VI. Stupid Familiar
Louise Valliere sent a withering glare at the useless lump of flesh currently sleeping in the seat next to hers. Said lump of flesh was a tall woman with dark hair and even darker clothes, spectacles, and a rather large gun that she absolutely refused to part with no matter what. This sad example of a woman was currently her familiar, and Rip Van Winkle was most definitely a bizarre familiar at that.
For one thing, she was a human, and a commoner to boot! But she was perhaps the most irritating commoner Louise had ever met, since the worm absolutely refused to follow orders! Not only was it an infuriating insult to her noble name, but it was making her look bad. Already there had been rumors circulating around the Academy that Rip was actually an actress hired by her to pose as a familiar. But since all her classmates saw how the woman absolutely refused to follow any of Louise's instructions, they began calling her a waste of a noble who couldn't even control her own hired servants!
It had been about three days since the Springtime Summoning Ritual, and not much had changed. Louise, somehow, had managed to talk the irritating woman into accompanying her to class, as all good familiars should. Sadly, all the fool did during class hours was sit and fall asleep in the desk next to hers! Not even the animal familiars were so rude! And she snored!
After one particularly loud snore during Alchemical Studies, Louise had had enough. She took her wand and roughly jabbed it into the black mass of hair and clothing that was Rip. The sleeping familiar grunted before her head rose up from the desk slowly, glasses lopsided and a half-dead look on her face. She glanced around in confusion before turning her glazed eyes towards Louise. "Ghh... huuuh?"
"You are acting like a complete idiot!" she hissed out in an angry whisper.
"Can't help it..." Rip yawned as her head began sinking back down onto the desk. "... tired."
"Well, why can't you sleep at night like normal people?!" Louise loudly whispered again. Every night since the ritual, her familiar had been going off wandering the school grounds. She never told Louise what she did during those hours, but knowing the woman's lunacy it couldn't have been anything good!
"Cuz I sleep during ze day... mmmm..." Her sleepy familiar grinned stupidly as she began hugging her musket tightly. "Schlauf gut..."
Louise's eye twitched as a large stress vein popped up on her forehead. She was about to blast her familiar with a spell when her destructive thoughts were interrupted by the teacher.
"Miss Valliere," the man's voice spoke up sternly. "Are we disturbing you?"
"Gah! I mean, um, no, sir." Louise straightened up in her chair and hid her wand behind her back.
"You can play with your familiar once class is over," the man grumbled. "Until then, keep quiet and pay attention? Is that clear?"
"Yes sir," Louise murmured. There were several snickers from the other students.
Stupid familiar! She angrily hissed.
0
At lunch that day, Louise sat alone as usual in the Alviss dining room, stuffing her face with tarts and pie. She wouldn't usually pig out so much in public, but with the annoying day she'd had so far she believed the gluttony to be well deserved. Rip was nowhere to be seen, as the irritating woman had wandered off after class to Founder knows where.
"Honestly, that familiar is such a pain," Louise grumbled in between bites of cake. "I swear, why can't she just do what I say? She's a commoner, they're supposed to obey me! Grr... it's so frustrating!"
She had tried to punish her familiar numerous times before, but for whatever reason they never seemed to work. Whenever Louise told Rip that she would withhold meals if she didn't behave, the dark haired girl would only laugh and blithely say that she was still full. If Louise threatened Rip with a lashing from her riding crop, the crazy woman would just smile creepily and make kinky sapphic suggestions. How the hell were you supposed to discipline something like that?
A sudden racket from near the entrance to the kitchen broke into Louise's mental meanderings. She glanced over and saw that one of the maids, an older woman with blond hair, had dropped a platter of fruit onto the floor. She was clutching at her face an weeping openly; two other maids came over and helped her out of the room.
"What's wrong with the servants these last few days?" Louise heard one first year girl from an adjacent table ask another. "They've all been acting weird."
"Didn't you hear?" her friend whispered, but loud enough for Louise to listen in. "Two days ago, they found one of the maids dead, out in the woods."
"Oh no!" Gasped the young student in shock.
"Yes. Not only was she dead, but her entire body was ripped to pieces. It looked like she was attacked by a wild animal!"
"That's horrible!" The first girl whimpered, tears coming to her eyes. "That poor maid."
"That's not all!" Spoke up a first year boy from their table. He had a leering grin as he began waving his hands at them like a story teller about recite a ghost story. "One of the men who found her, he works at the stables. I heard him talking with his friends, all bout what he had found." The boy's grin grew wider as he glanced at the girls, both of whom looked totally scared. "The man said that when he had found the body, even though it was torn to pieces... there was no blood anywhere!"
