A/N: So… I'm sort of embarrassed about this, but the chapter has been lying around mostly-complete for months, and I haven't really touched it that much. Well, until now, at least. Of course, I did say the updates would be slow, but really. Leaving it mostly-complete for four months is taking it a bit too far. I've been a bit unsure about the direction the story took, and have had to scrap some text repeatedly before it turned out well enough.

I know some of you may have a problem with it… but at least I can say with quite a lot of certainty that we aren't walking the same path as canon did, and let's face it, it's impossible to make everyone happy. Fair warning, there is a little bit of death later in the chapter, so if you're skittish about that, feel free to turn back now. The story rating has been set to T as a result.

Chapter Three: Onset of Disaster

Louise belatedly realized that, somewhere along the line, her jaw had surreptitiously sunk to a point where she was, in fact, gaping. Only barely, perhaps, but her ingrained 'noble instincts' still felt it prudent to point it out.

She quietly told the aforementioned instincts to kindly shut it. About two seconds ago, she had realized that she technically didn't have a Familiar in the truest sense of the word. That she had completely and utterly screwed up the summoning ritual. That she was possibly going to get killed in a very nasty way if anyone found out, and that she therefore, at least for the moment, couldn't care as much as a Founder's toenail about noble etiquette.

Then again, another thought chimed in, this is about the worst time to start behaving like some commoner. The last thing she wanted was to add yet another problem to her rapidly growing pile. It was already increasing in size at an alarming rate, and the last thing she needed was to grow it even further. Suffice to say she definitely didn't want to give anyone a reason to start digging, whether it be for information or her own grave.

It was with an audible 'clack' of teeth against teeth that her jaw swiftly slammed itself shut. Her training at the arts of the noble world, attained through year after year of growing up in a noble household, quickly began to kick in, telling her to be calm and composed in the face of danger. She had to keep her mind clear, think of a plan, and then somehow solve the situation. Unfortunately, as her realization really began to hit home, the much-needed rationality was swiftly and brutally overridden by the much stronger urge to panic.

She felt her heart beating heavily, pushing again and again almost like as if someone was trying to hammer their way out of her ribcage. Admittedly, that comparison would probably be stretching it quite a bit, but to be fair, her state of mind was not exactly the best around this specific point in time. Her breaths likewise came in short bursts, a staccato of air being repulsed only to be sucked in again just as quickly. It was so wrong. It was so utterly, impossibly wrong. The summoning ritual could not go wrong. Ever since the days of the Founder himself, it had literally not happened, not even once.

By all rights, a failure of such a magnitude would be impossible to achieve. The ritual was one of the simplest there was, and it was basically foolproof. Not only would it be utter heresy to even try, but to actually break the summoning ritual, to actually make it fail… it simply could. Not. Be. Done. Sure, you could make the entire ritual fizzle out, keep it from really starting in the first place. That was what she had been fearing beforehand. However, to twist it like she had somehow managed to… you would have to be an elf to even stand a chance, which was a terrifying thought in its own right.

Yet she had done it nonetheless. Somehow. Despite being considered an impossibility, she had somehow managed to fail at the binding without fizzling out the entire ritual. The binding always worked. Any failed casting, any mistake on the mage's part that would damage it… the entire ritual would be shut down by the very same, ancient failsafes that were established so long ago exactly to prevent this kind of situation.

Somehow, being impossibly bad did not feel like much of an accomplishment. She may have once been wishing that she could accomplish things that nobody else could, but by the Founder, this was not what she meant with those words!

There had to be some way to fix this. Some way to- wait. Where was Geth?

Louise's head whipped around, eyes searching for the strange golem which had been right in front of her just a moment ago. She turned and- there! When had it…

No, not important. Focus, Louise.

Turning herself around to face the direction she'd come from, she quickly gained speed. Catching up with her escaping Familiar was rather trivial after that. Of course, she'd realized that it wasn't really her Familiar, not truly, but the term had sort of stuck by this point. Not to mention that, despite the fact that she had screwed up the summoning somehow, she had still summoned it here to begin with, so maybe it still was?

This was so confusing. Which was, of course, not a fact which stopped Louise from calling out to the errant creature.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going?!" she began, rushing to catch up with the other being's larger steps. Geth turned, and began to speak;

"We are-" Only to be interrupted by Louise, who was, in fact, in absolutely no mood to listen right now. The question had been a rhetorical one anyway.

