My first fan fiction history, hope you enjoy reading it as much I enjoyed writing it.
Constructive criticism accepted & welcomed, everything that makes us better will always be received with open arms.
normal writing - Fun
Dreams, flashbacks, Whispers - Chuck Norris eats pasta
Thoughts, spells - Monkey magic
I do not own the familiar of zero franchise nor Dwarf Fortress.
I jolted awake to find myself lying on the ground sore all over my body; I tried to overcome the growing headache that assaulted my senses to look around at my surroundings, only to find it was pitch dark, and therefore impossible to discern my current whereabouts through sight.
As I finally started to feel good enough to put my mind on gear, the realization of where I was suddenly hit me. I was in a cell; probably a prison cell in the royal catacombs. The stench of sewer water and rotten bodies was too much of a giveaway to miss, also, the intimidating looking royal guard glaring at me through the door hatch helped too.
"It seems you are finally awake fallen Harish (Traitor)," I maintained a neutral face as he said the words, but I felt disgraced to have a lowly prison guard calling me a traitor "The rumors about your fall hold some true, you look pathetic," He declared with a smirk.
Once again I kept silent, no use in getting in a fight with a man at the other side of a door while you are malnourished and weak. After some more snide remarks the guard finally seemed to get bored with my presence and left to who knows where.
"Goblin Crap." I got the annoying guard out of my mind and started to think about everything that had happened to this point with a sour look on my face, it seemed so unreal. And it all started with such a simple thing, a question, a sentence of eight words that changed my life forever.
"What can change the nature of a man?" Asked the mysterious stranger with a solemn look on his terribly scarred face.
My mind immediately got to work on the answer, knowing instantly that it was a trick question. Every logical answer surely possessed a counter-argument to void them. The look on the stranger´s face also told me that this wasn´t the first time he had asked this question to someone, I idly wondered what had happened to the other puzzle solvers, but swept the thought out of my mind quickly to avoid distractions.
I checked every possible answer in a matter of seconds: death, love, pain, hatred, time, coercion, Betrayal...
No, no, and no. The stanger narrowed his eyes ever so slightly, time was running out, think! Understanding of human nature, split possible instinctive responses to stimuli, mammals tend to find peace in following a leader, pack mentality, simpler of community concepts.
"…Example" Was my final decision.
"…" The stranger didn´t said anything for a while, just limiting himself to stare at my eyes. After what seemed like an eternity, he opened his mouth and pronounced the words that ruined my life "Prove it."
I was a logical man after all, how could I refuse knowing something?
The constant dripping of the pipes on my cell were the only thing maintaining my sense of time active, but nothing mattered to me anymore. I was proven wrong and it was killing me inside. How could I forget such a primal part of the human psyche on my train of thought?
Fear had been my undoing. Since I was fearless I never counted it on the equation, and it cost me dearly. Fear was what put me in my current predicament and would possibly be what is going to kill me in the near future, as the only exit out of the royal prison was the executioner´s axe.
I was so engrossed on my pessimist prediction of the future that when a blinding sun of blue light appeared suddenly in front of my improvised bed of rags and mud, it scared the crap out of me, but not literally of course, I still had my pride.
"In the name of Armok bloody pants, what the hell is this?" At a closer inspection, the blue light seemed to resemble a portal of sorts, strange as it was. Only my experience with strange random things stopped me from getting closer to it, but my curiosity was as always making very convincing arguments. 'What more have you to lose? You are alone on this world now, nothing ties you.'
Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière stepped forward towards the summoning circle with her head held high and her heart nearly hammering its way out of her chest. She could hear the cruel comments of her peers behind her but choose to ignored them while she walked with all the pride she could build up, although honestly speaking, she was scared out of her mind. She slowly but surely raised her wand above her head and tried to remember the words she had previously thought would rid her of a lifetime of failure. She wasn't so sure anymore. "I beg of you… my servant who lives somewhere in the universe!"
"That's a rather original chant." Said one gorgeous redhead with a raised eyebrow.
"Indeed." Confirmed a blond young man holding a rose beside her.
