Windalfr, Right Hand of Vengeance
Chapter One
In the beginning, God created the animals, both mundane and magical. Eagles and wolves covered the land beneath dragons and basilisks, and it was good. Then God created humans, both magical and mundane. Farmers and fishermen worked the land and sea, and mages and sorcerers ruled over them, and it was good.
But if she couldn't use magic, how could Louise call herself a mage? What did her family name and noble heritage mean when every spell she cast blew up in her face?
The rest of her class called her a Zero, and all Louise could do was make grandiose promises about how next time she'd do something amazing, eventually she'd live up to the Valliere name.
Well, it was next time, the last time, her last chance. She stood alone on the well-kept lawn on that bright spring day. The rest of her class watched from a distance, not wanting to miss the show, nor wanting to get caught up in the disaster.
If the rest of my life is a disaster, please, Brimir, let me succeed. Just this once.
"By the Pentagon of the Five Powers..."
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The gods were dead. The humans had won. The power of the forest was broken, and nothing could stop the flood of mankind from washing over the land and draining it of everything it had like the Night Walker's own blood.
Ashitaka still believed in them. San couldn't understand how he could have spent his whole life among humans and still know them so little.
And yet, the humans didn't advance. They rebuilt their town, lit up their forges, and stayed there as the forest regrew. See with eyes unclouded by hate. Ashitaka always said that, but with the boar gods dead, the deer god dead, her mother dead, sometimes hate was all she could see.
She was, after all, Princess Mononoke. That was what the humans called her, Princess of the Vengeful Spirits. The humans of Iron Town whispered that her soul had been stolen by the wolf gods. That almost made her laugh. It was, after all, the humans who stole souls. It was the humans who poisoned the ancient spirits and turned them into demons.
Ashitaka believed that love was stronger than hatred. That was why he was in Iron Town, repairing their walls and their hearts while San...San hunted.
That was why on the middle of an island in the middle of the lake in the middle of the forest where the Forest Spirit once became the Night Walker, San saw a light open up before her.
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The field exploded. That happened sometimes. Louise's classmates laughed. That happened too.
But when the smoke cleared, Louise saw a figure that wasn't there before. Her heart jumped. Her familiar? It was white and furry. A dog? It wasn't the dragon she hoped for, but still, getting anything at all was wonderful! She'd walk it every day and...and...
A pair of human feet stuck out from under the fur. What? She hurried over to it. Under closer inspection, the creature she summoned looked like a person in a fur cloak. What? She rolled her familiar over with her foot. Yep, a human, a girl about Louise's age in commoner rags, a purple dress under a white vest, both of which had seen better days. And she was wearing...teeth, a necklace full of them, and a red, clay mask over the top half of her face. WHAT?
"Is that a commoner?" her classmate, Montmorency said. Louise grimaced. At that point, she was worried that she had summoned a complete savage.
"It's a commoner!" Kirche laughed. "That's hilarious!"
Louise, as usual, didn't appreciate Kirche's sense of humor. "Professor Colbert, can I try again? I can't..."
Her familiar's eyes flashed open, and in an instant her feet were under her with a knife in her hand. Louise screamed as her familiar lashed out at her right before Colbert hit the commoner with a spell.
"Miss Valliere, I am so sorry," he said. "I didn't think...you're bleeding!"
Louise tried to calm down, and realized that her cheek was bleeding with a cut on the left side. If her familiar had aimed just an inch higher, she could have lost an eye. Under any other circumstances, if a commoner had attacked a noble without provocation, that commoner would have gotten a death sentence. Louise wiped away the blood from her cheek and felt dizzy seeing it smeared on her hand. She swallowed.
"I'm fine. I...I don't suppose I could try to summon something else?"
Colbert smiled weakly and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Miss Valliere, but rules are rules. I have never heard of a human familiar, but whatever you summon, you must make your familiar."
Louise looked at her familiar. Wherever she had come from, she was high spirited. And thoroughly vexed. Colbert's spell had restrained her–it was a midlevel air spell to prevent the familiars from attacking their masters before the ritual was completed, and Louise's familiar looked like she wanted to stab, well, everyone. Neither of those attributes were what Louise would consider ideal in a servant, but she didn't have a choice in the matter.