"I'm standing here, terrified that we're both going to get killed, and you just- you just run off!"

Geth froze. The orange apparition on its arm flickered away, and it moved to grab something off of its back. Whatever the item was, it had a coloration similar to the machine's own hull, and rapidly expanded in its hands to fit Geth's now double-handed grip. A weapon, perhaps? Were the circumstances less serious, Louise probably would have gaped at the phenomenon -internally, she was still doing that- but as it was, she had greater concerns.

Then, stopping for a moment, it spoke;

"No hostiles detected."

Argh! Her Familiar was an idiot! Of all the braindead…

"Stop it!", she bit out;
"This isn't a problem you can punch away. If they figure out what happened, they'll brand me a heretic, kill me and do Founder knows what to you!"

"This world appears to lack advanced technology" -wait what? This was ridiculous. There were airships and everything! Tristain was not primitive!
"Our weaponry is effective against unshielded targets. We would be able to eliminate threats."

Now it was offering to fight for her? That was… kind of endearing, actually, despite its ridiculous overconfidence. Still, it would definitely be best to set it straight before it went and got itself killed somehow. No matter what that thing it was holding was -some sort of musket?- it definitely wouldn't be able to stand up to a whole college of mages, much less the whole country. You would have to be the Founder himself (or maybe just a really skilled elf) in order to take down a nation single-handedly, and it clearly wasn't.

She sighed. Thick-headed indeed.
"No you wouldn't. You can't fight the country; wouldn't even make it out of the building. You're not even a mage! The academy would lock you up or kill you and blame me for everything!"

Unimpressed by her tirade, the machine quickly conjured up a response of its own.

"We have detected neither biotics nor weaponry within this structure. You are unarmed. We would not be stopped."

Frustrated at the increasingly annoying, seemingly inexhaustible supply of stupidity being thrown at her, Louise considered her options. This level of raw stupid was not something she had encountered before. What did it mean they weren't armed? The entire academy was full of mages and-

Wait. Did it not know what a mage was?

Suspecting that she may have found the source of the stupidity being leveraged at her, Louise fumbled for her wand, digging through her robes in search of the elusive item. It had to be here somewhere. She was sure she'd grabbed it before heading to breakfast, so if she just- aha!

Triumphantly, the offending magical tool was pulled out of a side pocket. Geth looked thoroughly unimpressed. Well, she'd show it. She'd demonstrate her magical prowess, and thus, she would put an end to the argument before this stupidity drove her mad. Thus, she began the incantations for a very rudimentary spell. Please don't explode.

Then again, her magic never did what she wanted it to, so maybe it wasn't that surprising that instead of the flash of light she had intended to summon, the result was very similar to her typical explosion. A burst of viridian-green energy, a miniaturized sonic boom, and then bits and pieces of stone wall were spraying out onto the floor.

Geth turned to the defaced stonework, its facial plates now conveying surprise, an unintelligible noise reverberating through the air. It stared for a moment before turning back around… and promptly snatching Louise's wand right out of her grip.

"Hey!", she protested, reaching for the stolen item. That was her wand! She could scarcely believe that her Familiar had just taken it, the item robbed from her hand with embarrassing ease. Annoyingly, Geth simply stepped out of her reach, its free hand glowing as the mysterious orange phenomenon was brandished at her precious wand.

"Give it back!", she demanded and, when no immediate handover seemed forthcoming, lunged forwards in an attempt to retrieve the desired item by force. Unfortunately, Louise was not exactly a paragon of melee combat. Her telegraphed moves were far too obvious to anyone who knew where to look, which ultimately meant that her attack was sidestepped without a second glance. Instead of successfully retrieving the item, she instead ended up moving right past her target, crashing into the wall behind it shoulder first. A small jolt of pain flashed up to her brain from her upper arm, the signal telling her brain cells one thing and one thing only: ow.

Although Louise wasn't exactly used to pain, the impact wasn't even enough to leave a real bruise, and so was shrugged off without any great effort. Slowly, she turned back towards her Familiar…

-{III}-

A moment ago.

Legion didn't pay a great deal of attention towards Louise's ineffectual flailing. The main reason for this was the fact that they were preoccupied with something a tad more important. Namely, analyzing the 'device' -if one could call it that- which had spawned the sudden energy discharge from a few moments ago.

