The first to react to the question from the elf elder was Rikilda.

"What is your business with him?" She asked, with a sneer that made clear the question was less a request for information than a warning.

"I didn’t mean to offend the young red dragon lady," the elder said, bowing again. "I was merely curious. The aura he exudes is unusual."

"And what’s your business with his aura?" Rikilda asked, already losing interest, her eyes moving past the elves to the tree line beyond them. She turned to Bethan. "Are you staying? I want to leave and find something worth doing."

Bethan ignored her and addressed the elder. "We didn’t mean to disturb you. We were passing through. The young man is a friend of ours." She let a brief pause follow that before continuing. "I trust that’s not a problem."

The two elders exchanged a glance. Then both bowed, lower this time.

"Not at all," the first elder said. "Forgive the interruption. The tension between the human empire, the barbarian tribes, and the beastkin has been rising sharply. We have all been cautious."

"I understand," Bethan said. "I hope it settles."

She turned to Clone 1 with a small nod, and the group moved on without ceremony. As they left the clearing, the elves watched. Their eyes moved between Bethan and Rikilda, though never for too long, but they always came back to the human walking with them.

Clone 1 had noticed this too, and said nothing about it either.

They walked for a while in the direction Rikilda chose, a path that angled away from the elf territory and back into the deeper forest. The quiet stretched comfortably between them until Clone 1 broke it.

"Rikilda," he said. "You’ve been complaining about being bored since we met. I can help with that."

Rikilda slowed but didn’t stop. She turned her head just enough to look at him over her shoulder, and the expression on her face said she was trying to determine whether what she’d just heard was interesting or irritating.

"Why do I feel that there’s a condition?" she asked, with a raised brow

"For every round you win, you answer one question I have," Clone 1 said.

Rikilda stopped walking. She turned around fully and studied him attentively, as if she was recalculating everything about him.

"You’re planning to lose on purpose to avoid answering questions yourself," she said.

"I’m planning to find out how strong you are," he said. "Whether I win or lose is up to both of us."

Rikilda held the look for another moment. Then she smirked, curious to find out what Clone 1 is planning.

"Fine. But I won’t answer what I don’t have answers to," she said.

"That’s fair."

"And I’m going full power," she said.

"So am I."

Bethan had been listening quietly, finally spoke, "If you both want to go all out, the forest won’t survive it. We should use the duelling space."

"Where is it?" Clone 1 asked.

"Another dimension. Dragon territory, technically — you wouldn’t normally be permitted inside. But you carry Abyssal Dragon blood. That changes things." She tilted her head slightly. "It also means every dragon there will notice you immediately."

Clone 1 considered this.

"That’s fine," he said.

Bethan reached out and took his hand. The forest disappeared instantly around the two of them. Rikilda vanished immediately after.

***

Clone 1 found himself standing in the high up above ground and he quickly took in what was around him.

The sky here had no name that translated cleanly. It was vast and deep, layered in colors that had no equivalent in the atmosphere of Earth. It wasn’t the pale gradient of sunrise or the flat uniformity of noon, but something that moved and shifted at its own pace, responsive to no sun he could identify. Light came from everywhere and cast no shadows.

Below them, multiple arenas arena stretched across the landscape at a scale that made the word arena feel insufficient. It was continental. The outer walls caught the ambient light and threw it back in clean lines, and within those walls, dozens of rings were active simultaneously, each one containing figures in combat.

The attacks crossing between fighters left trails in the air. Not dissipating immediately but hanging for a moment, color and shape particular to each combatant — streaks of deep crimson, arcs of cold blue and do green.

Clone 1 watched a red streak cross an entire ring in under a second and detonate against a barrier that absorbed it without cracking.

The explosion from the detonation, from where he was in the sky, had sounded like a mountain coming down.

Above the arena, dragons flew in numbers.

It was the first time Clone 1 and Liam had seen the magnificent creature in their true form. And both original body and clone, had no words.

The dragons moved through the sky in every direction, some alone and some in pairs, their wingbeats slow and measured at cruising altitude, their scales catching the ambient light differently depending on color and angle. Red, green, blue — the same colors repeated across different bodies, each one distinct in size and proportion. Several were young by dragon standards, he estimated by their size, and even those were larger than anything that had ever flown on Earth.

Even from this altitude they looked massive. Even from this altitude they looked like something the word majestic had been invented for and had never quite fit anything else.

He looked back at the arena below.

"Welcome to the Dragons’ training dimension," Bethan said.

Clone 1 said nothing for a moment. Then: "It’s beautiful."

Bethan smiled. "It is. You’re also the first outsider to come here — if outsider is even the right word for someone carrying dragon blood. The other dragons will sense it immediately. Expect curiosity." She paused. "Some of it might not be polite."

Clone 1 nodded, his eyes still moving across the space. When he had proposed the spar he had been thinking about test Rikilda’s strength, observe how dragon combat worked, collect information he could bring back to the original body. It was a straightforward exchange.

He had not anticipated being brought to a dragon training dimension. He had not anticipated being the only human in a space that housed what appeared to be every young dragon currently living, training alongside each other in a scale of organized combat he hadn’t seen outside of cultivation sects.

He was aware that things could go wrong here. He was also aware that Bethan and Rikilda had brought him and that whatever standing they held in this space was currently extending over him by proximity. How long that protection held if something provoked it was a question he intended not to answer through carelessness.

But he was also genuinely curious to see what would happen.

"Let’s go down already," Rikilda said, and dropped.

She didn’t descend so much as release herself from the altitude, her body angling sharply downward, accelerating in a way that made her look briefly like something falling before the controlled nature of it became clear. She was moving fast and she knew exactly where she was going.

Clone 1 watched her for a moment. Then he looked at Bethan, who was already smiling at his expression.

"She’s been waiting for this since the moment you made the offer," Bethan said.

"I know," Clone 1 said.

They followed her down.