A Nascent Kaleidoscope.

Chapter 696 - 615

"Alright, all you idiots, get out." Brunnhilde all but kicked open the door to what I presumed was the medical area and yelled inside.

I think he had done this before because the people inside—the doctors? I don’t know if that’s the term they used here.

They all quickly hurried out the door.

"Belligerent" was a good way to describe her.

She was still dragging me too.

I think she was having fun as she quite literally tossed me up onto a table with a large device nearly encircling it.

"Ow." I intoned expressionlessly.

Though in all honesty, I was still hurting pretty bad. It wasn’t nearly as bad as before; I did heal a little bit, and I was more used to the pain now. But I still had a sharp, shrill run through my body as I hit the table.

And actually lying down, I felt more tired than I expected.

Even the bit of effort I put out in our little ’fight’ before had drained me quite a bit.

Not that either of us was trying at all, but I still got hit a couple times.

"What’s this thing?" I asked.

"You come from Midgard, right?" She asked, as if completely ignoring the question. I didn’t answer right away, but she took that as confirmation. "Don’t get all quiet; it wasn’t hard to guess. I’ve been to Midgard, and your friend was a dead giveaway. You’re weird just from feeling, but he’s 100% Midgardian or Terran. That’s what most species call the humans from your planet. It was good thinking to hide the name, though."

"And why’s that?" I asked, processing that bit of information.

"Terrans—Midgardians—are...famous, in a way. More like infamous, but all the same. There have been a few from your planet who have come around and made a name for themselves across the universe. It’s mostly surprising because your planet is still so primitive. I don’t remember the last time I was there, but you lot were still running around on wagons and living in dirt huts."

"It must have been a long time since you’ve been there, then."

"Yeah, it’s been awhile." They started messing with the control on the device. "How’s the technology there these days?"

"We had our first moon landing a few decades ago," I answered her.

"Huh," she said simply. "It must look completely different now. If you guys have managed to leave your gravity well, then that’s a big step forward. Still on the primitive side, though, if that’s all you can show for it. Most species won’t give you a second glance if you can’t travel between stars with relative ease."

I just nodded absentmindedly. "And what does that have to do with my question?"

"Well, I wasn’t going to waste an hour explaining what this thing did if you had no concept for it. You come from a primitive planet; why waste my breath?"

I let out a sigh.

"And what’s this about humans being infamous?" I was curious about that.

"Well, it’s a bit more than that." A hologram popped up, and she kept pressing buttons on it. "It’s famous—or infamous—for other reasons too. "It’s extremely rare for a planet to have as many gods make it their home as your little planet did."

She paused, looked at me, then punched my shoulder.

"Ow!?" I let out a pained noise.

"That’s for thinking I was an Olympian." She scoffed. "That also didn’t help things. As soon as you named all those guys, it was clear as day too. Your planet is a nexus between a lot of overlapping dimensions and invisible pathways that are carved through the universe. Otherwise, why would people even know the name of your species when you lot still haven’t left your planet?"

Huh, that makes an awful lot of sense.

The Ancient One said something similar too about how the Earth was connected to a lot of different dimensions.

And I discovered firsthand how it’s connected to other dimensions too.

"And what about famous humans out there?" I was also curious about that.

"Most of them faded into obscurity or died. But there’s some woman from your planet flying around giving the Kree a headache." She said casually. "Hold still, this thing is going to scan you now."

"Scan me how so?" I asked.

"Physically, spiritually, romantically."

"I question one of those."

"The Machine here says you like big guys, lots of muscles. I guess we share the same type."

"Funny," I deadpanned.

"You’re really lucky I’m in a good mood, you know? Those idiots in here before, they probably had no idea how to check your soul and get this thing to work from there. Most of the idiots here just stumbled into the job because they could stitch a wound together."

"This thing can seriously check the state of my soul and scan it?" I was incredulous, but I think it was understandable.

I mean, yeah, Chaldea even had similar things, but they used Magecraft.

I couldn’t sense any magic from this thing.

Then again, they also had something like that over on Remnant too, didn’t they? Using Aura, they were able to quantify the soul on their machines. But they also had the advantage of having Aura.

Chaldea and my home had magecraft; Remnant had aura. Both had shortcuts.

This reached the same conclusion purely through technological means.

Once more, I found myself humbled.

"Aww, it’s so cute. Is this your first time seeing technology this advanced?" She pats my cheek while cooing.

I smacked her hand away. "Without magic being used, yes."

She let out a snort. "It’s a far cry from the one we had on Asgard, but it’s not bad for being a machine that doesn’t use magic."

"You said the doctors—"

"Doctor" is a strong word for them.

"The medical staff didn’t know how to use this thing?"

