Summary: Male-Louise, AU. Magic is the proof and right of nobility. When Louis de La Vallière, a nondescript noble boy called 'Zero' for being unable to cast a single spell right, decides to try one last spell before giving up, he ends up being embroiled into the eerie legacy of the Founder…
Notes: Nom, nom. …Watching too much of the first episode of Fate/Zero can fry your brain. This little fic here is pretty much based off the first episode, my own plot-bunnies and various 'what-ifs' brought together. No cookies to anyone who blames me for my unoriginality. Really, this is just some stuff that I write at two in the morning after an exhausting, stressful day.
I claim no ownership of any of the elements found in this story, regardless of whether I leave it as a one-shot or not.
Also, English is my second language, so constructive criticism would be nice, and pointing out any mistakes I made would be pretty nice too.
"It has recently come to my attention," drawled the professor, standing regally atop the raised platform in the middle of the lecture hall, "that some of us have been thinking and studying quite hard on the 'might-be' forms of future societies."
It was a good, clear day in Tristain and everyone appeared to be in a good mood. Especially in Tristain Academy of Magic, the largest, most prestigious school in the entire nation (and most likely the entirety of Halkeginia), every single student seemed to be, at the very least, chatting merrily with their friends, some even going as far as to hum and dance like a fool in the corridors.
Too bad, thought Professor Dante, teacher of social studies and a square-class water mage, judgmentally, that one will not be sharing such a mood today.
"As you all know, social stratification today in Halkeginia is strictly divided between nobles and those above and the ranks below nobles by one, single irrefutable fact – magic. Magic runs in the blood, and as such, the offspring of nobles and higher classes inevitably carry the ability to use magic, and there has not been a single exception in history. You must be wondering," he carried on in a poised, terse manner reminiscent of a biting snake as he felt the quizzical stares of the adolescent nobles before him, "why I am covering material that even backwater rats would know."
He raised a clipped together pile of immaculately trimmed parchment, each filled neatly in equally immaculate writing from top to bottom in almost mechanically clear handwriting. Covering the pile, however, was a single parchment that was completely bare bar the title.
Various Inefficiencies of Modern Society and Its Influence on Future Social Structures
"Just a few days ago, a student researched his theories on possible forms of future societies and submitted this report directly to me. I," he paused for a somewhat tense and dramatic effect, tightening the atmosphere with the expertise of an experienced teacher, "have thoroughly read through this entire report, which logically theorizes and explains exactly how, in the future, current day social stratifications will cease to exist as strongly as it does today and magic will be used as a tool to further develop scientific discovery, including magic itself. In effect, it will create an efficient, equal society where magic is a practice for all people."
The entire class exploded into discrete mutters.
His eyes glimmered past a nervous looking blond boy in the third row, to the left of the lecture hall. The boy was seventeen, like the rest of the young nobles in the class, befitting his age—his abilities, though, remained in question.
Dante knew a hopeless mage when he saw one, and the young man he saw, though satisfying the 'hopeless' bracket quite well, wasn't so hopeless in the quantity half of magic (he had had heard enough talks at the staffroom about how destructive his explosions were).
"Quiet!"
Nevertheless, the scholar threw down the pile of parchments, looking up coldly at his bestirred class.
"Let me be clear as possible with this. This entire report is filled with nothing but the ramblings of an ignorant, dreaming child. Magic cannot, and will never exist in a world where the line between nobles and peasants blur, and all of you will do well to burn this fact into your heads."
There was a clatter of a chair being thrown back violently as Louis stood up, teeth gritted and bared, his dark reddish brown eyes cold and hard with barely restrained anger. Every single eye in the lecture hall turned to him, and students who were quick to piece two and two together burst out into derisive laughter.
"Louis de La Vallière. I am very, very disappointed that a student of my class has written such a report," Professor Dante's voice turned smooth and sharp. "It's quite a shame, don't you think? That the first son of the House of Vallière, which holds the power behind the throne, would write such a blasphemous report – nothing but the ravings of a dream-obsessed, harebrained fool, to imagine of such a society. And I could not say much more for your abilities in magic, or perhaps the lack thereof?"
Guiche de Gramont was the first to burst into a fit of laughter, followed by the entire class.
Biting his lip so hard that it bled, Louis mechanically packed his bag, turned on his heel and left the class with the door banging loudly against the frame.
"Asinine, narrow-minded, prissy little BASTARD!" howled Louis as he stormed down the grand, richly decorated corridors of the most prestigious academy in Tristain. "He's just a lying coward in denial, like every other fat, useless pig of a noble on this miserable little continent! Is that how any educator should act in the first place?! First father, mother and Èlèanore and then him and the entire retarded class! They're just—just jealous! This social system can change everything in our country and even take over the entirety of Halkeginia!"
Scowling darkly, Louis turned a corner, heading up to his dormitory room.