"N-n-no blood?" The first girl gasped.
"Yes," the boy continued. "It was like her body was completely drained of blood before being torn apraaaart!"
The first girl screamed, causing numerous first years around her to laugh.
"Stop it, Valjean!" Said her friend, who had put her arms around the now crying student. "You're such a creep, I swear!"
The boy just laughed along with his friends.
Louise chose that moment to depart, leaving her plate of sweets half eaten. She had just seriously lost her appetite.
0
Jean Colbert rubbed his weary eyes with the palms of his hands, letting out a deep, weary breath as his aching body screamed at him to get some sleep. He had been up for the past two days and exhaustion was all but dragging him down. It could not be helped though, as murder investigations were never supposed to be easy.
"Poor Siesta," he muttered with a shake of his head. It angered him that the world could be so cruel as to allow something so horrifying to happen to someone so kind and gentle.
Siesta of Tarbes. She was a popular maid, well known to both the faculty and staff. Even many of the students liked her. She had been a beautiful and kind young woman with many friends and no enemies whatsoever. Every one of the Academy's staff had been dumbstruck at news of her death; the head chef Marteau had been especially affected, as Siesta had been like a daughter to him. The poor man had taken ill upon hearing the news and asked to take several days off in order to recuperate.
Unfortunately, the chef wasn't the only one so affected. Colbert himself had personally gone to Tarbes to inform the maid's family; he felt that a letter would be just too informal and cold, especially with how much Siesta was so well liked at the school. The experience was... unpleasant to say the least. Siesta not only came from a large family (she had eight brothers and sisters) but it was a close-knit one as well. Her parents were utterly devastated by the news, the mother openly weeping whilst the father all but collapsed inside. The man kept his outward appearance strong though, all for the sake of his wife and children; if he broke down now, then their grief would be that much worse. No, the man remained strong, an ability that touched Colbert deeply. He didn't know if he himself, in the father's place, could show such strength.
The professor vowed upon leaving Tarbes that he would catch Siesta's murderer, and he was very much certain that this was a murder. After all, he had seen deaths like this before.
Siesta's body had been completely drained of blood before being dismembered, its heart torn out and the brain crushed. Her body was then dumped out in the forest, where it was later found by three groundskeepers who were out hunting for game. The lack of blood at the scene meant that Siesta was killed somewhere else. This showed the killer had intelligence. His examination of the post-mortem wounds indicated that they were not caused by tools or spells, but by sheer physical force; in other words, Siesta's limbs were torn right off her dead body. The brutality and strength of this evidence showed the killer had animal ferocity.
And the callous way the murderer had just tossed away Siesta's remains into the woods, like she was leftover slop from a feast, shows that the killer is completely devoid of a human conscience.
Intelligence. Strength. Evil. The lack of blood. All the evidence pointed to only one type of creature that could be responsible for such a heinous act. And that creature was a vampire.
Colbert had fought such monsters before. These vile beings were former humans with an unquenchable thirst for blood. The ones he fought were insanely powerful, capable of not only great strength and speed but the ability to cast the elves' Firstborn Magic as well. He had almost lost his life when, as a young man, he had encountered one of these undead ilk during his travels.
But perhaps the most devilish power in the vampires' arsenal, the one that made them so difficult to track down, is their ability to blend in completely with the human population. Unlike other monsters like orcs and minotaurs, vampires used to be humans. Thus they retained their form and only show their true colors when feeding. Vampires are indistinguishable from true, living humans; not even scrying spells could tell the difference.
Thankfully, there was a way of flushing a vampire out. Despite the fact that spells could not differentiate them from regular humans, vampires were still, at their very core, magical creatures. Thus Detect Magic could still work on them. Any vampire posing as commoner in a peasant village could be easily found by casting Detect Magic.
The difficulty came when vampires chose to hide in large cities, or in this case, an academy of magic. They could pose as nobility and feed to their hearts content. The only way to find them is to wait for the right moment, the right moment usually being when the vampire eventually made a mistake and was discovered.
Unfortunately, Colbert didn't have the time for that. At the moment, the official cause of Siesta's death was attack by wild animal. Old Osmond, the Headmaster, was quite keen on keeping the existence of a vampire secret. If word got out then it could cause panic with the noble families. The Academy might even be forced to shut down, and thus allow the vampire to escape into the night undetected.
And if the vampire attacked a student...
