Dire Familiar chapter 3
Disclaimer: I don't own anything other than the computer I write on, especially not D&D or Familiar of Zero, so don't sue me. If I did own either of them you better believe there would be some changes.
Author's ramble: I just finished re-watching the first couple of episodes, and am reminded again how much I loathe how stupid both Saito and Louise start out as. What is worse is the unspoken prejudice and arrogance of all the nobles about how the world works. This tells (minor in sociology) me several things about how Tristain society functions, most of them bad, considering this is a stable society that has existed for 6,000 years.
Super Kudoes go to Knolden for pointing out that Dire animals of any type in D&D are characterized by bony spikes exiting their skin at various points such as near joints. I was planning to put that in the story when they are found by Siesta as a plot hook to help teach Louise that commoners are intelligent, as they are rather reduced and hidden by his fur due to his young age and when Louise initially checked him she was exhausted and in low light. (which would give at least a -4 on her crappy spot check as a sorcerer)
Several people have wondered at the concept of using a puppy as a magical nuke such as Brimir originally used the Heart of God for. Rest assured, no puppies will be nuked in this fanfic.
To everyone else who read and reviewed thank you for your encouragement and continued input.
To the 693 visitors that didn't review as of me starting to write this, you make me very sad, hopefully all of you are just shy and will someday develop the courage to tell me what you think of my story, even if it will be only a few words.
Diverging from Zero no Tsukaima: As several people have pointed out, I am making magic a more dangerous proposition than is shown in the anime. After all, as magic is shown in the anime, nothing more is involved than repeating bad poetry and willing something to happen. I refuse to believe that is how magic should work, and there would not be any need for an entire national academy that is solely dedicated towards only teaching the basics of magic to its noble students for at least 2 years that will turn out a respectably large number of dot and line mages (if anyone can tell me if the magical academy lasts more than 2 years I would appreciate it, haven't found anything on any wiki).
Geography: Yes, I am bringing that up, as while a great deal is covered in regards to the Eastern desert where the elves are from, and there are regular mentions of Rhub Al'Kali which exists beyond that, but there is no discussion of either the northern regions, nor to the south, which seem to peak out as being unclaimed by civilization in the only map of Familiar of Zero that I can find on any wiki. Thus, most of the mages should immediately assume that a Dire Wolf could have come from some distant location. Additionally, nations don't just declare war for no reason, yet at least two nations over the course of the series do exactly that. While the series was originally designed as a romantic harem comedy in a fantasy setting, there isn't a romantic lead summoned, leaving a mainly female cast to deal with the realities of the world and not romance.
Not following Canon: As I have never read any of the books, much of what I use will be based on the four seasons of the anime as well as using what I can find on the various wikis in order to fill in the gaps. As such, most of the blanks will be invented by me in accordance with how I think politics and economic issues are handled by a 6,000 year old civilization with a culture stuck in pre-Enlightenment conditions due to the presence of magic and the Brimiric Faith.
Louise's Maturity: While many nobles at the academy are raised to be useless twits, (Guiche) Louise was theoretically raised by her mother under the Rule of Steel, which demands that a noble shoulder the consequences of their actions as well as strive to fulfill all of the obligations that they take on as being nobility. Considering that she was perfectly willing attempt to kill Saito with square level magic for kissing her daughter in the anime, only failing due to him having Derflinger, Louise has every expectation that she will be held to a high standard of nobility and get punished if she fails. Growing up in this kind of environment is something that should make any 16 year old grow up fast. Desperate to be recognized as a noble and making decisions based on emotions as seen in the anime yes, but she also should recognize there are consequences to her actions, though she may only think of them afterwords.
Enough of me rambling though
CHAPTER 3 START
The sun had finally come up and Elder Sister was still sleeping. At home with Mother and Father, the pack would be awakening by now. The sun was up and it was time to begin setting out to track food for the hunters as well as a chance to begin teaching the young how to hunt and play. He couldn't really blame Elder Sister though as the nest of soft things that they had slept on was very warm and soft, more so than anything else that he had ever experienced.
But it was daytime now and time so he would wake up Elder sister just like mother used to wake him when he was younger.