Their omnitool worked to its full capacity, analyzing the pointy item only to come up with a rather unexpected conclusion. Namely, as far as any normal scans could tell, it was nothing more than a completely normal, mundane stick of wood. Albeit a finely-crafted stick, but a stick nonetheless. This essentially left behind three viable options.

One: Their omnitool was simply failing to detect whatever triggered the blast, thus seeing the item as harmless when in truth, it was anything but.

Two: The item was single use only, its power source expended and therefore, as common sense dictated, impossible to find. Given that Louise-Vallerie was currently attempting to retrieve said item, they deemed this the least plausible of their three options.

Three: The blast was some form of hitherto-unknown biotic power originating from the girl herself, where this item was either a decoy or some sort of conduit.

The last option was simultaneously the most and least preferable. Shields generally blocked biotic powers without much difficulty, their emitters counteracting the attacking mass effect fields, whereas shield effectiveness was not guaranteed in the other cases. However, a biotic foe could not be reliably disarmed, and judging such an enemy's power level could likewise prove difficult pre-engagement.

They neatly sidestepped a horribly telegraphed attempt by the only nearby organic to retake her stolen item.

Must determine next course of action. Building consensus…

Consensus achieved. Enquiring about nature of blast.

"This item is unfamiliar to us", they vocalized, turning to face the Vallerie girl now situated against the wall.

"We request an explanation."

"That's my wand! Give it back!", she retorted, futilely trying to retrieve the item yet again. Processing the reply, Legion neatly stepped out of her reach before she could acquire a grip.

Performing count-sorted term search 'wand'…

Error: no extranet connection. Limiting search to archived knowledge.

Thirty-seven Alliance cultural references found. No other matches.

'Wand' defined as focal point for 'magical' source of power. 'Magic' theorized as synonym for biotics. Probability of biotic conduit theory now 77.31%.

Building consensus…

Consensus achieved. Performing practical test to ascertain shield efficiency.

"We request a second demonstration", they voiced, holding the item out. The item was quickly and triumphantly snatched out of their grasp, Louise managing a very quick victory celebration before the Geth platform's words caught up with her.

"Wait", she began, clearly not having expected that particular line;
"I nearly blew a hole in the wall and you want me to try again?"

"Affirmative", they replied;
" We will temporarily refocus our shield emitters to generate a localized mass effect disturbance. Target the field when it appears."

The organic, unfortunately, mostly looked puzzled by their request. It wasn't really the disbelief from a moment ago so much as it appeared to be a simple lack of comprehension. Legion, oblivious to the fact, continued as planned, diverting power from the rest of their shield system to temporarily overcharge the emitter by their right arm. Their shielding dissipated harmlessly, leaving their platform dangerously exposed, but in exchange, a small, fluctuating orb of scintillating mass effect fields slowly took form above the palm of their hand. It wasn't a particularly stable orb -this wasn't really what the emitters were designed for- but unlike organics, the Geth had enough technological aptitude to keep the unconventional effect from collapsing entirely. They wouldn't be able to maintain it for very long -the emitter would only last about five or ten seconds before it would begin to burn out under the duress, fifteen before it was irreparably damaged- but for now, it was working.

There was one problem, however. Namely, the organic wasn't doing what she was supposed to. Instead of triggering another blast, she was staring at the miniature mass effect field, her expression a mixture of wonderment, curiosity and fear. Almost as if on instinct, she had brought her so-called 'wand' up to point at the platform, but then she had just… stopped, standing there and staring.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Louise still didn't act.

"Target the field", they urged. The word seemed to jolt the girl out of her stupor. Four seconds.

She fumbled her movements, nearly dropping the wand. Five seconds. The heat buildup within the mass effect shield emitter was starting to reach potentially hazardous levels.

Six seconds. The wand was realigned. She began to say something.

Seven seconds. No detonation yet. Heat buildup was reaching harmful levels. They would abort the attempt soon.

Eight sec-

There was an explosion. Chunks of stone rained down around them. One struck one of their headplates with a small 'clink'. They took the opportunity to shut down the overworked shield emitter, which powered off with a pitiful whine as power was re-routed to the other emitters, leaving it to cool off in peace.

