The Dragon Queen of Thelvadore

With a groan I collapsed onto the bed, burying my face into the soft fabric of the blanket and the pillows. My mind was racing with different thoughts, worries, emotions, and all the various other revelations I had just gone through in the span of a single conversation.

After weeks of trying to learn more about what had happened, it felt almost comical how much progress I suddenly made. Especially since I still found it awfully convenient for someone with fucking System access to show up at my doorstep!

Okay, first things first. My profile.

Of course, I couldn’t be certain that it truly was exactly as Lucy had said, but I doubted that the courier girl had minced words. She looked far too baffled and didn’t strike me as a liar.

In addition, the summary she had given me matched pretty closely with what I remembered writing down for Vuthe in one of the many note documents regarding this world. There were some minor changes, of course, but nothing truly surprising. My age being different made sense, although I found it quite curious that whatever state this body had been in between whatever happened to Vuthe and my awakening counted as her aging.

The mana reading as error was strange. Vuthe had stupid amounts of mana, sure, it was pretty much the primary pillar for her immense power. She had been blessed with a naturally high mana pool, and her training and focus on control, both over herself and her abilities, naturally pushed her to expand it quite drastically over the years.

Many mages, especially dragons and other draconic beings, usually focused on power over control, with power being their limiting factor. Control was well and good, and nobody even remotely worth their salt would ever make the mistake of dismissing its importance, but power was why you needed control in the first place. The best control in the world didn’t mean anything if you had nothing to have control over.

Vuthe was slightly different. She was naturally powerful, given her lineage, and she was also naturally quite impulsive. Her evil nature was something she wanted to keep a hold of, and so focusing on control had been pretty important from early on in her career. And the best way to improve your control over magic was to have more magic to control.

And that meant more mana.

There were a slew of minor things and unique circumstances that had led to her stupidly vast pool of mana. Her divine authority certainly helped in that regard as well. And even in the version of the status page I had eventually written down her mana was by far her highest stat. Even compared to pretty much anyone else.

It was the reason why she was, on paper, Singularity Rank. The last Tier in the ten Tier system I had come up with in an attempt to quantify everything. A system I had eventually scrapped, yet somehow still found its way into this new world of mine.

In reality, Vuthe was at best in the early stages of Diamond rank. Mana density and control was important, sure, but unlike levels, Ranks on Satien were based off of a number of things, with mana density only being one of the aspects taken into account. And while Vuthe was no doubt powerful, she simply lacked the skills and capabilities to match her abnormally high mana pool.

I found it rather strange, though, that the Ranks were listed on the status page at all, given that they were entirely disconnected from Calon. Yes, I did introduce them at the same time I introduced Calon and its System, specifically so that I had some way to categorise the various hilariously overpowered characters that I had come up with at that point, but in universe the two were very much separated.

That difference had obviously not translated well into this version of the world.

Another thing that had changed were the titles. Or rather, a title. The first in the listing, appearing even before her divine authority. Normally divine authority would basically always be the first one in the list, as the titles were listed in order of importance to both the person and the influence they held over magick and the world. To see that there was a title even more impactful than actual divinity on my profile made me worry a little.

I had some ideas on what that title could be, and why it was simply listed as [???].

In the original concept of the System, I opted to allow anyone to always be able to identify others. So many stories opted to have the identify skill be something to level up, or to limit what you could learn when trying to identify vastly more powerful people or things, but I had always found that to be kind of… comical.

Granted, the entire idea of a System had, at this point, been done so many times–especially done so many times badly–that it was kind of overplayed. And yes, I was very much aware of the irony of such a statement coming from me as I talk about the System I designed in a direct and obvious attempt to somehow quantify power levels in a story about overpowered characters.

Nevertheless, there was very little that would be obscured on a status page on Calon. Which, at least to me, screamed outside interference. The one responsible seemed obvious to me, although it might just be personal bias. Abyss would certainly fit the criteria, and given that I knew she was involved with me at least somewhat, it was an easy conclusion to come to. Yet, despite her tendency to influence things from behind the curtain, even I had to admit that the explanation ‘Abyss did it’ was starting to become a bit of a joke.

