Scarlet had been true to her word and they were on a private jet not even one hour later. They could have flown there by themselves, but Scarlet stopped them, saying something about rules and regulations.
Truth be told, Vuthe was in half the mind to screw the ranks and just teleport there, but Tizanta had talked her out of it. Probably for the best, Vuthe had to admit to herself.
Castaphiel, Corellanium, and Calagrophy had remained behind, together with Apocalyptica who they unanimously decided should not be let loose on the world.
So, in the end only Vuthe, Tizanta, Scarlet, Archangel, and Vixus were on Scarlet’s private jet to Switzerland. All the while Vuthe was going over what she had just learned.
The fact that the imposter was under a truth spell when they made their claims troubled her greatly. Truth spells interacted with the soul, to lay bare the undeniable truth, without directly targeting it. It was a very complicated piece of spellwork and she had to admit to being impressed Earth even managed that. It was one of the very few spells that could interact with souls, without being some type of forbidden magic.
While not entirely impossible to fool, they were damn near there. Even Vuthe would have a hard time, even if she would utilise all her strength and training. Tizanta could probably manage, but even she would not take that kind of action lightly.
So what was the situation here?
As Vuthe had explained to the German Government, Souls were inviolable and unique. That was just how the world worked. But the imposter held up under a truth spell. While there was a non-zero chance that they lied, the much more likely explanation was that Vuthe was not who she thought she was. Did she get memories implanted? But if yes, for what reasons? Who was she before this?
A thought she immediately tried to dismiss, but wasn’t able to, was that Abyss was the culprit. Her friend was a mischievous being and did have her own agenda. If she was behind it, then there had to be a reason for it. But it didn’t feel right. Not even because that would have meant betrayal, it simply didn’t fit Abyss style.
Despite all her faults, she had never lied to Vuthe even once on anything more important than a joke. Yes, she spoke in riddles half the times, and in gibberish the rest, but she had never been actively deceitful. She knew how to have other people lie for her.
At the same time, however, all that argument was forfeit if Abyss had lied to her about who she was.
While the woman was definitely completely crazy and mad, she had always felt to Vuthe like she valued the truth. It was, after all, the driving force for her life’s purpose. If her words were true, she had been seeking the truth about everything across every dimension ever since the creation of reality. A little grand a claim in Vuthe’s eyes, but it was right on brand for her friend.
All that being said, she didn’t know what to make of this mess.
„Tiz… Do you know Truth spells?“, Vuthe asked, not moving her gaze away from the window.
„Sadly I don’t. I know a great many things, but I wouldn’t even know anyone in our ranks who would be able to cast one. The last one I remember was Dice from before Uterin“, Tizanta said with an apologetic tone.
Vuthe didn’t answer, it was a response she expected, but not one she wanted.
The rest of the flight was spent in silence, Vuthe losing herself in doubts about her own existence, while Scarlet tried to decide who was telling the truth regarding being her sister. She knew about truth spells and that it was pretty much impossible to fool them.
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Yet she felt like Vuthe spoke the truth herself. She felt so genuine, so… helplessly honest. It was hard to imagine all this to be a facade, a play, a lie.
They arrived four hours later, a cab already waiting for them courtesy to the Swiss Paranormal Council. With no delays they were driven to the meeting place.
Vuthe had no idea how this would go. By this point she was convinced the other person was telling the truth and was more interested in finding out who or what had made her have Rin Savart’s memories. No matter how she looked at it, it was impossible for there to be two of them, and it was nearly as impossible to fool a truth spell. As discouraging as it was, it was much easier and much more likely for her to have implanted memories.
Only Tizanta and Vixus picked up on her mood and thoughts, and while it terrified and worried them, they knew better than to try and talk about it with Vuthe. So far, she could still deny it, but the moment it was spoken aloud she was bound to react in some way or fashion. Both of them knew her long enough to know how to best let her deal with things to not have her breadown right on the spot.
Although even if they wanted to, it was hard to disprove Vuthe’s points. Logically her conclusion was the correct one, so they couldn’t even try and tell her differently.
„Here you are“, a man said when they finally arrived in front of a guard station at the entrance to a district.
„Please get us to this meeting as soon as possible“, Scarlet said immediately, trying to rush them through as quickly as possible.
„Yes, ma’am. Are there any additional guests that we need to know of?“, the man asked.
„No, I already emailed the complete list over.“
With that exchange out of the way they drove the last part of the trip, ending in front of an expensive looking mansion.
The moment Vuthe looked out the window, all doubts about the other person being an imposter, or her having implanted memories flew straight out her head, exchanged with only a singular thought. No, this wasn’t a thought, this was a feeling, a certainty. It was an experience that defied any and all she had ever experienced before, something so bizarre and surreal, yet so fundamentally real that it simply lacked any understandable description.
In the middle of the garden stood six people. The first, a scrawny, pale man, with white hair and red eyes just barely even registered in Vuthe’s mind, disregarding his presence immediately after her eyes left him.
The other five however… They were burned into her memory like a branding iron.
In the middle stood a girl, fifteen years of age, with jet black hair, glowing purple eyes, and obsidian colored clothes in the same style Vuthe had worn when she visited the pub. Her gaze was so intense it had a physical weight to it. It spoke of death, destruction, and murder. She was superior to anyone around her, and she knew it.
On the girls left stood another girl, a head taller, maybe around seventeen. She had silver hair, golden irises, and clothes similar to the first, but in white with gold accents. Her gaze spoke of knowledge and experience, of grave injuries to all those who dared attack those she held dear.
On the other side was the last girl, with night-sky hair and eyes, and clothes so skimpy they basically covered only what was absolutely necessary to avoid a public indecency fine. Her gaze spoke of explosions and reckless abandon, of indulgence and seduction, a promise of the best and worst time of your life, depending on how you treated her.
Behind them stood two men, one around twenty with purple hair and eyes, a bare chest, and purple cargo pants. He had a cigar in his mouth and his arms crossed in front of him. His presence screamed do not fuck with us in a way Vuthe had never felt before. The other was a scrawny man with black hair and eyes, and black camo clothes which might as well have been directly stolen from the closest army camp. He had a dangerous look about him, like an elusive shadow poised to strike those who dared come close.
Vuthe knew all of them so intimately she could pick up the silent conversation between their auras, despite never having seen them in her entire life. In fact, outside the specifics of their auras, she knew them so well she could read their every thought without even trying.
Just as she internalised all of this information, she realised that there had been a feeling of longing she hadn’t even known was there, that was now absent. Like she had found something important she had forgotten after far too long a time. A piece of her that had finally returned to its rightful place.
She had no doubts. Actually, that was too lax a term. She was convinced beyond any even unreasonable doubts, that those were exact copies of her and her friends. Those five people, for a lack of a better term, were their clones.