"…" Even the ever silent blue haired lithe girl took her sight out of her book to look at the pinkette actions.
"Oh sacred, beautiful, and strong familiar spirit! I desire and here I plead from my heart! Answer to my guidance!" With a little twirl of the wrist, Louise brought her wand down in a quick slash, pointing its glowing tip at the pentagram before her. As always, an explosion was the result, one powerful enough to knock even Tabitha's dragon flat onto her behind with a startled screech amidst the many screams and roars of the students and their familiars.
"I beg of you… my servant who lives somewhere in the universe!" To say that the ethereal voice took me by surprise would be an understatement.
"Huh?" Was my intelligent answer "What th-" Before I could continue my monologue the voice resounded in the meager cell again.
"Oh sacred," Sacred, me? I somehow really doubted that I could be called sacred after all my pasts deeds.
"beautiful," Well, the voice is right with that one, I though with a smirk, although I don't think being called beautiful is very manly.
"and strong familiar spirit!" Indeed I am, but what has that strength gained me aside from suffering and disappointment?
"I desire and here I plead from my heart! Answer to my guidance!" So that´s what it was all about, nothing more than a pact of servitude. I tsk´ed and tore my gaze from the portal.
"I am not becoming anyone´s slave."
…
…
…
The portal still stood there, like as if it was mocking my lack of courage with its existence.
'Its it really worse being a slave than dying? For all you know you could be mistaken.'
"I am not afraid of death." I said to myself, but it lacked my usual conviction.
'Maybe you aren´t so far from the average human as you thought.'
My hands were shaking, 'Thinking with logic doesn´t makes you immune to fear, only to its illogical branch,'I closed my eyes to try to shut the voice out of my head, 'And besides… You´re already a slave of Armok, what could possibly be worse than that?'
I stood with shaky steps looking at the portal again, my head a hellfire of possibilities "I really hate my mind." Was the last thing I said before jumping into the arcane apparition.
When nothing immediately happened Louise´s heart sank to her stomach. With her insecurities coming back at full force her noble pride was the only thing keeping her from breaking out crying. She could see Professor Colbert shaking his head from the corner of her eye.
"This is just like you Louise, all that talking last night was worth it!"
"Yeah, never before have we witnessed such a huge and useless explosion!"
This was the end, she was going to be disowned, throw out of the academy and forever be remembered as the Zer- , her train of thought was suddenly interrupted by an even bigger explosion than the first, the resulting cloud of smoke blinding everyone.
Complete darkness wasn't exactly what he had been expecting, but it was even more confusing when the weightless feeling he was experiencing inside the portal changed to one of free falling, accompanied by another flash of blinding light.
When he opened his eyes he noticed something bad, he was falling, from very high. He started trying to right himself in a decent lading position that didn't end with a lot of broken bones or him becoming a bloody stain on the floor. He saw a bunch of figures crowed under him, but in his hurry to avoid imminent death, he didn't gave them much thought.
With a grunt of effort he managed to land on a knelling position while making a few cracks on the ground in the process. His landing putted his already strained muscles on a very precarious situation, throbbing constantly in agony, and screaming at their owner to stop being an idiot.
When the smoke finally started to clear out of the way, he saw the figures he recognized before, this time taking care to observe the details.
It was a most bizarre sight, at least a few dozen of children in their adolescent years standing in a semi-circle around at what seemed to be a ritual of sorts. They were dressed in black robes with pants, and skirts in the case of the women, with similar looking socks and shoes, they all seemed to follow the same pattern, an uniform of sorts, perhaps?
Their hair colors seemed to form a rainbow of sorts, with fiery reds, platinum blues and all kinds of abnormalities. Although the most strange thing wasn't the children themselves, but the array of creatures alongside them.
Some were ranging from the ridiculous like a flying eye ball and a frog with a ribbon, others appeared to come from the underworld caverns like the fire salamander, and there was the dragon too. After sighting such a creature peacefully standing among humans he was inclined to believe he had somehow landed in a dwarf settlement, since only the dwarfs were mad enough to try to tame a mythical creature like a dragon.
