Because I'm Awesome

Chapter Two

"There's not one man left who'll stand up, shake his fist at the sun, and roar: 'That ain't the way it should be!'"
-Unsounded

"As much as I appreciate the irony of the situation," Wyndle said the next morning, "I strongly disadvise staying here any more than necessary, especially near that one, considering what she did to you yesterday."

That one still slept in her oversized bed. "So she tried to make me her pet Voidbringer," Lift said. "But I can't be a pet Voidbringer if I already have one. Besides, she promised me food if I do what she says." Most of what Louise said didn't make no sense, but Lift understood that part.

"Yes, Mistress," Wyndle said. "It's called getting a job. You've had plenty of opportunities for honest labor in the past, and normally I'd be ecstatic about you veering toward responsibility, but I trust neither that girl's abilities nor her intentions."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll leave after I get bored. In the meantime, I'm supposed to wake her up. Any ideas?" Louise seemed rich, if her giant bed was any indication. Rich folk liked extravagance, so Lift needed to wake her up extravagantly. "I'd put a cremling down her nighty, but I haven't found none here. A bucket of water sounds fun, but not too original."

"I have told you many times before, I am not a Voidbringer, I am a spren, and as such I am incapable of slumber, and so am no expert on the topic of awakening. But, if by 'ideas for waking her up,' you mean 'the worst thing you could possibly do right now,' why don't you just light her bed on fire?"

"That's perfect!" Lift said, a little too loudly.

Louise's eyes fluttered open and she sat up. "Oh, you woke me up on time, just like I told you."

"Um, yes," Lift said. "That's exactly what happened." She'd have to burn her bed tomorrow. "Now come on! You said breakfast happens right now."

"I have to get dressed first."

Oh, right. Rich people had clothes for everything, even sleeping, and they couldn't use their sleep clothes for nothing else. "Then get dressed already!" If they ran out of food before she got there ….

Louise sighed. "I take it you don't have much experience working for nobility." True. "A noble does not dress herself when a servant is present to do so." Louise looked at her. "That means you."

"Me … to do …?"

"To dress me." She stood up and reached her arms into the air.

Lift looked down at Wyndle. "You're the one who wanted to stay," he said.

She grabbed the hem of Louise's nightdress and jumped onto the bed to pull it off over her head. "And now I have to put something on you?"

"I'm certainly not going down to breakfast naked."

"Right, um..." Lift looked around for something she could wear until Louise pointed at a dresser. She grabbed some clothes and put them on her.

"Familiar," Louise said afterwards. "Does this look anything like what I was wearing yesterday?"

Lift hadn't bothered to look too hard the night before. "Yes?"

Louise shook her head. "First of all, this is not a hat. These are panties. They do not go on my head. Also, this is a skirt, not a scarf, and I don't know what you thought my shirt was, but it does not go there. Now try again. We're not going down to eat until you get this right."

Lift's stomach growled.

WWW

It took Lift a few more tries, but Louise was finally satisfied. Or hungry enough not to care. Lift started out hungry enough not to care, but rich folk were picky like that. She followed her down the stairs to breakfast, passing by stone block walls. It was crazy to build a tower this tall and spindly. The next highstorm was going to knock over everything above the cellar, if they had highstorms here, and Wyndle suspected they didn't.

Not that Lift put too much thought into it, not as the smell of her next meal wafted up to her. It smelled so good, savory and spicy and mixed altogether and … and why was Louise walking so slow?

They reached a big dining hall full of table and other rich folk eating rich person food. Lift didn't know how much it cost, but she knew how it smelled. Her mouth watered.

Louise sat down and began to eat. The spots next to her were already taken, and as Lift looked for the next nearest seat, Louise pointed at a plate on the floor. "What's that?" she asked.

"Breakfast," Louise said. "No complaints."

Lift looked down. Her plate had a roll and a bowl of soup. Not stew, soup. Louise's plate had fruit, toast, some sort of pastry, and a few things that Lift couldn't even recognize but smelled amazing. "I kind of liked it better last night when we was eatin' the same stuffs."

Louise sighed in a perfect Wyndle impersonation. "Last night was an anomaly. I'm a noble, so I eat noble food. You're a commoner, so you eat commoner food. Understand?"

Lift looked around. There didn't seem to be no shortage, no rationing gettin' done, and Louise didn't have nobody else that needed feedin', but that wasn't never the point with rich folk. Rich folk wore rich clothes and ate rich food so everybody would know they were rich. Lift didn't care nothing about their clothes, but their food tasted much better.

Course, "commoner food" was whatever you could get your hands on, and Lift's hands were awesome at that sort of thing. "I understand perfectly, Mistress," Lift said with a smile. "I eat only commoner food."

Louise nodded and turned back to her plate. She didn't start eating, though. At some unseen signal, everyone in the hall closed their eyes and said, "Oh, Great Founder Brimir, and our lady, the Queen, we thank you for this humble meal that you have graciously provided us this morning."

"Wow," Lift said to herself. "I ain't never eaten nothing made by a queen before." Most of the queens she knew of were too busy doing important stuff to do anything useful.

"I believe that may have been meant figuratively, Mistress," Wyndle said, forming a trail of vines at her feet.

"That's not what they said." Lift sat down on the floor and crammed the roll into her mouth. Like eatin' a rock. Lift had experience with that. Hadn't been fun. She downed the soup next. Dirty water with floaty bits. Best not to think about the floaty bits. Then she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and set off to get some real food.

Louise ate slowly. Rich folk always did. It proved that they had fancy eats all the time so it weren't no big deal to them, and they had enough time to eat at their … what was that word again? Leisure! Normal folk might be lazy when they had the chance and they might loiter, but only rich folk had leisure.

Good. She didn't want all the food gone and eaten before she had a bite. She looked around the dining hall. Three long tables, each with people wearing a different different colored cape. Louise and all the black capes sat in the middle table with purple and brown capes on either side. Louise would make a lousy mark, but no one else there knew her.

