Chapter 04
"And that is the most fundamental basis of interaction between humans and spirits to bring forth Spirit Artes." a blonde woman said before picking up another pastry and introducing it to her oral cavity.
Although it had become routine these past few days for her Familiar to dispense enormously interesting theories about the workings behind magic that could alter the way nobles throughout Halkeginia looked at the subject, Louise still found it slightly bemusing to have these lessons during breakfast or lunch.
Getting a glimpse of how magic supposedly worked on a deeper level than putting willpower into a wand, chanting an incantation, and producing an effect was truly fascinating for a student of the arcane arts who was blessed more on the theoretical than the practical side, such as herself. Disassembling the spells into their most elementary parts could possibly help her learn more about her own volatility problem. If not that, then she could probably get famous as a magic researcher if she could prove the stipulations of her Familiar, so the stories were worthwhile listening to.
What had really astonished her though was the part of Milla's explanation about the central part of each and every spell: an exchange between the caster's mana and the cooperation of lesser spirits.
Louise was aware of spirits entering into contracts with humans on several different occasions, but in each example the supernatural being in question was a mighty entity capable of assuming vaguely human shape and communication. And the contents of the dealings were more tangible as well.
Lesser spirits though seemed to be a much less flashy existence, yet incomparably more ubiquitous according to the blonde. They feed off of nobles, humans sharing their mana with them, or the faintest of magical traces produced by all living beings around them. In turn, all life would slowly wither away without them around. It was fascinating for Louise that such an essential balance could be kept while one side was completely oblivious of the other. Which was apparently the point where her Familiar, the Lord of Spirits, came into play as a kind of mediator between humans and spirits.
This gave the title a totally different meaning than the pink haired mage had thought it did. The blonde was neither born a supreme ruler of spirits nor did any actual obedience result from the title alone.
According to her, she had friends as well as enemies among the spirits, and even those totally indifferent to her existed. A title with an enormous duty and barely any privileges attached to it.
Once again, Louise didn't really know how to categorize her Familiar.
Relegating these thoughts to another time, the petite girl queried the blonde. "So if I can correctly form a contract with these lesser spirits, my spells won't end in explosions?"
"Hmm, I'm sorry to say that I can't really say anything definite on that topic." Milla admitted. "The times that I have met with Origin I can count on one hand with fingers to spare and you are the first I have met to try and succeed in interacting with the spirits of his domain. So I can't really say anything about the relation of your Spirit Artes and explosions as I'm not quite sure about the properties of the void itself.
My knowledge exhausts itself in what I know Origin to be capable of. And those abilities are as powerful as they are mysterious."
"Oh, what can this void spirit do?" Louise asked enthusiastically, lingering doubts about her identity as a void mage suppressed by curiosity.
"For certain I can only name two things." Milla began. "Origin is capable of granting wishes that can shake the very fabric of reality, though I don't know to what degree in detail since I have only witnessed it once. His second ability makes him important to the cycle of death and rebirth: the purification of souls."
"Purification of souls?" the pinkette interjected.
"When a living being dies, the part holding its consciousness and memories -its soul- leaves its body and departs towards the holy land, Canaan. There, the soul gets cleansed of all memories and attachments to its former life -be they good or bad- before returning to the world by being reborn.
For a complicated reason Canaan itself cannot handle all souls which necessitates Origin taking a part of that burden on himself lest the souls retain their taint or slip out of the wheel of reincarnation altogether. Either would spell nothing good for both man and spirit."
A being that handles the souls of the dead? What else could this be than a god, Louise thought. A god aligned with the same element as the founder. A god that took away the blemishes from one's soul, granting them a new life.
While it might seem heretical on the first glance, and maybe the second and third, surprisingly it didn't really obviously clash with anything particular written in the scriptures. What judgment the actual church as the topmost authority in interpreting them would pass down though was much harder to predict.
"This Origin sounds like a splendid person." A black haired maid interrupted from the side, having just refilled their cups after bringing a piece of confection Milla had requested. The maid's name was Siesta, and for some reason Louise didn't know, this servant choose to cater to her almost like a personal attendant. Though it would be more correct to say that this service was directed at her Familiar rather than herself.
The pink haired mages supposed that the strange aura around Milla, which apparently made it difficult for people to approach, was a good shield against the young aristocrats whose advances the maid wouldn't be capable of fending off without backlash.
Give and take. The relationship between nobles and commoners condensed down to the individual scale. Louise and her Familiar shielded the maid from trouble and in turn they got privileged treatment in comparison with their peers.