After finally making sure there weren't any hairy little alcoholic creatures nearby, he stood up ignoring the burning in his legs and back. There were a few "Gasp" and widened eyes after he got to his full height, he assumed they weren't used to tall people, although his 192cm of height were much more than the average back in Tihronea, so he wasn't very surprised at that.
For his surprise he hadn't noticed the other two people standing away from the main group to his left, a fact he related to the readjusting of his eyes to the light, considering they were "Really" noticeable, like really so.
One was a middle aged man with a bald head, glasses, blue robes and a long staff he was currently pointing at him, although discretely. His goofy exterior didn't fooled him, this man was dangerous.
After taking part of the little stare-off with the man he turned to the last other person in the field, and he was very surprised at what he saw. A little girl that anyone would assume to be around twelve years old with long, strawberry blond hair, falling freely to around her waist.
He didn't know why, but he felt a certain attraction to this one, so he decided to get closer to her. With the distance between both lessening he could finally see her eyes more clearly, which turned out to be a very clear pink, similar to the one of her hair, and staring at him with a mix of surprise and anger.
The sharpness of those eyes irked him; they reminded him of something… But he couldn't remember what. He stopped almost right in front of her to keep observing her features. At first glance they looked like those of a child, but close examination showed her to be older, at least sixteen years old. A very beautiful girl indeed, although looking at her now narrowed eyes he noticed there may be an ugly personality behind that cute face.
"Qui êtes-vous?" She said, not that he understood a word of it. They seemed to talk in a melodic tongue similar to that of the northern continents, although more adorned, but the inquisitive nature behind the statement told him she was asking something. Out of the possible things someone may ask to a newcomer, he guessed she wanted to know his name.
He smile at her and pointed a finger to himself "Dirian," he simply say. There was no real need to be more specific, after all, his past self died the moment he jumped into the portal, and as a plus, he never liked long introductions.
She didn't seem very happy with his short presentation and neither his choice of clothes, if the cautious way she keep looking at them mean anything. He didn't like them much either, but he couldn't be picky in a prison. The tattered dirt brown shirt he carried, which may actually could have been tinted with real dirt, didn't exactly match his ankle short fiber rope pants and humble sandals.
"Mon nom est Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, paysan" The long introduction left him with a raised eyebrow, but now he knew for sure they were nobles, considering the only other way to gain such long named status was through distinction in battle, and none of them seemed to have even the slightest combat experience, except maybe for the only old one in the group, whom by the way he never lost of his line sight.
He just shrugged his shoulders and crossed his arms over his chests to show he was waiting for her to continue whatever she was doing before. This magic stuff was never fast, and he knew that by experience.
She got the message and took a step towards him; she glanced warily at the baldy and proceeded at his nod. Raising her wand over her head uneasily she did some circular motions in the air.
She seemed to steel her resolve at the laughs and whispers of the other children and repeated the motion more firmly this time, along with some sort of chant which seemed to follow a pattern, a pentagram, he noticed after a few moves. He guessed the ritual would move more smoothly is their height difference disappeared, so he knelled before her still looking straight at her eyes, a gesture that apparently calmed some of her fears.
A few more motions, some words, and she finally seemed to finish, given the tone of closure of the last line. He didn't expect her though to quickly shut her eyes close, mutter something with disdain and kiss him in the lips.
A quick thought passed his mind at that moment, 'maybe this isn't going to be so bad after all,' and he had to give her some credit for making his mind to stop on its tracks, something that seldom happened before, even at the most heated of his battles.
He gave her an amused smirk when their lips finally parted and she blushed a pink tone that could match her hair and narrowed eyes. Though his amusement was short lived. Just a few seconds after separating an incredible burning pain appeared on his left hand, clouding all of his senses with intense agony.
He lifted his hand to watch a series of runes to begin marking themselves on his skin, in a very slow and painful manner. A little itch at the back of his mind made him feel like passing out would mean losing something important, so he gritted his teeth and endured the process.