Halfway down the middle table Lift tapped a better mark on the shoulder. He was a chubby fellow with a mop of blonde hair and, most importantly, he seemed to defer to others. He wouldn't be the sort of bloke that people went out of their way to talk to, so he'd be off balance.

"Mark" turned around in surprise. "Yes, what? Who are … what?"

Perfect. "Excuse me, your lordliness." She made her voice sound meek and deferential, like she never talked to no one as important as him. "Don't mean to interrupt your eatin', sir, but that there miss over there wanted to send a message for you." She pointed to one of the girls at the next table over with all the brown capes. "She says that you caught her eye, and if she catches your eye, then you should knock on her door just after midnight tonight and … catch each other's eyes."

His eyes bulged as he stared at the other table. "Who, her?" he said, pointing.

No, but it didn't matter none. "Yup." She swiped a chicken leg off his plate and slid it into her sleeve. It was a greasy thing, and the sauce was going to make her sleeve delicious. "That's the one."

"Birgetta," he said softly. "Hey, Guiche, you're not dating her, are you?"

Guiche, the boy sitting next to the mark, seemed like the leader of his group judging by how starvin' condescending he was, even compared to his chums. He was blonde too, but not as fat and his white shirt had lacy frills. His face was too pretty and his voice was too musical, so if he wanted to put on a dress he could have passed as a lady.

"Let me think," Guiche said. "Ah, dear Founder, it is difficult to keep track of all the lovely first years. I really should make a list one of these days. Let's see, I'm dating that one, that one, I'm not dating her yet, I used to date her but then she found out about her and we decided to take some time apart …. Now, Birgetta is that one with black hair? No, I do not believe that we are seeing each other." He turned and smiled at the mark, his perfect white teeth sparkling. "Congratulations, Malicorne! I told you that if you spent enough time at my side, the girls would one day find you charming by association! Now, do you remember what I always say about the fairer sex?"

"Um, they have breasts and smell nice?"

"True. Not helpful, but true. But for tonight, you need to remember that girls like flowers and poetry, so if you recite for her a poem comparing her to a flower, blah blah blah blah …."

Lift tuned them out after that. They had already forgotten about her, so she walked away, biting off a chunk of chicken. Storms it tasted good.

WWW

After breakfast, the first class was earth. The magic classes were always in the morning, and the mundane classes like literature and history were in the afternoon. The earth teacher was new and had started teaching that year. Louise didn't know her that well, but she knew basic social psychology enough to understand the importance of a good first impression.

Which would be a whole lot easier if she didn't have her joke of a familiar following her around. As her familiar walked down the hallway with her–not behind her as was proper, but at her side as though she belonged there–each one of her classmates paused to jeer. Even Montmorency smirked at her, and she summoned a frog, for Brimir's sake!

Class started and the teacher, Professor Chevreuse, took her place at the front of the room. She was a plump mage with a purple robe and a matching hat and a cheerful smile as she looked around the room. "Well, it seems like the Springtime Familiar Summoning was a huge success. In the future after your familiars are finished imprinting, you'll be expected to keep them outside during classes, but I for one love to see the brand new creatures crawling around."

The teacher's gaze travelled across the room, passing over the summoned snakes, owls, ravens, and cats. It stopped when it got to Lift. "My, Miss Valliere," Chevreuse said. "That is quite the unique familiar you have summoned."

The class sniggered at the comment as Louise felt her stomach drop, but Lift stood up straight and crossed her arms. "That's right. Ain't no one in the world like me."

The class sniggered again, and Montmorency said to no one in particular, "It's a commoner. They're all over the place."

Lift could have ignored the jab, but why would the universe give Louise a prudent familiar when it could have given her a lippy one? "So are snobby blondes," Lift said. "What's your point?"

The class gasped, except for Kirche who burst out laughing, though Germanians never had a firm grasp of propriety. "Familiar!" Louise hissed. "That's no way to talk to a noble!"

"Oh, right," Lift replied. "What's your point, your ladyness?"

"Wow," Montmorency said in mock surprise. "Between its magical skill and manners, that familiar is perfect for you, Zero!"

Louise snapped her head toward her. "Why don't you mind your business and get back to kissing your frog, Flood? If you're lucky it will turn into a prince!"

Montmorency's face soured. "It's Fragrance! Montmorency the Fragrance!"

"Enough!" Chevreuse said. "Both of you! Nobles should behave better than this! I don't want to hear a peep out of any of you for the rest of class. And, Miss Valliere? Do try to keep better control of your familiar."

Right. Keep control of her familiar. As easy as casting spells.

Chevreuse began her lecture. It was a review, explaining the different elements and classes. Louise knew it already, but she recognized the importance of a firm knowledge of the basics.

The same could not have been said concerning her familiar. Lift sat down and began fidgeting and muttering to herself. Louise caught the word, "Void," but nothing else. Void was the legendary fifth element that Founder Brimir used, but the night before Lift used the term, "Voidbringer," whatever that was. Probably commoner nonsense.

Lift's fidgets grew until she was practically writhing in an unladylike, distracting fashion, and then flopped over on her back.

"What are you doing?" Louise demanded, her voice barely more than a whisper.

"I'm dying," Lift groaned.

Louise's eyes widened. "What?" How? She hadn't even been her familiar for a day!

"This place is killing me," Lift said weakly. "I'm dying of boredom."

Louise slammed the palm of her hand into her face and rolled her eyes. "That is a figure of speech, familiar. One cannot literally die of–"

Lift spasmed and let out a breath, letting her tongue hang out as her eyes rolled back. Louise sighed as faux rigor mortis set into her familiar, and kicked her.

"Oomf!"

Ha! Not dead!

"Miss Valliere!"