"The word I would use to describe Origin is neutral." Milla commented. "He takes no sides and will keep his word even if it means an insurmountable disadvantage to him. For more details on him, it would be wise to ask Chronos though. His relationship with Origin and the previous Maxwell reaches back to the beginning."
"Chronos? Another spirit?" Louise asked.
"Yes. He is the Spirit governing the flow of time. He was arguably the hardest enemy I had to do battle against with my friends."
"The flow of time?" Siesta asked with a confused expression, seemingly having a problem imaging the abstract nature of the spirit's powers. Seated next to her, the pink-haired mage was interested in that as well, so she waited in anticipation for Milla's answer.
Said woman proceeded to describe parts of their battle. "Regardless of how much we damaged him, he would always just stop and rewind time, returning the battle to its start. It was an exhausting battle we were only able to win thanks to a special power of one of my friends, Ludger. After wising up to Chronos' trick he waited for the moment where time had stopped but not yet reverted and activated his Chromatus, shattering Chronos' control over time long enough for us to gain victory."
A dreamy sigh escapes Siesta's lungs. "That sounds like a story straight from a fairytale. This Mr. Ludger must surely have looked quite dashing."
"His mixed hair of black and white was certainly quite unique, and judging by his daughter Elle, his future wife also was quite smitten with him. His culinary skills were also nothing to make light off."
"Daughter...?" Siesta asked depressed, a devastating blow dealt to her fantasy.
"Yes, his daughter Elle, although it is a little bit complicated. A competition between man and Origin caused the existences of slightly distorted parallel dimensions. Elle is the child of Victor, a parallel version of Ludger in one of these dimensions. In our final confrontation against Origin, Ludger had to choose between her and himself in order to have Origin continue purifying souls at Canaan. Our Ludger chose to sacrifice himself to allow Elle to survive. From then on she grew into a fine fighter with the help and support of my friends and eventually took over the company Ludger's family had founded, going down in history as an influential arbiter between Rieze-Maxia and Elympios."
"..." Louise and Siesta blankly stared at Milla. "Sometimes I wonder why I even still try to make sense of your stories..." Louise mutters.
"Um, excuse my question, but how do you know that she went down in history? I got the image that this Elle was a child when you traveled with her, Miss Maxwell." Siesta asked.
"Well, I occasionally take a peak at how the world is doing and sometimes Spirits tell me of their experiences." the blonde replied.
"But wouldn't that mean you must have been born a long time ago?"
"I don't know whether it can be called "birth", but I was created by the previous Maxwell a little bit over a thousand years ago in the image of a woman he had fallen in love with another millennium before that. Incidentally that woman was also Ludger's ancestor.
The threads of fate are truly a mysterious thing."
"Thousand years..." Siesta looked at her while lost in thought.
"The time I spent on earth though is a lot shorter, barely reaching a few decades. I think Rowen might still beat me in that by a bit."
"Another one of your friends?" Louise asked, having swallowed her Familiar's proclaimed age without much doubt. It was in fact one of the less shocking statements the woman had given off.
"Yes, Rowen Ilbert, called the Conductor for his delicate and almost artistic direction of the battlefield, was the oldest and most skilled in the use of Spirit Artes among our group. His advice was always worth listening to and he helped my with my Spirit Artes after Sylph and the others were temporarily sealed. Without Rowen's insights into both strategy and the military we probably wouldn't have completed our journey.
He especially prided himself on his "gentlemanly" behavior and his beard."
"You needed a teacher for your magic?" the petite mage asked interested.
"Oh yes, all of the twenty years up until that the Four Great Spirits had taken care of me and acted as my arms and legs in most matters. As a result I spent those years ignorant of worldly pleasures like food."
"... you didn't EAT until you were twenty?" Looking at the pleasure she seemed to take in decimating all manner of food she stumbled upon, Louise found herself a strangely fitting reason for one of her Familiar's idiosyncrasies.
"Indeed. I had to learn all those things from scratch, including Spirit Artes. If you want to, I can later show you some simple exercises Rowen taught me. Though he did lament that I never took long to master them..."
"That sounds great!" Louise exclaimed. The person who taught her Familiar how to make floating orbs of illumination and turn into a flash of light sounded like person much to her liking and had apparently been quite skilled at magic. Maybe she could do also do replicate her Familiars feats if she followed these teachings, even if the end result was only a floating orb, it would heave her up a gigantic step on the social ladder. Not to mention the wonders it would do for her self-worth...
"Let's go immediately after afternoon classes finish! The forest outside the academy should be a good place."