Since so far it seemed everything was done by her in some ploy.

That said, I really could not think of anyone–or anything, for that matter–else who would be able to manipulate the System on Calon like that. Especially if I was right about what the title actually represented. Namely, my nature as the creator of both this world and the multiverse.

There was no way in hell that something with that level of importance and intent wasn’t listed on my profile, and if it was, it almost had to be the very first thing listed without any exceptions. I couldn’t think of much that could be of more importance to the intent of the magick in this multiverse than the person who made everything to begin with.

I might have to ask Lucy if she could give me more details about that later.

The thought made me frown, and I finally sat up, crawling off the bed and making my way over to the liquor cabinet. Grabbing myself a bottle of a drink I hadn’t yet tried, I made my way outside and onto the balcony. Sitting down I opened the bottle of sweet rum that I had grabbed, and took a light sniff before I put it to my lips and took a sip.

It was quite delicious, although a bit too sweet for my taste. Still, I enjoyed the drink, as it was one of those that were meant to be strong enough for dragons.

Unsurprisingly, my thoughts quickly returned to all that I had just learned as I sat there, watching over the ruined city in perpetual twilight, nursing my drink. The revelations about what had happened, even if it was far from a complete picture, nagged at me. Although by far not as much as the other thing I had noticed during our discussion of said topic.

So far I had still felt very much like me, most of the time. There were some minor moments when I had noticed that my personality and the memories of Vuthe mixed, and I felt like I slipped into the role of someone not quite myself, but those were few and far between.

When we had started talking about Thelvadore, though… At first I had consciously ensured that I didn’t speak out of turn, slipping into my role as Vuthe, and speaking as if I truly was her. But that had quickly morphed into me just sort of actually becoming Vuthe. To the point I reflexively referred to myself as such without having to think about it.

In addition to that, I had also started to remember things. Things from Vuthe’s life, things I hadn’t been able to remember before. It was an entirely too strange feeling, now that I thought about it more clearly, but the fact that I was suddenly able to recall details about the Fall of Thelvadore I hadn’t before kind of unsettled me. After all, that only happened after I had slipped subconsciously into the role of Vuthe more deeply.

Honestly, I had only really noticed all this once everything was said and done, and the three of us had separated for the day. And it worried me.

Was I going to be replaced by the person I was currently impersonating?

It all brought back the worries I had about my own identity from the prior evening. In some ways I had gotten a lot of answers regarding that particular topic today, but none of them had been the answers I had been looking for.

I was, in fact, Vuthe. I shared her soul. I held her titles. I held her divine authority. I held her memories. I even held her place in the eyes of the world, with the only potential hint at my identity as someone other than her being that strange question mark title. Which, quite frankly, could just be me desperately holding onto some desperate hope about its meaning in an attempt to prevent myself from having a complete breakdown.

It was made even worse by the fact that I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. My opinion and trust in Abyss notwithstanding, her warning had a logical explanation, and was based on a worry I was more than familiar with. Not to mention that even if I decided to ignore it, I doubted that it was a good idea to tell the two women I had saved earlier about that right now.

They were already quite overwhelmed, and I didn’t think piling on even more madness would make them any more friendly towards me. In a way I was sort of surprised, and even suspicious, at how calm they seemed to be after all of it.

Then again, they were from a world of might and magick, where dragons were a real thing and absurdity paraded around every other corner. I might be stranger than most, but I wasn’t incomprehensibly strange in the way high tech science fiction would be for them. Goddess was certainly an impactful title, and deities, while common knowledge, were rare. But they were a known quantity.

I took another sip of my drink, gaze locked onto something that wasn’t there, my mind quickly churning through a plethora of different things. I was used to being a nervous wreck most of the time, anxiety having been a constant companion for a good chunk of my life. Not that that made me special in any way, I was just one of many.

Still, right now it felt so much harder to keep it all down. And it only got worse the more I learned. Keeping a routine helped, but it would only do so much. Depending on how things continued, I was honestly worried about my own well being.

