Apparently, Louise had not been imagining the voice she heard down the hall. By the time she reached the stairwell the girl could hear it clearly.
"Can you hear my voice now? I can sense you walking up to the central stairwell." It must've been the castle, its voice was coming from the floors above her. Though the tone sounded different now, much harsher than before, and it spoke in a higher pitch. "Please return to the throne room Master."
"Familiar! Can you hear me?" Louise was in somewhat of a foul mood, after what she had just been through. "What the hell was that all about? Why did you leave me alone?!" Louise continued further up the stairwell, grasping the handrail as she went. "And what was all the ruckus about? Did part of the castle collapse?!" Louise did recall her familiar saying something about 'reduced structural integrity'.
A low groan made its way up the stairwell, as unseen machinery started its work. "I apologize, master. One of my logic engines suffered a catastrophic malfunction and reduced itself to a pile of spare parts. It is damaged beyond repair." The castle finished.
Louise stopped climbing the spiraling staircase, and grasped the handrail tightly. With her annoyance clear on her face Louise questioned "And what does that mean… exactly?" She hated feeling stupid. Every time the castle used words she didn't know of, it would remind her of the times her sister Elanore would tell her about some magical theory she had no understanding of at the time. Her sister had always been smug when she had to stop and explain what she meant in simpler terms. "I have no idea what you're talking about, and that doesn't explain why you left me!"
"Ah, right. You wouldn't understand." The castle paused. A rhythmic ticking could be heard while the castle paused its speech. "... You can think of a logic engine as part of my… mind. Originally I was fitted with seventy two separate logic engines, as of now only twenty seven remain functional. Also… I did not leave you. I merely lost control of the PA system… I mean my voice, in that area."
Louise, her hand still gripping the railing, suddenly lost all the color from her face. "D-Does that mean you could hear me the whole time?!" She was mortified. It was one thing for her to show her weakness to her sister Cattleya, but for all intents and purposes the castle was a complete stranger to Louise. She hadn't even been awake around it more than a half-dozen hours total. "Y-You, Heard everything?!" The noble girl instinctively made to cover her embarrassment with the shield of anger she had developed during her time at the academy. "Why d-didn't you signal to me that you were l-listening?!" Now riled up, Louise started ascending the spiral as fast as she could. "You could have… I don't know, If you're so great like you keep saying you are then I'm sure you could have figured something out." The Pinkette arrived at the floor she had originally come from, out of breath from running and talking at the same time.
A short-lived plume of steam erupted from a nearby pipe fitting, almost as if the castle was sighing. "Yes ma'am, I am confused as to why you suddenly started cr-w-s-loudly complaining, but I heard everything." The castle sent the signal to open the door in front of Louise. "Including the part where you said you hated me." Nothing more was said.
Normally Louise would let her haughty attitude carry her dignity, but what the castle said made her skip a beat. "I… I never said anything of the sort!" She crossed her arms over her chest. "Y-your just trying t-to redirect the conversation away from your eavesdropping."
The ticking noise returned, and crackling hiss came through the speakers in the hall. "I-I hate this place, I hate this stupid c-castle. *sob* I want to g-go home." the grainy recording came to an end. It was definitely Louise's voice, just a very poor recording of it.
That got her to shut up. Being a noble of the Vallière household, Louise had witnessed a wide array of enchantments Including a quill that would write whatever one was saying to parchment, but she had never even thought it possible that there would be a way to reproduce someone's voice audibly. She also realized with a growing horror that the castle could likely reproduce the entirety of the proud noble's breakdown.
The castle pulled Louise out of her distress by continuing to talk "I must say, I am curious. Why is it that you hate me?"
"I…I was just-" The pink haired mage started, but stopped quickly to think about her reply. It wasn't that she actually hated the entity she had contracted as her familiar, The young Vallière just hated the situation she found herself in, and the ever present feeling of helplessness that she had felt since waking up in this terrible place.
Louise wandered over to the railing lining the inner part of the semi-circular landing. She laid her left hand on the cool metal railing while clutching the edge of the blanket, and the handle of the lantern in her right. The air was chilly, and somewhat humid from the continuous stream of mist lazily rising from somewhere below her. No, she decided she didn't hate the castle itself either. Honestly, if anything, the castle fascinated her.
The castle...
If she somehow offended it, would the castle cease its efforts to help her? After all, she was the one depending on it to keep her alive. "I don't hate you. I was just… overwhelmed by everything that has happened." Louise walked across the semi-circular platform that served as the landing to this floor. "Look, can you just… forget that happened?"
"Understood." That one word was the only reply from the castle. Louise stood within the doorframe to the hallway before her, waiting for the castle to say something else, but it never did. The lights dimmed slightly as a quiet, low pitched buzzing sound emanated from nearby. It only lasted about two seconds, and the lights were back to normal, but something about the noise made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.
Louise shook her head and continued down the hall through an uncomfortable silence, her mind wandered, trying to figure out just what the castle was thinking. Just like before, the large door to the throne room started to automatically open as Louise approached it.
Once Louise stepped into the throne room, the castle, and an unnervingly cheery voice, finally spoke. "Ah, Welcome back from your first expedition master. I see you have found yourself a sheet to keep yourself warm." As it could finally see Louise again once she stepped into the throne room, it saw the blanket she had found was draped over the girl's slim form.
Louise snapped out of her daze, and looked up towards the throne. "Yes, I also found this lantern." She held the object out in front of her that had previously been hidden under the blanket. "I couldn't find any oil though… or anything to light it with."
"Bah! Your people still use oil lamps? This is an arc-lamp. It does not require oil nor fire. Just find the switch and turn it on."
The noble girl looked over the lamp in her hands. It really was a gaudy thing. Lots of brass, that she assumed would've been polished when it was new. A black knob made from an ivory-like material stuck out of the side of the base. "A switch, like the light switches on the walls?"
A bell chimed from somewhere "Exactly."
Louise frowned and started turning the lamp over in her hands to find the switch. "I… don't see any switches like the ones on the walls. Oh!" Louise found that by twisting the knob on the base of the lamp she could hear a snap, and a brief flicker of light came from within the glass, but nothing more.
"Oh… A pity. It seems the bat-ele-energy storage container has run empty." The cheer in its tone of voice did not at all suit the information that had just been shared.
…
Louise snarled as she thought the castle had been mocking her. "Oh for F-