For Louise at least. Nobody in danger of being exploded and nobody there to see her fail...
"And why is she here?" Louise asked, pointing at the black-haired maid holding a basket.
"She offered to take care of refreshments and tea for us." Milla stated as a matter of fact.
Her Master huffed once before dropping the topic. "Let's get started."
"Fine, let us start. Because I don't know any Artes for the Void Spirits, let's try the most basic step of Artes." the blonde started. "The most simple interaction between human and spirit is a one-sided offering. Normally a Spirit Arte is a kind of contract which contains a lot of instructions on what you want the Spirits to do in exchange for your mana, but we'll skip this for the start.
Just try to offer them you mana. The surrounding Spirits should greedily latch onto you. But they can't take your mana without invoking some sort of effect, so there is guaranteed to be some phenomenon occurring."
Louise and Siesta attentively listened to Milla's explanation. When she was finished, the mage posed a simple question to the Lord of Spirits:
"And how do I do that? Offer them my mana I mean."
"Hmm." Milla pondered. "In essence you have to open yourself to the world. If normal Artes are like making a complex key for a small door, this is simply throwing open a door without lock to its limit. It should be best to start with how you usually use magic and then forget everything but the feeling behind it. It should give you a vague feeling of the flow of mana being like a small river. Then try to move start and end of the river closer to each other."
"I'm not sure whether that sounds easy or incredibly hard, but I'll try!" Louise proclaimed enthusiastically.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
She then sat down on the checkered blanket, Siesta had spread that out for them, in an uncouth but comfortable way before intently staring at her wand in silence. She repeatedly closed her eyes and concentrated deeply for a few moments before returning to gazing at the stick in her hand.
When Siesta, who sat herself demurely in a corner of the blanket also started trying it, Milla gently placed her hand onto her shoulder.
"Doing this will not work for you, Siesta. Only people with a developed mana lobe generate a noticeable amount of mana, so achieving what Louise is aiming for is impossible."
"Oh... there really is an insurmountable wall between noble and commoner."
"When it comes to pure Spirit Artes that certainly is true. But with Spiritess that gap can be bridged.
I don't understand the detailed workings of them, but they make it possible to employ the service of a Spirit that has turned into a Spirit Fossil."
"That sounds amazing! So if you have that you can be as strong as a mage?" the maid enthusiastically asked.
"It mostly depends on the Spirit Fossil used. Not many Spirits are strong enough and have enough battle experience to stand up against a good Spirit Artes user.
On the other hand, the Great Spirit of Ice, Celsius was powerful enough to give me and my friends a good fight. However, stronger Spirits also tend to have a stronger will which makes it more of working with them than having them work for you."
"And everyone can do this if they have one of those spirit fossils?"
Milla nodded in affirmation. "Yes, the Spiritess were developed for exactly that purpose. But Spirit Fossils should be extremely rare here. They only form when a Spirit dies, and that in itself is really unusual as they have no natural lifespan."
"But if I could find one of those would you show me how to use it?"
"I still have some of the necessary components, so I don't see why not." the blonde agreed with a smile.
Siesta beamed in return and hastily made to stand up before she stopped abruptly and turned to Milla again with a slight blush of embarrassment on her face. "One short question. How do spirit fossils look like?"
"Spirit fossils usually look like azure crystals and emit a faint glow. They should be quite easy to recognize. Although without a proper receptacle, the mana they contain quickly dissipates, making them unusable."
"!" a flash of recognition appeared on the black haired girl's face and she sat down in thoughtful silence.
The Lord of Spirits didn't mind her sudden silence, taking it in as another amusing behavior of humans.
Louise meanwhile hadn't let herself get distracted by their conversation and had continued the exercise. And she needed that concentration too. She did indeed feel something vaguely similar to what her Familiar had described, but it felt distant and like looking through a heavily distorted pane of glass. And when even just being aware of it was this hard, trying to manipulate it would be like trying to sculpt flames.
If she really wanted to accomplish this - if it was possible in the first place - she would need a lot of training to accomplish it. But she, who had stubbornly persisted against all who denounced her, continuing to try the same spells time and time again without any hint of success, she would never shy away from such a challenge. Not as long as as she could see the possibility hidden inside her Familiar's teachings.
Hours later, the trio was still sitting in the shade of the trees. The sun had already passed its zenith quite some time ago yet Louise continued her training with a mental fortitude of steel. Milla and Siesta had taken the time to enjoy the food Siesta had prepared. In return for the morsels presented to her, Milla regaled Siesta with stories from her adventurous life, touching upon her comrades and several interesting and amusing positions she had found herself in.