They turned their optic upwards, spotting the blast hole that had torn straight through the ceiling, leaving a small opening behind. To have seen what just happened, you would more or less have to have been a machine, or possibly a really perceptive, abnormally quick Salarian. Fortunately, Legion was, in fact, a machine, and though they had not managed to process the video input in time, they could play it back to observe it in detail.

The playback began. They observed as Louise moved, her wand held out, pointing at the mass effect manifestation. Frame after frame passed unmolested… until suddenly, there was a burst of green. The semi-chaotic burst of green energy made it to the field in almost no time at all, entering the field with ease, and then…

Well, then it became rather more peculiar. As soon as the irregular energy orb made it into the mass effect field, the distorted space began to warp its shape. Frame by frame, the energy sphere narrowed until its shape was more akin to a spear or javelin than the coconut-like shape it once possessed. The energy shape conformed to the fields' whims, turned upwards by the distorted space even as it narrowed… and then it escaped the fields' grasp, soaring up to blast a hole clean through the ceiling. Exactly how this interaction worked would have required an advanced degree in theoretic mass effect applications and quite a bit of study into the workings of void magic besides. If one were to simplify it somewhat, it was essentially the case of one side of the blast having a lesser 'weight' (in layman's terms) than the other, causing the entirety of it to turn to the side as it tried to retain coherency. Against normal shielding, it probably would just have exploded, and even in the current situation, the odds of it doing what it did were probably somewhere around one in a hundred. Not that it was really that simple, but still.

Not-so-coincidentally, the struck ceiling was in fact the same ceiling which made up the floor of the relic vault. They had, after all, been interrupted in the middle of their investigations of possible breaching points, and in a way, this did indeed do the trick.

Unfortunately, the hole wasn't large enough for them to fit through it, and they found it improbable that they could replicate the happy accident which had just occurred. However, one thing they could do was to generate a combat drone with their omni-tool past the gap, and then use that to look around instead. Thus, with Louise too busy gaping at them to protest, that was exactly what they did.

-{III}-

Same place and time.

Louise was, to put it bluntly, shocked. Her Familiar had magic. Her Familiar had magic. Her Familiar had magic. She really didn't know what part of that statement was more shocking. Although she had absolutely no idea what that… thing it has summoned up was, that definitely wasn't something any commoner or golem could do. The glowing thing on its arm -which it was now sticking into the newly-created hole in the ceiling for whatever reason- should have been enough of a hint. She should have seen it sooner.

No wonder the ritual had failed. She had summoned a mage, for Founder's sake! The ritual wasn't designed for binding mages – it would have been stranger if it hadn't failed in that situation. The machine mage, if one could call it that, shouldn't have been possible to summon in the first place, yet here it was nonetheless. She wasn't sure if this made her more or less of an accidental heretic than when she thought she'd somehow sabotaged the binding herself.

Unless, a chilling thought made itself known, it is an elven creation. It made a horrifying amount of sense. If anyone, anyone could make a completely autonomous, self-aware golem and give it magical powers, it would be them. If anyone could make the summoning ritual malfunction and summon something like this, it would be them. Elves. Mortal enemies of all the Founder stood for. To even suggest working with them was tantamount to heresy, and here she was, having just helped one of their golems blow a hole in the ceiling.

Louise suddenly found herself struggling to breathe. She was so dead. If anyone found out she was consorting with elves, even keeping the unique circumstances in mind, they would probably kill her and destroy the rest of her family just in case. That was unless her mother got to her first. She was so dead. Her family could be facing the same fate. They would hurt Cattleya. Sweet, harmless Cattleya. They would burn the estate to the ground, drag the Vallerie name into the dirt, destroy everything she cared about.

Wait. I'm getting ahead of myself here.

A ray of hope presented itself. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe there was another explanation. Founder knew she couldn't think of any right now, but maybe, just maybe there was an explanation that both made sense and didn't make for a one-way trip to the grave.

She looked over to her Familiar, a creature which seemed to be the source of almost all her problems these days. It was retrieving something from the crack in the ceiling, something which only barely failed to fit through the gap. One particularly forceful tug from Geth's side later, and the item came loose, descending into the machine mage's waiting grip.