Louise looked up quickly. "Yes, Professor Chevreuse?"

"Is there something that you would like to share with the class?"

"No, Professor."

"Then perhaps you would like to demonstrate this principle?"

"Principle?"

"Yes. Just turn this pebble into a metal of your choosing." She pointed to a lump of clay on her table. "I trust you were paying attention?"

"Um, yes, Professor, but …."

Kirche waved her arm in the air and spoke up. "Excuse me, Professor? Maybe you could pick someone else?"

"And why is that, Miss Zerbst?"

"Because she'll kill us all!"

The rest of the class nodded in agreement, and Louise caught a few phrases like "total devastation," and "eldritch horror," which she thought was a bit of an exaggeration.

The teacher sighed. "Now, I'll have none of that, class. If you never try, you'll never succeed. Come down here and give it a try, Miss Valliere. It's a basic spell, and even if you get it wrong, you'll still learn something. And no one is going to laugh. Right?" She shot the class as intimidating a glare as she could manage, but the other students looked more likely to run than laugh.

Louise took a bit of pleasure from that. They seemed perfectly willing to laugh at her earlier, and who's to say that she wouldn't get lucky? After all, it was statistically impossible for her to fail every spell; she had proven that yesterday when she had successfully summoned Lift. Sure, a commoner wasn't the familiar she had wanted, but the spell did not fail! And if she could succeed once, she could succeed more than once, and if that once was this once then maybe ….

She stood up and walked to the front of the room.

"Founder, no!" Guiche cried out. "I'm too pretty to die!" He ducked under his desk, and many of his classmates discovered the appeal of a small, wooden barricade between them and the horrors Louise would undoubtedly unleash.

They would feel so foolish when nothing happened besides a bit of alchemy.

She pointed her wand at the lump of clay and visualized it turning into brass. "El nish et nora kem. El nish et dosh." Experienced mages could reduce the incantation to nothing more than the spell's name, but Louise always went all the way to put as much Willpower as she could into her spells. The spells often blew up in her face, but while people could say she failed, no one could say she didn't try. And that alone counted for something. Didn't it?

"Transmute!" she said, finishing her spell. It blew up in her face.

Everything she could put into the spell exploded in a flash of light, vaporizing the clay and reducing the table to rubble. The explosion threw Louise back, slamming her into the wall and knocking the wind out of her. Dazed, she looked around and saw the chaos she had unleashed.

Professor Chevreuse was still alive. She wasn't conscious, lying on the floor, but Louise's devastation had yet to claim a life. Still, her chances of making a good first impression on her teacher were as shattered as the classroom windows through which some of the panicked familiars had fled. Some of the other creatures had panicked and regressed to their base instincts and began devouring each other, causing a number of mages to peek out from beneath the safety of their desks to find their beloved pets swallowed whole.

"Lucky! No! Spit him out! Spit him out right now! No, Lucky! Why?"

It was the sort of thing that could inspire a grudge. Louise pulled a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe soot from her face as her peers' inevitable wave of less than constructive criticism washed over her.

"See? I told you! I told you this would happen!"

"Quit school already before you kill someone!"

"Yeah, Zero! Snap your wand and go home!"

"Thank the Founder my face is still attached to my head!"

"That was AWESOME!"

Louise opened her eyes in surprise at the last part. While her classmates remained huddled behind desks and glaring at her, her familiar stood with her long black hair even more disordered than usual with a look of pure wonder on her face.

It was the first piece of positive reinforcement that Louise Françoise de La Valliere had ever received.

WWW

Louise got scolded lots and had to clean up the classroom on account of her blowing the place up, and Lift had to help her on account of everyone expecting her to be a good pet Voidbringer, but mostly because if she waited for Louise to finish the job, they'd miss lunch. And there was no starvin' way that Lift was gonna miss lunch.

They were about halfway done with the room before Louise broke down. "I hate my life."

Lift looked up from a table she had been wiping down. She found out that she could put Awesomeness into the surface and make it look like it had been polished, which was interesting, even if it was a boring waste of Awesomeness.

"What's wrong with it? You get rich folk food, er, at least two times a day, and if we get done in time it's gonna be three!"

Lift didn't get how rich people could be miserable while eating food. It took a special kind of accustomed extravagance to eat and cry at the same time.

"There's more to life than food, you know." Yup, accustomed extravagance. Lift guessed that Louise had never been hungry before. "I'm a noble from a respected house! I have expectations."

"Sounds horrible," Lift admitted. People who knew Lift well expected her to be a master thief, but she had earned those expectations. It seemed a lousy business to inherit something like that, like being force fed gemhearts.

"It wouldn't be if could live up to them! But every time I cast a spell, it literally blows up in my face."

Lift frowned thoughtfully. "Nope."

"What?"

"That ain't true."

"First of all," Louise said, "that isn't true, and second of all, that most certainly is true!" And she managed to keep a straight face all through it. It was amazing what people could make themselves say. "I believe I have more experience observing the results of my attempted spells than you do."

"Oh, I wasn't arguin' that part," Lift said. "I'm sayin' that if you fulfilled every expectation folks gave you, you'd still be miserable."

Louise frowned. "What? Elaborate. Your master commands you."

Lift resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Your master commands you? That was gonna get old fast. "If you only do what you're expected to, then you'll never do nothin' surprising, and you'll never be nothin' surprising, and you'll be boring all your life."

Louise sighed. "I think Professor Chevreuse would have preferred something a tad more boring, and I'm pretty sure I just failed the entire semester, and I'm only a week into it!"

"Nope," Lift said. "You beat up teacher. That means you get to graduate early."

Louise shook her head in frustration. "I don't know how people do things in that Roshar place of yours, but here in Tristain we do not have Academia by Combat."

Lift blinked. "Then how the storms do you prove you did your learnin'?"

"Through tests and homework assignments."

Lift stared at her. "And you prefer it that way?"

