A/N: Finally, the holiday season is wreaking havoc on my creative drive with how busy work is. Retail sucks, it really does. Regardless, I finally get this one out. Maybe now I can find the motivation to work on some of my other works too now that the season is nearing its end. Also...Sylphid, the Witch isn't that tasty, ok?


Louise stood rooted to the ground before her familiar. She craned her neck in a vain attempt to get a look at her face, forcing her to stumble a few steps back as her view had been dominated by the absurd height.

'Is she human? Is it even possible for a human to be that tall?'

The large woman simply stood there, eyes closed, arms limp to her sides, and toes...scrunching into the grass and dirt...

'Is...she smiling?'

She looked to Colbert in her loss for words and unsure what could be said, only to find him in the midst of his own mental funk, gnawing at his bottom lip and tapping his graphite stick to an empty sheet in his notebook.

"Well?" The towering woman cracked open an unfocused eye in her direction and crossed her arms slowly.

'Oh...by Brimir, she asked a question didn't she?' Louise cringed under the woman's gaze, something in it setting every fiber of her being on edge.

"Ah, milady, there will be plenty time for explanations, perhaps now it would be best to clean up and do something to protect your modesty, hmm?" Colbert interjected before Louise could stutter a response that surely would have her sticking her foot in her mouth.

The woman slowly turned her gaze to Colbert. As she did Louise noticed that Colbert cringed just as she had, confirming that he too felt that certain something that Louise couldn't quite place. Seconds passed as the woman stood there eyeing Colbert up as one would when appraising some curious object before she slowly closed her eye and furrowed her eyebrows.

"Tch..."

'D-did she just click her tongue at him?' Louise's jaw dropped.

"Fine," her familiar straightened her back and shivered slightly, "I'll humor you, if only for your good intentions..."

'Such...disrespectful...,' Louise grit her teeth at her familiar's tone but flinched when her cold grey eyes shifted back from Colbert.

"Well, Louise, this would be an opportune time to get to know a little about your familiar. I'll look into finding clothes that would fit her, if you'd go ahead and go to the bathes, they should be empty at the moment and you seem like you could use one as well," Colbert walk by with a shaky voice, leaving an uneasy Louise to deal with an eerily no-quite-antagonistic familiar.

Her familiar stood at her side, arms crossed and eyes closed, seemingly waiting.

"S-so, I suppose I should show you the way then...," Louise mustered her pride and turned up her nose as she began to walk towards the Academy grounds.

As she walked, she noticed a distinct lack of footsteps behind her. A creature her familiar's size would have a noticeable step with its greater weight. So Louise looked over her shoulder to find that her familiar hadn't moved even a step from her spot.

"Oh...," Louise bit her lip as she started to put together the pieces to the puzzle.

How she rarely had more than a single eye open, how it seemed to remain unfocused on any single thing, and she noticed how a few times she seemed to squint at Colbert when he spoke. When Louise approached the motionless familiar she found her mumbling with her face scrunched up in frustration.

'Can...can she not see?' Louise waved her hand in front of her familiar's face, or at least try, having to raise up on her toes for her hand to reach her breasts.

"Grr...I'm not blind girl!" Her familiar barked at her, sending her to her rear in shock, "...I...just can't seem to see well...anymore..."

Her familiar cringed as she rubbed her eyes, the effort to keep them open seemed to cause great discomfort.

'Ah, then maybe she wasn't being disrespectful on purpose, she's just frustrated...'

"Oh...sorry?" The apology felt weird coming out but Louise continued, " then here, I'll guide you then...we'll have to see a water mage about that if that isn't normal for you."

Louise held up her right hand with the intent of leading her familiar by hand, only for her familiar to struggle to look at her and to lean forward and gently grasp a length of Louise's pink hair.

"I assume you were holding out your hand...but I can only see a blob of pink, and we'd rather not break your fingers by accident no would we?" Her familiar let a small smirk form on her face as Louise sighed and turned in place.

"Whatever...," the short pinkette grunted and massaged the bridge of her nose.

'This isn't anything like what I'd expected for a familiar...'

So the duo slowly made their way onto the main Academy grounds, with Louise reluctantly leading her absurdly tall familiar by unconventional means.


With each step she felt her frustration grow. The initial pain from opening her eyes had indeed started to fade, if only to be replaced by a general discomfort and the very disturbing inability to focus on anything. Every muscle she moved ached from the exertion and her skin overall felt much too tight on her body.

'Just what did that accursed inferno do to me?' The Witch grit her teeth.

As a bearer of a full lord soul she had enjoyed a general heightened resilience to anything that would cause permanent harm to her person, a resilience that would never be felt by any creature save for the Everlasting Dragons and some of their closest kin.

Her body tensed as she stepped on an errant stone, shifting her balance ever so slightly to cause her to stumble and brace herself on the diminutive human she used as a guide.

'How mortifying...' she wasn't sure if she had blushed as the unfocused pink blob seemed to partially turn mid-step.

