Hirune woke up in the Forsaken Realm. As usual in the same room as the last time she was there. She moved around for a bit, trying to get a feel for her condition. It wasn't anything too bad, in fact it felt worse in the actual world than in here. She contemplated on that for a second.
Last time the fatigue carried over from her the Forsaken Realm into the real world, so it doesn't make sense why it doesn't work as well in reverse. After all she was going in and out of it either way. She dismissed that for now, right now she wanted to figure out what the Shadow Jester could do while she had a good reason to be resting.
She took a deep breath and focused, chanting the same words she used last time, and the jester flipped out of her shadow in front of her, then bowed. She wasn't sure whether she should bow back or not, but that seemed like the most respectful thing to do.
Even if the thing probably wasn't conscious.
Then they stared at each other for a long while. The jester waiting instructions, and Hirune considering what instructions to give. She sighed and gave the jester a sideways glance, 'I mean... What can this thing be useful for anyways?' Shat sat down crisscross and rested her head on her left hand. Feeling the muscles on her hand on her expand on cheek. The Shadow Jester copied her like a mirror image, sitting crisscross while resting its head on its right hand, not feeling anything on its cheek.
This duality was something truly peculiar. Hirune serious and thoughtful, shrouded with curiosity and mysteries. The Shadow Jester playful, childish, and whimsy, seemingly as if it didn't have a care in the world.
Hirune looked at it, then thought of a simple command, "Fetch me a rock."
The Shadow Jester's mask shifted, one of its eyes lengthening upwards as if raising an eyebrow, then returning to a normal smile as it listened and went to fetch a rock.
Hirune walked behind the Shadow Jester, she was far behind it as each steep it took was a leap forward, but she didn't mind. She was just minding her own business, tracing her fingers along the broken windows and the joints between the bricks, thinking...
At first, she was excited about the Shadow Jester summon because she thought it'd be something cool like Sangra's hounds. Which sure, she did think a Shadow Jester was pretty cool, but it also seemed pretty pointless now. After all a jester was just an entertainer for a ruler; she wasn't a ruler, nor did she plan to be one. Yet she still wanted to believe it was useful somehow one way or another.
As she stopped walking and just stared directly through one of the cracks of the window, her expression dim of the red moonlight, the jester had already gone to get a rock and back. 'What I'm complaining about doesn't actually have to do with the jester... Does it?' She thought as she slowly reached and took the rock from the jester and thanked it. The jester seemed thrilled just to get a simple thank you and started dancing around gracefully.
This put a little smile in Hirune's face as a small bit of the red moonlight came in through the gaps in the window. 'Maybe if it makes this thing happy, I'll try to work with it.' She thought as her smile towards it's joyous prancing widened. Yet she still felt like there was something wrong somewhere in her.
She shook her head, that wasn't a good thought. Right now, she just needed to have fun while working to figure out how the jester could be used.
***
After a while she figured out that the jester was actually extremely useful. Not only did it somehow easily find ways to make her extremely happy, but since it was a shadow, it could change its form and sneak around easier, not just that, but since it's a jester it's also surprisingly flexible, allowing it to pull off some crazy stunts.
Then Hirune felt loud thudding on her left hand. She was so caught up in the fun she was having figuring out how the jester worked that she forgot to check on what was going on in the real world. Hirune dismissed the jester with an apology, and the jester nodded and retreated to her shadow as Hirune muttered and woke up in the real world.
"What's happening?" She quickly said as she looked around rapidly while being careful not to throw Mr. Comedian off balance. Then she saw it, a horde of a bunch of different things that had dozens upon dozens of nails shoved through their skulls chasing them. All of varying species and sizes.
Then Mr. Comedian suddenly stopped as they had reached the edge of the dome. As Hirune got off of Mr. Comedians back, ready to face whatever the effect of devouring so many things was going to be, they heard 2 maniacal voices.
Suddenly, someone landed between them and the monsters and with a single swing of a huge fan they got sent flying backwards, "Back off! It's been way too long since I've gotten a chance like this!"
The person said as the other protested, "What are you doing! The boss said to wait until they got down to the 2nd layer!"
Hirune and Mr, Comedian stared at them, then they looked at each other with raised eyebrows. The two people had dark navy-blue hair that seemed powdered to the max with charcoal, and they both had yellow eyes with cat-like irises. They were human, but whatever was up here clearly changed them into something inhumane. One had short hair, like a bowl cut that was messy and with bangs, that one was the guy between the two. The other was a girl with long tattered hair that reaches behind her knees.
"Oh, they're just at the edge of the dome. I guess that's fine, even though it's not nearly as fun to blow them off of here than to actually rip their bodies to pieces." The guy said, then the girl standing next to him shook her head. "I guess it's too late to go according to the bosses' orders now," she said while shaking her head. "At least he'll punish us," she said her tone quickly changing as she grinned.
Hirune and Mr. Comedian exchanged a glance then nodded, he tugged at his sleeve and Hirune got in a proper fighting stance. One foot in front of the other, facing towards her right side with her left arm closer to her and raised slightly, her right hand more outstretched in front of her other hand.
The guy just shrugged and swung the huge fan at them, which sent a large gust of wind towards them, that initially just passed them like a normal gust of wind, then suddenly it felt as if it clutched them and dragged them off the edge then dropped them.
Hirune looked down as she fell, her eyes shaking and her breaths coming as short heaves. Mr. Comedian took off his hat launching out a long chain of shadow hands towards the outer side of the edge of the dome, then with his free hand he reached towards Hirune and sent more shadow hands towards her for her to hold onto, but the shadow hands couldn't catch up.
As Hirune kept on falling her breaths got shorter and shorter, eventually being short hiccups, and her vision blurring. She wasn't sure what would happen if she hit the ground, she'd already been falling for 10 seconds, if she came back, she was guaranteed to be stuck in a death loop, and if she was, who knew what Vereta would do to her. Not to mention the pain, after all she would feel the pain of every bone in her body shattering into dust and her muscles squishing as- 'Nope, don't imagine all of that.'
She could go into the Forsaken Realm! But the Forsaken Realm only took in her actual body if she was actively getting hurt, which she wasn't. Hirune's eyes started to feel warm and puffy as she started sobbing, she was hopeless.
Then she started laugh, this was it, this was the end. No matter how many times she died, not only would she suffer from the pain, but Vereta would eventually get to her.
Then Namulenza spoke to her in her head while laughing nearly as deliriously as Hirune, "Hiru, honey. Doesn't a small part of you in the back of your head think you can easily survive this, right?" Hirune's tears suddenly stopped as her vision cleared, trying to process what Namulenza just told her. "Come on, we both know that you think you can somehow survive this somewhere deep inside of you. So feed that delusion, after all, only the most delusional of people managed to learn the reality of things."
Hirune thought about it as her ears rang, Namulenza was right. Before something was invented, everyone must've found the person that invented that thing delusional. Hirune started to laugh, but this time it wasn't a despairing laugh, this time it was fueled by straight up delusions. It was fueled by a want- No a need, to survive. To turn her delusions into a reality, to stop dreaming about things and instead work to achieve them. To breach past that border knows as delusion and turn it into a reality.
She looked back up at the dome with a wide smile, because if she was going to turn her delusions into a reality, then she was going to need to survive this.