Louise sighed and turned away. "Get back to work."

WWW

They finished in time for lunch, and that was what really mattered. Lunch for Lift was just a hard roll and a bowl of soup, but she didn't mind doing some good honest thievin' for some decent eats. In fact, that's what made things interesting.

"So Voidbringer," she said under her breath as she sat down on the dining hall floor to eat, "how can we help Louise to stop trying to be boring on purpose?"

Wyndle swirled beneath her on the floor, a face forming out of the mass of vines. "I imagine the surest method would be to stay by her side and be a negative influence on her well-ordered life. Though why you would spontaneously choose now to begin listening to me, I cannot imagine."

"I listen to you. When you're not whining. Or tryin' to trick me."

"I have never tried to trick you, Mistress!"

"And that's exactly what a Voidbringer would say."

"I am not a … nevermind. It's not worth the mental fatigue."

Lift gulped down the soup and pocketed the roll just in case she needed to chuck it at someone later, and then she looked around for a distraction.

And she found one. Just a few tables away, she saw a vial of something purple on the floor. Someone must have dropped it. Lift didn't like purple much; it usually tasted sour, and when it was sweet, it was too sweet, but purpleness was usually expensive, and rich people liked expensive stuff no matter how bad it tasted.

She could just pick up the vial, tap someone on the shoulder and say, "Excuse me, did you drop this?" And the person would look at the vial and he wouldn't notice Lift stealing his … cake!

The main course was nearly finished, and Lift spotted a squadron of servants in black and white uniforms carrying trays full of little cakes on little trays. Lift twitched a bit when she saw that; cake did that to her.

Okay, new plan. She'd wait until the cakes were passed out, and then she'd do what she did best.

One of the maids passed by, distributing treasures that would put the largest of gemhearts to shame. She set a plate on the table in front of Louise and kept going. Lift waited for her to pass by the spot where the vial was lying–when she picked it up!

It was one of those times when Lift wished she knew better cusses. And she bet that the maid wasn't going gonna steal it or use it or nothing! She'd probably just return it to its rightful owner out of the goodness of her heart like a good little axehound.

Lift gritted her teeth as she saw the maid do just that. Now she'd have to come up with another plan, and fast, because dessert wasn't gonna last. Should she try to play matchmaker again? That had worked for breakfast, but Lift had been lucky. Besides, if she started getting predictable, she'd start getting caught too.

Maybe she could nab a plate off a maid. Those girls seemed the sort to do what they were told without asking questions or nothin'. She could pretend that she was doing what she was supposed to be doing, say that they had missed someone, and–

"Ugh, coconut!" Louise said, turning her nose up at her dessert plate. "Why would the chef ruin a perfectly good cake with coconut?" She handed it to Lift. "Here, you eat it. I've lost my appetite."

For a moment Lift tried to remain cynical and tell herself that rich folk had so much they was always trying to find new ways to throw it out, but it wasn't easy staying untrusting while holding cake. Stealing food was more fun than buying it, but a gift … that was an offering on the altar of the Temple of Hunger it was.

"Just be sure you don't … inhale it, too late." Louise sighed. "Lovely. Now it's all over your face–don't use your … sleeve. We'll have to work on that before I bring you out in public again. And speaking of the public, we should go before people remember how hilarious you are."

She stood up and walked away, expecting Lift to follow her. And she did, having no reason not to, until she heard a loud smack. It was the boy the maid had handed the purple vial to. Lift recognized him from that morning, the fat kid's friend who was too pretty. Now he had a red handprint on his face. It suited him.

Louise glanced back and rolled her eyes as though this sort of thing happened every day, sidestepping a girl who ran sobbing past her. And maybe it did, but Lift hadn't been around long enough to get used to it.

Common or not, the scene still drew a crowd. Most of the audience looked amused, but the maid, the one that had gone and picked up the vial, she was still there and she looked terrified. That wasn't right. When everyone else was laughing and you were afraid, it was because you knew something … something that Lift didn't.

A second girl ran up to the middle of things with a frown on her face. Lift recognized her from earlier, with her curly blonde hair. Mount … something. Mount Mormont? Something like that.

"Who was that?" she demanded.

The boy … what was his name? Gauche? Goosh? He started sweating, like he knew he oughta run, but he wanted to push luck he didn't have instead. "That, um, that was a misunderstanding, nothing more. Also, I believe this is her time of the month. And have I ever told you that you look cute when you're mad? Because you really–"

The girl grabbed a half-full glass of red wine and splashed it in his face. "You know what? I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear your excuses, your lies! I don't even want to see you anymore, Guiche! We're through!"

Guiche! That was his name. He watched her stomp off, the wine dripping from his face and staining his shirt.

"Wow, twice in a row, Guiche!" one of the other nobs said, a shorter one with specs.

"Yeah, keep this up and by the end of the day you'll be single!"

They gave snobby, rich folk chuckles, 'cause rich folk couldn't just laugh at a person, they had to laugh and act dignified about it too. As they laughed, Guiche's face turned as red as the wine on his face, and he turned on the maid in a rage.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" he demanded.

The maid took a step back. "I am so sorry, Lord Guiche, I–"

Guiche grabbed her arm before she could get away. "Sorry? You ruined my shirt, tarnished my reputation, and worst of all, you made those two girls cry! Sorry isn't good enough!" He raised his other hand as if to slap her when Lift decided to intervene.

She was too far away to bite him and she didn't have time to throw anything, though she kept the rock bread in her pocket just in case, so she did the one thing she could.

She laughed.

"Ha ha ha! Oh, you shoulda seen the look on your face! Smack smack!" She didn't give a dignified chuckle like rich folk, she let out a real laugh, as loud and as obnoxious as possible. And she pointed her finger too for good measure.

Guiche let go of the maid and turned to face her. "Do you think this is funny?"