Never in her life would Siesta have thought that the beautiful woman before her had risen to the top of a fighting arena, the likes of which she had only heard of in rumors to exist beyond the great desert.
Paying no heed to the merry atmosphere around her, Louise was sweating, the toll of her exercises chiseling a haggard look onto her face. It was a state she wouldn't dare to be seen in inside the halls of the academy, or worse, to be caught in by her arch nemesis. She felt as though she had ran up and down the tower of wind. A couple of dozen times. Wearing plate armor. Made of Gold.
In short, she was absolutely beat.
Yet she wasn't inclined to stop quite yet.
Results! Actual, discernible differences one could call results!
Before, no matter what she had tried, changed, or researched had yielded anything but an explosion. Yes, there was some consistence in the size of the explosion depending on the spell she wanted to use, but in the end, it was always just an explosion.
But in the short span of a few hours she had already proceeded quite a bit from her starting point. Where before the flow of mana, as her Familiar had explained it, had been so distant that reaching for it had seemed like an impossibility. Its shape had been blurry and indistinguishable. The feeling it emitted faint, like the slightest whisper in a downpour.
Now? Now she had closed in on it quite a lot in the metaphysical sense. The distance now appeared more like watching a steady stream of water dripping down the rain gutter from beyond her window in the academy. She could roughly gauge the rate or flow of this mystical flow and even make out its impossible coloration of nothingness, swallowing up the faintest particles of every color in rainbow like fireflies swarming around a mountain stream.
The beauty of this thing, seemingly just beyond the edge of her fingertips, had entrance Louise as she stared unblinkingly at the tip of her wand. She wanted, no needed, to push further. To open the window and put her hand in the stream. Feel the surge of void on her fingers adorned by the sparkle of its complements.
She was only ripped out of her exhausted trance by a dainty hand snaking over her shoulder and around her head, pleasantly cool fingers softly closing her eyes, easing the strain her penetrative stare had caused them.
"There is no need to rush, Louise." Milla softly whispered into her ear. A second arm had made its way around her body, working in concert with its partner to gently pull the pink haired girl back into the embrace of the Lord of Spirits. "You have already made great progress. And have paid the price. As exhausted as you are now, you will not advance any further. So leave everything to me and relax for now."
The soothing combination of the fluffy warmth behind herself, the soft fingers covering her eyelids, and her own exhaustion quickly made Louise succumb to sleep as the fatigue she had stockpiled over the past hours crept out from under the iron lid she had placed on it. When her voice wouldn't even allow her to voice the obligatory denial of her own imperfection, the petite mage herself admitted that now was an appropriate moment for rest.
Slumping backwards into the arms of her Familiar, Louise allowed herself to be picked up by the blonde in a bridal carry. No words of complaint were raised by the pinkette at this treatment as her breathing had already become steady and her consciousness had departed towards the land of dreams.
With a small smile on Milla's lips and a slight inclination of her head, Siesta understood the implied meaning without the need for words which might wake the young girl. In short order the remaining food stuffs and the blanket vanished into the basked they had appeared from, all the while raising no noise surpassing the gentle rustling of the leaves around them. A comfortable silence accompanied the trio on their way back to the academy gates.
A posh man with twirled mustache, eyebrows and sideburns smirked as he took hold of the floating scroll in front of him. Unfurling the document, he let a quick glance pass over the headmaster's signature now present on it, before rolling it up again and addressing Old Osmond.
"The understanding and cooperation of the Academy are truly appreciated."
With a slight note of self-deprecation swinging in his voice, the old mage answered:
"It is a direct order of the royal family, who could dare to lack understanding or refuse cooperation."
Unwilling to listen to what would surely be the headmaster's veiled gripes with the order, Count Motte simply turned around with what barely amounted to a farewell and left the room.
He was pleasantly surprised as he left the office, as the voluptuous Mrs. Longueville was about to enter. As his duties as a royal messenger were accomplished for now, the pompous man allowed himself the leisure to admire the secretary's bountiful assets while inviting her for a dinner.
While the woman was a beautiful flower he would like to add to his garden, her position as Old Osmond's helper and eye-candy somewhat tied his hands. If she would come to his side of her own accord though, he would welcome her with open arms.
The same thing could not be said about one of the maids that had caught his eye earlier today.