And then, it was over before he knew it, but the little itch remained. He tried to reach it only to feel himself recoil with pain again, this time from inside his head. The scream he hold back last time came out in full force, making everyone close by wince at his obvious suffering.
"Z-z-zero yo-you´re going to kill him at this ra-rate" Said the fiery redhead. 'Wait a minute,' he thought between groans, 'I actually understood that, is this some kind of translation spell?'
He didn't have time to wonder that line of thought before another influx of information, as he now knew it to be, reached him. He was awed, so much knowledge, everything you could´ve possibly wanted to know about any and all weapons in existence. The immensity of it over-loaded his brain, and only his super human willpower kept him on his feet, though barely. The feeling was like being swallowed by a giant tidal wave-He was drowning. His mind couldn't no longer resist the constant punishment and decided to do the smart thing, shutting down all contact with the real world.
As he was fading away into darkness, the world traveler resumed all his feelings into a short sentence "Goblin crap." And he knew no more.
After her new familiar lost consciousness during the summoning ritual, Louise had to ask the other nobles for help to carry the massive man back to her room in the academy. Despite her pride, there was no possible way for her to even lift him off the ground, and using her magic on him would probably do more harm than good, she admitted grudgingly. Predictable enough, it was Guiche who offered his help, and so as he was casting a levitation spell on the fallen newcomer Professor Colbert approached her with a thoughtful look on his face.
"Miss Vallière," He said with a careful tone "Despite the holiness of the spring familiar summoning ritual, I must still warn you about something regarding this character." It was really weird seeing the normally clumsy Professor so serious.
"What would that be?" She asked warily, even is the fallen man looked suspiciously like a commoner, the summoning ritual was her first successful spell and her ultimate proof of her magical inheritance, and now here was Colbert trying to spoil her triumphal mood.
"I have never felt such an intense smell of blood on any person, ever" The magic professor said with a grim expression. 'Smell of blood? What is he talking about?' Wondered a confused Louise.
He seemed to feel her confusion and his expression returned to its normal goofy demeanor, although still quite serious. "Don't worry about that Miss Vallière. Surely it's just a mistake on my part," He told her with a smile.
So here she was, sited beside her bed watching her new familiar sleep. She hadn't really taken much of his features before, but now she noticed his skin was not brown like she had originally thought, but a light peach, probably darkened by many hours under the sun; his black hair fell freely in wild locks around his face, obscuring his rough but elegant features.
She hesitantly reached his face with her hand to touch a small scar on his cheek; the roughness of his skin awed her. She kept at trailing his features with her hand until she touched his lips, the same lips she had kissed just a few hours ago, 'and you liked it.'
The suddenness of the thought made her blush scarlet and shaking her head. 'What I am thinking about! He is the one who should be honored to kiss me; I didn't like it at all, not even a little.'
While she was shaking her head wildly from side to side, she didn't notice that the man´s eyebrows and fingers twitched minutely, and she almost jumped to the ceiling when he woke up with a sudden jolt.
Dirian looked around the room he woke up in quickly inspecting for any threats, but when he saw the pink haired girl from before he remembered the incident with the runes and looked at his hand, and surely, there was an intricate web of carvings and symbols on his skin. "Such a barbaric way to seal a pact." He thought out loud.
"What do you mean barbaric?" She asked with no small amount of anger in her voice and her recent surprised completely forgotten.
She took offense on that? Strange AND sadistic girl. I better try not to anger her further unless I feel like getting another artistic tattoo through my soul.
"Nothing at all," He replied with an insincere smile, but she didn't need to know that "It seems we have started with the proverbial wrong foot, so let me present myself," He did a grand gesture accompanied by a smile "My name is Dirian, may I know yours my lady?"
She seemed unsure of how to react to his sudden change of mood, but she answered his question nonetheless. "As I told you before commoner, my name is Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, and you´ll do good not to forget it again." His eyebrow twitched slightly but he controlled himself, no need to blow her cloud, after all he didn't really made it clear before that he didn't get a single word of what they were saying.
"Forgive me Ms. Vallière; it's a crime to forget one such as you," He let out an inward laugh at that one "I assume this rune here marks me as your servant, am I right?" He asked a little more serious this time.
