Nothing to See
The dust of Louise's explosions cleared and she saw...
Thousands limbs, twitching, spasming, grasping at the grass around them. What they touched, bled.
Many eyes, unfocused, revolving in their sockets, their movement leaving her with an impression that they could no more comprehend the sight around them than she could comprehend what was before her.
The red world staring straight at her, set in a framework of flesh that conjured impressions of human bodies yet was anything but.
The gasping void, beckoning.
Louise stared at the impossible monstrosity before her, transfixed. She held her breath, afraid that any slightest movement, any soft sound would attract its attention, would make its eyes focus on her, its limbs reach for her, its maw... She could feel blood coursing through her veins with each hastened heartbeat, and in a sudden moment of horrifying clarity she wondered if the blasphemy before her could feel it, too.
The standstill was broken by voices of her classmates, coming to her as if from a great distance.
"Ha! Look at it! Zero did it again! Summoned a commoner, of all things!"
"Right? How low could she sink?"
"Bet you her family just hired the guy so she won't be expelled. I mean, that explosion concealing the summoning is awfully convenient."
Slowly, as if she could no longer quite remember how to move, Louise turned to look at them, still keeping the abomination in her peripheral vision. At that moment, both it and her classmates were equally alien to her, intruders upon the world of sanity and reason. She could comprehend neither of them.
"What," she said, the word barely a whisper.
More jeers answered her.
Then she heard Professor Colbert awkwardly clearing his throat behind her.
"Please, continue the ritual," his voice said.
She didn't turn to look at him, merely repeating, "What."
He sighed. "Miss Valliere, I understand that you may be... disappointed about the results of your summoning, but it was successful. To that I can attest," he added in a louder voice cutting through the jeers. "And, as such, the ritual must be completed. It's a sacred rite, after all."
There was nothing sacred before her, of that Louise was sure with inescapable clarity. She nodded anyway.
The world has gone mad around her, the people has gone mad. But she still had her pride, the only thing she truly had. Whatever else might be true, she was the one who brought the being before her here, and so it was her responsibility now.
On unbending legs she marched forwards, muttering the words of binding under her breath as if afraid they would escape her mind.
She came to a stop before the impossible creature and waved her wand and said the incantation in a voice as clear and strong as she could muster and kissed a protrusion of flesh, tasting blood on her lips.
And the world screamed.
And she screamed with it, until her voice was snuffed out by flesh coiling around her throat, squeezing and crushing and making her bleed. Her vision darkened, and she knew it in her bones to be the end.
And then, suddenly, it stopped.
She found herself lying on the ground, harking blood from her lungs. Her wand fell a few paces near her, and she snatched it quickly before looking back at the abomination to see it folding into itself, familiar runes shining brightly at the heart of the red world, many eyes focused on them, while others were looking at her. Somehow, she's got the impression that their sight was calculating.
"The ritual is complete," Professor Colbert's voice said from above her. She looked up to see an encouraging smile on his face. She could see no worry in his eyes, no acknowledgement that she was lying on the ground, that she was bleeding, that she nearly died, that the world was bleeding. "Congratulations, Louise." The words she once craved now came as a hollow mockery of everything that was good and holy in this world.
She croaked an unintelligible response at him. The professor patted her on her back before walking away to direct the class to depart, leaving her alone with the blasphemy.
She looked at it and it looked back, all eyes focused as one. It was going to be a long day.
The floor bled. The walls bled. The ceiling bled. The window bled. The chair bled. The table bled. The wardrobe bled, and the clothes inside probably bled as well.
Louise was sitting very still on her bed, wand in hand and improvised bandages on her throat, and glared at the abomination lying - standing? sitting? It was impossible to tell - on the bleeding pile of hey. Her attempts to convince her teachers and the headmaster himself that her familiar was, in fact, a horrible abomination whose very existence should be considered a sacrilege and not, in fact, a commoner boy whose very existence probably wasn't a sacrilege (despite what Pope Ignotus XII has proclaimed) have failed. Her request for an additional room to hold her familiar - which would have been reasonable even within the delusion that it was a commoner boy - was denied. Even her attempt to get an attention of healers has failed because apparently nobody could see her bleed. At least it didn't look like a serious wound. Louise actually wasn't entirely sure she bled her own blood.