Louise could honestly say that she hadn't seen anything like the object before. The strange, tubular shape. Its white-aqua coloration, strangely pleasant to look at. The unfamiliar symbol on its side. The way Geth almost seemed to be cautious with its handling… it was peculiar, to say the least. However, she was more concerned with avoiding a sudden and untimely death by heresy than she was with figuring out what the strange item was, and the first step, she reasoned, was to simply ask.

Of course, asking her Familiar anything regularly seemed to result in a varying amount of insanity and little else, but still, it was worth a try. Perhaps, however, she could have been a little less blunt with her question.

"Were you made by elves?", she blurted, only afterwards realizing that it may not have been the most sensitive thing to ask. Not that Geth seemed to care.

"Negative", it replied, its one-eyed gaze now focused on her face. Almost immediately, Louise let out a sigh of relief. A niggling doubt remained -it could be lying- but at least in that case it probably wouldn't tell anyone else either, which was still an (admittedly smaller) relief. She really had to stop panicking about this. One realization after the other had hit her like a blast of magic in the face until she was basically panicking about every new reveal that kept coming up. She was a Vallerie. She could calm down. She would be fi-

Wait a minute. It didn't know what a mage was before. Did that mean…?

"Do you know Brimir's teachings?" If the answer was yes, she'd be fine. She would have summoned a fellow believer, another follower of the Founder's faith. A-

"Negative." -aaand of course not. Geth would be a heretic, wouldn't it? Just her luck. At this rate, she was starting to wonder whether she'd done anything that had made Brimir himself take offense, and that this entire mess was the punishment for said incident.

Then again, if that was the case, then this was a most cruel and unusual punishment which she really didn't think matched the Founder's style. It was far too unorthodox for that.

Nevertheless, she had just about had enough of this. Not only did she have to conceal the fact that her Familiar had magic of all things, but she needed to hide that it was a heretic, that it had taken something out of the ceiling, that it may or may not have been made by elves… the list went on. Enough was enough.

It was thus that Louise, with as much force as her short body could muster, grabbed onto her Familiar's arm and began to pull. She would drag it back to her room, she would lock it in there and, Founder be willing, she would finally get some peace.

Strangely, after she told it where they were going, Geth offered no protests.

-{III}-

Roughly three hours later.

Headmaster Osmond, square class mage and the man ultimately responsible for the entire college, stared unhappily at an empty spot in the air. There was something decidedly wrong with this particular spot of air. Not the air itself, but rather what was placed there. Or, more accurately, what was supposed to be placed there, but clearly wasn't. Indeed, the spot that once held the mighty staff of destruction, a spot nestled safely within the most secure vault in all of Tristania, was empty.

Disturbingly so. About an hour ago, someone had notified him that a hole between two floors had been found. Specifically, a hole which just so happened to connect the ceiling of a normal corridor with the floor of the vault of artifacts. The hole was still there, at the edge of his vision, almost taunting in its persistent presence. It wasn't large enough for a person -nobody would fit through there regardless of their stature- but some Familiars, on the other hand, could fit through there, and it just happened to be large enough to barely fit the breadth of a particular, missing staff.

In hindsight, it had been a rather narrow-minded idea to put all the enchantments on the door whilst leaving the other surfaces protected mostly through proximity to the powerful magical defenses. Sure, it would have required a tremendous amount of raw force to bust a hole in the wall large enough for a person to fit through, but such a large hole evidently wasn't a necessity for a prospective thief to accomplish their goals.

They had to retrieve it, and quickly. Step one of that was, of course, to identify the thief. The only problem with that was that there was a great deal of people with Familiars small enough to fit through the problematic hole, and he couldn't very well start pointing fingers based solely on the size of a person's Familiar. Not to mention that the nature of the hole made any finger-pointing even more dubious, as penetration wasn't exactly the strong suit of your average student's magical capabilities. Why the damage on the wall down there had the characteristic jaggedness of blast damages which resembled Louise Francoise de la Vallerie's disastrous magic more than anything.

…Nah. She couldn't manage this. His Familiar had run into hers during the night, wandering the halls just outside his own room, strangely carrying a bundle of clothing. If he didn't know better, he'd conclude that his Familiar was playing a joke on him, but the point was that the girl's Familiar was way too big to fit through this gap. Small the girl may have been, but she wasn't small enough to fit through the gap either, and if she'd used her magic to try and get the staff out of the room, the signs would be clear as day. The half-formed hypothesis was thrown out before it could fully solidify, abandoned for what seemed like more fruitful pursuits.

