The Dragon Queen of Thelvadore

Without any further words, the three of us left the building after Lucy quickly packed away the last of her breakfast. Cecily took the lead and began to lead us towards the gate we had entered the city through yesterday. It seemed like she was confident in her sense of direction, which I didn’t find all that surprising.

Lucy trotted after her, gaze obviously affixed to everything around us, taking in all the little details. I wondered if she noticed the lack of any personal effects, and what she would say to it, but the courier remained silent.

As we walked at a stern, but not rushed, pace, I thought back about everything I’ve gone through in the last two or three weeks or so since I woke up here. I still wasn’t sure how much time had gone by exactly, and truth be told, I found it a bit unrealistic that it had indeed been an entire month. That said, I could be wrong. If I took Abyss’ words at face value, then it could just very well be that I wasn’t that good at keeping track of time. After all, the two women did seem to be the kind that she would find entertaining. Lucy in particular, given just about everything she had going on.

Nevertheless, in case my guess was wrong and someone else would show up after we had left, I covertly summoned one of my shadow clones, positioning it within the city. I still hadn’t mastered the technique of making them actually sentient, or even pseudo-sentient, but I could give it the simple order of just patrolling and alerting me without having to concentrate all the time.

If worst came to worst, and I got truly distracted, it would stop moving, but unless something actively destroyed it, or blanketed the area in which it resided with an anti-magic field, it would remain. That way I could keep an eye on this place and have a nice anchor point to quickly return here if I needed to.

Technically I could shadow hop everywhere where darkness resided. Vuthe was more than powerful enough to traverse the entire continent if needed, probably even far more than that. But doing so blindly was a bad idea for someone as inexperienced as me. Even the old Vuthe would refrain from doing so without a very good reason.

Having my shadow clone present gave me a reliable anchor point to arrive at that didn’t need much focus, and if I left another at my previous location, I could quickly return as well without any worries. Magick surely was convenient. Especially if you were as powerful as I was.

From what I could tell, neither Cecily nor Lucy noticed my little trick, and if they did they didn’t give me any signs.

After a few minutes of walking, we finally passed the gate that marked the city entrance. I felt a shudder go through me as I passed the city boundaries, a faint sense of unease, but it wasn’t nearly as strong as it used to be before I broke out to rescue my two current companions. It made me once again wonder just what exactly its purpose was. Keeping me inside certainly wasn’t it. Outside the strange sense of danger, it hadn’t done anything to keep me from actively crossing it, nor did anything happen after I did so. At least, as far as I could tell.

Of course, it could’ve been weakened by Abyss. Or it could’ve been there to keep things outside, although I was coming up short on reasons for why that would be necessary. There wasn’t exactly much to steal in the ruins, nor was there much to do either. And, considering that I found it more likely to be a remnant of Apocalyptica’s strange magick, it didn’t seem to make much sense to me for him to try and keep the place safe.

Given that I had no way to actually determine the purpose, I stopped worrying about it. Maybe one day I would find someone or something that could help, but until then I had other things to focus on.

Like exploring the world outside!

I couldn’t quite keep myself from feeling a bit giddy at the thought. As much as I felt a bit terrified at the unknowns awaiting me, this was my chance to experience an honest to god fantasy world, and one that I had come up with, no less! There were so many things I hoped I could one day see and learn.

That said, I did try to keep myself calm. It was helped by the fact that the immediate surroundings of the city weren’t exactly interesting or awe inspiring, mostly just hilly open plains locked in perpetual twilight.

The thought made me quickly glance at my two companions. Neither had mentioned any potential lightsource even once since getting here. I was a dragon, a Shadow Dragon no less, and had my dark vision, plus my aura senses. Lucy was a Catkin, and I was pretty certain that she would have some form of darkvision as well. That much was pretty typical for Beastkin in most fantasy media–and if my lore translated over the way I thought it would, then it would hold true here as well.

Cecily, though… I wasn’t actually sure what race she belonged to. So far, I hadn’t even seen her without her mask on, the only identifying feature visible apart from her clothing were a few strands of her red hair. But, considering that she didn’t seem all too bothered by the darkness, she, too, must have had some way of seeing properly. She was an adventurer after all, and, from what I could gather, took her job seriously. Even if pulling out a lightsource could attract unwanted attention, it would make more sense to accept that risk than fight completely blind.

All that being said, however, I didn’t think it wise to ask, even if I was curious about it. Both women were far more experienced with long distance travel than I was, and I didn’t want to come across as patronising by sounding like I was questioning their methods basically immediately after leaving.

And if things truly went south, well. I was here for that. I doubted that there was much we could run into that could threaten me. And if so, then we had far bigger concerns anyway.

