Fate and the story of blood

Chapter 38: The Demon King's Domain

The sounds of silence rang throughout my head. The ringing noise that refused to stop pestered me to open my eyes and wake up from my slumber. The sense of tiredness, the feeling of falling right back to sleep as my consciousness slipped forward of my mind was tiring in itself. Yet I knew well I couldn't remain in that position much longer and as I pulled myself from a bog-like place where it wanted to hold onto me as long as it could, my eyes snapped open like a window shade and with it followed a sense of confusion of where I was.

My feet were partially submerged in a shallow pool of water that came as a window into the void despite the fact I could step on it. It puzzled me for a moment but something else did so even more as I came to see my bizarre surroundings. A locked door stood before me in the empty domain where the water I was standing atop stretched into what I assumed was infinity. Suddenly, it hit me, I was in a dream. I recalled upon a small fragment of memory I had collapsed shortly after entering the castle of the Demon King due to my drowsiness.

It was an embarrassing moment that I would do whatever I could to bury myself to save face though that was something I needed to deal with sometime later. Right now, I had to investigate what was I doing in such an odd setting. Although it was most definitely a dream, when I came to pinch myself, it only appeared as a numb pain that didn't reflect my action; as if my brain was trying to fill what I was doing with memories of the past. Finding it odd, I first needed to address the elephant in the room, that is the door with a lock that was a couple of steps away from me.

Putting my hand on the knob, a keyhole was apparent there without an indicator of anywhere to be a key to slot in. With nothing to lose, I turned the knob anyways on the off chance it would do something. And promptly, it did what it was supposedly designed to do, not budging an inch without a key to unlock the mechanism within. I wondered what could it be that this door was here for since when I came to look at the other side, only a blank rectangular slate remained without the other side of the knob for me to unlock. 

I scratched my head for but a moment until I heard a small but faint voice in my mind. Everything in the landscapes was starting to blur and fade away; I was waking up. With no time left, I touched the wooden texture of the door once more before I awoke from my dream. Waking up in a cold sweat, I found Amy sleeping on the sheets where my feet were. It seems that she was sleeptalking while asleep, her involuntary movements while she was unconscious waking up with the slightest push of my body.

The dream was still vivid in my head, which I found odd since the dreams I usually had lasted but a couple of seconds after I had woken up. Though I digressed and carefully, I moved in a manner that would not wake up the sleeping child as I got to my feet; the very touch of the soles of my foot chilling my core of the cold floors. Putting on a robe, I looked over towards where the windows were located in the room and found little light-emitting down from under the curtains. I could already tell from a quick glance it was not quite day yet and was likely to be a few hours left until daybreak. I could already assume that I would now come to be involved in the complicated affairs of the demon kingdom and would probably come to be very busy for the next couple of days, though, until then, I wanted to have a fresh breath of air for the moment.

Towards the door, I turned the knob that reminded me of the one I noticed in my peculiar dream and looked outside, only to see two guards wide awake standing guard of our door. They turned their heads and looked towards me as if they were questioning why I was awake at this hour and at that moment, I knew I had to come up with an excuse to get the chance to roam around the long hallways of the castle belonging to the generous host.

"Honourable guest of the Demon King, why are you awake at this hour? Could there be something you require?" One asked as I closed the door of the sleeping quarters behind me in an attempt to not wake up Amy who was sleeping soundly in the warm bed.