Soft moonlight peeked from the little space between the curtains. Little specks of dust flickered in the path of light, like little fairies dancing in the air.
Louise reached out with her left hand while lying on her bed, trying to catch the little fairies, but as her fingers swept through the air, they mysteriously disappeared. It reminded her of the time when her sisters talked about the elusive fairies, cheeky creatures that was said to bring good luck to people if you caught them, but the more you tried to catch them, the less likely you were going to meet them again.
Louise put down her hand. She tried to close her eyes but sleep never came. It had only been two hours since Henrietta left. Tomorrow, someone from the palace would escort them to Albania, where Louise was going to retrieve a letter on a secret mission with Saito.
Saito. A product of her failed familiar summoning ritual. Even until now, she had not told her family about him. They would certainly have just nodded and felt that it was indeed something little Louise would had done.
And yet, Louise, honestly, did not think Saito as a failure, in spite of what everybody else thought. Even the princess was astonished that her familiar was a human, though she did not voice her opinion on it. It was instead clearly written on her face. However, Saito was the reason why nobody called her Louise the Zero anymore, with the exception of a stubborn few, and he was the reason why she managed to defeat Fouquet and became the focus of everyone in the ball before. He had been her protector all along during this time, even if he was a noisy and very un-stoic one at that.
So no, Saito was definitely not a failure, he was just, well, weird. Especially after what he did this morning. But then again, Louise was going to write it off probably as something he did after drinking too much wine and sleeping.
Anyway, back to the topic of the mission tomorrow. No matter what, they were still teenagers. As Saito had said, she cannot even use magic properly, but in the heat of the moment, she had agreed to help the princess, even though they were practically walking into a warzone. A friend in need is a friend indeed, right?
Louise fumbled for the letter of royal consent Henrietta had given her, on the table. She stared at the royal seal for a moment, a seal with the head of a ceremonious spear, a symbol of the aristocratic warrior class in the past, which had been taken over by battle wands instead. Tristainians have been brave warriors serving the founder Brimir since his days as a humble tribe leader.
She wondered if she was really that brave to take on the mission, or was it just some hypocritical pride at work.
"Saito, are you asleep?" Louise called out softly to the familiar on the ground.
"Mmm?" Saito yawned. "No, I guess I'm not now."
"Can I talk to you a bit?"
"Of course." There was a rustle as Saito stretched his body on his straw bed.
Louise looked up at the ceiling, where the little fairies were still fluttering in the moonlight.
"What do you think about the mission tomorrow?"
"Mmm…It's crazy. It's absurd. It's stupid. But you're probably going to go for it anyway. You're just too stubborn on maintaining that noble pride you were always talking about."
Louise frowned and pressed her lips together. She sighed.
"You probably don't understand anything about noble pride, do you? Here in Tristania, nobles pledge their allegiance to the crown and provide help in any way to help the king. It is our honour to be able to service the royalty. "
"Yeah, I guess I won't really understand what that's all about. Where I come from, modern Japan does not have that kind of feudal system anymore. What good will come out of helping the king instead of yourselves?"
"Well, my father did say that it was more about dishonour than anything. A dishonoured noble will be stigmatised and may even be stripped of their title. But helping the king does give you special privileges, but my father doesn't really talk about that. In any case, Princess Henrietta is also my friend too, so I will help her out anyway I can."
"Anyway you can." Saito repeated Louise's words sceptically.
"The worst case scenario is just that we die during the mission, right?"
"Hey, don't speak of death so lightly!"
"I mean, a death in service of royalty is always better than dying as some unknown useless noble."
"There you go again. Dying is not an option you should think of."
"You know, Saito, I don't know about you, but for me, except for servicing royalty, I don't really have any other purpose in life. I'm useless with magic, I'm small and tiny, and so I can't do anything really. My sisters are powerful magicians, and they are all tall and beautiful. It's like I'm a by-product of the Des Orneires or something."
Louise laughed in self-ridicule. Hearing that made Saito get up.
"No." He said that with a deep steely tone. Louise turned to look at him, surprised. Saito's head was bowed down slightly. The darkness made it hard to see his expression.
"Even though I may have the same sentiments as you. I mean, what was I, an average Japanese, going to do as a member of the society? Go to school, finish my student life, go to work at some company for the rest of my life, retire, and then die. That's basically the template of life for anybody around me. Do I like that, a senseless and boring life? Nope, I hated that, but that was inevitable."
Louise's eyes widened. What was he getting at?