With that idea discarded, that left the thief as either a member of staff (unlikely), a student who knew more than they let on (possible) or an outsider who somehow managed to get all the way in here without being seen in the middle of the day (also unlikely). The rumors of the master thief Foquet being on the loose was likewise a possibility, but then again, that still left the same problems as with any other outsider. If he was really lucky, this was someone's bad idea of a prank, but he somehow doubted anyone would go to such lengths just to play a prank on him.

On the plus side, the staff of destruction was a rather large and bulky object – you wouldn't easily leave the grounds without looking strange or worse if you were carrying it around. That meant that either the staff was still on the grounds -in which case they had to start searching posthaste before this ceased being true- or someone had seen the thief escape with it, which would at least get them a lead on where to start.

It would probably be best to let the student body pitch in too. The more eyes looking, the better the chances of stopping the thief. The message would have to be spread that they were looking for a stolen item, its appearance described similarly to the staff of destruction's. The fact that the item in question was in fact the staff, which had been taken from the artifact vault, wasn't exactly necessary information, however. All they needed to be told was that it was dangerous and needed to be retrieved posthaste – quite a few students would no doubt pitch in from that information alone, given that someone informed them of the fact. Thus, that was exactly what he did.

-{III}-

The dining hall, thirty minutes later.

It was in the middle of lunch that Louise, who happened to be consuming a fish-and-potatoes dish at the time, was most rudely interrupted by a voice echoing above the din of meals gradually being consumed. A few hours ago, she had more or less shoved her most unusual maybe-not-her-Familiar into her room. Then she had shut the door as insistently as she could, for one particular reason: to finally get some sense of normalcy. Rationally, she knew that Geth was still in her room. Well, unless it had run off, which would bring a whole host of issues which she preferred not to think about. Rationally, she also knew that it hadn't, in fact, evaporated the moment she shut the door. Still, for the sake of one's sanity, one sometimes had to pretend that things were normal, that everything was going to work out just fine.

Indeed, she had spent the last several hours pretending exactly that, trying to mentally recover from the multitude of shocking revelations that had been tossed to her after breakfast. She hadn't been entirely successful. Her worries kept nagging at the back of her mind no matter what she did – the illusion of normalcy definitely hadn't been an all-encompassing one. Still, for what it was worth, she did feel better now than she had before.

Part of her noted that she was essentially hiding from her Familiar at this point. If asked, she definitely wouldn't call it hiding -she still had at least some of her noble pride- but nevertheless, the principle of the matter was probably that she was avoiding it. Sure, not having her Familiar around when everyone else did certainly affected how people saw her, but somehow, she had a feeling that actually showing off her Familiar would only make things worse.

Of course, she knew in the back of her mind that she would have to do exactly that sooner or later. Many people spent lots of time training their Familiars for that very occasion, seeking the status of victory in the competition in question. She would have to participate -sitting it out wasn't an option- and if she was to be entirely frank with herself, the end result was probably going to be huge. Whether it would be a huge success or a huge disaster was another question entirely, but she preferred not to think about that right now.

As fate would have it, however, not thinking about her Familiar would quickly prove itself as not being an option. Why? Well, suffice to say that the sudden arrival of one of the teachers set things in motion. After the initial, obligatory moments to get the hall to quiet down, servants stopping as any good servants should and students eventually following their example, there was an announcement. An announcement that, for Louise, could be summed up in one word: trouble.

An important item had been stolen. The hitherto-unidentified thief was probably still somewhere on the school grounds, and any help at catching said thief would be much appreciated. The stolen item was roughly cylindrical in shape, and possessed a white and… blue coloration? Oh dear.

The announcement continued with mentioning how the item was very dangerous, how students should be cautious. How they should call for assistance if they found the thief, not take the risk to try and retrieve the item single-handedly. However, Louise had stopped listening by this point, far too alarmed by the unsettling implications. The described item sounded suspiciously similar to what Geth had pulled out of that hole. As if she didn't have enough problems without thievery being added to the list.

Part of her wanted to just rush off then and there, but common sense dictated that such an action would look suspicious at best. The item in question, if it was indeed the same as what her Familiar had appropriated, had to be disposed of posthaste. The alternative was to be seen as a thief on top of everything else, something which wouldn't exactly be desirable, to put it lightly.

