Author's Note:
Hey ya'll!
This is me trying something a bit different to see if it might cure my writer's block. I hope you'll like it, but if you don't then that's fine too.
As always, constructive criticism and opinions are most welcome. In fact, I (just as any writer does) need them to improve my writing.
The crisp winter air bit at my neck as I lowered myself silently onto the floor. As if ancestors long lost to oblivion had reached out to me from Niflheim itself.
A warning whispered at the threshold.
I took a deep breath and then closed the window behind me. A pang of something too stunted and small to be given notice tugged at my conscience as I stalked through the darkened hallway of the castle. Through the gate of the damned.
Cheerful voices rose from a gathering of youngsters overseen by an elderly man in the walled courtyard of a grand tower.
An air of excitement hung in the air as they were all having lively discussions among themselves. The lush and neatly cropped grass shone with a luster under the warmth of summer's sun.
It was certainly a beautiful day for the Summon Servant ceremony. However, Louise de La Valliere had, at present moment, a hard time finding anything enjoyable about this particular day.
She tried her best to block them out; the voices of her fellow mages and nobles, as they taunted and jeered from the crowd encircling her.
They'd all succeeded in summoning their familiars, leaving Louise as the last student to take the exam.
The reputation of her entire family was now resting on her ability to perform this one spell. Taking a shallow, quivering breath she tried to steady her resolve.
She was trying her best to use the snide remarks and jokes rattling off around her as fuel for her determination.
"You said you could summon something greater than this boy. Didn't you, Louise?" A red haired girl called out to her, as she lazily petted the mighty reptile beside her. A superior smirk playing in the corners of her mouth.
"Naturally!" Louise shouted, raising her chin and shifting her stance. Her grip tightened around the wand in her hand. "Please…" She whispered in prayer. Then she raised her wand, eyes set and hard with resolve.
"… P-please! Don't! Don't hurt my family!" Cornered, he slumped to the floor. I regarded the man with utter contempt as I grabbed him by his collar and threw him head first into a desk. A shrill yell escaped him as I fell upon him again, dragging him whimpering and sobbing into the bedroom next door.
Careful not to leave tracks, I stopped short of the pool of blood therein, and tossed my captive into it. As soon as he hit the floor he balled up into a sobbing, shivering lump of cowardice and fear.
"I'm afraid, your majesty, that your request came too late." The grate of the voice distorter built into my mask adding another layer of menace to my voice.
The monarch, clearly not wanting to but compelled to act upon his fear, raised his gaze. Only to stare straight into the cold, dead eyes of his son. His breath hitched and died in his lungs. Slowly the king crawled toward the dead prince, cradling his sons head in his lap. His head shaking in disbelief. His lips moving without making a sound.
A sudden giddiness etched a predatorial grin across my face, and I had to wrest control over a sudden impulse to throw my head back and laugh.
Opting to do something useful instead, I checked the magazine on my SMG. 23 rounds… It'll have to do. No alarms had been raised as far as I could tell and I'd stashed away the guards I had taken out on my way in. They were, I must add, surprisingly few. One would think that the friggin' Royalty would be better guarded, but evidently not. That's modern day Swedish naiveté for ya…
Anyways, time to end this. I turned my attention back to the monarch. A spike of sadistic glee shot through my mind as I watched him rock back and forth with his sons head in his lap, what little blood remaining in the prince's body trickling out into the king's lap from his slit throat.
"Your entire family is dead and your bloodline ended. Unfortunately-"
"You monster! You psychopath!" The king's voice broke as he screamed at me. I rewarded his sudden burst of defiance with a boot to his face.
"Now, now. A man can never be both. See…" I knelt down, the muzzle of my MP5 staring the broken monarch squarely in the face as it rested on my knee.
Drawling on, a morbid amusement leaked into my voice. "… It lies in the very nature of the two to be utterly incompatible. Psychopaths and their like are more akin to, say, a plague or a hurricane. They are slaves to their nature, unable to truly choose their path as they can never feel the highs and lows of richer emotions and concepts. Good and evil, light and dark are simply words to them. Let me put it like this; They cannot truly be evil, because they cannot choose to be good. They simply are. Now, a monster on the other hand, is one who knows the evil of a choice, but makes it anyway. One who can both stare into the abyss and gaze upon heaven, yet in spite of this willingly takes the plunge into the pit. Ironically, it takes a heart to be a monster. And unfortunately for you, as I was going to say before, in times like these it is often great evil that best serves the greater good." As my monologue came to an end, I placed my finger on the trigger.
