Their turn at the festival was over, but there were a few others after them. Louise decided she needed time to think, and so master and familiar were heading back towards her room. She'd find out the contest results later.
"You do not do things by half-measures, do you?" she asked.
"Half-measures are for people who can't commit," Musician replied cheerfully.
"…Or those with restraint."
"Tomayto, Tomahto."
"I… what?"
Musician pirouetted around her, walking backwards but seemingly walking forwards. Louise's eyes were unable to understand this, so she didn't bother. "When you have a goal, my lady, why would you ever restrain yourself?"
"Some things are more important than one's own goals." Years of having the Rule of Steel pounded into her brain suggested there was no truer statement than what she just said.
"Who taught you that nonsense?"
Louise gave him a long look. Musician looked genuinely puzzled. Did he not understand this? What kind of god put everything into his desires and cared not for anyone caught up in the mess he left behind?
…Oh Founder, that explained everything. It's not that he didn't know what he was doing. It was that he didn't care.
But he was still waiting for an answer, so… "My mother."
"I see." Short. Curt. Just short of a direct insult, with a full implication that he thought poorly of Karin de la Valliere.
They must never meet. It'd be like mixing a volcano and a blizzard. No matter who came out on top in that encounter, everyone would lose.
BOOM
BOOM
BOOM
Louise stopped and stared at the giant earth golem trying to punch through one of the academy's walls.
The golem's mage looked at her.
Louise looked right back.
Musician was doing a handstand.
Louise shrugged. "This barely rates as unusual. I blame you, familiar."
"Naturally."
"I'll show you unusual!" the cloaked mage shouted as her golem reached down and grabbed Musician.
"Help I'm being kidnapped," he said in a voice almost as flat as Tabitha's.
"Wh- What do I do?!"
"What do you want to do, my lady?" he asked with his usual smug grin. The golem lifted him up, far away from the ground.
What do I want to do?
Did it matter? Obviously, this was an enemy. If she were anyone other than Louise de la Valliere, perhaps she would fight. Her mother would take out this opponent like they were nothing. Kirche would burn through with her usual attitude. Tabitha had aerial mobility and spells many times more powerful than her own. And Musician, of course, was Musician.
Nothing she could do here would matter. And as flippant as she had been, she truly was terrified. If it had been her grabbed instead of Musician, she'd have been…
And then, suddenly, at the thought of her familiar, she had an epiphany. Musician didn't seem distressed. And had he wanted to, he could have just broken out of the stone holding him. He had the strength. She had seen it.
But he hadn't. Which… which meant… what?
What do you want to do, my lady?
He wanted to be grabbed? Why?
When you have a goal, my lady, why would you ever restrain yourself?
…Because he didn't have a goal. He had no reason to break out. It didn't hurt him. And he didn't know it was something to fight. As much as she had a hard time comprehending him, she had barely explained anything about her world, either. To him this must seem like an owner with their particularly big pet or something. Some kind of reasoning that only made sense because he was Musician.
Yeah. There he was, talking to the enemy as if his master wasn't having a small emotional crisis here on the ground. Typical Musician.
Her annoyance made her decision for her.
What do I want to do?
She channeled as much willpower she could into making as much destruction as possible, casting it at the golem's arm with nary a word. The golem's arm exploded into a thousand fragments and the wall it had been pounding on was shredded like paper. The mage seemed stunned, but Louise didn't care. "MUSICIAN!"
He stood up, brushing literal boulders off his shoulders like it was dust. "Yes, my lady?"
"That." She pointed. "Is a golem. It is far larger than any Academy Student would make. And all faculty are still at the festival."
"…Okay?"
"Which means it's an intruder, you IDIOT!"
I want to tell my familiar off.
"Thank you for this!" The golem-mage shouted, now holding a box as tall as Louise was.
Musician looked from the hole in the Academy to the box. "So it's an intruder. But what do you want to do?"
"I want you to stop her!"