"And so when I reached this place, and got a new purpose in my life, I was overjoyed. I realised that really, it was all a matter of my own choice, even if the number of choices were constrained. I could have remained here as your familiar, or I could try to run away. However, I would never, ever think of dying or just giving up."
"What is your purpose in life now then?"
"I don't know."
"What? After you said all that?" Louise felt like throwing him out of the room. She sat up and glared at Saito.
"I mean, I don't know what my purpose is in my whole life, but I do know what my purpose in life now is. I can't really predict the future, but I can know what is happening now, and so my purpose now is just to make sure you're safe."
"I know you have that power but that's really situational…"
Saito cut her off.
"I will protect you, Louise."
Louise felt something warm filling her chest. She resisted the urge to cry.
"That's some big words for some boy to say." She mumbled as she looked down, hiding her face, red from embarrassment.
Louise caught Saito smiling like a fool at her as he scratched his head, from the corner of her eye.
"Anyway, that's a promise then. If you let me get hurt in any way…"
"Yeah, yeah."
Louise hated Saito for sounding so casual in his response, but she was overwhelmed with happiness at the same time. All she needed was that assurance that someone would take care of her, in spite of anything that would happen.
"Sleep on the bed tonight," she commanded.
"What?" Saito was taken aback at this.
"Tomorrow was going to be a long day, right? The port town isn't near, so you'll have to rest as much as you can tonight if you're going to protect me. I will not accept any kind of sloppiness from you, no matter the excuse."
And so, Saito laid down on the right side of the bed, his back to Louise. Louise looked at the twin moons hanging in the pitch dark sky outside the window as she felt the comfortable warmth on her back coaxing her to relax and surrender herself to sleep.
As darkness fell, Louise wondered if she had been successful in capturing one of the little fairies just now.
At the same time, in a mansion outside the academy, a small hooded figure stood in front of a table covered in letters, holding a huge staff nearly twice her height. Blue wispy hair peeked out from the hood and a pair of glasses glinted in the candlelight.
The potion should complete its work over the night.
Come daylight, the servants would find a noble child, the size of a man mumbling in his bed, crying for his mother. Tabitha had dripped a few drops of healing potion mixture into the nobleman's mouth while he was asleep. The mixture of those healing potions, when in specific proportions, would have caused a magic overdrive in the victims mind, causing it to go impaired. It would only leave traces of healing magic in his system, deadly yet inconspicuous.
Tristainian nobles would have never prepared for the way of assassination preferred by the Gallians, poisons.
Tabitha took a deep breath when she completed the job. At least they didn't have her take a human life. The nobleman would be cured if he spent ten years under medication, but other than that, there was no danger to his life, though his years as a noble is over.
She stopped thinking about anything else and focused on her next task, destroying all those letters she had put on the table. Some of it bore the seal of the Albanian nobles, written in Albanian high speech that Tabitha could only understand a little from her language training when she was young.
It was something about asking for military assistance.
Tabitha thought about the civil war that was happening in Albania as she pocketed the letters. The civil war had erupted suddenly without any warning, after several centuries of peace. Nobody really understood the reason behind the sudden uprising by the Albanian nobles against the Albanian royalty. There were only rumours about the betrayal of the Albanian royalty towards the nobles, but as for what the betrayal was about, nobody really knew, especially since Albania was separated from the Halkegenia mainland, orbiting in an elliptical path above the clouds. The distance between the island in the sky and Halkegenia had increased after the sudden magical outbreak of wind stones going ballistic in Halkegenia, but Albania has been slowly descending back to where it was flying centuries ago.
There were even rumours of sky pirates orbiting the sky looking for unsuspecting merchants to loot from. The royal Albanian air force was in no shape to patrol the sky for petty pirates, so normal mail deliveries has been halted for the safety of the carriers. So, it was strange that this noble managed to obtain letters from Albania in spite of everything that was happening.
Nevertheless, Tabitha was not about to poke into the business of other countries. She had one job now, and she was going to get it right. She stepped out from the balcony, careful to maintain the Silence spell that had been casted on her cloak. She called out for her familiar, Slyphid through her mind.
Immediately, a blue dragon glided down to the space beside the balcony. Tabitha jumped off the balcony, landing on the dragon's scaly back.
She stroked Slyphid's neck as they cruised through the winds back to the academy. The twin moons were now hidden behind dark clouds in the starless sky. Tabitha thought about her mother back in Gallia. She hoped that Percerin was taking good care of her back home.
Rest well, mother, I've been taking good care of myself and our family honour, thought Tabitha.
Slyphid cooed, breaking the silence of the night.