"Damn it," Colbert cursed and leaned back in his chair. The movement caused his desk to shake and two books fell off, each landing on the floor. The professor cursed and reached down to pick the scattered tomes up when his eyes fell on a sketch that had been lying underneath them. It was one he had made three days ago but had all but forgotten about. The sketch was of a set of runes, runes that were intricate and completely unknown to him. They were the runes of Louise Valliere's strange human familiar, the ones that had etched themselves on the familiar's left hand.
Rip Van Winkle. That was her name. Such a strange young woman. Dressed in strange garbs, wielding a strange firearm, and prone to the strangest fits of behavior. Simply put, she was strange all-around.
Colbert chuckled. Louise's familiar had actually been one of his first suspects. After all, Siesta's death had occurred on the same night as the Summoning Ritual. But after casting Detect Magic on Miss Van Winkle (from a discrete distance away) Colbert ascertained that the woman was not magical at all.
Besides, there was the fact that she had been summoned during the day, and had been exposed to the sun's rays without any ill effects. One of the vampires' most notorious weaknesses was direct sunlight; it was lethal to the vile creatures. So it was with Colbert's professional opinion that Louise's bizarre familiar was not a vampire. She was just a strange, eccentric commoner from Germania, that was all.
Sadly, the professor never even considered the possibility that Rip Van Winkle was an artificially created vampire from another universe. But we can't really blame him for that, can we?
0
Although it took quite a long while, Louise managed to find her familiar. Rip never bothered to show up for her afternoon classes, and even though she didn't want to admit it, part of her was deathly afraid that the woman had run off and left. If that had happened, Louise didn't know what she would have done. Despite the fact that her familiar was an annoying, disobedient Germanian, Rip Van Winkle was still her familiar. Thus, she was her responsibility. The talk earlier during lunch had scared her, and she was afraid for her. After all, Rip was just a commoner and couldn't really defend herself. Sure, she had a musket, but those things were completely useless when compared to magic. The fact that Rip would wander around at night by herself made Louise worry even more.
She eventually found the familiar near the front gates of the Academy. She was seated atop a low wall and gazing out into the forest. Louise marched up towards the woman intent on giving her hell, but then stopped. She calmed herself down and decided to try another tactic. After all, yelling at Rip and threatening her didn't seem to work. Maybe... maybe talking to her would.
Ugh.
Louise continued towards her familiar and stopped about a five feet away. She was about to call out when she noticed that the woman had a pink parasol in her hands. It was open, its length laying lazily against one shoulder while the canopy covered her head in the shade. Her ever-present musket lay comfortably on her lap.
"Familliar," Louise stated.
The woman raised an eyebrow upon hearing her voice. She then turned her head slightly to look down at her summoner. "Hmm?"
"Where did you get that?" the pink haired girl pointed up at the parasol.
Rip grinned. "Found it."
Louise's eye twitched. Found it my foot! She stole it! Louise was quite sure that she had seen one of the first year girls a few weeks back carrying the exact same parasol during an especially sunny day. The noble was about to jump up and strangle her familiar, but quickly restrained herself. Stop it, Louise! Talk to her about it LATER. Right now we need to be civil. Just civil. Be civil...
She took a long, deep breath, swallowing her pride, then began speaking. "Rip Van Winkle."
The woman blinked, her eyes widening in surprise. This was the first time her summoner had ever deigned to use her name. "Yes?"
"Tomorrow is the Day of the Void," Louise continued.
Rip shrugged, turning her eyes back to the trees beyond. "So?"
"That is a day free from classes, and is set aside so that we students my bond with our familiars."
Said familiar merely snorted. "Bond?"
"Yes," Louise nodded. "So we can get to know each other."
"Oh, truly?" Rip asked, a sneer coming to her face. "You vish to get to know me?" Her voice, normally airy and cheerful despite its annoying tone, was now stiff with building anger.
"W-well, of course," Louise muttered. She wasn't really sure what her familiar was getting so upset about.
"So let me get zis straight," The dark haired woman turned her gaze away from the forest and brought her furious blue eyes down upon the girl who had summoned her. "You vish to get to know me now. Three days after you have enslaved me?"
"I... I..." Louise flinched. Her familiar's voice began to quake with definite anger.
"After you have bound my soul to you? After you have turned me into your dog, put a leash on me, made me your drudge? Your chattel?!" Rip was screaming now, her blue eyes glowing with fury.
"N-no! It, it wasn't like that!" Louise shot back.
