Disclaimer! (Surprisingly needed on a site called ) I do not claim any semblance of ownership of the series Zero No Tsukaima/Familiar of Zero, which is owned by Noboru Yamaguchi. I do claim ownership of any OC's and the most obviously new nation however…

Anyhow, please enjoy my work, and review, every bit of criticism or advice would be helpful beyond measure…

Arrival.

Albion, the white country, so called because of the endless clouds that hide the continent above the rest of the world. For the past decade this beautiful country has seen almost endless strife, from a bloodthirsty civil war that overthrew the former royal house, and then followed shortly by a war with the smaller mainland nation of Tristain and her ally of Germania.

Albion was invaded from the southern tip by a combined force of the Tristianian and Germainian armies, in time it was repelled and expelled from the continent by the army of the newly created Holy Republic of Albion, though with an extreme amount of casualties. The war was short lived, only lasting two months, and neither side truly gained anything.

A complete waste of life, resources and other things that can never be returned.

Several weeks after the war, the nobles of Albion returned to what was left of their lands, and nothing stayed the same from the ways before. Political backstabbing was just as prominent as before, if not more so, and even some nobles took chances to outright kill or declare war on each other. The Holy Republic of Albion became nothing more than a floating continent covered from shore to shore with warlords seeking out to control more land than they had before the war.

One noble, Edmund Blackadder, was still a young man and naïve to the political ideals of the new Albion. The lands left to him by his father were located in the farthest north west of the Albionian continent…

Edmund Blackadder sat atop his draconic familiar as it flew above a large patch of forest and headed towards a long, low stretch of mountains. His lands were (to him) nothing special, covered in large amount of forests with simple forester folk who's only real income came from selling lumber to his family, and then the mountains, short and squat and completely underserving of the title of mountains, they were more like hills or highlands than anything. This all just abruptly ended as the 'coast' dropped off of the floating continent.

Edmund sighed, his lands were embarrassing to possess. Nothing of any true value, his family couldn't get richer and the 'mountains' were all mined out of anything valuable decades earlier. Maybe his family had higher standing years ago but not anymore. He sighed again, louder than earlier, before tugging on the reins of his familiar to land near a clearing in the hills.

The large wind dragon landed lazily on top of a hill, before looking back at her master, Edmund dismounted removed his helmet and then patted the dragon on the neck, "Just a short break, Mary, just need to stretch my legs," He then pulled a water sack from a pouch on his saddle, "Then we can go back to looking for this foreigner camp."

Edmund walked around the hilltop, taking an occasional drink from the water sack, and thinking of all the places a camp would be. He chuckled at himself, he might have been the owner of his family's ancestral lands but his mother, Alyssa Blackadder, was the person who made sure that it ran properly. Edmund laughed at himself as he remembered the conversation two days ago that brought him to this remote little hill.

He stood in his family's library, looking at the books that line the walls and then back at his mother's wavy hair, black and starting to go grey. The same hair he had himself, an idle thought came to mind that if he grew his hair out maybe he would look more like his mother than his father. He was about to chuckle before his mother stared at him with cold green eyes, cutting the mirth from his throat before it could escape.

"I want you to go to the north" She spoke before looking back at the letter in her hand, "Nobleman Reese keeps sending letters saying that his peasants there keep seeing groups of people that speak gibberish." His mother looked back at him, "Apparently, they flew in from the west."

He scoffed and closed his eyes, "I don't think chasing fairy tales is worth my time mother, everyone knows that there's nothing to the west, just the ocean which falls off the ledge of the world."

When he opened his eyes again, Edmund was struck frozen. His mother was looking at him with a smile, her wand in her free hand and her familiar, which until now was coiled around a drinking glass, rose as if ready to strike, its small icy frame let off a small mist as its bared fangs dripped with freezing liquids. Edmund's eyes widened and he clenched his jaw as his mother spoke softly, "Edmund, my sweet little Edmund… You wouldn't want to anger your mother, now would you?"