"You're insane."
Ta-ta-tat.
"If only… If only."
As I turned to leave, a bright light sprung forth from the dark of night and engulfed me. And then there was nothing.
"My slave who lives somewhere in the universe!" Lousie declared in a strong voice. "Oh, sacred, beautiful and strong familiar spirit! I desire and here I plead from my heart! Answer to my guidance!" And with a flourish, she whipped her wand downwards.
Boom!
A cloud of dirt and smoke erupted in a deafening explosion from where Louise's wand had been pointing and engulfed the gathering of magi. Sending everyone into fits of coughing and spluttering.
"I knew this would happen" Complained one of the young mages in between coughs.
"Montmorency! Are you alright?" Yelled another, a blonde young man who seemed significantly more… flamboyant than his peers as he dove to the side of a blonde girl with curly hair. The girl, Montmorency, did not reply and instead pointed in the direction of the center of the explosion with a look of stunned disbelief on her face. The boy followed her direction and an equally stunned look took over his features as well.
Lousie on the other hand stood shaking, gritting her teeth in anger and humiliation as the people around her started calling out the obvious.
"A Human?!"
"What's with that outfit? Is he a commoner?"
"He must be, just look at it!"
"I'm not sure; I've never seen anyone dress like that. Commoner or noble."
Lousie stood there cursing inwardly with raging fervor, glaring at what she had summoned.
Before her, seemingly unconscious, lay a man. At least she thought it was a man, judging from his large physique, as his face was obscured by a steely metal mask.
The mask was a garish thing with an intimidating, skeletal look to it and a thick black veil attached to it. The combination of how the veil obscured everything down to the shoulders but the mask itself and the dull black and grey colour-scheme of the outfit drew even more attention to the mask. So much so that she did not take note of the strange equipment he was carrying until it made soft clinks and rustlings as the man stirred.
Impatient, insulted and a fair bit miffed Lousie cast a challenging glare at the stranger as he awakened with a groan.
"Who are you?!" She more yelled than asked. The man froze, the dark hollows of his masked eyes trained at her. Lousie let out a yelp, accompanied by the collective gasps of the crowd, as the man suddenly shot out his arm, grabbing her by her throat and hoisting her into the air as he rose. She felt the cold touch of metal against her temple as the stranger pressed a curious instrument he'd carried anchored to his belt against her while keeping her held in front of him like a human shield.
The crowd, yet again stunned into inaction, gawked at the scene. Until the stranger boomed in a foreign language neither of them could understand.
"Founder's mercy! Help her already!" Cried one of the young magi.
The crowd started shouting, some of them pointing their wands and staves against the stranger. However no one seemed to know what to do. Worse; the stranger seemed to get further agitated, alternating between pointing his instrument at those brandishing their wands against him and shouting in that strangely distorted voice while pressing the tip of the instrument against Louises head.
"Everyone!" A bald, priestly looking man wielding a robust wooden staff shouted over the raised voices of the crowd. "Lower your wands, now!"
"But!-" The red-head with the reptilian familiar objected with fire.
"I said lower your wands!" The priestly man ordered again, slowly placing his own staff on the ground while raising his hands in a placating gesture. All the while keeping his eyes fixed at the stranger. The others followed suit, if reluctantly. Once the immediate threat was gone, the stranger seemed to truly take in his surroundings.
The dark pits of his mask swept across the scene before him, and suddenly, his strength seemed to drain from his grip. Lousie dropped with a complete absence of grace as his hands fell to his sides. Coughing and wheezing, she crawled towards her own wand as she'd dropped it in the strangers surprise attack. As soon as she reached it she whipped around, ready to defend herself, only find her attacker staring into the sky. Still as a statue.
"Are you alright, Miss Valliére?" The priestly man asked as he helped her up.
"I-cough- think so, Mr. Colbert." Lousie found that her legs didn't quite carry her, as her adrenal response to the ordeal still wracked her small frame.
"Right. Good. Now, I think we need to find a way to communicate with this… man." Colbert studied the tall black-clad figure with equal measures of caution and curiosity.