And so she found herself in her current predicament, watching the abomination even as it watched her and trying to think of what to do next. She couldn't think of anything, but she knew that what she thought during the summoning ceremony held true still: her familiar was her responsibility. Whatever it was plotting, whatever danger it posed, she was determined to stop it.
"I know you're plotting something," Louise croaked, voice still coming painfully to her. "But I won't let you do... whatever it is you're plotting."
The abomination stared at her impassively, the red world absorbing the light of the red moon.
The room continued to bleed.
Louise ran through hallways, out of the castle as fast as she could, swearing under her breath. She was up all night watching twisting flesh and twitching limbs and rolling eyes, and then she somehow fell asleep anyway, and she overslept, and her familiar wasn't there when she woke, and she knew something horrible was going to happen, and it did, and now she was almost too late, maybe already too late to avert the consequences.
In retrospect, her plan to not sleep ever had some flaws in it that she'd have to think how to fix later.
She finally reached the crowd surrounding her familiar and Guiche. Not wasting any time, she cast a fireball before her, the spell exploding in familiar weirdly harmless concussive force, clearing the path before her. She ran towards the abomination, new spell forming on her lips...
And then stopped in her tracks, the words dying on her tongue, as the scream of a dying man pierced the air.
The world slowed down around her, and with a horrified detachment she watched the last of Guiche disappearing into the gasping void. For a moment, their eyes met, and the look in them told her that Guiche knew - for the first time since the blasphemy marked this world with its presence he knew - the true form of her familiar and his inevitable fate.
And then he was gone.
Louise stood there, helplessly, tears frozen in her eyes, apologies and curses and laments and sobs forming on her lips, never to be voiced.
There were no other words to express it: she failed. For the first time in her life, she didn't merely fail herself, she didn't fail expectations imposed upon her that, in the grand scheme of things, didn't mean anything, didn't affect anyone but herself. No, this time, she failed her duty before the world, before the Church, before her own conscience, before Guiche. And he died because of that. And there was no hope to make it better. A man died, and it was her fault, and she didn't know what to do anymore. There was no hope.
Slowly, even as her mind was drowning in despair, Louise became aware of the murmurs passing through the crowd around her. A perverse hope blossomed within her heart that the sheer magnitude of the tragedy unfolded before them, the loss of life, would be capable of breaking whatever unholy magics the blasphemy used to conceal its nature from the world. And then she actually heard the words.
"Wow, that commoner managed to defeat Gramont!"
"Do you think he's some kind of a mage, after all? From faraway lands that practice some exotic arts?"
"No, I think he's just that good. I mean, did you see how... how... did you see that?"
"Come on, it's not that impressive. Guiche's only a dot mage."
"Yes, but for a commoner to be able to stand up to a mage at all..."
And Louise's hope died.
She didn't know Guiche well. They never really talked. She remembered thinking him a bit silly with his rose and half-unbuttoned shirt, making speeches he thought were poetic. But that wasn't even a strong impression on her part, just some passing thoughts she would forget right after thinking them. Otherwise, he was just a face in the crowd. Not exceptionally kind to her, not exceptionally cruel. Someone to shout at when he joined her peers in their taunts and otherwise ignore. And now he was dead, and even his death was going to be forgotten, swallowed by the gasping void along with the rest of him.
He didn't deserve that. Nobody deserved that.
She swirled in place to face the crowd, cloaking herself in anger, ruthlessly exorcising feelings of helplessness and despair in favor of something she could use, something that could fuel her.
"What is wrong with you?!" she shouted in a still broken voice. "A man just died!"
Blank looks were her only answer.
She screamed and swirled back to face her familiar, sending explosion its way in the same motion.
The world shrieked, limbs reached out to her, the gasping void grew larger, and yet she stood her ground, sending explosion after explosion at the abomination, turning chunks of it into red mist and gray smog.
It was regrowing its flesh moments after she destroyed it, regenerated limbs going after her throat again and again, yet she was faster, always just a second faster. It didn't matter what spells she used, it didn't matter if she used them correctly. Her will alone was enough to keep the abomination at bay.
And then she saw it folding onto itself, curling its flesh around the red world that was at the heart of it, and she knew herself to be the victor.