At first, a girl with rare, black hair had caught his eye and roused his desire. The shape of her body was certainly curvaceous enough to promise a pleasant master-servant relationship. However, that girl had quickly left Count Motte's mind after she had followed one of the schoolgirls and what he presumed to be a foreign noble. Not having had a good look at her front -he wanted to enjoy looking at their faces as much as the rest of their bodies- and her probably being a personal, or at least specialized servant rather than one of the standard Academy maids, made her more trouble than worth to him.
And he had quickly forgotten about that maid when another, almost equally "equipped" maid fumbled while watering one of the flowerbeds, allowing him to make skin-tight observations of her qualifications to work for him. Liking what he saw, the lecherous Count had hashed out a change of employment with Old Osmond as part of the social niceties they had exchanged before getting into the truly important matters.
He would only later realize that the maid had not spilled water on herself by accident and come to regret the decisions made by his lower body.
A new rhythm had found its way into Louise's life that was both exhausting and rewarding at the same time.
Her day would start by being woken up by her Familiar, before quickly freshening and dressing up for the day. Afterwards, she would follow Milla's enthusiastic gait towards the Alviss Hall, in the pursuit of breakfast. It had been amazing with how little resistance the woman had taken up seat between all the bundles of self-entitlement that studied at the academy, but Louise simply attributed it to the Lord of Spirit's strange charisma, deciding not to stress out her mind over matters pertaining to her Familiar.
The major part of the day was spent as was appropriate for a student: inside a classroom. Even though there had been some big changes, the pink haired girl was still at the Tristain Academy of Magic to learn.
What really stood in stark contrast to the past, was how her time after classes was spend.
Before, she had done nothing but exhaust herself in futile attempts at gaining some new insight from old tomes in the library, practicing the same spells over and over, only to always result in explosions, or simply wallow in self-pity as a small ball of misery where nobody could see her.
But now, her afternoons where much more fulfilling. Under Milla's often somewhat cryptic guidance, Louise had a clearly defined task set out before her, and was actually seeing some progress in the efforts she put in towards it. The exhaustion that settled in as a result of this training was something she almost welcomed as well. It shortened the time between fruitful endeavors and being claimed by the calming unconscious of nightmare-free sleep such, that her brain didn't find the opportunity to wander to the dark and depressing places it had frequented so much before.
As a bonus to all of this, her more active daily schedule had minimized the time her arch-nemesis heckled her. And when the busty Germanian did, Louise felt its sting strangely muted.
However, this routine was shook up one morning, when the trio of Louise and Milla, followed by Siesta, was passing through one of the arched corridors connecting the towers of the academy.
In the courtyard, a lively atmosphere had spread as several students and their familiars were up and about, training all sorts of tricks, although some were less acrobatic in nature, such as Guiche's words of encouragement to his giant mole.
The scenery took a few seconds for Louise's brain to process, before all the blood from her face seemed to drain and she froze in place. Noticing the sudden change in the girl, Milla stopped as well and looked at the courtyard in hopes of finding what had caused this reaction. Before she could identify the source of the pink-haired girl's distress, Siesta helpfully jumped in.
"They are all training for the upcoming Familiar Exhibition. Especially since her Highness, Princess Henrietta, will be in attendance this year."
"I totally forgot" Louise said with a haunted expression. "What should I do?"
"What is this Familiar Exhibition? Judging from the circumstances, the summoned beings and their summoners are to put on a show?" Milla mused.
Her diminutive summoner turned fully towards her before nodding slightly. "It is a tradition and an opportunity for students to show off how impressive their familiars are, and how well they can work with them. Doubly so if the Princess is in attendance. Inversely, a bad performance will bring shame and disgrace on you." The sudden anxiety had her chewing at her thumbnail.
"So we need to prepare something fancy looking for this competition?" the blonde asked while looking at the stream of fire bursting from Flame, Kirche's Salamander, get ever so close to singing Guiche and Verdandi. "Do you have anything in mind?"
Shaking her head with a dejected expression, Louise gave out a slight sigh.
"No. With everything that has been happening I was so busy that it completely slipped my mind." She then looked hopefully at Milla. "Is there anything you think you can do on a short notice that looks impressive?"
The Lord of Spirits put a finger to her chin in thought. Sure, there were a lot of spells in her repertoire she could use, but would her showing off really bring the effect that Louise desired? From their interactions so far, Milla knew that the one thing the girl needed the most was acknowledgment and praise for something she herself had done. Just as being privileged for being born into aristocracy, it would harm rather than help her to be just the summoner of an impressive Familiar without any achievement of her own to go along with it.
So, wouldn't it be better if, instead of Milla herself stealing the march so to say, the two of them did something for this exhibition together?
"I might have an idea."
Thankfully, the blonde had just the right thing at hand.