Chapter 22: Truth
Quartz had flown off in dragon form with Ruri in tow. He left the castle and capital behind, heading for parts unknown.
Ruri’s body was immobile, but she was fully conscious, so she had made an incredibly calm and composed assessment of the situation. Her eyes were the only things she could move. She wanted to see where they were heading, so she decided to stay still—or rather, she had no other choice but to stay still since she couldn’t move anyway.
Suddenly, the air around Quartz started to sparkle. Ruri blinked in surprise, but Quartz didn’t seem fazed. After flying for a little while more, he began to descend. He slowly landed on the ground below.
Quartz returned to his human form and picked up the still-paralyzed Ruri in his arms. Ahead of them was a charming house, which he walked into without hesitation.
Was this Quartz’s house? Ruri wanted to ask, but she was physically incapable of speaking.
Quartz walked her up the stairs to the second floor, entered a room in the back, and laid her down on the bed there. He then put his hand under her chin to nudge her head up a little. He pulled a small vial of liquid from his pocket and slowly tilted it to her lips, making her drink the contents. Once he let her chin fall back in place, Quartz took a seat in a chair near the bed and peered at her.
Quartz’s stare was practically burning a hole through her, making her feel extremely uncomfortable. That was when Ruri noticed someone else standing near the door, throwing her for a loop.
It was a small girl. She walked closer, but without making a single footstep. Her hair was golden, her eyes sky blue. Her wavy hair was as shiny as thread, and her features were as adorable and immaculate as a doll.
“What is this girl’s story?” the girl asked.
Without so much as a glance at the girl, Quartz spoke as if talking to himself. “She was singing the song, so I brought her here.”
“You think that she is the one?” the girl asked.
“That’s the only other explanation. That song was a secret between her and me,” Quartz replied.
“But she herself doesn’t realize it, right?”
“That’s why I’m asking you, please. Make sure she doesn’t go outside of the barrier.”
“Keep her locked in? Well, if that’s what you want to do, so be it,” the young girl said, sighing in resignation and walking over to Ruri. She stood by Ruri’s side and held out her hand. A vine of light grew from the girl’s hand, wrapped around Ruri’s wrist, and disappeared. “There. Now she can’t go outside.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Call me if anything comes up,” the girl said before silently exiting the room, leaving the two all by themselves once more.
“The medicine should be working. You should be able to speak now, yes?”
Ruri tried to speak. “Ah, aah, aaah.” She was indeed able to produce sounds. Her body still couldn’t move and her voice was a tad raspy, but she could speak. “Why...did...you do this?”
“You’re awfully calm. You do realize I’ve kidnapped you, right? I thought you’d show a little more fear or panic.”
Ruri was indeed calm—so calm that it surprised even her. She knew that she’d been kidnapped since she was conscious the entire time. Even so, she didn’t feel any need to be on guard with Quartz despite her predicament.
“I realize you did. But I’m still oddly calm,” she explained.
“You don’t think that I’ll do something to you?”
“No, I don’t think you’ll harm me, Quartz-sama. Um, maybe,” Ruri said, a tad unsure. But she deduced that Quartz had had plenty of chances to hurt her already if he’d wanted. She also didn’t sense any kind of hostility or ill intent coming from him. In fact, Quartz was acting so much like he usually did that it made her doubt if he’d even kidnapped her in the first place.
“You either have no sense of apprehension or you’re entirely too trusting,” Quartz said, suddenly scowling. “Tell me, Ruri, you came to this world because of Nadasha’s summoning magic, didn’t you?”
“Yes, that’s right. But what of it?” Ruri asked in reply, curious as to why he brought up Nadasha.
“What if I were to tell you that I was the one who taught the Nadashians the summoning magic?”
“Huh...?” Ruri looked at Quartz, her eyes going wide.
“And it was me who taught that strange cult how to resurrect the dead.”
Ruri was speechless.
“I also gave them all those Spirit Slayer tools as well. Though I never thought they would use them to assault a Beloved. I wonder if Jade has learned this in Yadacain by now. What do you think he’ll do?” Quartz said as if speaking about someone else’s problems.
“Why would you do that?!” Ruri asked.
“To meet Seraphie. Yes, that was what it was at first,” Quartz said as he started to explain. “Seraphie was a witch from Yadacain. I visited Yadacain with the reasoning that she might be reborn in the same place. There I found that the queen had lost someone dear to her, just like me, and was conducting a certain type of research. Research into bringing people back from the dead with magic.”
Ruri listened to Quartz’s tale, transfixed.