She grinned at him. She loved it when a plan came together. Now if the maid would just show some sense and get out of there, it would be starvin' perfect. "Hilarious! Best show I've seen all day."

Guiche glared at her. The red dripping from his face started to look more like blood than wine, like he had stabbed someone and stuck his nose in it. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

Lift shrugged. "Dumped?"

"I am Guiche the Bronze, youngest son of General Gramont! I will not stand here and be insulted by peasants!"

Get outta here, lady! But the maid stayed in place watching the exchange like a chicken staring at the rain. Lift feigned surprise. "Oh, I had no idea! See, I just thought that since I saw two girls dump you, it meant you done got dumped! But I guess violence and insults is how folks express love in these parts. If that's the case, I bet you get loved lots!"

The crowd laughed. They weren't on her side, she knew, but they enjoyed entertainment where they found it. Lift didn't mind providing it, but Guiche seemed to. "That's it! You clearly need a lesson in manners, and I shall do the world a favor and teach you some."

"Bring on the learnin', then. This is a school, ain't it?"

"Quite. If you refuse to apologize for your insults, then I, Guiche the Bronze, challenge you to a duel!"

"Um, Mistress?" Wyndle said at her feet. "I would strongly advise against–"

"Done!" She was in more trouble than she had planned, but she decided to go with her gut and right then her gut was full of cake. The maid gasped and ran away. Finally.

Guiche pulled a lacy cloth from his pocket and wiped the wine from his face. "Meet me in Vestri Court in fifteen minutes. Go to that place, and you'll learn yours."

"Lookin' forward to it." She didn't know where Vestri Court was, but she didn't plan on showing up neither.

The crowd dispersed now that the show was over, and as Lift turned away she nearly bumped into Louise.

"Lift! Where have you been? I was halfway to my room before I realized you weren't following me!"

She didn't seem to have seen her accept the duel. Good. "I stopped to watch that kid Guiche get dumped! It was hilarious, Louise, you shoulda seen it!"

She rolled her eyes. "You get used to that sort of thing eventually. He made a scene, didn't he?"

"Yup."

"And he made a fool of himself too, correct?"

"Oh yeah."

"What was it this time? Did he sign over his soul again and declare his undying love in verse?"

"Nope. He challenged someone to a duel."

Her eyes widened, but only slightly. "Boys. They always seem half drunk on their own testosterone. Why can't they solve their problems with cruel gossip and veiled insults like civilized people?"

Lift shrugged. "It's more entertainin' this way."

Louise sighed. "Well, whatever." She turned and started back to her room. "Come along, and try not to get lost this time."

WWW

Louise sat at her desk in her bedroom studying literature, or at least making a valiant attempt. If she wasn't going to pass any of her magic classes this semester (and if today's experience with Professor Chevreuse was any indication, she wouldn't), then she would have to excel perfectly in her mundane ones, and that meant working her way through the works of the Bard Baron Bartholomew, the first, last, and–for some reason–most famously successful of the one man line of Bard Barons.

She realized that she had been staring at the same line in one of his sonnets ("But the bitter burning of the violet violence of my heart did beat") for a good ten minutes when Guiche of all people charged into her room.

"Ah ha!" he said, throwing the door open and pointing at her familiar. "Thought you could hide from me, did you?"

Lift waved at him with one eye open, lying on her pile of straw. "Yo."

"Guiche?" Louise gasped. "What are you doing here? This is my bedroom!"

Guiche turned to her. "My apologies, Louise. I'll just borrow your familiar and be on my way."

Louise waved a finger at him. "No, you'll leave my familiar alone and be on your way."

"There's really no need for you to get involved," he said. "And if you knew what she did, you'd stay out of this."

"What, did she barge into someone's room without even knocking?" Louise asked. "Because, Founder, Guiche, I could have been changing in here!" Honestly, this was the sort of behavior she'd expect from Kirche!

"Your familiar stood me up!"

Louise stared at him with surprise and then growing disgust. "Sick, Guiche. Does shame mean nothing to you? First of all, she's a commoner, and second of all, she's … how old are you?"

Lift held up all her fingers. "This many."

"Ten? Really? I would have guessed that you were at least thirteen."

"Nope," she said. "There ain't no luck in being that age."

"Well, no, but I don't see what that has to do with … nevermind. Anyway Guiche, she's a ten-year-old commoner, and both too young and too old for you. You should stick to girls in your own age and social group."

Guiche blinked. "What? No, you misunderstand. She didn't stand me up on a date, she stood me up on a duel!"

Louise stared at him. "Wow. Well, in the risk of repeating myself, first of all, she's a commoner, and second of all, she's–"

"She insulted me! She insulted me in public, and she laughed at me. If I do not receive restitution in penitence, I will take it in punishment."

"She laughed at you," Louise repeated. "What, did you make a fool of yourself in public?"

"Yup," Lift said from her pile of straw.

"I did no such thing!" Guiche protested. "Your familiar is ill mannered, and if you refuse to rectify that, then I will."

"I am aware of her crass nature, and as her master I recognize my responsibility in educating her," Louise said cooly. "But if you dare usurp my position in that regard, then know that an attack on my familiar is an attack on me, and an attack on me is an attack on my house. You may have made several poor decisions today, Guiche, but you do not want to attack my house."

By all rights he should have been intimidated. Her mother could say something like that and make grown men wet themselves, and she had retired twenty years ago, but Guiche just scoffed. "Your house may be high and mighty out there, Louise, but within the Academy walls, you are Zero."

Her eyes widened and her face felt hot. There was a line and Guiche had crossed it. The Academy ran amok with petty rivalries, but those were fiercely segregated. Louise would engage in snide insults and gossip with her female classmates, and the boys in her year would do … whatever it was boys did to each other, but the sexes kept things separate. Always.

And in the back of her mind, there was the phrase she had mentioned to her familiar earlier that day.