She rose from her chair, walked over and stood a half head taller than he, tapped the wand on his cheek, "After all, it would be wrong of you to anger your mother, Edmund."

"No mother, I would never anger you mother." He hastily replied before she tapped his cheek twice with the wand.

"That's my little Edmund" She turned and went back to her chair. He, silently, let out a breath he didn't know he held.

"Besides, I always thought you liked stories like that. Elves, knights on dragon back, the fay folk, I thought you would've jumped on the chance to go see people that might've come from the edge of the world."

Edmund laughed again as he noticed for the hundredth time that he had no backbone whenever it came to talking with his mother, a frightening woman, a square class mage that uses ice. He shuddered and took another drink from the water sack and made his way back towards his familiar who was lying down and starting to doze off, "Mary, wake up, time to keep looking."

He put the water sack back into the saddle pouch as the dragon rose, he mounted her and was about to put on his helmet when he just barely heard the sound of wing beats in the air. Using a small dot level wind spell, he increased his hearing for a moment in an attempt to locate it; he looked towards the sky and saw nothing. He motioned for his mount to turn around, no sooner had he done so, it landed in front of him.

A dragon, ten meters in length from the tip to tip, nearly twice the size of his own familiar had landed in front of him. But it was a different breed, one that he has never seen before; its front limbs were the wings themselves and from the size of them they were easily twice the creatures own size, the creatures head was thin at the tip of its mouth but got wider the closer it got towards the neck.

But there were two more frightening aspects of this beast, this monster, were the fact that covering its head is was what could only be called armor and its chest and abdomen was painted a dark purple. An armored rider, with a helmet that had a V-shaped slit over the eyes, several long colored feathers and a long staff in his hand sat at the base of the creature's neck.

The creature arched its neck and dozens of half meter long, brightly colored feathers flared out from behind the dragons head as the creature hissed an unearthly sound. The rider atop the dragon raised his staff and brought it down quickly on the dragon's neck before pointing it at Edmund. He returned the motion in kind, drawing his sword wand and pointed it towards the unknown rider.

"Lower your staff!" Edmund shouted, "You are in the lands of the Blackadder family, you are to cease your actions and leave!"

The man on the dragon spoke, it was odd. It was just, gibberish. Edmund's mind raced, this person couldn't be one of those people that the peasants spoke of, could he? Also, not one letter from the nobleman Reese said anything about a giant dragon. Either this man was insulting Edmund, or this is the first time that anyone saw this beast and lived.

Edmund's arm tensed up as he started to think about what to do next, the dragon across from him and Mary was huge, but it couldn't be that fast. And if he could kill it or slow it down, that means he could get away.

The man on the monster of a dragon yelled something at him this time and Edmund replied in a simple way.

"Wind lance!"

A long shot of spiraling wind leapt out from the tip of Edmund's sword wand and lashed across the beasts left eye, sending it into a berserk fury as it whipped its head around in an animalistic attempt to stop the pain, casting the rider to the ground. Edmund then yanked on the reins of his own mount and shot off into the air.

Edmund and his familiar rose at blinding speeds, during this time he finally put his helmet back on allowing him to see through the glass of the cross shaped slit in the front. Looking back towards where the beast was he yelled out in horror as the creature rose from the ground into the air to follow him, he also noted the rider of the beast was lifted into the air as well by a rope that attached the two.

Edmund urged Mary to fly higher into the air, and unsurprisingly the great beast followed them albeit slowly. He started to find it hard to breath, and realized that he was the highest he himself could go, and the beast was still rising to catch them.

He then pulled the reins to stop his familiar and they both hovered and waited as the monster kept coming, when the beast had gotten close enough for Edmund's liking, he yanked on the reins and made Mary dive. While passing the dragon he fired another wind lance and scored a hit across the beast's belly, causing its deep red blood to mix with the purple painted on its body.

Diving as fast as they could Edmund spared a look back at the monster now above them, and gripped the saddle tighter than he has ever before in an attempt to gain speed. His plan to out dive the monster backfired as the bigger beast snapped eagerly at his familiar's tail.