One minute Louise was comfortably asleep after an exhausting day, and then she was quickly returned to consciousness by a large rough tongue running over the side of her face.
"Aaaagghh, wha? What?" she mumbled through sleep encrusted eyes as the sensation stopped and though her eyes stayed close, she could feel a warm body close to her, as well as a sudden rotten odor of something terrible breathing on her. Shortly after that as she rolled to get away from whatever monster was in her room, her movements came to abrupt halt as she fell off the side of her bed.
Sitting up from her impromptu landing spot along with several of her askew blankets, Louise couldn't help but sit for a moment in shock at her abrupt awakening. The shock though quickly changed to outrage on seeing that no monster was present, just her familiar standing on her bed instead of obediently staying on the pile of hay that she had prepared for him the day before.
"You, you, you DOG! How dare you…" she couldn't help but let her voice peter out as she thought to herself of what exactly she had expected when she tried to summon a wolf as her familiar.
Taking a glance at the brightening window, which told her that she had been awakened at least an hour before she would have woken up on her own, she couldn't help the sudden yawn that ripped through her.
Which was strange, since while it was earlier than she was used to, there was no reason that she should feel this exhausted, where it wasn't just her eyes that struggled to stay open, but instead a struggle to sit up and disentangle herself from the several sheets and comforters that she had pulled up the night before, that ordinarily would have been kicked off sometime during the night as she got too warm.
From her position lying on the bed from where she had been knocked down, Louise couldn't help but shiver as a wash of cold realization ran over her. While she had never experienced this before, it had been covered repeatedly throughout their first year. Now that the adrenaline and later shock from yesterday had completely faded, she could feel the physical weakness associated with critically drained willpower clearly. On top of that, even under all of her sheets and the quilt of her bed, her hands and feet were freezing, despite it not being particularly cold in her room. This meant that not only was her willpower drained to the point where casting would be nearly impossible, but she had tapped deeper than that, which was the reason that instead of just mental tiredness, she was also experiencing physical symptoms. Most importantly, instead of just being unable to cast spells until her willpower recovered, she would need to both stay warm as well as eat heavily in order to recover physically from the summoning.
Sitting there she couldn't help as her hands started to shake from the realization of how close she had come to being killed like so many others from modifying the summoning and attempting to get a familiar beyond their ability. Just a little more power thrown into the ritual and it would likely have killed her.
As she sat there and panicked, her familiar had gotten bored of watching her and came over to the side of the bed and proceeded to try to lick her hair in order to get her attention similar to how he had woken her earlier. When that received nothing more than a shaky shove, her familiar promptly upped the ante and jumped down to the floor at her feet and then pushed her over and stood over her. Unlike before when she was asleep however, he then promptly lay down on top of her, practically squishing her.
While the earlier distractions weren't enough to break her out of her shock, it was infinitely harder to ignore a wolf lying on top of her that weighed almost twice as much as she did.
After several seconds of pushing and squirming, Louise managed to get herself out from under her familiar and untangled from her sheets to start getting dressed for the day. For today however, that meant donning the winter uniform of heavy wool with tights underneath her skirt as well as gloves in order to stay warm while she recovered from the drain of the near lethal summoning that she had performed.
In between her slow rising and moving slowly as she got dressed, she managed to leave for breakfast at around her normal time, meaning that she would likely be one of the earlier students at breakfast. This practice had become habit over the course of her first year due to the difficulty of finding a free spot to sit when she was recognized as being something that all nobles secretly feared and despised, being incapable of controlling her magic.
Unfortunately, as she exited her room and headed out with her familiar, she encountered Kirche and her fire lizard also heading down to the Alviss dining hall.
Of course Kirche new that she would be meeting with Louise on the way to breakfast. To that end she had planned out when she would leave her room just down the hall in order to encounter Louse just as she was leaving. Despite teasing Louise relentlessly for her failure to successfully use her magic, Kirche had no desire to see Louise expelled. After all, from the sheer power and variety of explosions that she regularly generated, there was absolutely no way that she lacked magic like the occasional magical blunt that would crop up from time to time in the more inbred sections of the nobility.