She'd say that a glint appeared in Musician's eyes, but his strange spectacles made seeing his eyes impossible. She could tell that he was excited though, because the music around them was suddenly deep and expectant, as if announcing the oncoming battle. "As you wish."
And suddenly, the music took off, and so did he, axe in hand. At a speed even dragons couldn't hope to meet, he was suddenly kicking off the golem's chest, pushing it back several feet. It stabilized quickly, though, and then as the music made the most outrageous noises, the golem counterattacked. Its hand swung from the side this time, and Louise expected it to knock her familiar aside.
Instead, he stopped it. With one hand.
Both Louise and the intruder gaped.
"You know, I think your statue isn't that strong? You're not pushing its arm. You're just letting its weight do all the work." He sliced three of its fingers off, and they immediately disintegrated, turning to dirt.
The intruder seemed to recover. "Quite observant of you. But you don't seem to know how an earth mage fights."
The rest of the arm lost cohesion, flowing around Musician's body like a liquid, then solidifying. Almost immediately, Musician burst out, but the arm became as sand again, surrounding him and making it impossible to escape with brute force. The intruder shrugged. "So much for that."
Part of the golem's face exploded, knocking the intruder on her butt. Louise quickly got ready and cast another spell, hitting the golem's shoulder. As expected, the golem's remaining arm came off as well, and Musician rolled out of the rubble. "Alright! Let's go again!"
He raised his axe above his head, and the music-note tattoos on his arms glowed yellow-gold, ripping from his body and flowing through the air. He seemed to explode from the ground, colliding axe-first with the golem's leg, which shattered like glass, pieces flying every which way. He quickly turned on his heel and reared his arm back, and Louise suddenly understood his intent.
She blasted destruction at the golem's hip, detaching its leg and knocking it aside. For a moment the torso hung in the air, then Musician's arm came forwards and his axe flew straight towards it.
With a mighty crack, the torso was launched backwards into the Academy's outer wall. Louise winced. "Um… is it over?" she called out.
"It's not the end of the measure yet."
The golem's remains lurched, then rose from the ground. Rather than a humanoid shape, it had become something more akin to an octopus, with many limbs nimbly moving it and keeping it steady.
"Nifty." Musician's axe yanked itself from where it had struck and flew back to its owner, who caught it.
Their enemy was looking rather upset now. She muttered a few incantations, and then the golem rolled forwards in a twister of dirt and rock.
"She's at least Triangle-class…" Louise muttered as she prepared to unleash another spell.
But then, just as it reached her familiar, the golem's core seemed to collapse, burying him. The intruder slid down one of the 'arms' towards Louise herself. "Today's your unlucky day."
Louise cast, but a quickly-raised earth wall took the brunt of the blast, and then Louise was up to her shoulders in dirt, a stone spear about to impale her face. It was sudden, but Louise had more than enough time to realize the gravity of the situation. I failed. Zero to the end.
And then Musician was there, grabbing hold of the tip of the spear in both hands at the last moment. "We're near the end, my lady."
"Quite right," the intruder said. The spear was suddenly lengthened, its blunt end widening until it resembled a nail, and an enormous cylinder formed out of solid stone behind it. With a last incantation, the hammer fell, pounding the spear into Musician, and Musician into the suddenly-crumbling earth beneath them. Louise screamed.
"Hold onto me, Louise."
Again, the hammer came down, and Louise grabbed onto Musician as tight as she could, screaming all the while.
"…Don't let go."
Down.
Down.
And down again.
Louise hadn't fallen unconscious, but her mind had gone empty with sheer terror, and coming out of that felt somewhat like waking up. The first thing she noticed was that she could barely move. The second was that despite being underground, she could see.
She moved her head as much as she could, and saw that the horrible spear had pierced a tattooed shoulder. A glowing, golden liquid flowed like blood from the wound. And Louise couldn't help but think it was all her fault.
What did she want?
She hadn't wanted this. "Musician…"
The body pressed against hers, guarding hers, shifted somewhat. "My lady?"
"…Stop that. Don't… don't call me that."
"And why not?"
