This post has the following content warnings:
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
It is, all things considered, a very nice drawing room. Portraits adorn the walls and the heavy drapes are open to let starlight from the moonless night through. There's a table far too small for the large room with a pot of tea, a set of tea cups and an arrangement of cookies and fruit. Two oaken doors are firmly closed to one side, and to the other a single door is slightly ajar, the sound of sobbing coming from past it. Every once in a while it's possible to hear a page being turned in the other room as well. The drawing room on its own is silent, save for the ticking of a grandfather clock and then, with no prelude, an exclamation.
Haru meets a regency superhero Lucien
stage-manager
"Nobles with abilities beyond what everyone else has - well, not strictly only nobility but there are few exceptions here."
stage-manager
"You are confident of this?" Information about distant lands is not especially reliable so far as Lucette can tell.
stage-manager
"Well then... I'm curious for information about your land of origin but perhaps it is more immediately useful for me to answer questions about mine."
traceless
"Being as it's the one we're in, yes. I'm coming to the conclusion that the apparent low-technology situation isn't just for the aesthetic, so there's that, what year is it?"
traceless
"...I'm from 2034. Espers started being a thing in the 1970s, but I'm pretty sure that demons were not a thing in my world even in this calendar year."
stage-manager
"Oh, I'd still probably like to hear quite a lot about everything that happens."
"In this world demons, and the empowered they haunt, have existed for over three centuries."
stage-manager
"Each empowered has a corresponding demon in addition to extraordinary abilities. The demon grows in power over time and can be kept relatively under control by giving it regular chances to haunt the empowered, though ultimately it's necessary to limit their growth via marrying another empowered."
traceless
"For those of us who just arrived from another dimension and know the world 'haunt' as an exclusively fictional or metaphorical word..."
stage-manager
"They didn't initially, but it was initially feasible to become a noble if you were empowered and it runs in families. Additionally, it is difficult to survive without knowledge of how you have to allow hauntings and marry and few commoners know those things, so the occasional commoner who is empowered either fails to handle their demon or is shunned or killed. At least that's my best guess - people do not often talk about empowered commoners and many nobles deny they exist at all."
stage-manager
"Before they have fully manifested they'll just vanish as mine did. Usually, if anyone is around besides their victim they'll vanish until they are strong enough at which point they'll probably still vanish if threatened sufficiently I expect. Once they have manifested fully it can be possible to kill them but it is very very difficult to do so and requires scores of empowered working together, at least some of whom will not survive the attempt."