Academia by combat.

"Suppose I dueled you in her stead," Louise suggested.

"Suppose you what?"

"Yes." She smiled. Louise had always been a somber child and had grown into a somber young woman. These days, she only smiled when she was furious. "After all, a familiar's successes are her master's successes, as are her failures, as are, one might suppose, her dueling agreements."

"I'm not …"

"And I'm sure that Guiche the Bronze would have no difficulty defeating Louise the Zero."

"Okay, look, I may have …"

"And I'm sure Professor Chevreuse would agree." She smiled as all his bluster and confidence turned to dust, and she realized how the rest of her family could be so intimidating when they need to be. They did not hide behind the family name; they built it.

Guiche swallowed. "As much as I would like to, um, do that, the Academy rules are quite clear on the matter of the nobility dueling nobility, and I have to worry about my education! But I see you are quite set in your course, so I'll be the gentleman and relinquish your familiar from her dueling agreement."

Louise nodded. "That may be the first smart choice you made today."

"And really, teaching your familiar manners is your responsibility, and I have absolute confidence in your ability in that regard."

"Finally we agree."

"And if anyone's to blame for my predicament, it's that idiot maid and her clumsy indiscretions."

Lift, who had been lying on her straw pile, sat bolt upright. "What?"

Guiche straightened his back confidently and ignored her. "So while you're dealing with things here, I'll be helping said servant understand what is and is not proper behavior. Or one of them at least. Honestly, I doubt they can even tell themselves apart."

Louise smirked at him as he turned to leave, until Lift stood up and ruined everything. "Okay," she said. "I'll play your stupid dueling game."

He turned around. "What?"

"Right, sorry," Lift said. "I'll play your stupid dueling game, your lordliness."

Guiche blinked. "That's not the proper form of address, but …"

"Hold that thought," Louise said. "What?"

Lift rolled her eyes. "For the third time, I'll–"

"Actually, allow me to rephrase that," Louise said. "No, you will do no such thing."

"I kinda think I will."

"No, you …." She turned to Guiche. "You. Out."

"But–"

She pointed her wand at him. "Out!"

Guiche smiled. "Please, we both know that the only thing you can do with that wand is blow stuff … I'll be leaving now." He closed the door after him. Finally. In retrospect, she should have opened with that. Threatened violence got results.

She turned to her familiar. "You just watched me go through all that work to get you out of this mess, and now you want to get back in it."

"Yup."

"Explain!"

Lift shrugged. "That Geetch guy is having a really bad day, and he won't feel better none till he takes it out on someone that can't fight back."

Louise stared at her. "And you wish to be that someone?"

"Yup. 'Cause he only thinks I can't fight back."

"Can you?"

"Ha! No. Fightin's for chumps. What, did ya think I got this far in life by accommodatin' all them folks who wanted a piece of me? Nope. I got this far by being awesome."

"So you plan to fight him by … not fighting him?"

"Trust me, he'll be begging me to stop, before you know it."

"Begging you to stop not fighting him?" No, Lift's words didn't make any more sense when Louise said them.

"Because …?"

"Because I'm awesome."

Louise shook her head. "No. No, see, not fighting him is what you are doing now and the exact opposite of what you're planning to do. Why can't you not fight him up here?"

Lift looked around the room. "There ain't enough room. To not fight right, you need space, and loads of it."

"No, I mean, why do need to duel him at all? He's gone."

"Yup. Off to take everything out on someone that can't fight back."

Ah. "Well, I'm sure that whatever maid he was referring to will be fine. Besides, servants need to know not to provoke the nobility." Founder, that sounded bad when she said it out loud. "But she is not my responsibility, you are, and I forbid you from fighting him. Or not fighting him. I forbid you from dueling him."

"And 'cause you said the words, I gotta do what you say?" Lift asked.

"Correct."

"Them's the rules?"

"Yes, those are the rules."

Lift stared at her stonily, and Louise found herself in her first power struggle with her familiar. She had read that some familiars were more willful than others, and that it was important to present them with an iron will from the start. No, not iron, steel.

"You seem rich," Lift said finally. "You rich?"

She frowned. "Why?"

"Rich family? Lots of important, influential folk?"

"Yes, we Vallieres are highly esteemed."

"Big house?"

"The estate is rather expansive, yes. What is your point?"

"I didn't. I grew up on the street, and not just any street, but nearly every street. Which barely means nothing 'cause they're all pretty much the same. A lot goes on down there that no one knows about, 'cause the first and last street rule is that you didn't see nothin', you didn't do nothin', and you weren't there. No one looks out for no one 'cause everyone knows that no one's gonna look out for you."

"Now, that doesn't make any sense," Louise said. "Because it sounds like you're trying to do the exact opposite."

"Yup. 'Cause I ain't never been good at followin' no stupid rules."

Louise stared at her, trying to stand her ground. The Rule of Steel meant that she could not back down. But … with her familiar trying to do the right–no, the honorable thing, maybe she wasn't the one Louise should have been standing up to. And besides, what was the point of honor if it couldn't bear a bit of folly?

"Guiche's family specializes in constructs, so expect him to send a low level golem at you. Duels end when one of the combatants can no longer fight, so if you can get past his summon and grab the rose he uses as a wand, you might have a chance."

WWW

Some days being awesome could get Lift into more trouble than it was worth. Today was not one of those days.

"After all the trouble it took getting you to come here," Guiche said outside on the grounds, "the two minutes it's going to take to teach you the manners you so desperately need is going to reek of anticlimax. Now all that remains is to select a judicator."

"A what?" Lift asked.

"Referee, judge, someone to overlook the duel and declare the winner." He looked at the crowd that had gathered around them, and approached a girl with curly blonde hair. "Sweet Montmorency, might your beauteous face grace this–"

"You can't be serious," she said. Lift recognized her as one of the girls who had dumped him that day.

