A Demon Secretary

It forthwith came to appear as though her silenced considerations were indelibly written in the air around her, their subsistence bordering on subliminal, for he took the liberty to point their nascent conversation in the direction she wished. While thankful for this thoughtful - or perhaps thoughtless - change, the knight felt inclined to weigh the unanswerable enigma of if this topic was borne their way out of coincidence or some actual act of mind reading.

At any rate, Forte noticed but was unconcerned by his nervous gestures, and she responded with a voracious promptness meant to pacify the uncertain vacillation of his eyes.

‘So we can dream walk. I was doubtful about it, admittedly. The idea was too strange to accept given all that has happened.' 

Describing it as ‘hazy’ did not ultimately discredit his claim, as she was no scientist by nature and did not require empirical figures to ascertain something. Her vocation mandates a more acute level of trust, that trust independent of tabulated considerations, for she handles blatant violations of safety that sometimes require recount — and while the tenet of a dragon knight stops there, she expands its definition with her humanist attitude, which nullifies the uselessness in unclear stories or hazy memories.

“I’ll admit, I didn’t believe it at first, but…that would be a little hypocritical of me…” Kyousuke’s voice nearly lowered to a mumble out of habit. Though people reacted with wide-eyed curiosity at his being a demon at best, and mere indifference at worst, Kyousuke always braced himself for any negative reaction to even hints of his supernatural nature.

But his concern definitely outweighed his fear of rejection this time. Raising his hand to chest level, he looked down at it, flexing and contracting his fingers a bit before his hand balled up into a tightly-clenched fist. His strength was here, and its loss was all too jarring when he first felt it. He figured he’d try and tell her about it, so she wouldn’t be so caught off-guard when she experiences it herself.

This includes not only if our characters haven’t met yet, but even if they already have.

”.. How do I even make sense of all this?”

Perched atop a tree with a sucker placed between his lips, Gaius had been left to piece together all he had learned after meeting up with the mysterious red-headed beauty from before. Of course, that was only a minor problem at best. What had really caught him off guard was the layout of this city. Was this even a city? It certainly didn’t look like any he was used to seeing.

However, instead of chasing him away to put a stopper to whatever schemes being cooked up in that figure’s head, Kyousuke opted for another approach upon seeing the clear consternation on the man’s face the closer he got to the tree.

  “This realm isn’t too different from mine, but the birds here sure are huge…” he 'observed' as he leaned against the tree.

[A key, the clothes on his back, and a pack of circular cards. Those were all he had to his name around here, as if the circumstances weren’t bad enough.

Sure, there was a sense of pride that it was him and not anybody else he knew (see: Seiichiro Sano) who was given this sort of duty, but he didn’t necessarily want it when there wouldn’t be much in it for him. He had a competition to fight, and a throne to claim at some point…what would he get here? Sent home once he was done. All that work expected of him and absolutely no perks.

The tiny teen gently rocks back and forth on his bare heels, letting his gaze fall over the numerous buildings surrounding him along with the people that occupied the streets. Midtown was busy, busy, and it should come as no surprise. He barely knew anything about this place besides the little he’d been told, so learning things should be a priority….but from whom? So many possible choices.

After a few moments of scanning, Taro locked onto somebody who seemed to stand out even the slightest bit, and upon crossing the distance he reached up, tapped them on the shoulder, and then clasped his hands behind his back.]

Eeeh…

He was only just wandering about the city, trying to lose himself in the crowd, which made Kyousuke all the more surprised that he would be singled out like this. But Kyousuke put such thoughts aside for the time being.

This child needed his assistance, and Kyousuke was never one to turn a blind eye to someone’s plight, even if he wasn’t always the right person to ask.

Although a mere accident, putting the longsword to this young man yielded a small break from the belief that her peripherals and blind spots were reasons for worry, which, while not prominent, provided a foundation of white noise for her anxiety. But he was trapped in this city just as she was, and, really, it was his rapier that found her and brought her forth from the indistinguishable darkness.

With a modicum of ease loosening her tense readiness, she lowered her weapon and brought it back to the sheath.

‘I am. And it seems you are one as well.’