She approached her familiar, who snarled at her. Elegant. "Commoner, do you have a name?" she asked, trying to sound polite. And so what if she didn't? The girl did try to kill her.
"Let–me–go!" Her voice came out as a snarl.
Louise shook her head. Out of all the creatures she could have summoned, she had to summon a commoner, and out of all the commoners she could have summoned, she had to summon a wild one. But again, she didn't have a choice. She put her hands on the girl's shoulders, stood up on her toes, and jumped back as the commoner snapped at her, trying to bite her nose off.
If I had wanted to lose my face, I would have summoned a fire elemental. "Professor Colbert?"
"Of course." He waved his staff, and the invisible ropes of air that bound the rest of her familiar kept her mouth closed too. Despite everything, Louise felt a speck of pride in that. Not even Kirche's Salamander had put up as much of a fight.
"My name is Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Valliere," she said. "Pentagon of the Five Elemental Powers, bless this humble being and make her my familiar." The humble being growled at her, and before she could start foaming at the mouth, Louise kissed her.
Louise smiled. "You may release her, Professor Colbert," she said confidently. "The Familiar Contract is completed; she won't harm me."
Her teacher hesitated, but only for a moment. After all, who had ever heard of a familiar attacking her master? As soon as she was free, the girl stepped back, her face still angry, her knife still in her hand, and Louise remembered that no one had ever heard of a mage summoning a human, either.
But Louise couldn't back down, she couldn't show fear, no weakness, she...
Her familiar screamed. She screamed and dropped her knife, clutching her right hand at the wrist as runes formed there. In a mad panic, she grabbed the knife in her left hand and was about to stab herself in the right when Colbert stopped her.
"Go to sleep!" he said, waving his staff, and her familiar fell to the ground. Colbert smiled weakly. "Well, that was a lot more excitement than I was hoping for. Will you need any more help with her?"
Louise blushed and shook her head. Her familiar would have been a lot more impressive if she had managed to remain standing at the end of the ritual, and the last thing Louise's reputation needed was for the teacher to hold her hand throughout the entire ordeal. "No, Professor Colbert, thank you. I can handle the rest."
"Alright then. In that case, the Springtime Familiar Summoning Ritual is finished. Class dismissed."
Her classmates wondered off, some walking, others levitating, depending on where they were headed. She caught a few of them gesturing towards her and snickering, but that was to be expected. She looked down at her familiar, asleep on the grass.
"This is all your fault, you know," she said. "You just couldn't have been a dragon, could you?" A dragon probably would have eaten her from the start, but at least it would have been impressive. She waved down a couple of servants. "You two. Come with me. I need you to carry that girl to my room."
If the maids didn't know why Louise didn't levitate her familiar to her room, they didn't ask, and if they knew that she couldn't, they knew better than to bring it up. When they picked up the girl, a spear fell out of her cloak.
"Should we bring her things too, Miss?" one of the maids asked.
Louise studied the spear and the knife. She was no weapons expert, but she had assumed that they were made out of some sort of metal. Under closer inspection, though, it looked like both the spearhead and the knife were made out of a matching pair of teeth. They weren't manticore teeth, fortunately. Her mother's familiar was too well trained to bite her, but she had seen the effects of manticore poison before and it wasn't pretty. They might have been from a dragon; they were big enough, but the shape wasn't quite right.
"No, leave them," she said finally. Familiar Contract or not, she wasn't going to let the girl sleep in her room and walk around with sharp objects. She'd have to earn that trust. And maybe Louise was feeling a bit petty, but so what? She rubbed the scratch on her cheek, hoping that it wouldn't leave a scar.
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San awoke to the smell of straw. She opened her eyes and found herself in a stone room. Not a cave, but something manmade. She stood up quickly and looked around. There were stone walls made out of stone blocks and too many right angles, and a floor and ceiling made out of wooden planks. The room was filled with wooden structures that she didn't recognize that were polished to a shine and one door and two windows. And one human.
The human had long pink hair, short stature, and clothes San didn't recognize. She smelled like flowers. No, that was inadequate. She smelled more like flowers than flowers did. She smelled as though she had taken a field of them, crushed them into a fine paste, and then rubbed it all over her skin. In such an enclosed space, the smell was overpowering. "So, you're finally awake," the human said.
She pulled her mask up from over her face to on top of her head. "Where am I?"