"They probably knew how to use its basic functions, but they’re all random slaves. Do you think the Grandmaster actually hires specialists and brings them here?" She shook her head. "Though he does have a few well-trained people up with him. He tends to leave his toys laying around."

"He doesn’t care that he left something like this here? What if someone abuses it?"

With a shrug she just chuckled. "He’d probably laugh and have fun about it."

I didn’t know what to think about that.

"Ok seriously, don’t move; this thing is going to do an in-depth scan, and I don’t really have a lot of experience with something like this." She stated.

I lay still as an orange light began to envelop me.

I felt a tingling sensation.

My magic resistance really didn’t even flare up at all; it passed right into my body.

I had no idea what kind of energy this was, but my body wasn’t rejecting it because it showed absolutely no harmful intentions.

It’s like...some kind of radiation? Not the harmful kind, well, the harmful kind is in plentiful amounts. Like how they use certain electromagnetic radiation to conduct X-rays back home.

"There’s something blocking the scan."

Was it the storm I had brewing inside of me?

I was surprised again.

With a bit of effort, I sort of...parted it? It was hard to put into words, but that was the best I could describe it.

It was strange; whatever energy this thing used, I felt it envelop my soul.

"Why is there a tree in your soul?" She blurted out, then turned the device, the interface, in my direction, showing a sort of outline that looked quite a bit like a tree.

"I’m part tree." I answered seriously.

She gave me the driest look possible. "That’s the answer you’re going with?"

"Don’t be racist. Because I don’t look like a tree, that doesn’t mean anything."

She let out a sigh and shook her head. "If you weren’t hurt, I would probably kick your ass. And wow, you really weren’t lying." She played around with various interfaces as many different images flashed. "Nirns..." She breathed out. "Your soul is in really bad shape. How are you even standing? You let me punch you."

Her look was strange.

"This is the part where I say that I’m strong and built different." But honestly, I’m just tired and don’t have much bravado in me, even if it is in a joking way.

"Whatever this tree thing is, it’s doing a lot of work to hold everything together." She pressed a few images.

Huh, I didn’t even know that.

But it makes sense; even as a new sprout, it’s Yggdrasil that held up the Nine Realms. Holding together my soul is just a matter of course.

She stopped again. "What’s that? Is there something carved on your soul!?"

"Ah..."

"Are those Runes?"

To be honest, I forgot those were there.

"Would you believe me if I said that’s not the weirdest thing you might see?" I responded.

She shot me a look and rolled her eyes, and then once more she just stopped. "Why is there an arm in your arm? Wait, no...it’s spiky...is that a gauntlet?"

"That’s the dragon that lives in my soul. His name is Ddraig."

[Sup.]

"He says hi."

I think she may be wondering if I had something wrong with me at this point.

"I’m just going to stop asking questions. Alright, the machine figured out what’s wrong, I think. It could be having trouble processing the fact that you have a tree or a dragon inside you; I don’t know. This is a hunk of junk compared to the ones in Asgard, so let’s see how it does." She smacked it once.

[I can see what’s happening, don’t disturb the machine.] Musu Tengai told me. [It seems to be converting an unknown energy into Spiritrons and using those to mend the parts of your soul that are fractured.]

Spiritons, that was the designation that Magi gave to soul bits.

Like how spells were made of magical energy, souls were made of spiritons.

[Fascinating. I think I may be able to replicate this in the future. The Hogyoku is processing it.] I could feel it shifting around inside of me, like someone suturing a wound but on a soul level. [It’s similar to the process by which Shinigami use their healing arts, but in reverse.]

"What are these weird pathways!?" Her words snapped me back to focus. "I didn’t see them before, but as soon as the machine started healing you, they showed up all across your body."

"Magic Circuits." I breathed out, feeling them start to stop burning finally. "They allow me to utilize magical energy for spellcraft."

I usually don’t just blurt out things like this, but, well, I was feeling thankful and euphoric.

The feeling of being in pain for so long, and then it starts to disappear—it was like a drug injected straight into my veins.

"Is this how all humans use magic?" She whispered. "I must have been away for a lot longer than I realized.

It wasn’t just my soul either; the damage inside my body was slowly mending too.

Or rather, now that the brunt of everything I had wasn’t focused on keeping my soul damage from getting worse, it started to bleed outwards and speed up my normal regenerative process.

I was a freak of nature by every recognizable margin. The fact that I wasn’t regenerating properly spoke volumes about the severity of the soul damage I suffered, or the depth, I should say.

I felt a spark of life flicker back into my aura.

Fractures in my bones slowly mended.

My insides no longer felt like they were on fire.

My heart, I felt it beat smoothly for the first time I landed on this planet.

I lost track of time as I focused on what was happening inside of me.

It was by far the best healing I ever received; Avalon certainly takes that spot with ease. But I was once more taken aback by the profundity of this device.