"See if I take any of his classes ever—OOF!"
A mild, gravelly old voice spoke up.
"Oh, and what might you be doing out of class, young…err…"
Looking up, Louis didn't know whether to scowl harder or smile awkwardly.
"H-headmaster Osmond, umm, err, Louis—Louis de La Vallière."
Old Osmond gave a harmless and sheepish, but all-too familiar smile that spoke volumes of his frivolity.
"Yes, Louise of the House of Vallière—and, ah, what might you be doing out of class at this time?"
Louis twitched – he had always hated it when the headmaster mispronounced his name for its feminine form. While Louis wasn't the tallest, most handsome young man around, he was hardly someone who looked like he could be bullied, inheriting his mother's sharp air of command and confidence and his father's sturdy build.
"Professor Dante asked me to run an errand for him, headmaster," he lied dully, smoothly.
Although, most of the time, he appeared as a perfectly normal, somewhat overly casual and dull boy.
"I see…hmm, yes, perhaps – could you take this to the library for me, then?" the headmaster held up a short stack of books that Louis hadn't spotted in his hands before. "I daresay that the librarian has been giving me quite the look lately, and I only just remembered—or perhaps, she could be—"
Louis bowed and scuttled off to the library before Old Osmond's infamous perverted lectures started again. The last time he had been caught in one, he had been given a rather lengthy lecture on the female body that were so graphic in description that he would've fallen into a fit of violent spasms had Professor Colbert not interrupted in time, or perhaps, that one time when the headmaster had seen fit to inform him of the daily colours of his secretary, Longueville's underwear, and their exact texture, shape, style and material, both bra and panties. Goodness knows where the man had gotten his wrinkly old hands on such information in the first place.
As classes were still going on, the library was silent and tranquil, almost stiflingly so. The librarian was a quiet maid who frequently cleaned the place, and despite it being time for the nobles they served to be in their classes, she asked no questions and simply curtsied as he entered.
He dropped the pile of books on the counter before her.
"The headmaster returns these," he explained.
He didn't quite expect the maid to know how to read, but surprisingly, she took out a pile of parchments and began to scan through them one by one. Stealing a glance at the maid's face, he quickly realised who she was – the talk of most of the boys in Tristain Academy of Magic, the pretty black-haired maid who had most of them doubting whether her being a peasant mattered or not.
Shaking his head, Louis turned on his heel and would've left the library immediately had one of the titles of Osmond's books not caught his eye.
Composition of Non-Elemental Magic
Non-elemental magic, meaning normal magic, meaning magic that didn't require him to mold his magic into the form that always, without fail, exploded in his face…
Louis made up his mind.
"Wait," he said, startling the maid (she gave a cute sound that he couldn't help but look up in mild alarm at). He picked up the decently sized tome. "Can I borrow this for a few days?"
The maid meekly nodded, and immediately drew up a separate parchment.
"T-the due date is in a week, my lord."
"Oh, OK."
"S-sign here, please…"
He signed, fitted the book underneath his shoulder and trooped wearily out of the library.
Once he was out of earshot, Siesta the maid sighed in relief.
The Spring-Time Familiar Summoning Ritual was barely a week away, but Louis wasn't the sort of boy who could simply 'wait and see'. He needed proof – proof that, at the very least, he wasn't born without magic. Even with the report he submitted bravely to his social studies professor, he had been strictly raised in a society where the offspring of nobles born without magic were abandoned without a second thought, considered as a shame to their house before they even took their first step.
If this fails…if this fails, then I'm no good. He tightened the hand over his face as he rested tiredly on his desk, his lamp waning in the darkness of the deep night. All mages have familiars – summoning it is considered the most basic and important part of being one, a partner for life. I'm…the only thing I'm prodigious at is at swordsmanship and blowing things up…
Sometimes, he wished he were born a peasant, with no worries of magic and discrimination hounding his mind, just the gritty, sheer realism of surviving and scraping by.
He then dropped his head onto his desk with a bang.
Dear Founder, I've gone mad, wishing that I were a peasant criminal…but still, stealing for a living would be much less mentally taxing than this…
Dawn was approaching. Louis had ignored lunch and dinner, even sleep for that matter, to finish the book and fully comprehend it in a single go. A week wasn't much, and he had no idea what the Familiar Summoning spell required.
So far, as he understood, it was quite simple. While he failed quite spectacularly at the practical side of magic, he was good enough as any other mage on the theoretical side.
Rubbing at his stinging eyes, Louis stood up and stumbled over to his bed, only halting when his eyes landed on yet another book.
He drank in the picture of the man and the dragon drawn beautifully on the cover.