A sudden retching feeling hit Edmund as he maneuvered Mary to turn at sharp angles to avoid getting bitten, the beast behind had to move in wider angles because of its size. Getting closer to the land of Albion, they eventually leveled out near the ground and shot through the valleys of the undeserving-to-be-called-mountains.

Taking a look over his right shoulder as they came out of the mountains near the 'coast', Edmund saw a sight he never thought he would have to see again after the war. Ships, large cigar shaped ships, at least six of which were on the ground with another three even longer ships still in the air, looking towards the mountain he noticed the castle that was abandoned after the mines dried up was now in the process of being rebuilt by whoever these foreigners were.

He had to get back to the estate and tell his mother that he indeed found people, and they came in the hundreds.

Flying low enough that he could see these people, but still high enough in the air that they wouldn't be able to get a lucky shot using muskets or crossbows to knock him and his mount out of the air, Edmund noted what these foreigners looked like. Almost all that he could see had white hair and tanned almost red skin; others wore armor that looked like sheets of metal plates layered on each other and carried large purple fronted tower shields with a strange symbol that he couldn't identify at the speed he and his familiar were flying.

Looking back the way they had come, Edmund noticed the monster of a dragon land in a nearby open field and the rider dismount (after finally remounting he noticed, although the thought of a connecting rope was a little odd for a mages familiar though) and start motioning towards his mount and towards the general direction of Edmund.

Flying closer to the abandoned castle, Edmund motioned for Mary to land onto the highest tower to get a better look than just a simple flyby. Landing might have been the wrong term, since the tower was in a dilapidated state and half the roof caved in, it was more akin to hanging onto what was left of the tower.

Looking into the tower for safeties sake, Edmund noticed a single woman with a tall staff and a long green skirt that extended around her back and then to her front where the two bands from the skirt covered each of her breasts and wrapped around her neck, she had a beautiful gold medallion covered belt that was more for ornamentation than to hold up her skirt, and she was standing blindfolded in the middle of the tower. She might have been blindfolded but anyone would have heard a dragon land on a tower and she stood, relaxed and undaunted, and was looking in the direction of Edmund and his familiar.

The gust of wind he caused when landing sent the woman's white hair (which was inlaid with many golden beads) into disarray and besides for her hidden eyes looked quite beautiful, Edmund paid the woman no more mind as he was more than worried about attacks from soldiers with ranged weapons or, Brimir help him, another one of those monstrous dragons.

Yanking on the reigns intending to fly off, Mary whipped her long necked head around and looked back at the woman, Edmund noticed his familiars eyes grow wide and he turned to look at the woman and noticed that beside for her raised hand had barely moved at all, what caught his attention was the woman's brightly glowing hand.

He barely had enough time to raise his, still drawn, sword wand before a spiraling triple helix like beam of white energy escaped the woman's hand and struck his familiar just behind her left wing, and removed it from the rest of her body. Edmund and His familiar screamed as they fell towards the ground, Edmund in fear and desperation, Mary in her bestial fury and pain at the forced removal of her wing.

Edmund let go of his saddle when they struck an out cropping extending from the old castle, which might have saved his life as he landed a few meters away in a stack of crates as his mount landed on her back and crushed a small cart beneath her.

His helmet now removed and himself just barely conscious he looked towards his familiar as she writhed around in the ground in pain, he yelled out when a group of the scale armored warriors started to throw short thick javelins into her draconic hide. Mary, a wind dragon almost as old as Edmund's twenty-one, with a strong penchant of sleeping away her days and eating small sheep, killed by the hands of strange white haired foreign commoners with commoners weapons.

