Once more, the next few days were mostly quiet, outside of her apprentices arriving in camp. Despite these brief reprieves of trouble, it began to feel like everything fell into a bad rhythm, of something bad happening, then a few days of silence, to wait for the new source of trouble.

Not that she could relax. Her mind was running away from her in those days. Truth be told Vuthe had spent most of that time thinking about the one topic she tried to avoid. Divinity.

She had to begrudgingly admit that part of the reason it came up so quickly was her desire to stop humanity from committing the same mistakes as most people had in the past.

Another reason she was loathed to admit was that she felt responsible as a former goddess. It had been the reason for the divine taint in her aura, as her accumulated divine power started to express itself on her own soul.

She had long since left her divine title behind, banning her own worship and preventing anyone who tried to forgo that ban. But it still was part of her, as much as she didn’t want it to.

Divinity itself was something most people thrived for, but for her it was a curse. An endless line of people wanting something from her, with her not having the motivation nor energy to help, yet had done so anyways, since it was her duty to help those who couldn’t help themselves.

And now it had, once more, come back to bite her in the backside.

Once the new apprentices arrived she tried to banish such thoughts, to middling success. They still came back to her during the night.

Four days after the council meeting the apprentices finally arrived, giving Vuthe a much needed reprieve from her own thoughts.

That was until she saw the people lined up in front of her. In total there were seven, with both Tika and Gerald Loltharim present. Those two were the only people she had a genuine hope for.

She looked over all of them, before crushing all their auras with barely any effort, only the Loltharim siblings able to mount even a semblance of resistance.

„Weak”, she said, with disapproval in her tone.

She let her gaze wander over them once more, all of them directing their gazes to the ground.

Everyone knew it wasn’t their fault that their ability was lacking like this, but Vuthe’s gaze alone made them feel inadequate.

„From today on you will learn under a dragon. You were chosen because of your ability, or favouritism. In the upcoming days it will be clear who was sent here for one or the other. I will not accept any whining. You have come here, to me, to learn the mastery of an ancient dragon, if you think you cannot bear that burden, leave now.”

She looked over the people lined up in front of her, but nobody moved, even though most of them flinched when her gaze set onto them.

She showed a ferocious smile. „Good. Now, we will start with the first exercise”, she said, much to dismay of the people güathered.

One of them was foolish enough to voice his concerns. „Already? We have just arrived!”

He was thoroughly squashed by her aura, the full domineering effect of her being settling over him like a blade on his neck.

„I do not tolerate whining. If you feel inadequate then leave. I have no time for little children throwing a tantrum”, she said, her voice as cold as steel.

He didn’t move, despite his shivering.

She nodded, not sparing him with another glance. „For the first exercise you will fight against my second in command.”, she said.

The people arrayed in front of her, including the Loltharim siblings, looked confused. Tika spoke up. „Weren’t we sent here for aura training?”, she asked.

Vuthe gave her a cold look. „Yes. Which is why you will fight Calagrophy. Once you can deal with her, you have at least the barest of aura skills.”

With that she turned around and left. A moment later the ground shook, spooking the group. As they turned around they found Calagrophy de Thal looking at them with a smirk, her giant Greatsword halfway buried into the ground.

„Well. Who wants to start?”

Despite many complains from the new recruits there was a reason Vuthe let them fight her best friend. Or rather, let them think they would fight her. Aura was a part of one’s soul, and its strength lay in its appliance.

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The recruits didn’t know it, but they didn’t in truth fight Calagrophy, nobody would survive that. They fought an imaginary image conjured up by Calagrophy’s aura. Their first lesson lay in figuring that one out, before they were fit to continue further.

Vuthe guessed it would take them a few days, so she had time to deal with other things. It wasn’t that she was lazy in her teaching method, but that lesson was the most important to any aspiring mage, so she wanted to drive it home hard.

In fact, if she would have known that herself in her days as an assassin, she would have avoided much of the trouble that came out of her involvement with the order.

However, life, as it seemed to really have it out for her, didn’t give her the enjoyment of being able to deal with different things during the time Calagrophy spent beating up the apprentices.

She was currently out and about with Scarlet, for once spending a pleasant afternoon just taking her sister around the camp and talking with different people.

As they walked they stopped at the bakery of the camp, which in truth was just a big stove operated by a dwarven woman with a truly magnificent beard.

“‘Ey, lass!”, the dwarf greeted with a wide smile when she saw Vuthe, “And ye too, lady”, she added with a nod to Scarlet.

“Good day, Track, how are you doing?”, Vuthe asked with a kind smile. She liked the dwarf, even if Track had a tendency to be complaining about pretty much everything.