Personally, she thought that she had some sort of mental block that was causing the problem.
Of course, it was even better the way that she would puff up and spit right back at her whenever she so much as verbally poked her during class. As Kirche the Ardent Flame, there was no way that she would let such a flame lie still and quiet when it was so easy to provoke Louise into such a roaring inferno of anger and passion.
At her side Flame grumbled to himself about the cold of the morning hallway.
"Oh hush you, breakfast will come soon enough if you just wait." She responded to the feelings that that reverberated down her link with her familiar. This of course reminded her of what she was doing out here in the hallway for, namely getting a chance to get a good look at the familiar that Louise had managed to summon yesterday.
Despite Louise's boasts of summoning a noble and amazing familiar, she had managed to pull off a close second with her wolf, clearly both exotic to Tristain as well as magical based on its sheer size.
And while ordinarily she would be more than willing to challenge Louise on not managing to pull off her boasts, there was something to be said for knowing when to acknowledge a rival and not push until all the facts were known. Especially the rather important question of whether Louise could control her familiar appropriately, as she had no desire to try to fight off an angry wolf of that size, regardless of how old it appeared to be.
As the door to Louise's room opened and its occupant entered the hallway however, she could barely keep herself from gaping like a commoner.
Louise, someone how always maintained her image as a noble, and despite the makeup to hide it, was clearly pale and drawn. What was more obvious however was her clothing. Instead of the standard summer uniform that Louise almost religiously wore, she was dressed in the winter uniform, as well as having on a thin pair of gloves.
Between those two facts, Kirche could tell that whatever had happened, it was big. And not big like if Louise finally broke out of her prudishness with boys, but much worse.
At Louise's tired and challenging look though, she was reminded of her plan to poke Louise for details about her new familiar, and more importantly what level of control she had over it.
"So this is your noble and beautiful familiar Louise? At least it's bigger than certain other assets of the Valliere." she asked with subtle arm under chest in order to 'emphasize' exactly what kind of asset she was talking about.
"That's none of your business, you shameless Zerbst!" was her only response before she moved down the hall with her familiar following behind her with nothing more than a low growl at Flame.
Standing there as Louise kept going, she couldn't help but worry even more. Louise had a tame familiar, which was excellent considering that she managed to summon a highly predatory species, normally a good thing in a normal mage. But considering her normal success rate with magic it was more than slightly disturbing. More than that however was how tired she was acting. Combined with the heavier winter clothing, the only question in Kirche's mind was how the hell Louise could be suffering from willpower exhaustion. This was a girl that regularly managed to detonate entire classes without even looking the slightest bit winded.
Which prompted the question of what in the world she had managed to summon?
Sure, a wolf was a respectable enough familiar, but that sort of magical exhaustion from someone of Louise's lineage and likely magical power should have been more than enough to summon even a rare giant breed of wolf without the sort of willpower exhaustion that Louise was showing. If she had managed to get a dragon like Tabitha or some other rare and powerful familiar it would be understandable, but there was no way that wolf could be that powerful.
Right?
While Louise had set out for the Alviss Dining Hall in search of a large breakfast to help deal with her current exhaustion, her familiar had been dropped off outside the dining hall with the other familiars to await servants to feed them. This of course was followed up with an order for her familiar to not eat or attack either the other familiars or any of the servants that would be bringing them food.
In order to deal with the sudden influx of new familiars at the academy, the kitchen had responded by setting out a wide variety of possible food for the familiars in a fashion similar to a buffet with a group of servants there in order to note down any special dietary needs for some of the more exotic familiars as well as replenish the tables of food as they ran low.
Siesta, who normally would be serving in the dining hall directly had been reassigned to serving the familiars, and more specifically the carnivorous familiars as she had successfully dealt with Louise's familiar the night before and Marteu, the head chef, hoped that she would manage to continue to deal with feeding at least some of the other predatory familiars with similar success. In past years they had managed to avoid serious injuries, but for new familiars there was always the risk of an accident. Of course if they were injured the responsible familiar's master had to pay a fine and for a healer, but there was still the potential for a lethal accident with an unattended familiar, especially one that had recently been summoned.
