Even as they approached, she could already tell that something was not right. A red haze was tinting the horizon, faintly reminiscent of a sunset, which would be fine, it was late evening after all, if the sun weren't on the other side of the sky.
That could mean only one thing. Something that brought back unpleasant memories. Steeling herself, she nudged her horse and approached the Commander.
"Sir, if I may?"
"What is it, Agnes?"
"That light - it's not the sunset. It's a fire. A firestorm."
"Yes. Yes it is," her commander answered after a moment of contemplation.
"And since there are no other settlements in the vicinity, this must be our destination burning."
Which was disturbing, since there weren't many things that could burn so brightly in a mostly stone castle.
"We shall increase our pace."
Agnes herself wasn't so eager to meet what- or whoever managed to torch a castle. But, be that as it may, she wasn't the one in charge today. (That was another source of irritation to the fiercely proud woman. If the Commander appointed for this mission was any other person, she might have even protested to the Princess.) Frowning, she spurred the horse into a gallop, jealously watching the Commander's mighty familiar cover in one wings-assisted stride what her mount needed two or three for. The rest of the squad followed after her.
When they cleared the forest and got the first clear look at the castle, Agnes failed to stifle a gasp. It was soon echoed by her squad mates, one after another, as they emerged from the thick cover of trees. The Commander just stood still, watching with a stony expression on her face.
The walls themselves were aflame. From the edge of the forest, the castle resembled a multi-layered cake: the grey walls were topped by a ring of fire that burned strong enough to conceal half of the main tower of the Academy. There was almost no smoke, which ruled out oil derivatives, and why would they be in the Academy in such quantities anyway. That left only magic, and Agnes estimated the amount of magic necessary to sustain such a fire to be downright enormous, and the Commander was already moving towards the fire at high speed, leaving Agnes and the other girls to try (and fail spectacularly) to catch up with her manticore.
Despite appearances, the castle was quite far from the forest's edge. Having so easily outpaced the rest of the unit, the imposing woman and her manticore quickly became a small moving stain on the road which was eerily illuminated by the fire.
After several minutes of travelling full-speed, Agnes thought that she saw the Commander stop and dismount a short distance from the burning wall, but she couldn't be certain. As they neared the entrance, however, more details became visible. The entrance was blocked, the massive wooden doors of the gate blazing with fire that projected unbearable heat for dozens of paces. Agnes was thoroughly mystified by that point; surely a flame of such intensity should have consumed even the ashes of the gate by the time they arrived, but, lo and behold, it still obstructed their way, even resisting the Commander's occasional half-hearted attempts at bringing it down with what looked like cutting spells.
Another notable detail was situated at the edge of the road, where the soil was not quite as thoroughly pounded in by whatever means of transport were used by the Academy's numerous guests and inhabitants. A long stick, roughly the height of a man, was firmly planted into the ground; a dirty strip of white cloth was tied to its end, occasionally twitching as another wave of heat wafted by, and just hanging there limply otherwise. At first Agnes thought it was a sign of surrender, but this possibility was promptly discarded for a far more likely one.
More likely and much, much more terrifying.
"Sir," said Agnes after hopping off her horse and approaching the Commander.
"Agnes Chevalier de Milan," replied the woman, ceasing her probing of the gate's strength and turning to the Captain of the Tristain Musketeer Squad. "Do you know the meaning of that sign?"
Agnes swallowed. "Yes, sir."
"Knowing this, can you still do your duty?"
With another wave of searing heat coming from the gate, the shackles Agnes bound her memory with broke. Her eyes watered; for a moment, she was no longer at the entrance to the Tristain Academy of Magic, but amidst the burning ruins of D'Angleterre, desperately wishing for her parents to come and save her from the hellish nightmare that was consuming all she ever knew and loved...
She shook her head, forcing the memories down, blinked away the excess moisture on her eyes and stood a bit straighter. "Yes, sir, I believe I can."
The Commander's eyes bored into her own, searching for something. Finally, seemingly satisfied, Karin of the Heavy Wind gave a short nod, turned on her heels and whipped her wand-sword toward the burning gate.
Even the Academy couldn't afford to light all its halls with oil lamps, never mind the ever-burning magelights. Most of the halls, exceptions being the main passages and the Alviss Hall, were lit by torches, which required regular replacement.
Agnes estimated that the torches hadn't been replaced for at least a day. Karin said that it was more like two.