"You," she intoned, her voice high and trembling, "are coming with me. Now."
And the blasphemy obeyed.
Louise marched towards her room, wand at hand and her familiar close at her heels. Her mind was filled with thoughts about what should be done, none of them conclusive, none of them good. Still, at least they helped to drown up the guilt over Guiche's demise.
So absorbed was she in her thoughts that she nearly ran into Kirche standing straight in the middle of the hallway, her salamander shivering in fear a few steps farther.
Louise stopped sharply and said in a clipped tone, "Go away."
"Glad to see you too, Zero," Kirche said, smiling. "Or should we call you the One now?" she asked, her gaze moving to the blasphemy behind Louise. "Because, I must admit, you've finally succeeded in casting a spell. And what a success it was!"
Louise shifted to position herself more strategically between Kirche and her familiar. She didn't know what Kirche was playing at and she didn't care, but she'd be damned if she allowed another tragedy to happen.
"Hey," Kirche said, addressing the familiar. She then did something with her hips that caused Louise to narrow her eyes at her. There couldn't be two anatomically-impossible abominations hiding in the Academy, could there? "I see little Louise here keeps you on a tight leash. But you know, if you ever get tired of that, you can come to my room. I have leashes too, and mine would make you feel much better." And she smirked.
Louise blinked.
"This isn't happening," she said firmly. The world has gone mad, but it couldn't have gone that mad. It couldn't. Clearly, the delusion that afflicted her peers had some effect on her as well.
Kirche pouted. "It's rude to keep him all to herself, you know. Besides, I'm sure someone as passionate as him would appreciate a woman with more... talent."
Louise pinched her nose, ignoring Kirche's cleavage.
"You know what?" she said. "I don't even care anymore."
Quickly she cast an explosion at Kirche, sending her tumbling towards her familiar and away from the many limbs reaching for them. The salamander managed to bite on Kirche's cape and drag her away despite her protests.
Louise turned towards her familiar, wand raised.
"You. Follow. Nothing else."
With that, she continued her march.
As Louise opened at the door to her room, she saw a vaguely familiar maid standing in the middle of blood-soaked carpet, fidgeting nervously.
"My lady -" The maid curtsied as she saw Louise "-I..."
Louise pointed her wand at the maid.
"If you came to flirt with my familiar, I will throw you out of the window."
The maid's already big eyes opened even wider.
"What?" she said, stammering. "No. That would be... No. No, no, no. That's not... I mean, I wouldn't even think..."
"Why are you there? Get to the point," Louise said in an annoyed voice.
"Right, of course," the maid said and took a deep breath. "It's just that, well, I've seen your... familiar around, and I've heard what happened to poor sir Gramont, may he rest in peace, and what you did after, and I thought that maybe you would want to know..."
"Wait," Louise said, the words only partially processed by her brain. "You know that Guiche's dead? And you actually act on that? You... you don't deny that happened?"
"Um, no," the maid said. "I mean, yes, I understand that he's... dead."
"What... what do you see when you look at my familiar?" Louise asked with a note of urgency in her voice, hoping desperately and denying herself that hope.
The maid gulped.
"I... I see many limbs and the red world and the gasping void and the eyes," she said slowly, as if in a trance.
Louise rushed the maid and embraced her in a tight hug.
"Oh my God! Oh my God! Thank you! Thank you. I thought... I thought I was alone. I felt... I... I don't know what I felt... I... Thank you."
"Um, there, there," the maid said, awkwardly patting Louise on the back. "So, um... The reason I came here?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, I thought you may need help dealing with your familiar... It's obviously a bad idea for it to remain here, and I thought I may lend you a hand at dealing with it?"
"Wait," Louise said, looking up at the maid but not releasing her from the hug. "You know what to do with it?"
"Um, yes," the maid said. "Well, my family does. They sort of have some experience with that, so if we manage to get your familiar to them, they may help."
"Right," Louise said, steel returning to her voice. "We should go at once."
"Ah, that would be... I mean, that wouldn't be wise. I should first contact them, explain the situation, inform them we're coming."
"Why's that?"
"Well, my lady, you see," the maid said squirming down at Louise, her being too close for both of the maid's bulging eyes to focus. "You don't have the look."