Luckily for Siesta, the two largest carnivores among the familiars were Louise's familiar and Tabitha's Sylphid, a young wind dragon that had proven to be extremely docile in the short time that Tabitha had summoned her. Not taking chances though, Siesta had made sure that all of their food was laid out ahead of time and that she was safely out of the way prior to any of the student's arrival so as to avoid any chance of an accident, even from one of the smaller familiars.
After Louise had left her familiar in order to get breakfast for herself, Siesta moved carefully over to the young wolf in order to continue to become acquainted as the wolf had been friendly the previous night and would hopefully provide Siesta with an additional layer of safety from any of the other smaller carnivores that were present at the table and ripping away at the meat that had been placed in various sized bowls.
While being around a giant wolf normally wouldn't be the smartest thing for the maid to do, in this case several factors made Siesta far more confident than normal. First, she had already encountered the familiar the previous night and he had acted more like a friendly dog than as a vicious predator that he would likely become in the wild. Second, being near a non-hungry wolf that was friendly would likely be far safer than standing alone near a group of predators in the middle of eating. And third, while not quite as tall as herself, he was still a puppy, and reminded Siesta quite strongly of several of the dogs that she had grown up with on her parents' farm in the village of Tarbes.
Thankfully for Louise, Siesta's decision to move closer to her familiar came just in time to watch as he began to move toward a table filled with fruit where many of the herbivorous familiar's were feeding.
Trailing behind the wolf, Siesta noticed rather quickly what had caught the attention of her protection and proceeded to do her best to prevent any potential conflict that might occur.
"Mr. Wolf! No, bad dog! No hunting familiars!" she called trailing after the young familiar that had begun to crouch and move forward as if to stalk a nearby frog that was on the ground, having not been interested in the offering of fruit on the nearby table.
Despite several calls to in order to stop him as he began to stalk the frog slowly hopping away from him in the grass, the familiar failed to stop. Finally, Siesta managed to get next to the young wolf and try to push him back towards Sylphid and the other predatory familiars.
Getting around in front and to the side of the slow moving familiar, Siesta could only pray to Brimir that this would work as she put her hands on the wolf's shoulder and try to push him back and to the side in order to stop the familiar. Hopefully Mr. Wolf would stop and not attack her, but based on last night's interaction, Siesta could only hope that he continued to act like one of her family's dogs and not try to attack her for interfering.
After several seconds of pushing on his shoulder in an attempt to turn the large familiar, pain suddenly bloomed in her right hand, along with an abrupt halt to the familiar's advance.
Pulling back her now crimson hand, Siesta could do nothing but stare at her gashed hand that was now throbbing with intense pain whenever she tried to so much as move her fingers.
After getting Elder Sister up, everything had been boring with her put on the fake extra fur from before. After leaving their room though, meeting the fire two-legger and the fire lizard had been very interesting. After the two-legger and Elder Sister had talked at each other with funny sounds, Elder Sister had been quick to go to HUGE cave with all sorts of people and spicy smells coming from it. Before entering though, she had taken him over to a table where food had been laid out and told him that he was supposed to eat and not bother any of the other two-leggers that were around.
Of course, he hadn't understood the word noises that she had made, but the meaning was clear from the tone and how her body posture presented itself, but that was okay since he wasn't really interested in the other two-leggers any way since the food providing two-legger was already out in the fake meadow with more than enough food for himself and the other hunters. Of course if any of them tried to take what he was eating he was confident that he could show them that he and Elder Sister were the Alphas in this giant pack. Of course the big flying lizard that was already present was worrisome, but he was confident that he was stronger than everything else. And the big lizard smelled like a youngling too, so there was no way that it could be a better hunter than him, which to his mind was a big part of who was the Alpha.
After eating his fill from the various dishes laid out by the food providing two-legger, the question of what to do arose.
Of course any parent could tell you that it was a recipe for disaster when a young child of any particular species is bored and without supervision.
They create their own distraction.
For the wolf, this consisted of preparing himself to show the lizard that had eaten more than himself that even if it was bigger and could eat more, that he was still the better hunter of the two, and thus more important by far.