Whilst she couldn't just rush off in the middle of the announcement, however, a chance soon showed itself. Indeed, many students seemed rather eager to get a chance for glory. Some, such as a lesser noble whose name she thought was Guiche, outright stated that they were doing it to impress the ladies, and that of course a man such as him wouldn't shy away from as important a task as this. Others were more reserved, their reasons going unstated or, in one notable case, being 'I just want to help' – a rare attitude indeed in the world of noble politics, at least if it was genuine.

As for Louise, this presented a fine opportunity for her to slip out, her course set for her room even as some others left alone or split off in groups of two or three to commence their search. If only she had started to move a few minutes earlier, the ongoing events could have turned out very different indeed.

The first sign she got that something had gone horribly wrong was a very particular smell: smoke was in the air. The reason for this fact abruptly became clear as she entered the dormitory itself. This reason, disturbing as it was, was quite simple: Her door had been knocked off its hinges, half the place was on fire and Kirche's Familiar lay slain in the middle of the corridor. Its side had been ripped open by numerous small projectiles of some sort, and if she were to hazard a guess, it was probably caused by either a skilled earth mage or half a dozen muskets all hitting the same target. Of the perpetrator, there was no sign, and neither did Kirche herself seem to be close, although Louise could faintly hear the sound of magic going off somewhere in the distance, along with staccato bursts of a different, unfamiliar character. Whatever the sound was, it was decidedly odd.

Despite a large part of herself which, upon seeing the fire, reacted like a rational person and wanted to run away, she nevertheless began to approach. Slow, cautious steps gradually carried her closer to the steadily growing inferno. She reached the body of the fallen fire lizard -Flame, was it?- and carefully gave it a small prod with her left foot. The act spurred no activity from the creature, though whether it was actually dead or just very close to it was much harder to tell. She couldn't help but wince slightly – corpses were never pleasant.

Somewhere along the line, she had drawn her wand. The wooden shaft didn't feel as reassuring within her grip as she would have liked, but she still found some measure of comfort in its presence as she continued her approach. Whatever had torn the lizard open like that, she didn't want to be caught unarmed, and her malfunctioning magic was still better than nothing. Hopefully. Unless she blew herself up first.

With the door effectively having been removed from the equation, there was nothing to stop her from looking through the vacated opening. She approached, leaned forwards, and peaked through to a sight which was anything but pleasing. That her dorm room had been ruined was a very severe understatement indeed. Even if she didn't take the liberal amount of ongoing fire into consideration, it would still have looked like a war zone. Of course, it was technically a war zone, or so it would seem, but that was somewhat beside the point. The fact of the matter was, the window was smashed, the bed was anything but intact and she didn't even want to look at what had happened to the rest of the furniture. Of whoever had caused the calamity, however, there was no sign.

It was at that point that she saw the pieces of what had to have been the staff of destruction, small metallic fragments scattered about, and only then did things really hit home. They had accidentally blown a hole in the ceiling some time back, Geth had retrieved something from the opening and then the staff of destruction had mysteriously gone missing. Evidently, someone -Kirche?- had found it, taken offense, and this was the result. Oh, she was going to kill it. In the span of a single day, her new Familiar had caused her no end of problems. She may have ended up with a magically-capable Familiar that made absolutely no sense besides, but this? This was taking it one step too far.

Part of her felt dangerously close to having a breakdown… but no. Not yet. She had to… she had to keep calm – to not let her emotions get the best of her. The crying could come later – the tides may have turned against her ever since the summoning, but she had to. As of right now, she had a… different matter to attend to.

Fully intent on her great, terrible and fully justified revenge, Louise stalked off on a path towards the sounds of combat in the distance. She would find her Familiar there, she was sure of it… and when she did, there would be hell to pay.

End of file.

So, I know I said cliffhanger last update… but there appears to have been a slight off-by-one error. Well, anyway, here you go.

Sorry about Kirche's Familiar. It sort of just… happened, and by the time I'd written it, I couldn't get the story to flow any other way. I tried to consider alternatives -it's part of why this update took so long- but in the end, it just didn't work out. Besides, as Legion is prone to lethargy unless properly incentivized, I hold firm that the story needed a bit of a push to really get going… and this was it.