Midnight And The Void

An A Green Sun Illuminates the Void AU

...

The contents within being a short tale of of the path of Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, if it had lead to her warped destiny as a Dark Messiah, not an Infernal Monster.

{●}

The sun shone down, from on high, down onto a field in Tristain. The chill of the morning was still barely present, although rapidly departing, and the faintest hint of dew was still present on the grass, which made the shoes on the feet of the gaggle of students and their teacher squeak slightly. But, still, it was a lovely spring morning, and the clarity of the sky above declared that it was only going to get more pleasant. There were birds on the field, tiny sparrows in the sun and a number of large grey cranes in the nearby pond. It was a lovely day for getting close to nature.

"Urgh," one of the boys said, staring down at his feet. "I think I've trodden in something."

"Well, then, Guiche, perhaps you should look where you are going, and not at the other girls then," the girl beside him, blond hair in ringlets, replied acerbically.

"Aww, Montmorency, my love, you know I only have eyes for you."

And, indeed, the gentle warm wind, when combined with the sun above, the hints of dew, and the rich earth below gave the perfect elemental correspondence for this day. It was the first day of spring, and thus, for the prestigious Tristain Academy of Magic, it was by some reckonings the most important day of the year. Today was the day when each student in the second year summoned their familiar, just as Brimir had, long ago, just as every mage did, just as had been done by every student before them.

Or, at least, every mage who had not dropped out of the Academy in utter ignominy. And for one Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, this was a noted fear. It should have always been easy for her. Her bloodline was impeccable. Her genealogy could be traced back 600 years, and contained no commoners, none of the magic-less plebeians who might leave her weaker. Her family was one of the wealthiest in the nation; indeed, in the whole of the known world, rivalled only by the rumours of the decadent fortunes of the elves and of the strange lands, further east. Her mother was Karin, of the "heavy wind", and that alone spoke volumes of the skill that she should have. Only the royal lineage, carrying the blood of Brimir himself, held more potential.

And despite these things, despite every advantage, she was a failure. A weakling. A zero, as her classmates called her, lacking any skill at magic. They could fly; she could, at best, irregularly generate explosions, no matter what she was attempting. In a more normal family, there would have been the tag of 'bastard', but it was her mother who was the prodigy, and the family resemblance was clear. There could be no accidental swaps at birth, no adulterous affairs, nothing to explain what was so wrong with her.

It was just her. The failure.

The zero.

{●}

Louise subconsciously shivered, and wrapped her cloak tighter around herself. She hated this, hated doing it in public. Why was it necessary to do it in front of others? Why couldn't they carefully take each student out on their own, give them time to get the summoning right, and then let them get to know their familiar? Certainly, she knew that others were afraid of getting something weak, inferior, or ugly. She envied them. They didn't seem to worry about nothing happening. Of course not. They didn't have to worry about what Mother would say or the look on Father's face or the slight sneer that Eléonore would have, or... or...

No. She took a breath, and steadied herself. Maybe she should have gone to bed earlier last night. But she'd stayed up so late pouring over the ritual, staring at it until it seemed that it was burned into the back of her eyelids and that she could see it with her eyes shut.

"Watch where you're going, Zero!"

Louise opened her eyes again, despite her desire otherwise. Maybe if she closed her eyes, she could pretend that everyone else had failed too, and she was going to be the first to succeed.

But, no, as student after student paraded through, with their incantations and their successes and their... okay, what was the thing with the eye? Well, maybe she didn't want one of those, thought it would be better than nothing, but, still, she would like something like...

... she gritted her teeth. Damn that von Zerbst and her large-breasted ability to summon a salamander. It was probably a male salamander, wasn't it! Men and their stupid ability to fall for that Germanian... Germanian... argh!

Louise was aware that this was not the most rational chain of thought she had ever had. It certainly wasn't jealousy... well, it was.

"Miss Vallière. It's your turn," her professor, Colbert, said. He was a good teacher, he was. She'd asked him so many questions in the run up to this, run over the procedure time and time again with him. He... he didn't treat her as some kind of magicless Germanian noble, who'd bought their way into a title, like some of the other teachers did. It wasn't anything overt. If it had been overt she could have done something. Anything. But it was just the glance out of the corner of an eye, the way that they pushed her away from further study when she really, really wanted to know, the faint sighs when she answered something correctly, as if they felt that this knowledge was going to waste by her having it.

It would be not inaccurate to say that this scion of the Vallière family was not the most happy person, from her constant litany of failures.

Colbert cleared his throat. "Miss Vallière," he prompted again, as above his head, a flock of birds cast a momentary shadow down across the field.

"Oh. Yes." She cleared her throat, and drew her wand. "Thank you."

"Zero attention span, too," someone said from behind her, and her knuckles whitened around the stick.