Of course, prey that were over at the other table had potential, but since they had another two-legger to feed them, he knew that that might not be a good idea, as they clearly had some sort of place in the pack, even if it was as someone else's prey.
But the lone frog hopping around in the grass off to the side was perfect. After all, one of the first things that Father had taught about hunting was to always make sure to separate your specific prey from the rest of the herd so that it would be easiest to follow it so that when you chased them until it collapsed there wasn't any other prey to defend it or confuse you.
Slowly making his way closer to the delightfully slowly moving frog, he made sure that he was downwind and stepped lightly so that he wouldn't be found by his new distraction. As he began to approach and get ready to make his move though, the familiar food provider had followed him and was making noises at him, resulting in his prey beginning to hop away.
At the chance of escape he began to get ready to make his charge, but the two-legger was pushing his shoulder, making him come up short.
Whining at the food-provider, he couldn't help but wonder what was wrong, all of a sudden there was the smell of blood and the two-legger was sitting down staring at her bleeding hands.
Something had hurt a member of the pack! There was only one response for something like that!
Howling has loud as he could for Elder Sister.
His job was making sure that whatever had hurt her was gone and didn't come back while Elder Sister summoned the rest of her pack to help the food provider. Keeping watch was barely necessary though, as Elder Sister was quick to come running with other two-leggers from the food cave. Lowering himself from his crouch, he laid down to the side to watch, confident that Elder Sister would fix whatever the problem was.
Louise's day prior to the hearing her familiar start howling had been getting better by the moment. While realizing that she had managed to magically exhaust herself and nearly die from magical exhaustion after her unexpected awakening had been less than pleasant, having an obedient familiar while facing the Zerbst had been a definite positive. Combined with finally getting to the dining hall with its promise of a hearty breakfast and the rest of the day free in order to bond with and name her familiar, things were looking up for her.
Then the howling started.
Thankfully she had managed to get through most of her breakfast at that point so it was no particular loss to rush to where her familiar was kicking up a massive fuss, but it still was not how she had imagined her first morning with a proper familiar.
Seeing a maid with bloody hands and a massive red streak down her apron was even more outside of what she had expected, but definitely explained why her familiar was making such a fuss.
Trying to remember Mother's lectures on first aid, Louse began to tug at her cloak with her hands as thoughts of using the material as a makeshift bandage flickered through her hands. As she handed over her cloak to the made for her to use to help slow the blood from the crying maid, she couldn't help but notice with a hint of relief that the maid's wounds appeared as deep gashes on her palms and not an injury such as a bite, absolving her familiar of wrongdoing.
Once her hands were fully wrapped in the cloak, the maid managed to show proper respect and thanked her for the help, standing up and looking ready to try for the kitchen, where she could likely get one of the other servants to properly have her hands bandaged.
Watching her familiar snuffling around her hands though from where he had come up to inspect the maid, Louise couldn't contain her curiosity as to how she had managed to injure herself so grievously when there were no knives or signs of an accident nearby.
Listening to her answer that she had managed to cut herself on her familiar's shoulder while trying to
stop her noble wolf from killing Montmeroncey's familiar was enough to make her stomach feel like it was about ready to drop down to the level of her feat.
A familiar's actions were considered an extension of the will of the master.
That single rule just about thundered through her mind, along with the rather unfortunate implications. While claiming that she had not ordered her familiar to hunt the stupid frog, by that same line of logic, it could be argued that she lacked sufficient control over her familiar and herself in order to forbid him from acting on her own subconscious desires.
Either she intended to kill Montmeroncey's familiar as an act of petty revenge, or she was sufficiently incompetent as a mage that her familiar was a threat to those around it.
Neither were particularly appealing, as both would likely result in a visit from Mother on top of any punishments that would handed down in order to limit the political blowback of such an event.
Which meant that she owed the black haired maid.
Handing over half her allowance to the maid was a possibility, considering what a commoner could make, it would be more than enough to cover any debt, but that would be far too embarrassing. After all, she would have to explain what she owed the maid for, which was unacceptable for a noble to admit that she hadn't even realized what her familiar was going to do.