Rolling onto his back Edmund noticed three armored men come into his field of view; they looked towards each other and spoke in their funny sounding gibberish, he looked once more at his familiar as a group of men, stripped to their waists and wearing what could truly be called a knee length skirts and strange sandal like boots, started to drag her off somewhere. Looking back towards the sky Edmund saw one last thing before the blackness of unconsciousness took him; seven small metal studs on the bottom of a dark brown leather boot…

His head pounded, almost like it would if he had been drinking heavily the night before, but even in his near conscious state he knew he wasn't drinking the night before. Trying to move his hands, Edmund felt that they were tied behind his back, and after a few moments he gave up when he heard a person move. He kept his eyes closed as the person started to walk towards him, a step away and whomever it was stopped, the sudden cold sensation over his head and upper body proved to Edmund that the person had just dumped water on him.

Opening his eyes fully and sitting up as fast as he could, he realized he was in a small room with three other people. An armored man was stepping away holding a bucket, now empty of its contents, he wore the same armor as the other men from before but it covered a fine red tunic and was now finished with a helmet that covered all of his head except for a T-shaped slit down the center that showed his eyes, nose and mouth.

Edmund looked at the second man, he sat in the middle and wore the same kind of armor, except that it was heavily decorated with swirling lines and it covered a splendid purple tunic that was the same color as the shields and the monsters belly. His helmet, which was covered just as heavily in the swirling marks, looked the same as the other mans except for a plume that extended up on a small brass piece and then transversally extended from the center of the helmet, the color of the stiff hair was white in the center and ends with two black parts separating the white.

The man's helmet sat on his right knee held there by his hand and his left sat on the hilt of a decently long steel rod, the man's face was that of an older man, in his mid-thirties at most. His hair and skin were just as white and tan as the other men Edmund has seen, and just like all the men without helmets, his hair was cropped as close to his head as he could get it. He had a small nose and his face was round, and compared to the rest of his armored body, his head appeared to be smaller than what should be normal.

His eyes looked hard and tempered from battle, their color was a slightly brown, but what really brought Edmunds attention to them was the light skinned scar that extended from just above his right eyebrow down to the bottom of his chin.

Looking at the person on the far left, Edmund felt what little energy he had turn into rage, the woman from the tower was standing in the small room. Her green clothes and gold medallions stood out from the purple and silver of the man in the middle, and the red and silver of the man on the right. The gold medallion band around her waist jingled when his eyes settled on her.

Edmund stood, "Y-you killed Mary! Y-you killed my familiar!" Edmund took a step forward and stopped when the man to his right tugged on the short sword and revealed the shining metal shoulder of the blade.

The man in the center raised his left hand, and the sword went back into the sheath.

"And you attacked one of my men," The sitting man's voice was ruff after what must have been years of yelling and sounded painfully loud inside the small room, "You severely wounded a feathered serpent, and if it wasn't for the skill of the beast's rider it would've rampaged and destroyed more than just soldiers. Fields, forests, herd of beasts as well as the homes of those that cannot fight such monstrosities."

Edmund stared at the man as if he grew another eye or nose, now they could speak the Albionian dialect? The man stared back with his hard eyes, in an effort to hide his fear Edmund straightened his back and spoke with his best 'regal' voice.

"I am Edmund Blackadder," Edmund closed his eyes, remembering all of his little speech, "Son of Harold Blackadder and Alyssa Blackadder. I am the current head of family of the Blackadder estate, and you sir are on Blackadder lands and are required to leave at once."

Edmund opened his eyes and fixed the man with his best nobleman gaze, "I struck at your man because he would not identify himself and chose instead to speak nothing but gibberish to a man of noble descent; he was at fault here, not I."

The man looked at Edmund, his expression didn't change at all and he was quiet for a long moment, "Alright, archon of Blackadder," The man started, "I am the second in line for the archon of house Parlathan, I have served since my initiation of manhood at eighteen, and since then have gathered many honors and have been given the command of the sixty-seventh legion for three years now. I have fought the desert dwellers near the great crevice, culled the pictish tribes in the north, and have found an island that floats in the sky upon a bed of clouds."

The man stood, helmet tucked into the crook of his elbow and towered a full head higher than Edmund, "Boy,"The man leaned in, squinting his eyes and got within a hands width of Edmunds face, "I, am Antarios of Parlathan, servant of the 'Acheronian Empire' and the man that is going to annex this floating continent in the name of the First, and the Empress Larissa Kamaterina."