Having broken into a guard shift chamber (empty of people, naturally) and raided a storage closet, the unit had a supply of torches and several lamps to go with them. That made navigating the dark halls at least somewhat easier. With an inferno blazing two floors above, the air in the walkways hidden inside the walls was uncharacteristically warm and dry. Thanks to the closed doors, the smoke had not spread from the upper floor; the Musketeers gladly constrained themselves to the lower parts of the wall's insides.
After a minute of fast walking, the squad emerged from a door on the first floor of the Water tower. There were several storage closets containing tools and materials that the non-magical staff used for daily maintenance of the Tower, living quarters for said staff, currently empty, a door leading into the inner court and a spiral stairway which Karin promptly used to ascend to the second floor, wand at the ready.
The second floor and up were occupied by students' living quarters. The doors were reinforced and locked by magic; Karin marched through the hallways, neatly slicing the wooden constructs off their hinges with precisely applied Vacuum Blades and leaving to the musketeers the task of actually looking inside for survivors.
(Agnes was not sure when she started using that term for the Academy's inhabitants; they have certainly seen no bodies, neither dead nor alive, but the general atmosphere was grim, the silence unsettling, and Agnes didn't like it one bit.)
Such an investigation went without incident up to the fourth floor, where a musketeer checking one of the rooms accidentally glanced out a window and shouted for Agnes' attention.
The grass of the inner courts was tinted orange by the flickering light of the flames surrounding them. This illumination, while creating a somewhat sinister looking light play, was quite sufficient for Agnes to be able to discern several noteworthy details, such as multiple long patches of grass that appeared to be burned; a large crater in the center of the court to the right of the Water Tower; and two men in somewhat tattered clothes slowly ambling towards the gates that were extinguished, so to speak, by Karin several minutes earlier.
"Hey! You two!" Agnes shouted to them, poking her head out of the window. The men stopped, turning their heads around in search of the shout's source, with which Agnes gladly helped them.
"Over here!"
The men focused on her and began walking towards their tower. They didn't appear to increase their ponderous pace; Agnes suspected that they were injured and ordered two of her people to go meet them at the door on the first floor.
She turned back to the window just in time to see a torrent of fire blaze from one of the windows at the top of the main tower. It reached the two men in a split second, enveloping them in an instant and scouring the grass for paces around them. There were no screams, no sound at all besides the whoosh of the flame torrent. After sweeping the ground for several seconds, it winked out of existence, leaving behind another burned patch of grass.
Another second later a girl with disheveled red hair and ample bosom looked out of the same window.
"Got them both, darling!" she reported to someone inside after a moment of observation. Then her eyes fell upon Agnes, who was still staring ahead in shock. The girl cheerfully waved to her, then disappeared inside. She reemerged quite soon, this time accompanied by a balding man.
"Hello! You came from the outside, right?" shouted the man. Agnes nodded, still not trusting her voice after what she just witnessed. "You must return immediately, we've got a deadly epidemic here- Karin?! What are you doing here?"
"Where is my daughter, Jean?" came a question from the window above Agnes. The Heavy Wind didn't raise her voice, but it carried across the expanse of the court with no effort. Even the roar of fire became quieter; it was probably more high-class Wind Magic shenanigans from the legendary woman, though Agnes was not sure.
"I... I'm not sure," hesitantly replied Jean. The girl next to him, having just noticed Karin, paled and quickly ducked inside.
Karin Desiree de La Valliere's next words were delivered in a magically amplified hiss that bordered on painful to those who heard it.
"Explain."
The majority of the halls were intact, if a bit dusty. Others, though, bore traces of struggle, ranging from spell-fire damage to walls and furniture to an occasional smear, handprint, trace or, in one particularly macabre case, a veritable pool of blood, complete with a mutilated corpse of a (first-year, if Karin remembered correctly) student.
That was the first impression Karin got after entering the main building of the Academy. Since then, however, time has elapsed; and in that time, she'd seen much more and was forced to do much more than she expected, adding her personal touches to the spell-fire damage and blood smears and puddles and sprays.
Students. Familiars. Staff. All of them fell to the epidemic, regardless of pedigree or even species, and all of them rose... changed. Nobles of the highest caliber rampaged through the hallowed halls of this educational institution alongside the hired help in search of food; and the best food, according to those miraculously not affected by the illness, was the food that lived and breathed and walked.
The hunters themselves fit only the latter category.
Karin recast the Whirlwind and directed it to the door ahead of her. The flimsy wooden construct crumbled under the assault, and the spinning air caught the splinters and promptly and forcibly deposited them into someone unlucky enough to be nearby. Said someone gurgled and collapsed, taking a bronze chandelier down with him and attracting the attention of everyone present.