"I am as serious as the sun is radiant and the moons are pure. There is no one I would rather–"

"Guiche Gramont, I am not speaking to you! And if you keep speaking to me, I will need to start not yelling at you too, and I might even not slap you a few times for good measure."

He wilted and the crowd chuckled at him. He didn't seem to like getting laughed at none. Lift could use that.

"Hey, how about Louise?" Lift suggested.

Guiche scoffed. "Your master is hardly an unbiased judge."

"Look," Louise said. "If it will get this farce over with more quickly, then there is only one completely unbiased individual who is not a teacher and, as a bonus, might actually know the rules." She turned to a blue haired girl with glasses who was sitting under a nearby tree reading a book. "Excuse me, Tabitha, would you mind–"

"Reading."

"But we need–"

"Reading."

"Let her be," another girl said. She was tall with long red hair and tan skin, and looked like she had a bit of Horneater in her. "If you really need a judicator, I'll do it."

"What?" Louise gasped. "No! Not a chance, Kirche von Zerbst! I do not agree to this!"

"Yes, but you're not involved in this anymore, Valliere."

"That's my familiar over there! I'm feeling pretty involved."

"And if she can survive you, she can survive him." The girl, Kirche, turned to Guiche. "Well? What do you say?"

He nodded. "Yes, I find you acceptable."

"And you?" she said, looking at Lift.

Louise shook her head violently and mouthed the word, "no" over and over. "Sure, why not?" Louise smacked herself on the forehead. "Let's get this game started already! All these rules are making things boo-ro-cratical!" That was a fancy word for boring. Azir had been drowning in boo-ro-cracy.

"Alright!" Kirche said. "Lords and ladies, boys and girls, and Louise, here we have Guiche the Bronze dueling against the Familiar of Zero! Let the duel–"

"Lift," Lift said.

"What?"

"The name's Lift. You gotta get it right."

"Lift, right. Hey, do you have a title or a surname or something?"

"Sure. I'm awesome."

Kirche struggled to keep a straight face. "Okay then. Guiche the Bronze versus Lift the Awesome. Fight!"

Guiche waved his flower around, scattering petals. "Now you will learn what it means to challenge nobility! Arise, my Valkyrie!"

One of the petals turned into a flash of light, and a suit of armor holding a spear grew out of the ground. It might not have been awesome, but it was neat, and there was only one thing Lift could do in her situation. She laughed at it.

"Your floating armor has breasts!" she said, pointing.

Guiche blinked. "Well, yes, Valkyries are mystical–"

"It's a booby knight!"

His face started to turn pink. "No, it's a–"

"Booby knight!"

He ground his teeth. "Booby–Valkyrie, shut her up."

The booby knight swung at her with the butt of its spear, so Lift sat down on the grass, ducking underneath it. It followed with an overhead swing, and Lift made her butt slick and slid out of the way.

"So tell me," she said, "on a scale of one to wearing a dress in front of a mirror, how single were you when you designed this thing?" The crowd laughed, and the more they laughed, the angrier Guiche got. And the angrier he got, the more his booby knight thrashed around. While both of them started out condescending and dismissive, Guiche had become red-faced and the booby knight was in a frenzy.

Lift had to become more and more Awesome to keep up, the storm coursing through her veins heightening her speed and reflexes. And, for some reason, the words of Darkness echoed in her mind.

He had called her an Edgedancer. Wyndle did that too, sometimes. A glorious order … elegant things of beauty … move through the battlefield like a ribbon on the wind.

A single booby knight didn't make it a battlefield, but right then Lift felt like she could out-ribbon a skyeel. She dove between its legs, made her belly Slick, and slid underneath it. She jumped to her feet in time to throw herself at Guiche and–

"Levitate!" he said, pointing his wand at her, and Lift was lifted off her feet. "There! Now you see that–"

"I'm flying!" Lift felt like she was being held up by the air itself. She twisted around, trying to maneuver herself. "This is so cool!"

"What? No, you're supposed to be horrified as the realization dawns on you that you are entirely in my–"

"Send me higher! I wanna see how high I can go!"

"This is a duel, not a carnival! I am your opponent, and you are mine!"

"Can you send me over that wall?" She grinned at him. "I know you want to."

Guiche sighed. "Normally, I'd worry about how being seen beating a small child would affect my reputation, but you are worth it. Valkyrie, beat her senseless."

Well, that wasn't how she had hoped the game to end, but it didn't surprise her none. She got the people to laugh, mostly at him, and there wasn't nothing in the world she wasn't awesome enough to heal from. All the same, she made her whole body Slick so the booby knight's blows could slide off of her–and fell to the ground, like she had slipped through the grasp of the air itself.

She felt the wind of the spear right above her as she dropped down, and Guiche looked at her seeming as surprised as she felt. But Lift was better at improvising, so while he was busy saying, "How did you," she was jumping at him.

Or more precisely, at his wand. He tried to pull away, but she only needed to touch it to make it Slick enough to squeeze out of his grip. 'Cause she might not have been a good fighter, but Lift was a master thief.

Of course, when she tried to snatch it out of the air, it was still Slick and fell to the ground between them. Right. She'd have to work on that later.

Guiche dove for the wand, but Lift kicked it out of the way. She ran for it, and he tripped her and tried to crawl over her. He grabbed the wand, but before he could use it, she squirmed around underneath him, reached into his pocket out of principle, grabbed him by the arm, and bit him in the wrist.

"Ow!"

He dropped the wand and Lift grabbed it. Wyndle, a vine growing through the grass, provided a handhold for her to pull herself out all the way. Guiche grabbed onto her hair, which did absolutely nothing.

"Catfight!" someone from the crowd called out. Lift didn't know what a cat was, but it sounded fierce. She rolled to her feet and raised the wand triumphantly.

"Wait!" Guiche said, standing up. "This fight is not over!"