"Let me." Colbert blinked, thinking he must have heard wrong.
"Miss Valliére? I don't think it particularly advisable that…"
"It's my responsibility, my…" Louise hesitated, cringing at the thought, but stood her ground all the same."…Familiar."
I would not call myself prone to confusion or surprise. If my mind was faced with an unknown it would simply churn on in its normal, steady march, grinding away at any obstacle no matter its composition. But now… myriad questions darted through my mind at an impossible rate. I was truly stunned.
Somehow, I'd been transported from the Swedish king's, by night's shroud darkened, castle to this sunlit place. A place that was, judging from the ghostly pale outline of not one but two moons in the sky, nowhere near Earth. To say I needed a moment to digest the circumstances I was in was... a bit of an understatement.
The tense crowd of agitated strangers around me seemed to pose no threat at the moment. Though that had been demoted to a lesser, peripheral concern at the moment. The girl I'd grabbed before now started to walk toward me as my questions distilled into something more manageable.
She spoke. Questioned. I regarded her with more interest this time. She was no doubt braver than she looked. She was small, ridiculously small compared to myself, but she was clearly a young woman rather than a child. Her hair was a lustrous strawberry blonde curtain that fell in waves all the way down to her waist. She held herself with pride and dignity and as far as I could tell on a first glance; it was not all the vainglorious pompousness I usually saw in people who carried themselves that way. Interesting.
As I glanced around, I took in the appearance of the strange gathering and came to a conclusion. They looked like mages from out of fiction. The younger ones most likely students, the elderly one their tutor and if I were to guess I'd been transported here through their magic. I blinked at the conclusion a few times. Mages, really? But as for now, it was the only thing that even remotely made sense.
I turned my attention back to the petite would-be mage in front of me. She spoke again, more impatient and demanding this time. I cocked my head slightly to the side while I took in her features.
They were all fine and delicate, much more so than anything I'd ever seen before. The word "aristocratic" came to mind. She was certainly pretty and given a few years she'd likely grow into a beautiful young woman. Unless my estimation of her age was off.
Seeing as I did not respond to what I presumed was her own language, she began to speak a number of different languages, firing off the same question over and over. I counted four before she had to think for a second or two and then come up with a fifth language. Clever as well, I see. A rare combination.
The languages all sounded familiar to languages I knew from back home. Her own (judging from how she'd started with that particular language) sounded like French, not that I knew a full sentence of it, but still. I recognized two others as German(ish) and Italian but the others were too archaic and foreign for me to place. I decided to try something.
"Parlez-vouz Anglais? Suedois? Je ne parle pas Francais." My sudden break from silence seemed to startle the crowd as much as the girl. Or maybe my voice distorter was to blame. Anywho, that was all the French I knew. Hopefully it was enough to kick-start communications.
"Anglais?" She repeated; furrowing her brows in an equal measure of concentration and confusion before letting out another string of her native tounge. Seemingly more directed at herself rather than me judging from her contemplative tone and body language.
Suddenly she looked up, determined yet again.
"Did you perhaps meant to say 'Albionais', commoner?"
Author's Addendum:
I've been wanting to give writing a Zero no Tsukaima a try ever since I watched it, but I never got around to it. Well, now I am on vacation and I'm definitely going to get some writing done so here we go!
The setup of the anime is just ideal for an OC or SI. However this is not an SI like my other fic here on fanfiction.
Though I'll admit that key components of the protagonist personality, psyche and physical appearance are taken from myself. Well, that and a long list of oftentimes rather nasty traits. But then I threw it all into the blender and voila; protagonist.
The rating is M because I will not shy away from the (if it was real) real consequences of magic, medieval warfare and the rather unforgivable aspects of human nature.
And, of course, the better (and sometimes steamier) aspects thereof.
Also, and this is important, I'll mostly be using Inner Legions' "An American Geek In Halkeginia" version of the Zero-verse as reference and 'canon' simply because it is by far the best Zero fanfic on this site and the verse he's cooked up for it is just brilliantly done. Of course I'll be tweaking it to fit my plot but still.
I strongly recommend that you read his work by the way. I have it favorited so you can just click your way to it from my favorites.
Anyway, thank you all for stopping by! 'til next time; cheers!