“Then it hit me like a slap in the face. I had been so preoccupied with finding Seraphie’s reincarnation that I’d never considered that I could bring her back to life as she was. Nothing would make me happier than seeing Seraphie coming back in the flesh. I decided to help the queen with her research. I even gave her dragon blood. In return, she gave me a variety of tools that used Spirit Slayer.”
The bracelet that turned people into rats, the one that the Church of God’s Light had used, was crafted by Yadacain witches, so it was possibly one of those tools as well. If Quartz was the one who’d taught the Church of God’s Light magic, then he most likely was also the one who’d given them the bracelets. Even if it wasn’t intentional on Quartz’s part, the danger that Ruri had faced as a result of his actions left a bitter taste in her mouth.
“But, you see, the research never took off; it just added more bodies to the pile. Feeling that the queen’s knowledge wasn’t enough, I taught a cult how to resurrect the dead. I figured it would be more efficient to have more people researching it aside from just the queen. I even threw in some dragon blood,” Quartz said, explaining how the resurrection method had ended up in the hands of the Church of God’s Light.
The church must have kidnapped the dragonkin during Ruri’s assassination attempt because they’d run out of Quartz’s sample platter of blood. But though they had also conducted research, they hadn’t been able to produce anything more substantial than what they were initially taught.
“After much digging, I found out that people couldn’t be revived without a soul. It was a complete waste of time and effort. After all the hope I placed on this research, I was devastated. But I still had my eye on another of the queen’s research projects. Magic to summon people from another world.”
At first glance, this didn’t seem to have anything to do with Seraphie, but it did to Quartz.
“Souls are always in cycle. However, sometimes reincarnation sends souls to the other world instead. What if that had happened to Seraphie? You can’t go from this world to that one. If Seraphie was on the other side, I would lose my chance to see her forever.”
“And...that’s where summoning comes into play?” Ruri asked. “But that magic can’t bring over a specific person.”
“Yes, at least the version I taught the Nadashians can’t. It was still in its incomplete phase. That magic can actually bring over people from the other side who possess mana. Apparently, there aren’t many people in the other world who have mana, so if I bring them all over, Seraphie might be among them.”
“That’s mad,” Ruri said.
He didn’t know how many people in the other world possessed mana, but he was going to summon them all—regardless of whether those people who weren’t Seraphie wanted to come over. Seeing as how Ruri had been dragged over herself, this news only enraged her.
“Mad? Yes. But I want to see Seraphie no matter how many people I must sacrifice. That’s why I taught them the unfinished technique with the stipulation that they use it for research. Yet those Nadashian priests ended up using it to suit their own desires with barely any research themselves. Then again, the fact that they brought you over was a stroke of luck. For both Jade and myself.”
“Why would you be happy about that?” Ruri could understand Jade being happy. Thanks to her summoning, the two of them were able to meet. But why Quartz?
“So, tell me, Ruri, let’s say that I found Seraphie after all my searching, but not only does Seraphie not remember anything about me, she actually is in love with another man. What do you think I would do in that situation?”
“That’s not a question I have an answer to,” Ruri replied.
Quartz suddenly took a tuft of Ruri’s hair and softly kissed it. “Tell me, what should I do?”
As he looked at her with those entrancing, gem-colored eyes, Ruri started to get the gist of what he was asking.
“You’re not saying that I’m the reincarnation of Seraphie-san, are you?”
“I would hope that you are. It’d be a nightmare if it were you after Jade picked you as his mate, but you’re the only likely choice.”
“It isn’t me. It can’t be me.”
“How can you deny it if you don’t remember anything from your previous life?” Quartz pointed out.
Ruri paused momentarily. That was impossible, though. There was certainly nothing wrong with Quartz, but Ruri didn’t feel anything toward him.
“I assure you, it’s not me,” Ruri said.
Her frankness painted Quartz’s eyes with sadness. Seeing that made Ruri recoil; it almost felt like she did something wrong.
“You might regain your memories if you stay with me. Seraphie said it herself. She said that she would always remember.”
“Okay, but that’s only if I am Seraphie-san.”
“You’re the only person I can think of. Especially since you know something that you shouldn’t know otherwise.”
“What do you mean ‘something I shouldn’t know otherwise’?”
Quartz stood up from his seat rather harshly, as if saying that he couldn’t speak of it anymore. “You’ll remain here until you remember,” he said as he exited the room. His face was tinged with sadness, looking like he would cry at any moment, but Ruri couldn’t see it.
The room was cast in silence.
Ruri could finally start moving her hands. “Seriously...?” she muttered and then sighed deeply.
Ruri being a reincarnation of Quartz’s late mate? She wanted to know what in the world he was basing that assumption off of. She hadn’t done anything to him. He’d seemed his usual self until just before he’d kidnapped her. What on earth was going on here?