"You make me sick," The woman's voice softened, but the fury within her was still very much evident. "Ever since I had gotten here, all you've done is treat me like an animal. You expect me to do everything you say, like a commander vith his troops. Yet vhat have you done to earn such a thing, hmm? Vhat have you done that I should respect you?" She pulled her furious eyes away and directed them back to the woods and trees. "You vould make an appalling commander. You don't even think vhat zis is like for me. You sink just because I am the one who was summoned, that I had no life before now. That I didn't have things I needed to do, people who needed me, friends and comrades who care about me..."
It was at that moment that Louise felt utterly horrible. Despite how she wanted to deny it, what the woman had said was true, she had never even bothered to think of her familiar... this person, in front of her. All that had mattered to her was that she had finally cast a spell right and that she had proven herself as a mage. She had her familiar, the symbol of her victory. To her, Rip was just a thing, barely a person at all. She was her familiar, no better than a pet or a possession. She had never thought about how the woman in front of her had felt. She didn't even consider that her familiar actually had a life before now, and now that she did Louise couldn't help but feel sick. She was no better than one of those savage barbarian slavers she'd read about in books as a child. She was no mage, she was a monster!
"I'm sorry!" Louise whirled around, unable to face her familiar due to the shame she now felt. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" She closed her eyes to stem the flood of tears that she felt were coming, but it did no good. They poured from between her shut eyelids, streaming down her face. "I didn't mean to do this... I... I..." Her shoulders began shaking as sobs wracked her body. "I just wanted a familiar, that's all! I didn't mean to kidnap a person, I swear! I just wanted to show everyone that I'm not useless, that's it! I just wanted them to see me, not the Zero! Not the failed Valliere! Just me! I wanted to matter! I wanted..." Her hands shot up to her eyes and began rubbing at them, trying to force the tears from coming. But they wouldn't. Her mother would be so ashamed.
Suddenly she felt two arms wrap around her and she gasped in surprise. From the black sleeves and white gloves, she realized it was her familiar. Funny, she never even heard the woman jump from the wall she had been sitting on. The arms tugged her tightly into a warm embrace, and soon she heard her familiar's voice, the tone strangely soft and comforting, waft against her ear.
"It's alright, Louise," Rip whispered in her ear. A small smile twisted the teenage girl's lips; it was the first time her familiar had ever used her name. "I am sorry, too. I should not have called you zose things. I vas angry, and sometimes in anger I do things I should not. In truth, I am very grateful for vhat you have done. For bringing me here, to zis beautiful place. Believe it or not, you saved my life. If it veren't for you, I vould be dead. For zhat, I will forever be in your debt.
"But," Rip added after a moment's pause, and Louise wondered if the ominous delay meant anything. "But, I can not be your familiar, not forever. I still have sings to do at home, important things that require me to be there. But I swear to you, until I find a vay back, I vill be your loyal familiar. The vone that you deserve."
Louise choked down another sob. Only her big sister Cattleya had ever promised her something like that. "A-and," she coughed, but plowed on through, intent on giving her own oath. "And I swear, as your master, that I will do everything in my power to find a way to send you back home. I swear on th good name of House Valliere." Truth was, she didn't really understand what the big deal was. Could Rip not afford a carriage ride back to Germania? Despite her confusion, Louise was determined to keep her promise, no matter what.
She heard her familiar chuckle, a genuine laugh this time, not one of the manic sounding cackles the woman was known for. Rip then stood up, arms leaving Louise. But before her grasp slackened, the teenager felt a motherly kiss placed atop her head. "You are such a sweet child, you know zhat?"
Louise wiped at her eyes, then shook her head in mock anger. "I'm not a child!"
"Oh, ov course! Ov course! You are a big girl."
Louise continued to use the sleeve of her blouse to wipe away at her tear-stained face. Once she was satisfied that her cheeks were dry and she was presentable, she turned around and gave her familiar a smile. She realized that she should have done this in the first place, instead of acting like a haughty bitch. Whether her familiar was a human, commoner, or mere beast, she deserved to be treated with respect. She was, after all, her familiar.
"Hello," the pink haired girl stated, then gave a low, respectful bow. "My name is Louise Francoise le Blanc de La Valliere. So nice to meet you."
Rip gave the girl a lopsided grin. With a shrug, she thought "What the hell?" and decided to introduce herself in the same manner. She stood ramrod straight, clicked her heels stiffly, then shot her right arm up. "Heil, Louise! I am First Lieutenant Rip Van Winkle, Millenium Organization. Sehr erfreut."