It was the story of the man and his familiar dragon, embroiled into an adventure as they escaped the enclosing darkness of war to keep safe the last elf. It was a fantastic tale that Louis had grown to love ever since he had been young. The story had been considered heresy the moment it had been revealed by the author, a travelling noble, who had been executed – the elves in the story had been portrayed in an undoubtedly sympathetic light, and in the end, the man and his dragon had united all the races of the world to end the war. The entirety of Halkeginia had been shocked.
Still, to Louis, it was a great novel, and he had managed to procure a precious, surviving copy from a giggling, dreamy maid who worked in his family mansion for a few gold coins. Usually, he made good care to keep it quietly hidden away in a discrete, private place in his room, but the nerves he had suffered last night, anticipating the reaction of Professor Dante from reading his report, had caused him to be rather careless.
Fortunately, no one had just so happened to intrude into his room. Regardless, Louis took good care to keep it stashed away just in case. You couldn't be safe enough, after all.
He tripped awkwardly from the sheer fatigue, and fell into his bed.
An adventure…I've always…wanted to go on a…adventure…
His eyes began to droop, feeling like they had the weight of the world pressing down on them. He squinted at the ceiling of his room.
…Maybe…if the summoning fails…I could just run away…see the world…
With a hollow smile, Louis fell asleep just as the sky began to brighten.
That night, he dreamt of beautiful blond elves on floating islands, empty-hearted kings thirsting for power and holy men with silver tongues.
It was time.
There was just a scant two days left until the official Spring-Time Familiar Summoning Ritual. Louis felt vaguely sick, but steeled his mind as he pulled the dark travelling cloak over his head.
Tonight was the night, and he had all he needed – his wand, a small knife and a steel shaft to inscribe the summoning circle. Pulling his cloak tighter around him as he stepped softly out of his room, he quietly closed the door and locked it with his private key. Glancing around at all directions, even above and below him, he padded swiftly down the dark corridors with bundles of cloth wrapped and knotted around his feet instead of his boots, which were tied to his belt.
The castle was almost scary, bewitchingly so, at night. Still, there were a few odd people, apart from the maids and workers who worked tirelessly all day, who preferred the stoic serenity that the darkness of the twin-mooned world provided. Louis had to sidestep, hide and almost run to avoid every single one of them in the almost alien mood of the academy at night.
On the way, however, he could not be blamed for not noticing a pair of brilliant blue eyes following his cloaked, suspicious form curiously.
The short, petite figure blinked once behind her red-framed spectacles, extinguished her lamp, closed the large, heavy tome in her small, slender hands and soundlessly followed him at a safe distance.
Tabitha was the best at being silent.
Louis came to a stop several hundred meters away from the castle, a safe distance where any potential disturbance (say, for instance, his trademark explosion, should things go awry, but he felt sick once he thought on the subject anymore) would not attract unwanted attention.
He navigated the forest outside the academy campus, following the memory of his explorations of the place over the past few days during his preparations, until he found himself in a familiar, decently-sized clearing. Shaking off his hood, he stared wordlessly down at the flattened circle in the middle of the clearing he had hacked at clumsily to make. He was decently good at penmanship, excellent once he concentrated (like with his report), he was prodigious with the sword and good labour, but he had realised over the past few days that he wasn't good with soil – at all.
I would've made a terrible farmer, he joked half-heartedly inside his head.
He still managed in the end, however, making a big enough patch of dirt in the middle of the clearing. He could still see piles of ripped grass by the sides where he had thrown them away carelessly in frustration and gave a rueful smile.
Tonight would decide whether he stayed or not.
On one hand, he was desperately hoping – that he would succeed, that his family, his father, all of his peers would at least acknowledge him as a noble who could use magic.
On the other hand, he felt excitement at the wild freeness of escaping and rebelling, with no further expectations from anyone, even if a failure, shame and disappointment, for the unknown, murky paths of the adventure up ahead should he fail.
Louis was more convinced that he would fail.
He shivered, although not quite from the chill of the early spring night, as he threw off his travelling cloak and stepped out into the silvery moonlight that illuminated the clearing. He had exchanged the bundles of cloth for his boots after he had left the castle, and they pressed carelessly over the blades of grass beneath them.
He brandished the steel rod, and began to inscribe the circles, graphs and runes he had memorized onto the dirt ground.
His hand shook. Cold sweat trickled down his temple uncomfortably. He was breathing a little too hard and felt somewhat dizzy, somewhat sick, but with grim, icy determination, he concentrated and carried on like a man with only mere hours left to live. But such was not so far from the truth – the ritual he would be perform just a few minutes later would decide whether Louis the noble would continue to exist or not.
Perhaps a better Louis would come around if the noble were to disappear.
He paused, swallowing.
He had finished carving the last rune onto the ground.
And now, according to the book…
Taking out his knife, he rolled back his left sleeve and held the edge over his arm, trying desperately to calm his tensing muscles, primal instinct clashing fiercely with reason.