"Is something the matter?" Louise asked in a tone that the Witch couldn't quite place, a mixture of arrogance, fear, and somehow genuine concern hidden beneath.

The Witch simply hummed her frustration when a familiar feeling tickled the back of her neck. She roughly jerked Louise's head to the left, causing the girl to hop to her side to prevent herself from falling.

"H-hey what gi-" FWOOM "AH!" Louise's admonishment was interrupted by a fireball the size of her head that blazed past said head and collided with the Witch's right thigh, sending preexisting ash into the air in a puff while coating the area in a fresh black powder to replace the gray.

The Witch didn't so much as twitch at the impact.

Louise turned towards the direction the fireball came from to find herself cringing at the source, gritting her teeth.

"Kiiiiirche!" She growled as the redhead jogged towards them with her familiar tailing only a few steps behind.

"Ah, sorry, I was playing with my dear Flame. Poor thing tripped and missed the catch," Kirche knelt to playfully scratch Flame's chin after coming to a stop in front of an indignant Louise.

"Gununu~, you did it on purpose didn't you!?" Louise ground her teeth as she tried to burn a hole in Kirche's forehead with her eyes.

"I haven't a clue what you mean. Like I said, I was just play-...why is your familiar holding your hair? ….And why is it still -"

"-nude...," Kirche's tag-along, Tabitha, startled Louise by appearing opposite of Kirche on her left side.

The Witch actually flinched at the quiet voice, idly scratching at the impact area of her thigh with her free hand as she wondered just how the little blue blob managed to avoid detection. Most likely she had been distracted by the bright red blob that had been the source of the pink blob's outrage, or at least that is what the Witch had reasoned.

She shook her head as the one called Kirche somehow goaded Louise into a tirade that only caused Kirche to further tease the smaller girl. As amusing as it seemed, the Witch opted to tune out the teasing and accompanied tantrum. Instead she stood tall, toying with her shortened hair in introspection.

"Hrmm...," her eyes shifted to the red blob that was on the receiving end of ineffective series of punches to the stomach.

'She...used fire sorcery...does that mean Quelaana survived to continue her research? Had she really found a way to pass on the Flame to humans?' Once more she itched at the thigh that had taken a fireball, 'If so, the product is seriously lacking...'

She ignored the red beast that sniffed at her, dismissing it regardless of her urge to pet it...she had more important things to think about, such as inquire about the source of the newcomer's fire. Hope of being reunited with one of her daughters blossomed in her buxom. As she took a breath in preparation to interrupt the fighting humans, she felt a chill run down her spine. A familiar feeling from long ago that filled her with both nostalgia and fear. But it was the hot breath on her neck that nearly sent her into a panic.


Tabitha had been watching Louise's odd familiar from behind the pages of her book, blocking out the shouting fight that had inevitably broken out between said pinkette and Kirche. The large woman seemed lost in thought as she leg go of her grip of Louise's hair when Louise had begun of bat at Kirche's stomach. Kirche's familiar, Flame, seemed unusually interested in the woman even though she opted to instead play with her hair instead give the overgrown lizard any attention.

It was the woman's body became rigid in its entirety that Tabitha became genuinely intrigued and actually slightly worried. Such a response she recognized as an involuntary reaction to intense fear, something she had plenty experience with from her early days at the mercy of her uncle and Sheffield.

'What could cause something that ignores a fireball impact to...oh...,' Tabitha closed her book with a sharp clap as she noticed Sylphid had managed to place herself directly behind the large woman and had started to sniff at her hair.

She watched as the woman cringed under Sylphid's breath and slowly turn in place, her right hand flexing as though trying to grip something that wasn't there. She jerked her head to look at her empty hand before a look of realization washed over her face and she slowly turned her head back to squint at Sylphid with gritted teeth.

Tabitha watched intently, ready to move should the woman do something regrettable.

The woman stood in place, frozen in conflict provided by the fight or flight instinct. Tabitha was perplexed as to why Louise and Kirche had yet to notice such an intriguing 'battle of wills' between the woman and Sylphid, and instead continued their pointless squabbling. It looked like a scene one would only be able to see in nature if one remained completely undetected, a gripping confrontation between a predator and prey. Tabitha's grip on her staff and book intensified as the woman slowly slid a leg back a step, which seemed to be enough to cause Sylphid to spring into action...promptly licking the woman's face from chin to brow.

Tabitha's shoulders slumped in disappointment, having actually looked forward something exciting, though she quirked an eyebrow as Sylphid covered her mouth and seemed turn green in the face as she allowed herself to fall back while she attempted scrape away the foul taste on her tongue. Sylphid's tail flailed as she wriggled on the ground in disgust, which in turn caused the stunned woman to tumble back. Louise and Kirche had finally taken notice of the action nearby, but only a moment too late as the woman bowled them over in an ashen dust cloud on the ground. Flame, being the not so bright beast he was, must have thought this to be a new game and promptly jumped atop the tangle of limbs in dogpile, causing the woman to heave a deep grunt as the salamander further knocked the air out of her.