No, simply paying the maid privately would be a disgrace as a noble, just one that would be see by a single commoner instead of her classmates.
Patting her familiar on the head and telling him to stay, she made sure that her wolf was away from any temptation as she moved over to Montmeroncy where she was cradling her frog to her chest after finding out that her familiar had nearly been eaten.
After getting within a few steps of the blond, she noticed Louise,
"What do want now, Zero." She was quick to ask. "Going to finish what your familiar started?"
Louise was quick to answer in a quite tone meant to not carry to the rest of the crowd that had gathered around the bleeding maid, "No, just going to point that you, as a water mage, owe that maid for saving your familiar and that if you want to save face as a noble, healing her would be a good way to avoid any trouble with the servants later."
While Montmeroncey certainly didn't look happy, she got the hint about making sure that the maid was taken care of and got to work on using her water magic in order to heal the slowly bleeding gashes on the maid's hands.
With the drama over, most of the small crowd of nobles that had been loitering around under the excuse of gathering their familiars were quick to disperse. Of course standing around and gawking wasn't appropriate for a noble, so no matter how curious they may be about it, most of them wouldn't be caught dead obviously eavesdropping over something as inconsequential as a maid getting injured by a familiar. That wouldn't stop them from gossiping about it incessantly at the various tables that had been set out by the lake for the students to get to know their familiars, but for the moment the appearance of disinterest would be maintained, if only because anyone who appeared too interested would become involved as a topic of gossip themselves.
Reminding herself to seek out the maid later in order to get the full story from her later, Louise was quick to collect her familiar and head off to one of the table in order to get started in getting to know her familiar in the daylight now that she was awake and had the free time available to her.
After sitting herself down at an empty table at the edge of the grounds, she was quick to inspect her familiar more closely. From the blood that coated his fur around his shoulders, Louise was quick to check him for any wounds by wetting her handkerchief and running it over her familiar's fur. While getting his fur relatively clean was a simple proposition, finding the bony spurs that were on both his front shoulders and hips was a larger shock. Knowing for sure though that she was responsible for the maid's earlier injury, Louise was just glad that she had managed to avoid publicly being ousted as the cause.
Heavens forbid what her mother would have done if it was known that she had injured a servant, even if indirectly, through her carelessness.
But more than that, it was more than due time that she named her precious familiar.
Sitting back with her tea and watching the various familiars and students around her, she considered her dilemma.
Merely naming her familiar something mundane like Flame as Zerbst had been bragging during breakfast would be unsuitable for a familiar of a Valliere. Similarly, it wouldn't do to be too pretentious with her familiar's name.
From what she had been able to figure out from her books last night, her familiar was both magical and not native to any of the Brimiric Nations. Similarly he couldn't have come from the Holy Land occupied by the elves. After all, the holy lands had become a desert as a result of the Founder's magic during his attempt to save the holy land from its Elven occupiers, and thus not the sort of place a giant wolf could come from.
That left to the Far East of Rhub'al Khali and beyond, where mythic animals and strange nations of both humans and nonhumans existed.
Straining as much as she could, Louise did her best to recall if there were any legendary heroes that she had heard of from the traders that would occasionally succeed in crossing the Elven lands with their goods. After sitting and thinking awhile and petting her familiar absentmindedly, Louise couldn't remember any particular tale from the tea merchant from Rhub'al Khali that she had spent some time listening to tell stories last year in the capitol.
The only name or word that she could remember was Onai, which sounded unusual enough to be fitting her familiar without being immediately identifiable as pretentious.
Either way, if anyone asked about her wolf's new name, she could always make up some story about how he was a legendary hunter or something.
Introducing her familiar to his new name was simple, as her familiar was of course quite intelligent. As well as being quite interested in responding to his name and her pointing in front of her when he got a treat from the selection of cakes that were laid out with her tea at her table.
While not a commoner animal tamer, Onai was easy for her to direct, being more than willing to go where she pointed as long as there was a treat from one of the trays that had been set out along with the tea that had been set at the table.
After finishing introducing her familiar to the concept of responding to his name, Louise was rather pleased with his loyalty as Onai proceeded to lay down on the grass next to her table and proceed to watch the various students and familiars clustered around several of the nearby tables.
