Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny
AN: I'm breaking Destiny's inventory rules for the sake of the story. They're just gameplay elements that don't really exist in canon. Louise has multiple exotics equipped, mostly because exotic gear is a bit more memorable than whatever expansion's armor/weapons. Of course, that doesn't mean stuff of lesser rarities won't be showing up, but non Destiny players certainly won't grasp (of malok) the power of stuff like a god roll Hopscotch Pilgrim or Blast Furnace.
(Louise is wearing pretty much the same stuff my warlock is, with a Prodical Hood instead of Obsidian Mind isn't in D2.)
This is just like subclasses having fixed abilities at any one time. They don't, and guardians in lore are much more fluid than represented ingame, also for gameplay reasons. I already rekt that part by having Louise use a total mashup of Destiny 1 and Destiny 2 voidwalker in the same fight. Byf did a few pretty in depth videos on how this works in canon, particularly with the difference between Sunsinger and Dawnblade if you want to know more.
Chapter 7: Long Road Back
Tristain, Halkeginia
Near the Tristain Academy of Magic
Louise's Return + 30 Minutes
It was barely three kilometers from the forest clearing to the academy, but to Louise, it felt like a long road into the distant past. She had little intact memory of her time before becoming a guardian. Most of what was left consisted of scattered faces and vague images of locations that no longer held context or meaning. Who had she been in this world? The question was no longer simply academic.
The two men walking beside her certainly seemed to have an answer, but were totally unprepared for the state she returned in. They were expecting a terrified little girl that would be happy to be rescued, not a battle hardened warlock that had been there, killed that, and studied what was left. They were dumbstruck that her memory of this world, and her life in it, was so thoroughly degraded, even disbelieving at first, until she asked them to explain how their system of magic worked.
Apparently, according to professor Colbert at least, she had been one of the academy's top students in all matters theoretical and academic. She was herself supposed to have been able to easily answer every question that she asked them. Knowledge that had drifted away with the sands of time.
That left Louise feeling even more lost. Here she was, an unimaginably long way from home, forced back into a world that she knew virtually nothing about, but had been well versed in during some distant past stage of her life. She got the feeling that there were many battles to be fought in the near future, but not the sort that she could blast her way out of. To her dismay, Nova Bomb was probably not a universal language here.
"Saito, go up to about ten kilometers and map out the area. We're going to need all the intel we can get." She told her ghost, who immediately began to float skyward. With his excellent sensors, she would have a decent map of local topography and landmarks in a few minutes. It wouldn't be as good as real orbital scans, but probably better than anything she was likely to find locally.
"What is that amazing creature?" Osmond asked her. "Is it your familiar?"
"Saito? He's a ghost." She noticed the look on their faces. "No, not that kind of ghost." Louise paused, searching for a way to explain it that would work for people with no concept of advanced technology.
"Back home, there's a powerful being known as the Traveler. It was...crippled in a great battle long ago. Unable to defend itself anymore, it created the ghosts to find those capable of bearing its Light themselves, and empower them to do so. Those that wield the Light are known as guardians." She was over simplifying the hell out of it, but it would do for now. She continued. "They are always a team, one guardian and one ghost. I suppose that does make him my familiar."
"That magic you cast against those Taken creatures, that was this...Light?" Colbert asked.
"Yes. But Light is a spectrum, and there are three types. Solar Light, the power of flame and fire, Arc Light, the power of storm and lightning, and Void Light, the power of chaos and consumption. I'm a master voidwalker; Void Light is my specialty." She explained, deciding not to mention that she was utterly worthless at trying to do anything more than cheap party tricks with the other attunements. Hopefully that would wait to come up until some indeterminate future. Far future preferably.
"Void? Impossible. There are no void mages. The Founder was the only one, and that was six thousand years ago." Osmond responded. Louise's right arm began to glow as she coalesced the Light into her hand. A swirling sphere of violet energy floated a few centimeters above her palm, and she held it out for the skeptical man to see. He stared, awestruck. Even though he had seen her unleash such power a short time ago, it wasn't the same thing as seeing a practical display of wandless void magic up close with his own eyes.
"I don't know what a 'void mage' is, or what you would consider to be 'void magic', but I do know the Light inside and out. This is Void Light. Whether that's the same as what you call void magic here is not for me to say without an example to compare." Louise told him.
"Is there something else we can call it then? Mentioning anything that could be misinterpreted as void magic may draw the attention of the church, and that's the last thing we need right now. Not after what we did to bring you back." Colbert asked her.
"Then just call me a warlock and my power Light, or Light Magic if you must. You wouldn't be wrong in either case. Besides, I do not know if the Light and your system of magic are in any way related. The Hive, another race of monsters from back home, have powers and rituals commonly referred to as 'magic', but with no relation to the Light at all. Guardians, even those that understand it well, have very little ability to recreate Hive magic on their own." She explained. They didn't need to know about Taeko-3 and the void crystals.
"Fascinating." Osmond chirped.
"What happens when we reach your academy? It's not that much farther." Louise asked.
"Tonight, we rest. This has been a very long day for us all. Tomorrow, we must figure out what to do with you. We were expecting to return you safely after a traumatic few hours, not discover than you had lost most of your memories and learned to cast a form of strange, powerful magic." Osmond told her. "It's put us in an unexpected, and unprecedented position."