The man moved back a step but stayed standing in front of Edmund, the young man's mind raced as he thought continuously of what the man said.

"Y-you came to conquer Albion?" The young man couldn't hide his fear anymore, they just admitted to him that they were going to try and conquer the Holy Republic of Albion.

"W-w-with nine ships and only a few hundred men," Edmund let out a small nervous laugh, "how are you going to conquer an entire nation a pittance of a force, general?"

Antarios turned away from Edmund and walked towards the cell door, the man on the right grabbed the stool and the door opened; the general looked back over his shoulder at Edmund, "Archon Blackadder, more will come and besides," He motioned his head towards the blindfolded woman, "you are going to tell the Ley Mother."

The general and the red tunic man left after that, but they were both replaced with two brown tunic men with the same undecorated armor, but both took a position in opposite corners of the room to either side of the 'ley mother'. The woman moved in front of Edmund as he took a step back, she stepped forward again and raised her arms, and once again Edmund retreated from the woman straight into the wall of the small cell.

She approached and put her hands on either side of his head and spoke in an impossibly smooth and relaxed tone, "Relax, Edmund, relax, the more you fight the more it will hurt."

She moved closer and a slight smile spread across her lips, if he wanted to, Edmund could kiss the woman in front of him she was so close, he tried to relax but what the woman said next made his face go pale in terror, his strength leave his knees and tears stream unbidden from his eyes.

"You wouldn't want to anger your mother, now would you?"

Antarios Parlathan, general of the sixty-seventh legion walked down the musty old hallway as the young man's pained and terrified screams behind him faded into the ancient stonework of the albionian fortress. He was followed closely by his most trusted and trustworthy advisor in these foreign lands, the red tunic showed that they were also the second in command to the general of the legion, and also the master of the engineering corps of the legion.

They both came up into an open courtyard and looked on as the stripped to the waist legionaries working hard at rebuilding the crumbled walls. The master engineer removed the helmet that would normally safeguard a soldiers head in combat and shouted towards a group of men working on building an improvised ballista cover on the upper wall.

"You men," A high, truly feminine, voice rang upwards towards the legionaries as the master engineer pointed up at them, "make sure that you have at least a meter of length extending from the crenellations outward, and make sure that it's supported by corbels, don't want some poor bastard to fall and take the whole damn cover with him on the way down!"

Antarios pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes as his sister walked back towards him, helmet in hand and a forced face of calm. Her face was round just like his own and much softer in appearance, and lacked the scar he received from a pictish back-sword four years before. Her white hair was also much longer than his, which is odd for anyone in the Acheronian Legions; long hair had problems of getting caught in the winding gears, pulleys and turn cranks of the war machines the legion normally marched with.

"Master engineer, I believe that will be enough modifying the still unfinished walls of this fortress." Her reply was a curt and silent nod, Antarios sighed and chose instead to speak with his sister, "Arturia, You are not acting like your normal self, what has you troubled?"

"Those children," She didn't even look at him, and he could hear her voice shake ever so slightly, "They were starved half to death and worse off than some beggar in the poorest backwater village out in the sticks."

Antarios sighed again, ever since she saw those children she would constantly think of them. Hell, he couldn't help but think of them when he had any time he wasn't using to set up the camp, rebuild the fortress and send orders to the just arriving commanders of ship and cohort. The children that you could see their bones through their skin… He shook his head violently to get the images out of his head; he was a soldier and no one, no matter who they were, deserved to die as nothing more than skin and bones. With no fuel to feed the fire that sends them into the Summerland.

"Sister," He began, "We will absorb this country into the empire, and we will change it."

He grabbed her shoulder with his free hand and gently made her look at him, "In the name of the First and on our family's honor; I swear that we will change this floating island for the better, for Acheron and for our family I swear this on our ancestor's blood."

A slight smile spread across her lips, "You swear too much."

"But I mean this, little sister, the Empire has arrived."