Without a pause, Karin let loose a flurry of Vacuum Blades. Two of them found their marks, neatly slicing necks and efficiently downing a pair of faster attackers; the third one, however, went a bit off and hit a hideously obese student (as she surmised from pieces of a torn black robe still hanging on him) in the chest. The student promptly exploded, startling Karin enough that she almost failed to cast a quick shield spell to repel the suddenly airborne flesh.
She had the presence of mind to continue with a flash of fire, hopefully disinfecting the nearby area; fire magic was by no means her speciality, but she was proficient enough for such simple spells. Unfortunately, she was now faced with another problem, one the Flame Snake warned her about: the Boomers (that was the name the survivors gave to the exploding infected) scattered copious amounts of a foul liquid which attracted other infected like honey attracted flies. While she managed to repel it from herself, this hall was now a death trap. Thus, Karin narrowed her eyes and gripped her wand a bit more tightly, launching a chain of high-powered cutters and blasters in the hopes of clearing this corridor before the enemy reinforcements would arrive.
She almost managed it too; although one of the infected turned out to be much more athletic than she anticipated and almost got to her before she immolated it with one of her wide-area Wind-Wind-Fire flamethrower spells. This was one of the few moments she wished for a squad to be with her; not having to watch for them, however, outweighed the potential advantages at all the other times. And, anyway, they were occupied with escorting the surviving civilians off the Academy premises; if what Karin had been encountering was any indication, their job was hard enough without further diminishing their numbers.
Taking a second to compose herself after the last minute's fast casting, she suddenly realized that this was actually the hallway she wanted to get to; namely, the hallway of the second floor of the Fire tower, which, according to some maid Colbert managed to rescue and shelter on the top levels of the main building, accomodated Louise's room, where she most likely was.
When Colbert told her the story of Louise's summoning, Karin felt a surprising amount of disappointment. She thought that she'd accepted Louise's fate of a failure; but, upon hearing about her daughter attempting the summoning ritual time after time, only to fail with explosive results, before suddenly stopping and claiming that her familiar was right there, despite nothing being in sight, despite even herself not being able to pinpoint exactly where or what that familiar was; upon hearing that, Karin's heart clenched painfully in anticipation of their meeting, of what she'd have to say, to do to her Louise that was always so proud and lively and determined to prove her worth...
Duchess de La Valliere didn't show any emotions then; she didn't have time to show any emotions now, her destination being so close, in such a dangerous environment. That is not to say that the emotions weren't present, however. Karin took all the sorrow and hope and resolve she could muster and channeled them into her spells.
Three doors had to be taken down before Karin found her daughter's room. She knew it from the others by the furniture; everything was handpicked by Louise herself, under Karin's supervision, to reflect her status. The room didn't appear to be invaded in any way, and Karin allowed herself a modicum of hope.
A sniff attracted her attention; a sniff and almost inaudible mumbling that came from a corner partially hidden by the queen-sized bed. Karin approached, unconsciously trying (and succeeding) to make as little noise as possible, and listened.
She managed to overhear something about a familiar and summoning and failures and sisters amidst weeping before seeing her daughter. She was sitting in the corner, curled up into a little ball of messy purple hair and bare toes and sharp elbows, garbed in what looked like a nightgown, quietly weeping. It was totally unbefitting a Valliere, and Karin intended to remind her daughter of that fact, and so she called in a level tone.
"Louise."
The girl flinched and looked up. Even obscured by her hair, Karin could see how her eyes widened in recognition. She also stopped weeping.
"Mother... Mother, I..."
"Come, Louise. We'll talk once you're safe-"
"Mother, I summoned... I summoned..."
Louise shifted her posture a bit, now not leaning against the wall but crouching near it. Her eyes became unfocused, as she continued her rushed and stuttering monologue, in a suddenly wistful and introspective tone.
"I summoned... I summoned, but it's not enough for you, it's never enough, but I summoned... I... I'm..."
Karin made to approach her, but suddenly froze, her instincts warning her of danger.
Louise's vision focused on her mother again. Now, however, her eyes contained resentment and malice and anger and hate.
Karin stepped back, and not a moment too soon, as Louise suddenly sprang up from her crouching position with inhuman speed, her hair flowing and distracting, her hands extending to strike at the older woman's wand hand and face with previously unseen long claws, her throat issuing a long high-pitched battle cry:
"ZERO JA NAAAAAI!"