"I think it's quite obvious that she cannot continue on as a normal student in this state. I believe Louise is telling the truth about what happened to her, which means that not only is she suffering from general memory loss, but also that she has lost most, if not all of her knowledge of arcane theory." Colbert told the headmaster.
"True, professor, that is a valid point. However, this is also an opportunity. Here we have a whole new type of magic, and a very capable practitioner of this new power. There is much we could learn." Osmond wondered aloud.
"If you think I'm going to be reduced to some kind of test subject, I'd be happy to give you a demonstration as I blast my way out." Louise said flatly.
"No, no. Nothing of the sort." Osmond appeased. "There is much you could teach us of the world you were sent to, and its strange magic. Just think of how much the academy could gain by being the first source of this knowledge in Tristain, or maybe even all of Halkeginia."
"That may actually be a good idea." Saito reappeared from his mapping expedition and chimed in. "We know that there is magic in this world that can manipulate space and time on a level that would make even the Vex jealous. They've done it to you twice. If we can figure out how it works, and learn that power for ourselves…"
"Oh, you devious little light. I like the sound of that." She grinned at her ghost.
"Transport back to the Sol system, teleportation that puts blink to shame, stuff like that." Saito suggested.
"Alright, let's make a deal. I'll give you the knowledge you want, and in return you help me figure out exactly how your rituals work." She offered to the academy men.
"Tempting." Osmond said. "But there's still the not so small matter of your mother to deal with, and I know that if you succeed in mastering those spells, you'll probably just leave us to her wrath."
"I don't remember having parents at all. Is my mother someone important?" She asked.
"Louise, your mother is Karin the Heavy Wind." Colbert told her, almost showing how shocked he was at having to actually inform her of that.
"And? What's the significance? I just told you that I don't remember who she is."
"Karin is the greatest wind mage in the known world, and easily the most powerful in the last century. Armies have fled the field instead of facing her in battle, more than once in fact." Colbert continued, recalling at least three times in which that had been confirmed to occur. 'Armies' may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but thousands of trained and experienced soldiers had decided that retreating four kilometers was preferable to being thrown five through the sky by a magical tornado.
"So what do you want me to do about her?"
"When she gets word of what's happened today, she will undoubtedly make an appearance at the academy. I want my school to survive that." Osmond told her bluntly. "I want you to convince her that your...present condition is no fault of the academy or its staff."
"That seems like a reasonable price to pay. I'll do it, if you help me."
"Splendid. I'll get you full access to the academy's extensive library, and dig up everything we can on the summoning rituals and related spells. Meanwhile, you will work with professor Colbert to uncover how your Light magic works. But, that's enough planning for now, and a job for tomorrow. I'm getting too old for exciting things like this." Osmond continued.
Silence held for about a minute, until they cleared the forest and the academy walls became fully visible about 300 meters distant.
"Saito, what do we have to work with here? We're farther off the map than any guardian's ever been, and I wasn't planning for a long vacation." Louise asked her ghost.
"Not much. Your Seeker is probably still in orbit over Luna, and it'll fly itself back to the Reef if it's out of contact for too long." He said.
"That's alright. At least I trust Petra not to let anyone steal it." Louise commented, trying to remember exactly what automated emergency flight plans it had stored. It would probably end up back at a hangar on Vesta.
"Unfortunately, it's what's inside the ship that we're really going to miss. Weapons, armor, your sparrow, and all of the raw materials we had stored in its transmat matrix." He reported.
Together, guardian and ghost took stock of what they had left for this unplanned journey. Louise still had her armor, a set of Iron Symmachy robes and gloves earned through victories in the Iron Banner, an Obsidian Mind helmet, her trusty Transversive Steps, and a Binary Phoenix Bond from Lord Shaxx. New Age Black Armory shaders on everything, of course. She liked black and red.
For weapons, she of course carried her Thorn, but Saito also informed her that he held her old wire rifle in his own limited transmat matrix. She would have liked to have known that during the battle with the Taken since she thought she left the rest of her arsenal on the ship, but it was too late to matter now. No point getting mad about it. She was glad Saito had held on to the old Fallen weapon.
It was the same wire rifle she had found in the Hellmouth over a century ago, now upgraded and modified to be as good as the Queenbreaker variant some guardians operating in the Reef carried. Charging it would be an issue, as would finding rare materials to maintain it, but it was an old friend. The Fallen built their guns tough, and this one was a prime example. Louise knew she could make it work, even in a technological desert like this place was turning out to be.
It was not the loadout Louise would have picked for being stranded long term, her MIDA Multi Tool definitely would have been on that list, but at least what she had was well balanced. Saito assured her he could create more, or even replicate gear he had the designs for, but finding the materials necessary in a place like this was a long shot at best. Ammunition and electricity were a challenge, but doable. Exotic materials and rare elements were quite another.
"Don't worry, we'll be fine. We always are." Saito reassured her. "What was it that Lord Shaxx said to you that one time?" Instead of playing the actual voice of Shaxx, he did his own best impersonation of the man. " 'Look at you! At what one guardian can do, with nothing but their Ghost, their weapon and their Light.' Well, we have all of that." Louise froze mid step.
"Is something wrong?" He asked.
"You just reminded me that there's no Crucible out here." She sighed, displeasure clearly audible. She kept walking in silence after that, into the large stone structure before her.