My own well being, and those around me.

Before, if I had a mental breakdown, then that was that. I had a horrible day, was sent down into a depression spiral, and likely started drinking again. Now, though, I was inhabiting the body of a being who could flatten a mountain range by accident. Throwing a fit as a normal human was one thing. You might hurt yourself and destroy a few items, but that was about the worst of it.

Throwing a fit as a dragon like Vuthe?

The last time that happened tens of thousands of innocent souls died in a single night. And that was over three millennia ago, by this point. Vuthe had gotten unbelievably stronger since then. I didn’t want to know what would happen if the Night of a Thousand Screams occurred these days.

It was that particular possibility that worried me most. Vuthe had done quite some insane shit over the years, and she had endured quite some insanity. She also had tried quite some things to keep herself from going overboard ever again. But she wasn’t alone.

She had her friends. Four people–four dragons–that she had gone through hell and back with, who all shared her history, and who all shared her origin point of Earth. Tizanta, Calagrophy, Castaphiel, and Corellanium. Four names that had become the pillars of Vuthe’s world over the millennia they spent together.

I had none of that. I was alone. Alone, and teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown that might very well endanger a whole lot of people who didn’t even know I existed.

I sighed at the grim thought and took another sip. Maybe I was overthinking things, maybe I was worrying too much. Maybe I was just brooding and exaggerating things. I doubted it, but it wasn’t impossible.

Nevertheless, my mood was… not good.

Hopefully the two women would accept my request to join them. I was very much aware that being holed up in the ruins of the city Vuthe had spent her entire life building wasn’t going to do me any favours. And I had already broken past the enchantments running along the city borders. If I were to leave, now would be a good time. And despite my usual social anxiety, I would prefer to do so with other people who had at least some idea about who or what I was, and how the world actually worked.

But I wasn’t going to force them to do anything either. Over the course of the day, I had realised at some point, somewhere deep down, that I held power unlike any other. Far more than I ever had in my life previously. Real, tangible power. The power of not only a dragoness at her prime, but also that of a Goddess. It was a sort of muted realisation, the sort of thing that I had been intellectually aware about, but that took its time to actually internalise.

I was convinced that even now I hadn’t properly internalised it. But I had made a step in that direction. And it worried me to some extent, because, while I couldn’t remember anything specific from my past, I had the fleeting feeling that I probably wouldn’t handle power too well. That urge to just… use it. To do something about the perceived injustices of the world.

I could, theoretically, march towards the closest kingdom and take over in probably less than a week without any serious threat. I could demand just about anything and there was nobody who could do something about it.

It made me wonder just how much of Vuthe as a character was just me being edgy about wanting an evil creature constrained only by pure will power, and how much of it was based on some subconscious fear or understanding about myself. As the author, my own being inevitably leaked into my works, and not everything is deliberate.

There were entire lists about things as evidence for that, often to do with hidden fetishes and whatnot, but not limited to just that. I wouldn’t doubt for even a moment if someone told me that a lot of other, at first glance innocuous, things were influenced by our subconscious psyche.

Being aware of that while writing, and experiencing that in person were two very different things, though.

Well, whatever. I could sit here and contemplate all of that for weeks, probably years, and still have more to think about. It didn’t help my current situation. Then again, I also didn’t know what else to do right now either. As much as I wanted to plan ahead, there wasn’t much I could plan for, given how little I knew about basically anything important.

At the same time, I also really wasn’t in the mood to do some reading or training. Even if I was, I doubted I was able to focus on any of that today. My mind was a mess, and even the buzz of the alcohol only helped so much.

Maybe I should just lay down and try to get some rest. Part of me wanted to remain awake, just in case either of the two women wanted to talk to me, but at the same time, I doubted I even had the spoons for any more conversations anyway.

With a sigh, I finished the bottle, frowned as I realised how quickly I had gulped it down, then put it down and made my way back inside, crashing into the bed. Rest would do me good, even though I was pretty sure this night wasn’t going to be nearly as restful as I wanted it to be.

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