There was the following train of thought. If they had something like this for healing, what kind of weapons did they have available?

The energy flowing into me slowly began to whittle down to a trickle, and even that was cut off, like turning off a sink.

I opened my eyes, and Brunnhilde was standing over me. "You good?"

I slowly got up, and there was not a single jolt of pain. "I’m feeling better than I have in days."

Huh, that headache I had was gone. It had been pounding in my head for so many hours now that I had gotten used to it.

"Good because this thing is out of juice. It’s going to take awhile to recharge, and this planet is a shithole, so don’t expect another round of healing anytime soon."

I clenched my fist before releasing.

[The damage has been mended enough that you can activate your circuits and utilize your abilities should the need arise. But I should remind you so you don’t get lost in the excitement, the collar still on your neck. My Zanpakutō reminded me.

"Hypothetically speaking," I spoke up. "What happens if I destroyed this collar on me?" And the one on my wrist, but that one seemed...easier? It was just a bomb.

She gave me a look. "Hypothetically speaking, what do you think the difference between you and one of the people working around here is?"

"The collar on our necks?" I said the obvious.

"The difference, scrawny boy, is that your collar is just visible." She swung her arms wide open. "Welcome to Sakaar; everything and everyone here are just toys for the Grandmaster to play with."

"Why not kill him?"

She let out a laugh, like an honest if exasperated laugh. "Do you think people have tried before? Do you know how many times I’ve seen him get stabbed, shot, or, my personal favorite, pushed off a hundred-story building? He hit the ground and went splat."

"Immortal?" I said it more for myself. "Or some time of healing? Possible time reversal or causality reversal?"

She snapped her fingers. "Points for that last one; that’s out-of-the-box thinking. But no one really knows. I’m old, and the Grandmaster is old enough that even I don’t know how old he is. No one knows what his deal is, only that he’s been around forever and he can’t die."

"Why not just leave? You clearly have no collar." I knew there was more to it than that, but I asked the obvious question.

"You saw the sky, right?"

"The Wormholes?"

"The Wormholes." She repeated with a sarcastic tone. "Do you think those are natural? It both keeps everyone out and keeps everyone in. They dump the universe’s trash here for the Grandmaster to play with, and it stops anyone from getting any ideas. I don’t even know if the Bifrost can penetrate the atmosphere."

I did some quick mental calculations. "The spatial fluctuations would prevent the establishment of a space anchor that your Bifrost needs to connect to points across space-time."

She raised an eyebrow. "You sure know a lot about the Bifrost."

"King of Asgard."

"Yeah, sure you are." She still clearly didn’t believe me.

"But that still doesn’t answer why you can’t leave. Are there no ships around?"

She opened her mouth but seemingly realized something. "Right, primitive world." She said it with a sigh. "Normal ships can’t survive atmospheric exit or reentry with so many of those things up there. And trying to go into one? That’s a death sentence for the vast majority of ships. I’ll give you a guess about who owns the only ship sturdy enough to survive that kind of trip."

"The Grandmaster," I drawled.

"He calls it his pleasure ship." She said cheekily. "I hear the orgies are great."

I scrunched my nose. "Thank you for that imagery."

I recognized her tone.

The kind of tone that someone had when they gave up and decided to just say fuck it.

"If you could leave, would you?"

She let out another sigh. "I just said—"

"I’m saying if there was a way off this planet, would you take it?"

She was silent for a long moment; her mocking tone and her sarcasm seemed to disappear. "Don’t dangle that kind of thing in front of me."

That felt like the most genuine emotion I got from her at this point.

Despite her harsh words, her dismissal, and even her verbally wanting to keep a distance after I found out her ’identity’...

She very clearly showed a certain fondness for me. No, not for me personally; it was nostalgia because I was related to her home.

She was homesick.

"Just answer me this." I wouldn’t push her. How long had she been here? A very long time from what she said. Thousands of years, maybe longer? Time here flowed chaotically, so who knows. "Have you seen a sword about this long—" I held my hands apart. "A thing about the width of two fingers, almost a transparent blue blade and a black handle with a spherical decoration in the hilt?"

She blinked. "Does it produce a mist when it’s swung?"

"That’s right. So you have –"

"Haven’t seen it." She smiled happily.

I found myself rubbing the bridge of my nose.

Be nice; she just got me healed...mostly, partially, enough.

She walked towards the exit. "But I did hear that someone gave the Grandmaster some kind of unique treasure to earn his favor. The Grandmaster seemed quite taken with it and said it made him look regal."

The Grandmaster again.

Well, at least I know where Mirage is.

And I do not like people touching my treasures.

Regardless.

I ran a finger against my collar.

My finger ignited with my power of destruction, and I contemplated it for a moment before extinguishing it.

Not quite yet.

But it was now time to get down to work.

[Line Break]

A/N

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