"I don't deserve to be your master." It was the truth she hadn't wanted to admit to from the moment she found out what he was. He had beaten that golem around like it was nothing. Sometimes, she'd hit it too, but Musician didn't really need her help. And the moment it seemed like they'd won, the intruder had gone after their obvious weakness.
Her.
"I don't think I ever did. I wanted a powerful familiar. I wanted proof that I was a powerful mage. But I'm not. I'm just… a weak, pathetic… child who gets angry too easily. Just for a moment, I thought I could be something… bigger? But you didn't need me. You could've even won if I just… got out of… your way…" Bitter tears ran down her cheeks. "I let the intruder get away. The princess would be ashamed of me. Mother would disown me. And I would deserve it…"
She shuddered, a pit in her gut making this situation all that much worse. It was so cramped in here, and so cold, the earth leeching every bit of heat from her body. There was a wet patch where the golden blood was soaking into her uniform, and it felt like her fear and self-loathing were slowly strangling her, closing her throat tighter and tighter…
"No."
A moment of silence.
"…No?"
"You did what you wanted to do. You fought the villain with me. You didn't just run away and let me do the work. You helped."
"But… you got hurt… and… I let her get away…"
"Nonsense. You did what you wanted to do. And I did what I wanted to do."
Silence again.
"Why?"
"Hm?"
"Why me? Why did you want to… stop me? Save me? You… you're… a god. Strong. You could do whatever you wanted. You didn't have to save me. You could've… let me die, then defeated her."
"Because I want you to live."
"Why, though?"
Musician chuckled. "You summoned me."
"I… I think we both know you could have refused."
"True. Those runes on my arm mean little. But I barely noticed that. You know I'm closely tied to music, yes?"
"Yeah…"
"I hear it, all around me, all the time. It's in the fall of a leaf to the forest floor. It's in the softest of rains…" He tilted his head upwards, seemingly seeing through the earth above them. "It's in each and every star in the night sky. It's in the dance of the planets around the sun." He turned his wrist in a semblance of a gesture. "The whole of reality is one grand symphony that flows through my very soul."
He twisted his wrist back to point at her. "It flows through yours, too. And I hear it."
Louise didn't know what to make of that. "You hear… my soul."
"Every note. Your uncertainty. Your doubt. Your pride and your self-hatred. And even though you might not think it, your hope, too."
"So you know what I'm thinking?"
"No, my lady. I can hear the music you make, a song that tells me nothing except what kind of person you are."
"…"
"And you are beautiful in ways I can barely describe."
Louise chuckled darkly. "Yeah, right."
"Louise, I'm not staying here as some sort of joke. I didn't save you because I thought you were pitiful. If I followed your commands simply because I was summoned, I wouldn't be me."
Something about this struck Louise as true. He… really wasn't here for just any reason. He wanted to be here. "Then… why?"
"It wasn't because I was summoned, but because it was you who summoned me."
Louise coughed suddenly, the tightening of her throat releasing somewhat. Tears ran down her face and she burst out laughing. She didn't quite know why. Her feelings were one big mess. The Rule of Steel fought against her battered pride, and for some reason memories of Cattleya and her kindness came through her head, only to be dismissed by her worst doubts as "Cattleya is kind to everyone."
Musician was here… because of her? Truly? Did she dare hope? Did she dare even believe she had hope left?
Because her feelings were telling her that it was impossible. They cared for her as Louise the Valliere. Louise the student. Louise the daughter. Louise the noble. But no one cared for her as just Louise. No one.
But Musician could… see her? Hear her? Without any of those roles. And he cared. Wanted to stay with her. Help her.
It was too much to believe, but a little part of her did believe him. She loved him for it. She hated him for it. She couldn't handle the way she felt about him and what he said. And all of this was coming from her ridiculous familiar. But if he really, really, could do what he said…
"Can you hear it?"
"Of course."
"Do you… understand? How I feel?"
"…I think I do."
Heh. It was funny, but…
In this moment, there was nothing that mattered more than that.