Having had her fill of the comical and rather pathetic scene, Tabitha let out a quiet sigh and tapped Sylphid's arm to get her attention.

"Come...," she commanded in a flat tone at she departed the scene.


"D-dragon...but...not...heh," The Witch's brow twitch as she struggled with her thoughts.

Kirche, the summoner of the annoying salamander, had explained just what the blue beast was. Yet, no matter how she turned the words around in her head, the Witch just couldn't believe it was still a dragon. If what the girl had said was indeed true, the beast couldn't have been anything more than a drake or perhaps a wyvern. Both were bastard relatives of the Dragons she knew, that she had slain. She still twitched at the strangeness that was the fact that it was...tame, for the most part.

Despite the 'danger' having passed, she still couldn't deny the point made clear by the encounter. She was without a catalyst and nigh helpless because of it. Sure, she could attempt the half-baked and mostly theoretical 'Pyromancy' her youngest daughter had ever so excitedly continued on about, that is if she wanted to cook herself from the inside.

She attempted to smooth her tousled hair with her free hand, the damned 'dragon' having given her a 'cowlick' as Kirche had put it. Her other hand lightly gripped the slightly messy and tangled hair of Louise as she continued to guide her to the bathes. The short trip being somewhat silent save for some grumbling as the two humans complained about their 'disgusting' state. Somehow, the Witch found a perverse satisfaction in having smeared her ashen filth over the rather obnoxious duo.

"Here we are...," Louise turned and tapped the Witch's hand to get her attention, "This is one of the private bathes. Be sure to get yourself cleaned well, I can't have you going around like you are now."

The Witch let go of Louise's hair and attempted to take stock of her surroundings. The air she breathed felt humid and the stone floor somewhat damp and slick.

'Ah, a heated bath is it?' Her blurry vision setting on the shimmering pool of water that looked as if she could barely lay within it on her back, with her shoulders and head well out of the water...and most likely her feet would stick out as well.

'Somewhat small...then again, it must be meant for humans.'

The movement of the pink and red blobs caught her attention as she moved towards where they had entered the room.

"We'll...be going to different bathes," Louise paused, the first word said with some venom directed at her redheaded 'companion', "I'll make sure a servant knows to come here with whatever Professor Colbert managed to find to clothe you and then help you find my room."

With that, the Witch was left alone with only the occasional sound of dripping of water and her thoughts for company.

"Huh, I suppose I may indulge myself then," she mumbled to herself as she carefully knelt by the steaming water and began to rinse the filth from her hair.

It felt surprisingly soft and smooth for hair that was savaged for an unknown amount of time by the brutal black flames of her former prison. When she pulled her bangs down before her eyes she had begun to lament at how her once almost reflective obsidian hair had been bleached to a nearly silver white by her ordeals in the fire.

She rose to her full height to gingerly step into the body of water, reveling in the comparatively gentle heat that actually put her at eases. She slid down so that only her knees and head remained above the waterline as she gently rubbed off caked ash and blood. A deep frown formed on her lips as she traced the edges of scarred tissue that seemed to cover a sizable portion of her body.

"Tch, if only I had a catalyst...," the Witch grunted in frustration as she thought of several ways she could restore her once smooth skin to its former glory if she had unfettered access to her sorcery, quite possibly her hair as well.

'No use fretting over it for now...there are more important things to worry about.'

As she hung her arms over the edges of the 'large' bathtub her thoughts wandered to that of her daughters and son. She had escaped her 'prison' and an unknown amount of time had passed, long enough for her daughters to find a way to pass on a form of flame sorcery and for someone to find a way to restore life to the land. Whether it was by recreating or revitalizing the First Flame, she could not tell. She would have to ask about where she was since no creature she encountered seemed native to Lordran, nor did the one that aided her or her compatriots seem to realize who she was.

Then there was the fact the human named Kirche mentioned that the 'dragon' and the salamander were Familiars, a term she remembered from just after she escaped the fire. Something that she too was apparently referred to. What did that actually mean? She had originally assumed the 'dragon' and salamander to be some sort of pet to the humans.

An infuriating implication crossed her mind that caused her to grit her teeth before deciding to dismiss it.

'Not important...'

She brought a hand to her forehead and massaged her brow to nurse a dull headache that seemed to fade just as fast as it formed.

'By the flame...why am I so tired...'

Her body felt heavy and despite the warmth of the water, seemed to have a slight chill, and the edges of her scars seemed to itch.

"Hmm...," She turned her blurred vision to the water, "red..."

Her mind was swimming as she slurred the word.

A knock echoed before the door to the room creaked open.

"E-excuse me, I'm h-here with your sheet- er...robes from Professor...ah...," the nervous voice the doorway hitched mid-sentence and transformed into scream.

'So noisy...,' the Witch's eyes felt heavy.

She allowed them to close, ignoring the ruckus of the servant in favor of an encroaching slumber.