"Indeed it does, is there any problem?" She asked in a low tone, it was clear she like to be in charge, an amusing thought.
"None at all," He replied with another smile, this time actually sincere "I just needed to confirm who I was going to give my life for," that seemed to take her by surprised, but he didn't paid it much mind before getting out of the bed in two motions, carefully stretching his muscles to check for lasting damage. Finding none, he proceeded to bow in front of her.
"I´ll be your shield, protecting you from harm; I'll be your voice, carrying your will across the four winds; I´ll be your sword, slaying your every foe; I am yours forever, this I swear on my soul" he finally said sealing his fate and leaving her with her mouth wide open. It seemed fitting for the occasion to quote the knight´s chant, and a little of formality would ease his pride at being marked as living furniture a little.
"Now that´s out of the way, with your permission I am going to familiarize myself with the layout of the castle." Still too shocked to speak, Louise just nodded her head, at which he left through the door closing it quietly on his way out.
The small mage just stood there, staring at the door with a dumb-struck expression for a while, before looking first at the floor then at her bed. She just let herself fall over the fluffiness while she continued thinking about the words of her familiar. Strange as he was, she had to admit he had a way with words.
"Yours forever…" She softly whispered his words before surrendering herself to exhaustion.
The now officially proclaimed familiar was walking through the halls of Tristain Academy of Magic at a leisured pace, while the inside of his mind was raging with an endless line of thoughts respecting his current situation.
After sobering up of his slumber on his new master´s bed, he remembered all about the rune incident, which served to prove the seriousness of the whole deal. The power he felt cursing in his veins while the marking was taking place was otherworldly, ancient and incredibly powerful. Even if his mind suppressed most of the information he could still remember the main idea-weapons, an infinite library of weapon´s knowledge, maybe even more. The problem now was getting to it, considering that his encounter before with the library was most probably a mistake on the planning by whoever invented the ritual. There had to be a catalyst to access the knowledge the way it was intended to, but the key of the puzzle avoided him.
Even while he was pondering this he was actually memorizing every corridor, hall and stairway he walked through, a little something he called "reflexion mode", an act that needed utmost concentration on his part, mostly at the expense of zoning out and walking blindly. He was throw out his theories when he suddenly crashed with something soft and he heard a loud "Kya!".
By pure instinct alone he reached out for whatever he had stumble with before it landed on the floor, when his mind finally synched back with his body he realized he was holding a girl with short black hair and dressed in maid garments.
"Are you alright?" He asked her slightly concerned; after all it was mostly his fault for not paying attention.
She seemed reluctant to say anything until she realized Dirian´s style of clothing "Um… yes, thank you." She said with a little smile.
'It seems she´s wary of nobles, interesting, and showing a possible abuse of power by the ruling class,' he rolled his eyes at that 'typical.'
After exchanging a few more words with the maid, he let her go making sure she was really fine. He didn't miss the fact she was the only person with black hair he had seen since he arrived, 'Siesta, huh?'
He gave a sideway glance to the twin moons on the sky and sighted with nostalgia. This truly proved he wasn't in Xaldria anymore, and as disappointed as he was with his homeland he would still miss many things, 'and people too,' he thought for a second before shrugging it out of his mind, there was no use in getting all broody now.
Upon returning to his little master´s room he found her on her bed hugging a pillow with an uber-adorable look on her face, while mumbling incomprehensibly. 'Just a Child after all.'
He smiled at the sight and covered her with a nearby blanket; looking around the room he found a little pile of hay on the floor. He assumed this was as far as he would get for sleeping accommodations, not that it bothered him, he had years of experience sleeping in nightmarish shit holes, and that little spot actually looked quite comfortable to him. He shifted a bit before putting his back against the wall and dozing off to recount the day events.
Author Notes
For those who don´t know, Armok, the god of blood is the deity from which the game Dwarf Fortress takes its name.
I seriously recommend the game for anyone with interest in extremely interactive rpg/city(Fort in this case) managing.
Thanks For reading!