Behind him, hiding discretely behind the bushes, Tabitha's eyes widened. But before she could gasp – before she could think of how strangely a mere summoning ritual was being carried out – the silver sank into creamy, pale flesh, and drops of crimson fell to the centre of the summoning circle.
Louis gritted his teeth, facial muscles tightening in pain as he leaned down and tore off a part of his travelling cloak with the blood-stained knife. He wrapped it around his fresh, deliberate wound, and roughly, but successfully, knotted the ends tightly with one hand.
Finally, he was all set.
Breathing heavily, staving off dizziness and swallowing back bile that rose in his throat, Louis stood up to full height at the edge of the circle and took out his wand.
Magic poised—it tensed—and—
It began to form.
"My servant…that exists unfulfilled…in this vast universe," Louis caught the rest of his breath, staring determinedly at the steadily glowing lines of his circle—it was working! "My divine, beautiful, wise and powerful servant, heed my call!"
Behind him, her body shaking in an emotion not so much unlike fear, Tabitha watched on in wide-eyed fascination and horror.
He's using blood…in a summoning ritual… What manner of perversity would drive him to do such a thing?
Gritting his teeth, Louis carried on, his brow furrowing harder.
He could feel his magic draining away—was it the cost of a successful spell? Or maybe it was…
With a mental growl, he roughly pushed aside all of his fears and doubts, ignoring everything but the circle brightening violently with ethereal light before him.
More! It needs more magic to succeed!
And if Louis had anything, it was more will and power than anyone else.
"I call from the deepest depths of my heart, my soul, my mind and my body," his voice was starting to break, coming out in rasps. Sweat gleamed and trickled down his jaw line. "In the name of the great Five Pentagon Powers, follow my fate, through this life of shadows and brightness of the stars above, until death does us apart!"
He choked. He vaguely registering that blood was trickling down his chin. Inwardly, he felt alarm—should a mere summoning spell take this much magic?!
His voice was weakening—narrowing his eyes, Louis focused even more fiercely.
Pure magic trembled. The ground shook beneath him, but not for even a single moment did he take his eyes off the summoning circle, which shone brighter the stars or the sun or the moons in the sky, nor any fire or magic that he had come across before in his life.
Louis's body screamed as he chanted the last, fateful verse.
"I beg the spirits, the earth, the air, the seas and all that haunts this world! Heed my call—friend of my fate!"
His eyes sliding open, the pope woke up abruptly, yet with calm clarity, in the middle of the night.
His instincts sang of one thing only, calling for magic of Void pulsing in his heart and body.
Lying back down on his bed, the long haired man stared contemplatively at the ceiling.
Another familiar of the Void has joined this world…
The king suddenly dropped his gold goblet of fine wine, and the servants of the castle around him immediately jumped to clean the mess.
His familiar blinked, surveying his oddly blank expression shrewdly, yet with the unmistakable softness of utter devotion and concern.
"Is everything alright, my lord?"
Slowly, the king's handsome face split into a cold, sly grin that sent shivers down the spines of his servants.
The third has appeared…
"Ah—Ouch!"
"Geez, Tiffania—you're supposed put the needle through this part, not your own finger," her sister chastised her softly, carefully, taking her bleeding finger in the gentle, yet calloused hands of an earth mage.
"S-sorry…I just had this…jumpy feeling?"
"What are you talking about?"
The half-elf looked curiously out of the window of her cottage, out into the bright blue sky stretching forever into the horizon and the uncharted depths of the heavens.
What was it, I wonder…?
Stumbling back, Louis stared, shocked and disorientated, at the hazed shadow standing in the middle of the summoning circle, flopping ungracefully onto the ground.
"…What…"
The clouds above cleared, allowing the twin moonlights to shine down unhindered upon the clearing.
What Louis saw bewildered him even more, even as his mind began to gather itself.
As the haze began to thin and clear, he slowly began to make out the shadow in the centre of the circle—regal white armour, looking graceful yet powerful, with aqua tints of ethereal aura seeping through the joints with easy, cool power. The helmet looked no less royal and splendid in craftsmanship, and without exception, the two swords strapped to the waist radiated with a cold, precise power that whispered of death even from inside their richly embossed scabbards.
Within the shadows of the sharp-looking visor, two glowing pits stared back at Louis with an almost inhuman pressure, yet clearly magical in nature. It was then that he came to fully realise that fact that he had not summoned any random creature or beast that were the norm for familiars, but an intelligent, absolutely sentient being.
Inscribed in sharp, firm letters on the back of his left hand, even over the white armour, were strange, ancient runes that he could not recognize.
The armoured knight bowed his head respectfully, dropping to one knee onto the smoking ground beneath him.
And he spoke.
"I have answered your call, Mage of the Void. I, the spirit of Gandálfr, the Left Hand of God, am honoured to serve you, Master."