Our little group continued at the same steady pace, following along the remains of the road leading outside the city, before Cecily eventually led us off the stone and onto the soft grass, following along the ridge of one of the hills. From here we had a decent view of the area around, all the way until the edge of the forest. The hill wasn’t high enough to see much further past that, so I couldn’t be certain what else expected us. That said, I could see a few interesting things in the far distance. My eyes were quite sharp after all, and while I couldn’t quite make out all the details, I was pretty sure that I saw some signs of civilization on the horizon.

“Truly marvelous,” I muttered, more to myself, as we walked along the peak of the hill.

Lucy giggled in front of me, giving me a glance over her shoulder. “You act like you haven’t been outside the city before.”

“That actually isn’t really inaccurate. Ever since I woke up I only left the city boundaries once, to help you two. There was a sort of… I wouldn’t quite call it a barrier, but something similar, that I had to pierce through. It made me feel quite uneasy, so I was a bit hesitant about crossing it. After I pushed through to save you, though, it vanished. Or rather, it got far, far weaker.” I shrugged, not moving my eyes away from the sight before me.

“That’s… curious. Do you know what that barrier thing was? I didn’t feel anything.” The courier asked, one eyebrow raised in inquiry.

“Nope. And I doubt I’d be able to figure it out either. As I mentioned, memories weren’t the only thing I lost. There’s quite a bit of training and knowledge I have to regain before I’m back at my peak. Maybe I can decipher it then. So far, I’m missing far too many pieces.”

She nodded in understanding, although she didn’t comment.

“I did fly around a bit to watch the surroundings from the sky. But it’s not the same as walking on the ground,” I added with a small smile.

“Oh, yeah! You’re a dragon! Couldn’t you just straight up fly us to our destination?” From the tone of her voice, I was certain she was positively ecstatic at the idea of flying on a dragon’s back. Not that I could blame her.

I chuckled at her enthusiasm. “I could, technically. But I’m not sure if it would be such a good idea. My true form is quite a sight to behold. And I’d rather not spook innocent travellers or villagers without good reason.”

“Not to mention that dragons aren’t all that small,” Cecily chimed in, obviously having been paying attention to our conversation, despite the fact that she kept her gaze forward. “While I haven’t seen a fully mature dragon in their true form before, I had the pleasure to watch a small group of juveniles from a distance. They are definitely eye-catching.”

“True that,” I agreed, stretching my arms over my head. “I’m not quite as big as most adults, which probably shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, given that I’m not exactly big in my humanoid form either, but without boasting, I’m still quite easy to spot. And quite terrifying to look at. You saw my titles, right? Daughter of Destruction?”

Lucy shivered, but nodded. “Yeah… That’s one of the ones I’m still not quite sure I fully grasp the meaning of. The description said something about you being the offspring of the Primordial Evil, but like… You don’t seem that bad.”

The way she said it, and the way she glanced at me made me laugh heartily. I suppose that reaction was kind of what my goal was when I first dreamed up the character concept of Vuthe, but I still found it quite amusing to actually see someone try to wrap their head around the deliberate dichotomy between the innocent appearance of Vuthe’s physical body and the true meaning behind her background and nature in person.

“Me not being that bad isn’t a natural thing. I’m a trueblooded Shadow Dragon. As far as I’m aware, there is only one lineage of those, that being the one started by my draconic grandfather, Ga’zeith de Thal. According to legends, he was the first Shadow Dragon, and–together with his sister, the Light Dragon Sha’gath de Thal–the only dragon not to be created by Bahamut, the Dragon of Origin. While Sha’gath certainly has a lot of descendants, Ga’zeith only has one that I know of. That one would be Schatten de Thal, my draconic mother.” I swallowed the grimace at the name. It was another example of my inability to think of any names that weren’t cringy as fuck. “Anyway, Shadow Dragons are, by nature, evil. It’s a result of Ga’zeith own existence. He’s the Celestial of Darkness and Evil, and worshipped as the Primordial Evil. And, with magick being what it is, that worship also shaped his descendants.”

I gave the courier girl a faint smile. She was obviously watching me closely, her wide eyes full of curiosity. If not for the fact that we never stopped our walk, I could very well imagine her standing right in front of me, being glued to every word leaving my mouth.

“I was lucky. I was born with a nearly indomitable will, so I was able to–mostly–keep my evil nature in check.” My smile fell a little. “But, even I’m not perfect. You know my titles, so you should be able to piece together that I wasn’t always able to keep myself from acting on my… lesser instincts. Especially in the early days.”

Silence accompanied us for a moment, as we crested the peak of the hill, and slowly began our descent, leading us closer to the edge of the forest’s edge.

At least they didn’t seem overly terrified by my presence. I had to remind myself that while this was all new to me, they had grown up in this world–or in Lucy’s case, one very similar. So tales like these probably weren’t all that unusual to them.

And it did warm my heart a little to be able to talk to them about all of what I now was, without them running for the hills.

Or perhaps they just hadn’t properly internalised it yet. Only time would tell.

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