"You are in the Tristain Academy of Magic. I imagine that your arrival must have come as a bit of a shock, so I'll overlook your past actions. This time." Her voice carried a threat, even though the human was smaller than her and alone. But then again, earlier, San had been bound by cords she couldn't see or break out of, not that she had never backed down from a threat before.
San looked at the mark on her right hand. When her body began to burn and the mark began to form, she had panicked, and thought that she was being infected by the same curse that had turned so many of the gods into demons and had nearly killed Ashitaka. Such things happened when you spent too much time around humans. But while the curse was black and purple, the mark on her hand had only a slightly different color from her skin.
"How did I get here?" She had been in the forest, then she had woken up on the grass, and then she had woken up in a human...place.
"I summoned you as part of the Springtime Familiar Summoning Ritual. You are my familiar and I am your master. Not an ideal situation, I know, but it seems to be the will of the Founder in his own, confusing way, and we'll just have to deal with it."
That...that told her nothing. San decided to leave this human place, and maybe find a pack of wolves she could talk to. She studied the door. She had never used one before, but she had seen them used.
She pushed the door. Nothing happened. She tried to slide it. If she remembered correctly, it was supposed to slide into the wall, but this door didn't. She grabbed the metal ball half way up the thing and pulled, but the door didn't budge.
"What are you doing?" the human demanded, but San ignored her. If the human was going to answer her questions with nonsense, then she'd answer hers with silence.
She reached for her knife to stab the stupid door if only out of frustration, but it wasn't there. Neither was her spear. "Where's my knife?"
"I don't know what you did before this, but you're my familiar now. You don't need a knife, especially if you're not responsible enough to know better than to stab everything you see."
In a surge of anger, San slammed her shoulder into the little human and nearly knocked her out the window before grabbing her by the strange fabric she wore. "Where is it?" she demanded.
"What are you doing? You're stretching my shirt!"
San shoved her to the side and climbed out the window. Any answer the human would have given her probably wouldn't have made any sense anyway.
"That is no way to treat a noble, your master least of all! Honestly, were you raised by wolves?"
"I am a wolf," she replied. She must have dropped her father's teeth when she collapsed on the grass, but it looked like a forty foot drop. She might be able to climb down, but it would be tricky.
"Great, so you're delusional as well as uncouth. I certainly hit the familiar jackpot. And yes, that is the ledge of a fourth story window you're standing one, so unless you can fly, you might want to step back a bit.
Looking up at the night sky, San saw something that nearly made her lose her footing. The moon had split in two, a small red one and a large blue one. Was that the Night Walker coming back? When he was alive, he took the form of the night sky between dusk and dawn, but if he was in the process of rebirth, would he have taken the form of a second moon?
It made sense in a twisted sort of way. Her first instinct was to ask her mother, Moro, but she couldn't. The humans had taken that away from her, just as they had everything else.
She took a step forward, and fell. She heard the human scream right before she grabbed onto a ledge ten feet beneath her.
"Familiar, what are you doing? You're going to get yourself killed!"
San ignored her and dropped to the next ledge.
"I'm serious, familiar. Come back here this instant! As your master, I order you to return! Did you not understand the whole master-familiar part? I'm sure I explained it to you."
San dropped to the third ledge, and then landed on the grass on all fours. It had gotten dark, but the Night Walkers second moon gave enough light to pick out any landmarks. She had collapsed between the stone tower and the stone wall, but all stone blocks looked the same. She remembered that she was between a large ash and a young oak, so she ran lightly through the night until she found them.
She picked them up reverently. Though she was a wolf, she was stuck with the dull teeth and hairless body of a human. She had grown to be almost as cunning as her mother, but she couldn't spend every night curled up in her brother's fur and drinking milk from her mother's teat without feeling inadequate.
And so her father died, and gave her everything he could: his fur to keep her warm, and his teeth, which she fashioned into weapons she could use. Afterwards, she still needed to ride on the back of one of her brothers, but she could hunt, and...and they were all she had left to remember her father.
From her mother, she had nothing. Even the memory of her love was tainted by the hatred she felt toward those who killed her.
She tucked the knife into her cloak, but kept the spear. Just in case.
She had seen an open gate that led out beyond the wall, but on the way back to it she caught a smell she recognized. It was a mix of straw and horse dung, from a small wooden building. Part of her wanted to pass it by, but her brothers were far away, and she still had slow, human legs.