"Come one Guiche, which one are you going out with?" came from a group of boys sitting at one of the closer tables to Louise's.
While she didn't know any of the boys in particular, Louise was easily able to identify Guiche Gramont by his ridiculous frilled white shirt and rose that he had taken to using as a wand. Known more for his flirtatious way than for any particular magical ability, he was of known to Louise by the simple expedient that he was the only boy to have hit on her all last year even after her lack of magical talent had become known in the academy. Overall, Louise considered him to be a womanizing fop that acted desperate to date as many girls as possible, but it didn't change the fact that he had never gone out of his way to be nasty to her, unlike many of the other nobles in the Academy.
He hadn't ever stood up for her either, but Louise had never expected him to do so, and if he had, she would have spent quite a bit of time wondering what his motives were.
Regardless of Louise's feelings though, it looked like his womanizing tendencies had finally managed to catch up with him as a pretty first year had approached him with a basket that likely contained some kind of homemade food while Montmeroncey, a second year that even Louise had noticed he was wooing was in a direct line of site, and if the way she was squeezing her frog familiar was anything to go by, more than ready to make the connection that she wasn't the only girl that Guiche had given his romantic attentions to.
With both of them together, and clearly expecting that the son of Gramont would show his favor toward them alone, it didn't surprise Louise that both of them were quick on the uptake of what exactly had happened. While neither looked particularly pleased with the other, both seemed to be in agreement of how they felt about Guiche, with a hand print on each side of his face, Guiche was left standing as everyone else laughed and the first year fled back to the Academy in tears and Montmeroncey huffed and returned to her table with several of her friends.
Watching the confrontation, Louise couldn't keep herself from smiling at not just the impromptu floor show, but also at how the drama would likely keep the situation with the injured maid from earlier being the primary source of gossip material for the next several weeks.
Unfortunately for Louise, it seemed that Guiche had caught her smile, and had immediately marched up to her table in order to confront her and salvage his reputation.
As he stood in front of the table where she had sat alone, Louise couldn't help but internally cringe at what she knew was going to happen.
A challenge to a duel.
Duels were technically illegal, but out on the lawn with no one but various servants present, a duel could be done and over with far before any teacher could appear to prevent it. Several such duels had occurred in the last year, and while both parties had been publically punished, it didn't change the fact that Louise had before yesterday never successfully cast a spell, while Guiche was the son of a famous general.
In other words, she was about to be publicly beaten down by a dot mage for the sole reason that it would help distract the school gossip from Guiche being dumped into how he had gotten dumped and then destroyed anyone who made fun of that fact.
Both she knew and Guiche knew that she wouldn't win a magical duel between the two of them. But what Guiche hadn't particularly taken into account though was the nature of Louise's single successful spell from the previous day.
As Onai sat up and began to growl in the back of his throat at the approaching aggressive male, Louise's mind began to desperately search for a possible out from her upcoming humiliation.
All that she could recall however, was the numerous tomes that she had spent nearly all of the previous months studying, namely the familiar summoning. Drifting out of that mass of information, the common phrase from the introduction to one of the texts came to mind, 'the actions of the familiar are held by Brimir and the Law as being one and the same as that of their mage master.'
If Louise recalled correctly, Guiche had summoned a giant mole as his familiar, which was rather feeble compared to her own wolf. Additionally, as the challenged she could decide the terms of what form of combat would decide the duel.
Normally, that would be magic as they were both mages, but if she could push for it to be a duel of familiars, well that would possibly save herself from a public shaming as Guiche could use basic spells and golems in order to pin her down and force her to surrender. While there was the faint chance that Guiche's mole would manage an upset win, especially if it revealed some sort of magic ability that Guiche had yet to brag about, a duel of familiars still was far better than if they did so with their wands, as well as having the bonus of likely ending with a far reduced punishment when the teachers did eventually arrive to investigate the inevitable commotion of a duel between nobles.
Wagging his tail, Onai was just about ready to start vibrating with excitement.
Finally, a chance to show that he was the new Alpha among all of the familiars.