Although Forte did not have the ill self-consideration to cheat herself out of listening to the meaning of what it means to be a Dream Walker, the concept of it, being already suffocatingly bowtied in this massive debacle, sounded like nothing but a morbid hypothesis. As this was but a game in the first place, she struggles to adopt the perspective that being a Dream Walker is already a functioning title and not that Admin is simply surmising what environment is needed to induce an interpersonal nightmare.

Completely displaced from your home realm, separated from any acquaintances, asked to complete a vague and indeterminable objective…wasn’t it scary? But between her noticeably relaxing upon seeing that he wasn’t a threat, and how she either could keep her fears at bay so as to not have them show or didn’t have them to begin with, Kyousuke couldn’t help but think he’d found a potential ally in this jumbled mystery.

But voicing such a proposal was terribly inappropriate, given that he hadn’t even introduced himself to her just yet. He almost felt like apologizing for thinking so irrationally, even if these thoughts weren’t even voiced.

“Well, that’s a relief…” Still a little shaken from having the sword pointed at him, Kyousuke gave a sigh of relief. Act like nothing’s wrong, and you’ll be fine, he had to remind himself.

“You’re the only other I’m certain to have met. My first conscious dream walk session was still a little hazy, so I couldn’t tell if anyone was real or not then.”

What a difficult truth it is to comprehend that the light, the familiar sun, and the physical embodiment of hope are, regardless of how sempiternal they may appear, no less ephemeral than life’s funeral march.

The regularly uniform and burnished golden path that time tread fell into disarray, the escalating hysteria in the coherent continuum given a sightless intermission by which the entirety of her surroundings rearranged, this cessation rendering the inherent understanding of time baffling and gilded. When she awakened, her stomach lurched, that pain more akin to the moment she lost her sovereign than to any intensity of motion sickness; anxiety aggregated within her and made a game of her muscles despite the fact that she could not yet see how her environment has changed. Whilst the knight can not claim to seriously have any ability of clairvoyance, she knew, even through the hallucinatory blindfold she wore, that her good fortune has polarized.

And then a woman stood before her, speaking a hortatory lecture with a tone that made her seem like she was under the weight of a thousand bores. Forte listened diligently despite how her gaze vacillated between the orator and the city behind her, all the while swallowing every cutting shard of hysteria that dared to try to split her attention. This woman seemed avid to expel blunt antipathies as if to test how many holes one could put in ship before it capsized: one, two, two hundred. …

Chronology was dead, and her efforts to grapple onto the desultory happenings that composed her introduction to Somnia were for naught — the deathless, universal syntax of time has experienced a terrifying lapse, and its grammar was no longer comprehensible.

By the finale of her inception to this empire of dreams, she could not claim to be angry at what has been done to her happiness; no, she carried an odd medley of vexation and steadfastness, for the information shared with her denied the impossibility of returning home. From the impression she got, traversing the cosmic boundary and being delivered back to Selphia was no miracle, and she had witnessed how attainable miracles were time and time over.

A brazen smile lit her face. She is wont to inuring any challenge; the pinnacle of them all will not yield stagnancy.

However, the muscles which held her grin disbanded to create the deep curves of a frown as she sensed someone approximate from behind, and, her reflexes to the trigger, a taut hand flew to the hilt of her longsword, the sound of metal leaving the sheath accompanied by a flash of the blade’s resplendent casting. She had turned at a speed no longer measurable, the tip of her weapon to the person’s upper chest.

Or so he thought. If Kyousuke knew he’d end up near the sharp end of a longsword, he would have taken care to address her much more properly, if not safely. But that ill-informed decision was too far gone to rectify, and now, he was staring down the length of the blade, into its owner’s daunting eyes.

But instead of intimidation, Kyousuke found a degree of comfort at the sight. Her expression—one that was stern, but undoubtedly refined—was almost exactly the same as a certain young mayor he assisted back home. It went against common sense, but Kyousuke felt he could relax around someone like her, even as he continued to be held at sword point.

He cleared his throat, and held his head high. As a servant of Hime Yarizakura, he could dignify his position by at least trying not to falter over something as simple as introductions.