The horse building's door had a simple latch that she could open. Inside was a dark, stinking prison. The horses, stuck in cells barely wide enough for them to lie down in, whinnied at her presence.
"I'm leaving this human place," she announced. "Some of you might prefer captivity, but if you don't, tell me, and I'll release you."
She waited uncertainly. Some animals, like Ashitaka's elk, served out of love, others, out of fear. And many couldn't talk at all, but just in case...
"I'd like to go outside," one of the horses said. "The humans will send me back here in the morning, but until then, I wouldn't mind some fresh air."
San opened the door to his stall, as well as for several others. In the end, about seven of them were trotting around happily, munching on the grass.
"Are you content with this?" San asked them. "Just one night outside before being locked up again?"
"What's the alternative?" one of the horses said. "Leaving? We'd either get captured by other humans or eaten. Here, we're safe."
"If that's what you want," she said. "I won't force you."
"Wait," another horse said. "Where are you going?"
"Home," she said. "To the forest." The nearest forest probably wasn't the one she grew up in, but Moro was well known. Surely she'd be able to find a pack that remembered her.
"The forest," the horse repeated. "I've never been in the forest. I mean, I've traveled through them, but I never, you know, lived there."
"Come with me, then," San offered.
The horse whinnied. "I...I couldn't. I'd get eaten by wolves or bears within a week."
San smiled. So there were wolves in the forest. "If you carry me, then I promise you that nothing in the forest will harm you."
"Can you do that?"
She nodded. "Yes."
"Alright. I know I'll live to regret this, but I accept. Climb on my back, strange one. A new life awaits!"
San grinned and climbed up on the white stallion. "What's your name?"
"The humans call me Cotton," he said.
"I don't care what they call you. What's your name?"
"Alo."
"Alo? My name is San. Let's leave this place."
She didn't bother with a saddle or reins, not knowing how to use either, nor needing to. Together, they rode through the gate and into the night. San never looked back, but more than once she caught herself scratching at the strange symbol that had appeared on her right hand.
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a/n I have to say, Familiar of Zero crossovers are the easiest things to write in the world. I've already started three others that I might never publish on account of them being really crappy. I probably shouldn't have published this one either, but I feel it stands out a bit because Louise's familiar is Windalfr instead of the standard Gandalfr.
Because Windalfr does very little in canon, I'm going to establish Windalfr's powers as I understand them. First, Windalfr can talk to animals. San can already do this, but most of those animals were lesser gods. Second, just as Gandalfr can strengthen himself, Windalfr can strengthen animals. Physically, San can already run really fast and jump fifteen feet in the air, so she wouldn't need the strength bonus anyway, but to strengthen animals, she has to touch them. The duration and magnitude the bonus lasts after she lets go will vary. At one point in canon, Julio's dragon managed to defeat several other dragons, so I'm using that as the basis for this ability. Third, Windalfr can control animals. This also requires touch, and the number of animals that can be controlled at once as well as the duration of the control varies, but more intelligent animals are easier to control than dumber ones. This ability cannot be used on other familiars. Again, in canon, Julio could control his own dragon, but not his enemy's dragons. The last two abilities ignite the familiar runes, but the first one does not.
In short, Windalfr's abilities allow San to make other animals her familiars, if only temporarily. Also, just as Saito's Gandalfr abilities varied according to his relationship with his Void Mage, San's animals will be stronger and more obedient when she's on good terms with Louise than when she's off on her own.
Finally, I'd like to say a few things about San's characterization. I love her as a character, but she's not a very nice person, at least with people. She's great with animals, though. In the movie, she was motivated by hatred to balance Ashitaka's all-loving nature. Despite it all, she's still very idealistic. Admittedly, believing that she could solve all her problems just by killing the right humans wasn't the best ideal, but it was still an ideal, and she also encouraged the apes to keep on trying to plant trees and so forth. In the end, her hatred still won out, as she admitted that she loved Ashitaka, but couldn't forgive the humans. Her relationship with humans and her own inner demons are issues that I'm eager to discuss later in this story.
I don't know where she got her knife and spear, so I invented a backstory for them. Her knife is about as long as her mother's teeth, so I decided to roll with it.