There was no way that Ruri was the reincarnation of Seraphie. She didn’t have any memories of her previous life, but she could say that for sure. And even if she were Seraphie, she wouldn’t feel anything for Quartz. That was because the person Ruri loved was...
Be that as it may, it was hard to staunchly deny that assertion once she saw that sadness on Quartz’s face. It almost made her feel as if she was wronging him. She needed to talk things out with him. If she did, he would come to understand that Ruri was nothing like Seraphie.
First, however, she needed to contact Kotaro and the others. She could finally move her body again, so she sat up. They were all surely worried after the way she’d left the castle.
Just then, Ruri decided to break things down in her head. She’d been abducted and brought to this world because of the king and priest of Nadasha, which was why she sought appropriate revenge against them. But since Quartz was the one who’d told them about the summoning magic in the first place, would that not make him a target for her revenge?
“That’s actually starting to kinda piss me off,” Ruri said to herself, realizing that the root of the evil that had brought her to this world lay in Quartz.
Ruri couldn’t let that go unsettled, but now wasn’t exactly the time for that. She opened and closed her hands to make sure her body was no longer numb. Then she slowly got up and looked out the window of the room. The house was surrounded by a forest, reminiscent of Chelsie’s place. She couldn’t tell where exactly she was just by looking outside, though.
Confirming that the window easily opened, Ruri took out her bracelet from her pocket and transformed into a cat.
“Nyeow!” she cried as she jumped out of the window onto a tree directly across from it. She then slid down the tree and began to run. Just as it seemed her escape was assured, she bumped into something blocking her path.
“Meow!” Ruri cried, almost as if saying “ow.” She rubbed her sore nose. She looked in front of her to see what she bumped into, but there wasn’t anything there. She absolutely bumped into something, though.
Feeling something was off, Ruri reached out to find that despite being invisible to the naked eye, there was something akin to a wall there—a wall similar to the kind that Kotaro would form out of the wind.
“Is this...a barrier?”
She tried banging on it, but it showed no signs of cracking. She tried to use magic to break it, but her magic wouldn’t activate. She thought of whacking the wall with a weapon from her pocket space, but it wouldn’t open either.
“Huh? But why?!”
Her actions were completely limited. There also didn’t seem to be any openings anywhere on the barrier. If she had the physical strength of a dragonkin, she might’ve been able to crack it, but she had nothing of the sort. She was utterly powerless.
“I guess I’ll just have to wait until Kotaro and the others come and rescue me, then?”
“That isn’t going to happen,” sounded a voice behind Ruri.
Ruri jumped in surprise. She thought it was Quartz for a second, but the voice sounded far too young. Turning around, she saw the cute doll-like girl who had been standing in the room a second ago.
“You’re inside a barrier I’ve secluded off. You may have contracted Wind and Water, but neither of their powers can break this barrier. In fact, they can’t even pinpoint this location in the first place. So, give up and stay here.”
“Who are you?” Ruri asked, positive that she wasn’t as ordinary of a girl as she appeared.
“I’m a brethren of Wind and Water, the two spirits you share a contract with—the Spirit of Light.”
“The Spirit of Light?!”
It was shocking, but if she could put up a barrier of this caliber, then it made sense she was a supreme-level spirit.
“Let me out of here, please.”
“I can’t do that,” the Spirit of Light said, flatly refusing.
Ruri scowled. “What is the Spirit of Light doing here to begin with?”
“I had a contract with Seraphie, and she entrusted Quartz to me before she died. Which is why I’m helping him.”
“Then you should tell him! Tell him that I’m not Seraphie-san!”
“It’s pointless. There’s nothing I can do as long as he thinks you are. You can try to convince him. Though I doubt he’ll accept it as fact. I’m simply granting Seraphie’s wish.”
“Her wish?”
“To watch over him and make sure he doesn’t break. Though it may already be too late.” The Spirit of Light looked toward the house and let out a tiny sigh.
“Too late...?”
“Dragonkin are wholly dedicated to their mates. And Quartz was particularly dependent on Seraphie. It’s been decades since he lost her... His mind is already at the breaking point. Seraphie left quite an unfair wish behind. It would have been better for him if he had just forfeited his life along with her,” the Spirit of Light explained, looking like a concerned mother—an expression unfitting her youthful appearance.
The Spirit of Light looked back at Ruri and lifted her by the scruff of her neck.
“Meow!”
“Come on, back we go. If you want to go home, then you’ll have to convince him.”
“Whaa?!” Ruri telepathically exclaimed as she was hauled off back inside the house.
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