Sure, showing how powerful he was by trying to hunt that frog or growling at the other familiars had worked as most of the humans and familiars had been properly respectful afterwards, but there was nothing like showing the other pack members their place by pinning one of them to the ground and putting his teeth to their neck.
Why Elder Sister was saying that it was okay to fight the giant earth rodent wasn't something that he was overly concerned about, only that he could finally show some of the other familiars how powerful he was. While he might be younger and smaller than a few of the other familiars like the magic smelling dragon, he could definetly beat all the non-flying familiars and cement his position at the top of the pack!
Watching the earth rodent snuffling on the ground from where it had emerged from the dirt, Onai was crouched and ready to spring with a moment's notice. More than that though was that unbeknownst to him, but obvious to the rest of the nobles watching the fight, was that the crest on Louise's familiar's head had begun to glow as soon as it had looked like a true fight would start.
At the signal from the dragon's master that smelled of ice and determination, Onai was quick to charge and then leap for the still form of Verdandi, Guiche's mole familiar.
Unfortunately, Onai hadn't known that at the moment he was being empowered with void magic from Louise through the familiar crest on his forehead. On top of the passive amount of magic that had been flowing through his system, Onai's jump managed to carry him a solid 5 ft beyond the tail of Verdandi, and while he landed without trouble, it gave more than enough time for Verdandi to recover from his shock at seeing a massive wolf leaping for him with a set of teeth and claws that were way too big for its comfort.
With greater care this time, Onai approached Verdandi, watching to see if he would use the rather fearsome claws that he would normally use for digging. Verdandi, instead of attacking though, began to start to try to burrow underground, after which he could attack from below and swiftly win the fight.
However, Onai was close enough and quick enough to land a heavy strike with his claws to Verdandi's exposed side, quickly followed up with a strong bite onto Verdandi's left foreleg before the giant mole could disappear underground. Not letting go with his jaws, Onai jerked his head around while keeping up the pressure in his jaws, managing to wrench the giant mole out of the partially dug hole that it was disappearing into and launching the familiar onto its side next to the partially dug burrow in the academy grass.
As Verdandi struggled to rise, bleeding from the gashes in its side and leg, a earthen wall formed between the two familiars, halting the advance of the Dire Wolf as it stalked forward in order to finish off the other familiar and prove that it was truly the Alpha of all the familiars at the Academy.
"Loss by interference, Guiche de Gramont" intoned Tabitha, standing several steps in front of the crowd of curious second year nobles that had formed at the beginning of the familiar duel.
Watching Guiche fuss over his 'dear Verdandi,' Louise did her best to keep from cackling at finally, finally, managing to not be the loser of a confrontation among her classmates. Petting her own familiar and rubbing behind its ears like she had seen Cattleya often do to the various hounds that she would play with.
What was worrying to her though was that it had ended so well for her. While it certainly wasn't unpleasant to bask in the recognition that her familiar had won her, it had worried her at how easily her familiar had won.
Fast, strong, and with an incredible initial leap, there was no way a wolf, even one of his size, should have been able to do any of the things that he had done. Sure, she had suspected that her familiar would win, but not without managing to take a single hit. Add in the sheer power behind that bite, and Louise had a rather bad feeling that if he had wanted to, that level of strength would have been more than sufficient to kill a commoner armsman wearing anything less than plate mail.
Last night, she had been stumped as to what kind of wolf her familiar was. After this though, she would definitely be asking Professor Colbert for his help, as he was both one of her favorite professors, as well as having been there when she had performed the summoning ritual.
As she made her way back toward her rooms to both clean off her wolf as well as see about getting her new familiar some toys, Louise couldn't help but hope that her familiar continued to stay loyal and obedient to her without any further accidents.
End Chapter 3
By god that took far longer than I ever thought it would. In between practically rewriting the entire chapter twice, as well as staring at a blank word document for far too long, this has to be not only the longest, but also the hardest chapter that I ever wrote.
So, please give my your comments about what you did and didn't like, and hopefully the next chapter will be much faster.
No promises though, as my classes for nursing school is currently eating up my life at a prodigious rate.