“Doin’ fine ‘nough. Gotta say tho, lass, ever since those humans buggered off things got a lil’ borin’, yer feel me?”, Track said with a shrug. She was of course referring to the departing of the army shortly after Chell Bertner arrived, as had been the agreement. It had been a pretty silent and quick affair, with no great speeches or anything, they just packed up and left.

“Well”, Vuthe gave Track a smirk, “Now you have the apprentices to annoy.”

Track laughed wholeheartedly, only interrupted by the ring of Scarlet’s phone. She excused herself and stepped away for the moment.

While Track was a baker, she was brought up in the trades of all kinds of crafting, so she eyed Scarlet’s phone with a curious look on her face. “Still not entirely sure what those slates are. Had some bloke explain it to me, but I just can’t grasp it. It’s not magic!”

“Well, yeah. Phones and other non-magical tools are the reason that humanity had come so far on this world. Although, perhaps there had been more magic involved than we thought…”, Vuthe said, before stopping for a moment, lost in thought.

Track was just about to speak when they heard a surprised and shocked “WHAT?!” coming from Scarlet.

Vuthe waved a hand at the dwarf to indicate she’d go look and walked over to her sister.

“What is it?”, she asked, as Scarlet turned around to her, fixing Vuthe with a burrowing gaze.

“Are you truly Rin Savart?”, she asked, completely blindsiding Vuthe.

For a moment she didn’t know what to say, just looking at her sister in confusion and terror, feeling like all she had gotten back had just gone back to brink of disappearing. Sadness and loneliness gripped her heart tightly once more, just as it had back in the days before the order. Although this time it was much harder to control the sheer power of the emotions she felt, leaving her just shy of breaking down in fear.

Her expression went from surprise to suspicion, “Of course I am! I thought we settled that topic already.”

Scarlet looked at her for a moment longer, than spoke, “Okay. Vladimir, I hate to break it to you but that isn’t possible. My sister is right here.”, she said with confidence.

A huge weight fell from Vuthe at those words, just for her relief to be shattered once more when Scarlet continued, looking even more surprised, “What?! That isn’t possible!”

She once again looked at Vuthe, this time with suspicion, and the weight that had just vanished settled on Vuthe once more.

“No, we don’t have a mage with truth magic. But I believe her. She would have no reason to lie to me. Even ignoring her absurd levels of wealth and power, it would need barely any effort on her part to outweigh my influence on anything. I don’t know whats going on, but whoever you have there is not my sister.”

Finally Vuthe began to understand what was going on and her mind went from focusing on the fear on the fact that there seemed to be something suspicious going on.

“Yes. We will leave within the hour… No, don’t bother. I have a plane ready, or we could portal- … Okay, yes. We will probably be there in about 5 hours… Good.”, and with that she hung up, facing Vuthe squarely.

“That was Vladimir, an Overseer in the Swiss Paranormal Council. He apparently met someone who claims to be you, even under a truth spell. From what she had told him they returned from some other world around the same time you did. I think it was called Amalium or something like that.”

Vuthe was just starting to think about the mention of truth spells when the last sentence stopped her thoughts cold. “Do you mean Amnellium?”, she asked coldly, only realising she dropped straight to DEFCON 1 when she saw Scarlet take a few steps back out of fear, and the auras around her started to seep fear. With a distinct effort of will she reigned in both her temper and her aura, but didn’t look away from Scarlet.

Her sister nodded, still pale, “Y-Yeah, I think that was it…”

Turning to the main camp Vuthe yelled out a single name. “ARCHANGEL!”

Vuthe had no problem to make her voice carry, a dragon’s lungs were big enough to really yell, but this single word had physical authority to it.

Scarlet had no idea what to make from this exchange, until the three meter tall cyborg woman arrived in a dead sprint, hands already on the handle of her gun which was drawn half-way. “What is it?”, Archangel asked in Amnellal out of habit.

Vuthe looked at her with a mostly blank expression. Only those close to her could see the emotions brooding beneath this mask. “There appears to be an imposter of me, who claims to be from Amnellium. Thoughts?”

“Impossible. They would have no idea about you. I’ve spent considerable amounts of time to see if they tracked us somehow, but there was nothing. Apoca even made me an enchanted detector, but nothing.”, Archangel said immediately, putting away her weapon, but not letting go of its grip, “That means there are two possibilities. Either it’s a coincidence, in which case they are only very dangerous, or they somehow do know, in which case they are extremely dangerous.”

Once more Vuthe turned to Scarlet, “How quickly can we get there?”

Her sister forced a smile, still a little shaken by Vuthe’s sudden outburst of aura, “Already ahead of you. I have a meeting scheduled in five hours.”