This was it, she thought, as she deliberately placed one foot after the other on the still-drying grass. This was it. Her last chance to do well. Her last chance to make Mother proud.

She took a deep breath, and knelt down with the chalk and the knife... knife... knife... aha! She ignored the giggles, and picked it up off the ground, where it had fallen out of her pocket. Carefully, slowly, laboriously, she marked the circle into the ground, taking it slowly and checking that all of the elemental correspondences were in place. And then she checked again, lips pursed, resisting the urge to scream, hide, whimper, or, more meaningfully, play with her hair. She ignored the flapping noise of something taking off from the pond; this was everything for her.

She began, with words that she had drilled herself on, over and over again. Each word was enunciated perfectly. Her wand motions were mechanical, drilled, elegant. This was the culmination of her life, her last chance.

And then the explosion. Too close, too strong, too painful. As she was hurled backwards, through half-closed eyes she saw the shimmering emerald portal open, and then flicker, and though she tried to scream in protest, her muscles would not respond.

Then she hit the wall, and there was the crack of bones and the last thing she saw before her vision went dark was her precious portal gutter out, and a crane fly overhead.

{●}

The world was washed in grey, as Louise opened her eyes. There was no colour at all. No colour, save for red. Red on the grey stones around her, red seeping from the red gashes in her grey skin.

And red lips, the colour of coral on the woman standing before her. Red lips, and skin like black porcelain, like in the tales of tribes living south of the lands of the elves, and green eyes and underobes the same colour as her eyes, the only other colour in this dead world. She could vaguely see spectre-like figures of her classmates running around, but compared to the absolute reality of this woman, in her robe of black feathers, they were as nothing.

"Who..." she managed, before the lady, leaning down, placed a single finger on her lip.

"Shhhush," she said, gently, her large eyes widening. "Do not speak. There is no need. Not yet."

Louise ignored her, and tried to pull herself upright, her muscles not responding. "Are..." she swallowed, and licked her lips, "... are you m-my familiar?"

"Me?" The woman shook her too-large head, and sighed. "No, I am not. I am already bound to another, against my will."

"... I'm d-dead, aren't I?" Louise asked, ignoring her.

The woman brushed back a strand of Louise's world-greyed hair. "No. Not yet. Not quite yet. You have one more breath that you can take. You can take one more breath, and then die. Or you can take the Last Breath that I offer, and live."

"L-live?" Louise choked out. Her eyes flicked around this greying world. There was the distant knowledge of pain, yes, great pain, but here... it was suppressed. For the moment.

"Yes. Live forever. The woman sighed, a melancholy, beautiful sound. "I can feel your life. So much belief. So much hope, so much perseverance... and yet here you will die. All your life you have endured against that which would tell you that you are weak and useless. You know well the hours of midnight, when all others are asleep. You have fought all your life." The dark-skinned woman smiled, a beautific expression. "Do you want to live?"

Louise stared, through eyes which were starting to already lose the last colours. "Y-yes," she managed.

"Will you give up your name to live?" the woman asked

The girl swallowed, and nodded.

"Will you give up whatever destiny you would have had, instead of dying here?

"Yes." This word, this agreement was stronger. If she had a destiny, it seemed it ended here. It was no sacrifice.

"And," the woman, paused, straightening up, resting her furled parasol on her shoulder, "will you, you who was once Louise de La Vallière, give all this in the service of those who were Never Born, in the knowledge that all things will end, and in that end, there will be only the Void? Will you accept the doom of all things, for life?"

One breath. One pained, prolonged exhalation, of a single word. "Yes."

"Then, rise. I name you the Lady of Zero Faith and One Hollow Heart, and I tell you, take the Last Breath, and rise!

And whispers, in the back of her mind.

you are ours

{●}

She was slipping away, Jean Colbert knew. His student should have been already dead, and even the assistance from shocked fellow classmates trained in water magic was only enough to prolong the end. He'd seen similar things, back in his past. With this sort of head injury, with these broken bones... you didn't live. Not unless a Triangle-class water mage with willpower to burn got to you instantly. And that wasn't something they had.

He checked her pupils, which were still fully dilated, and kept his fingers on the slowing, juddering pulse of her wrist. He wasn't about to give up. Even if he knew he couldn't win. She exhaled, once, a sagging, twitching deflation...

And her eyes flicked wide open, pupils like pinpricks, and she screamed through empty lungs.

Colbert recoiled, but forced himself back. Sometimes it happened. She was dead.

Except she wasn't. Gasping for breath, Louise de La Vallière pulled herself to her feet, ignoring his presence, a faintly hollow look in her eyes. The broken bones were mended, the open wounds sealed under pale skin.

And on her forehead. A black disk, empty, hollow, and rimmed with blood.

Colbert could swear that it was watching him.

{●}