“My apologies for surprising you,” he began. There was only a slight amount of trepidation in his voice. While he’d been on much more dire circumstances before, he was still somewhat shocked at the unexpected turn of events. “I just wanted to ask you something—"

It would’ve been obvious from her apparel, but Kyousuke, always one for formalities, just wanted to make sure. She had been brought in from another realm, one that was clearly very different from his own. And as far as he knew, only people recruited by the red-haired woman from before had that single specific distinction.

Gaining a vantage point was always the first thing Archer did in any situation he was unsure of. What he lacked in direct fighting prowess, he made up for in tactics.  And after that run in with Gilgamesh and Jeanne, he could use a little alone time. There was no war to be fought here, nothing to be gained. But if this world was truly in danger, he wasn’t about to turn a blind eye to their suffering.

Whether it was his own ideals or the convoluted thought process of Emiya Shirou, Archer was contracted to the world itself. He had a duty to protect the inhabitants no matter what the cost. If this was the world’s new found task for him, then so be it. Upon further inspection, landmarks started to become familiar to him. Unfortunately, those landmarks were simply familiar because he had seen them before. This wasn’t the city he had arrived in earlier that day. It was a place he had been before. And in that moment he knew that this wasn’t real. A dream. Or rather, to his dismay, a nightmare.

Before he knew it, upon the rooftop, dark figures materialized in front of him. People. Just regular people. But to Archer, these were the mistakes that he had made. The lives he had taken to save the existence of man. These were the people who died for the sake of many. Moaning about their pain and sorrow. Their words would grind away even at the Counter Guardian’s psyche. Fear. Doubt. Self-loathing. A brew of negative emotions stirred within him knowing full well this wasn’t real.

"I failed you. All of you. And there’s nothing I can do now to rectify that…"

Like zombies, the shadows hobbled and dragged their existences toward him. Weapons. He needed weapons. Projecting his bow, Archer immediately knew something was wrong. He couldn’t reinforce the structure at all. This weapon couldn’t possibly handle the power of Caladbolg or Hrunting. Of course there had to be a catch to fighting these nightmares. Casting the weapon aside, he tried his favored pair of swords. Kanshou and Byakuya.

…But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have apprehensions about it. Though he hated and feared the immense strength being an oni granted him, his blood chilled when he felt the difference in his strength. The relative sluggishness in his limbs made Kyousuke feel like he’d been asleep for years. What made his weakness really sink in, however, was the effort of trying to ball his hand up into a fist. The strain in his muscles was entirely different. Even without the shackle on his wrist keeping him from exercising his full strength, there was always some invisible weight in the palm of his hand keeping it all at bay. Now, no matter how tightly his hand curled up, all he could grasp was emptiness.

And he had to endure this lacking sensation alongside the nausea and throbbing headaches. In addition to an absence of strength, there was a despicable absence of silence. He could hear his heartbeat, his shallow breathing, each and every step he took—all of it was in his ears, and the intrusive thought of tearing his ears out was actually starting to sound appealing.

But what kept him from curling up and wishing it would all just stop was the unmistakable sounds of a fight. If there was anything advantageous about his hearing, it was its accuracy. He could hear the difference in elevation—on a roof, most likely—and how near the combatants actually were. Kyousuke only needed to look up.

And what drew Kyousuke to the scene most of all, what motivated him to climb a fire escape despite the repetitive clang of his limbs against meta ringing and rebounding in his skull, was the pure anguish in someone’s voice. His basest instinct of jumping into help someone, even if they were a stranger, undoubtedly rang out.

Awaken, Kyousuke Kishi, to the world of Somnia! You will be staying on Floor 7, Room P. You are currently a 5th tier Dream Walker.

Like all walkers, you are able to use all of your abilities and weapons in the Realm of Reality other than any game-breaking abilities. When you travel to the Realm of Dreams, you will find that your super strength has been reduced down to a normal human’s strength. You will only be able to use your super senses. However, your hearing will be super sensitive you and will hear everything, which will cause you to get migraines.

You can use your BARE HANDS in the Realm of Dreams. Or whatever you find lying around.

As you rank up, the side effects attached to your ability will disappear slowly.

Welcome, and thank you for your help.