"Yeah it is," Lift said. "I got your wand. That means I win, don't it?" She looked at the Kirche girl. "Don't it?"

"The fight ends when one of the combatants can no longer fight," Guiche said. "If only one of them can use magic, then he clearly is the winner, but right now neither of us can."

"Well," Kirche said. "Normally I'd call it done, but this affair has been really entertaining, so go ahead and keep going."

"What?" Louise demanded. "Do you know nothing about basic dueling regulations?"

"Of course I do. They all agree that I'm in charge. So deal with it."

"You heard her," Guiche said. He balled his hands into fists and looked at them hesitantly, as though unsure how fists were supposed to work. "We're down to good old fashioned fisticuffs." He glanced at his booby knight. "Unless … Valkyrie, attack!" The booby knight stood motionless.

Lift grinned. "I guess it ain't listening to you, now that you don't have your wand no more. Me, on the other hand …." She flourished the wand just like she had seen him do and said, "Booby knight! Deck 'im in the schnozz!" It stood still until a gentle breeze knocked it over.

Well, that didn't work out. And since stealing the wand didn't end the fight, she would have to, well, fight now. Lift could steal anything she needed to, but she hadn't never beaten up no one. This was exactly what she had wanted to avoid. And now she was hungry. She looked down at the flower in her hand. It smelled nice. Maybe it tasted nice too? She bit down on it–and spat it out. No. No it did not taste nice.

"Hey! That's my wand! Why would you do that? First you bite me, and now you bite my wand? What is wrong with you?"

She shrugged. "Being Awesome makes me hungry. Do you lot have a meal between lunch and dinner? 'Cause I don't think I can wait that long."

"What? You insolent little … you're not eating anything until this is over!"

"Okay, fine," she said. She walked up to him with her hands in her pockets while he still tried to figure out how fists worked, and she swung her leg out, making one of his feet Slick and tripping him. His Slick foot shot out away from him and he fell to the ground doing the splitz.

"AAAAOOOHHH!"

"Well," Kirche said. "I know I've seen enough. The winner is–"

"AAH! AH AH AAH!"

"I said the winner is–"

"AAH! OOH AHAEH EAGH!"

"Quit being such a drama queen, Guiche! You lost already!"

WWW

Professor Colbert stared at Headmaster Osmond's scrying mirror long after the duel was concluded. It was Osmond's idea to allow the duel to take place, and it had seemed a perfectly logical method of testing Colbert's theory, but life always ended up a few steps ahead of logic.

For example, if Colbert was wrong, then they would have been allowing a spoiled noble vent his frustrations on an unarmed child. But if he was correct, then they would have been allowing a dot-class mage to fight a half-forgotten legend reborn in the modern day, a force capable of defeating armies single handedly and walking away unscathed. Neither was a situation that Colbert would be able to explain to the parents of those affected or to his own conscience.

Life, in this case, took over the situation and told them nothing at all. The only bright side was that, with the exception of Guiche's pride, reputation, and hamstrings, no one was hurt.

"Well," Colbert said at last, "the girl did win."

Osmond smoked his pipe thoughtfully. His secretary, Miss Longueville, didn't allow him to smoke, so he only took out his pipe when she wasn't around. He also only took out his scrying mirror when she wasn't around, but he didn't explain why. "Yes, but that didn't prove anything. She could have just been lucky."

If Miss Valliere's familiar had displayed superhuman speed and strength, that would have leaned toward empirical evidence, but the girl, while agile, resembled more a child playing a game than a legend brought to life.

"It takes more than luck for a commoner to defeat a mage," Colbert said. "But Mr. Gramont was awfully overconfident."

Osmond nodded. "And besides, she didn't glow."

"Um, glow, sir?"

"Yes, glow. It's a basic rule in magic that when magic happens, something has to glow."

"I do not believe that is a universal phenomenon, Headmaster."

"Of course it is. Transmutation? It glows. The familiar summoning spell itself? It glows. With any major spell, there's glowing."

"Levitation? Telekinesis? Most basic spells, especially non-elementals, contradict that."

"Bah! Those are cantrips! That familiar, by your own admission, bears the mark of Gandalfr! This is a legend we're dealing with, if we're dealing with anything at all! Something has to glow!" Osmond fell silent for a moment as he puffed on his pipe. "Maybe she was glowing too softly to see. It is quite sunny out. That's it! Just trap her in a dark cave and have her attacked by some horrible subterranean monster! Trolls would work. Yes, trolls. That would yield results."

Colbert stared at him. "Um, sir, there are serious ethical implications to consider with that scenario."

Osmond leaned back in his chair. "Oh, I'm sure society won't miss a few trolls. It's not like they're endangered or anything." He sat up. "They aren't, are they?"

"No sir."

"Perfect! Then it's settled."

Osmond was not always the easiest man to explain things to because he was, like the rest of the faculty, a scholar at heart, and for each thing he understood perfectly, there was at least one he could not grasp at all.

"I have an alternative idea, Headmaster. The stories pay special attention to Gandalfr's abilities with weapons, so if I give the child a weapon–"

"And she can slay a troll with it …."

"Let's leave the trolls out of the experiment."

"Ah."

"But if she shows special, nay, superhuman, no, legendary abilities with weapons, then we can conclude that the marks on her hand are more than a coincidence."

Osmond nodded in approval. "And if that doesn't work, you can always try the trolls later."

"No sir. Sending a child against a troll remains an unjustifiably unethical course of action, and I can have no part in it."

"Oh."

WWW

A/n And that concludes chapter two. I would like to thank Magery, Stone Mason, and the Glorious Sublime Princess Mei-tan for editing it. Also, I would like to thank everyone who left a review, because without you, there would be no continuation.

The quote is from a webcomic called Unsounded, and the protagonist shares several characteristics with Lift, so feel free to look into it.