Brynhildr Aria

Chapter Six: Planet of Jewels

Chapter Six: Planet of Jewels

Deep in the pitch-black, never-ending void of darkness, a voice called out to me. "Yuki? Yuki, please! Please wake up! Yuki!" It was a familiar voice with a foreign accent, light and lilty while sharp like a knife. As I slowly drew myself out from the aether, it continued to beckon me, again and again, crying out in desperation. And then, I realized.

It was the voice of the man who broke me.

I jerked upright and gasped out loudly, as though I had been dragged from deep water. My lungs heaved in and out, sucking in gulps of air. I found myself lying on the soft blue interior of Seishirou's spread-out coffee-colored trenchcoat. The ground beneath it was hard and smooth, like glass.

I opened my eyes and awoke to a world I did not recognize. It spread before me, beckoning me in its unearthly glory. Unearthly was the only word I could use to describe it. It didn't look anything like Earth. In fact, I didn't think it even was Earth. The landscape sprawling out ahead of me was composed of shiny, glass-like earth and lustrous pillars of multicolored crystal jutting up from the ground. The blue, cloudless sky bore two white-hot suns that shone down thin rays of sunlight. Those rays pierced through the jagged crystal pillars dotting the landscape and splayed delicate rainbow colors on the ice-like surface. I stared in wonder, jaw slacked. Where was I?

Seishirou set himself beside me and latched onto my shoulders. "Yuki, are you alright? Does anything hurt?" I slowly shook my head. "No...I don't think so..."

I tried to piece together the last fragments of what happened yesterday before I fell unconscious. Last I remembered, we were fighting Amamiko on the London Eye, and Seishirou accidentally hit me with one of his vectors, snapping off my right horn. My memory became foggy beyond that point. I was on the floor, bleeding from my mouth, Seishirou wrapped his wings around me, and then...everything went black. I couldn't remember anything else after that.

I lifted my hand and felt around through my hair. "My horn...is it really gone?" Seishirou nodded. "Yes, I'm afraid so. Like Elijah said, a Kamui's horns are powerful, and they grant us our abilities, but they can be quite fragile. It's no different for a Brynhildr. If you lose one of your horns, your strength will be halved and the power of your abilities will be severely cut down. If both horns are broken, however...you will die instantly."

I hung my head. "So...I'm not going to die then?"

"No, but your body will continue to weaken without your right horn," Seishirou replied. "Eventually, you'll perish without it. We have to find a way to regrow it." I gazed upon the diamond world once more. "Hey...what is this place? How did we get here?"

"This is Houseki, planet of the Jewel People," he replied. "It's in the constellation of Lyra." I stared at him as though he were speaking another language. "Houseki? Jewel People? What are you even talking about? Are you saying...we're not on Earth anymore?"

"No, we are not, my lady," Seishirou promptly answered. "We Kamui possess an ability called Spatial Jump. To make it simple, it's a type of teleportation. Except this teleportation allows us to travel to any planet in the universe we wish in the blink of an eye. But it takes a lot of energy out of us, so we can only use it once a day. I took you here to find a replacement to regrow your broken horn. There are many gems here that cannot be found anywhere else in the universe. The one we're looking for is a Houseki Diamond, the rarest of its kind. That should be suitable enough. But for that, I believe we should seek an audience with the Houseki High Commission. Come, Yuki. Follow me."

He didn't even give me a moment to let the fact that I was standing on another planet sink in. He grabbed me by the hand, pulled me to my feet, and began dragging me across the crystalline landscape. I didn't have much of a choice but to listen and follow him. I'd never be able to find my way around here without him.