It was hardly human to say the least but it did stand on two legs unlike most of what was around. It had arms that dangled down to its sides much like how a person normally would when posturing upright. Still, it carried itself more akin to that of a primal beast than a human being.
Frankly, what Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière had called upon from the aether unto the hallowed grounds of the Académie Royale Tristain Des Arcanes was a humanoid creature covered in head to toe with thick foliage if not composed entirely of it. She was still clutching her wand high up in the air long after the smoke dissipated from her attempt at the Invocation Familière Sanctifée. She looked at its head, or rather, the thick mess of leaves and grass that covered it.
Strange was a kind descriptor for it. Macabre to a nightmarish degree seemed more accurate though.
The Académie sophomore had been expecting an animal—a creature somewhere in the universe—to serve as her familiar; to guard her, to protect her, to serve her, to vindicate her lineage as she finally moved on to the next stages of her life. Looking at the...thing...that occupied the summoning grounds... Louise had not the faintest idea of what exactly she had summoned. Her initial assumption was that of a man (or woman) hiding under a thick overcoat of densely-packed foliage that in itself was moving on its own—the leaves were swaying with the wind. Except, there was no wind today.
Louise lowered her hand. To which the creature hunched its head, eliciting cautionary reactions from the audience of students and familiars around the Vestri court. Even Tabitha's mighty blue dragon—widely considered the highlight of the day—bucked behind its mistress, letting loose a low growl.
"Ma'amselle Vallière, get behind me," ordered Professor Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the instructor supervising the Invocation.
The pink-haired student, however, remained rooted in place, glancing back at her teacher who angled his arcane staff towards the summon.
"Mademoiselle Vallière, get behind me now," Professor Colbert repeated more sternly.
She gulped. The whispers began. Everyone was already talking about the strange creature that Louise 'the Zero' had called forth. Louise would have been elated if it were not for how unnerving this was becoming. Evidently, she had just proven that she was not a Zero by successfully completing the most defining ritual of magehood, certifying her as a legitimate daughter of the nobility. This creature's mere existence was evidence enough.
If only it did not appear so hypnotically discomforting...
"Mademoiselle Vallière!"
"Zero, hey!"
"Louise!"
Louise blinked repeatedly at Kirche, her most ardent rival in this school, yelling out her name as Professor Colbert grabbed her by the shoulder. In that moment, she glimpsed something rarer than her succeeding at the Invocation: an uncomfortable fire brimming behind the glasses of the most docile and understanding instructor in the whole Académie.
Jean-Baptiste Colbert breathed deep. He sensed something off about this creature, this...thing. Before the smoke cleared, he felt the residual arcana off the wisps of the aether dissipating. And on those wisps were carried an immense dread that alarmed him. Then finally, he lay his eyes upon it and for a moment, he found it hard to breathe.
He licked his lips and tasted copper.
Founder above, no! Spare us a cruel twist of fate, I pray unto thee! The professor had presided over countless Invocations even before becoming a teacher here at the Académie. None to the best of his memory had yielded something of this...intensity...that made the air taste like blood...
"Professeur, wh-what is going on?" asked little Louise Vallière, third daughter of his former commander in the service.
His denotable staff remained poised towards it, warm with the magic channelling through it. It has been years since he lifted his hand to this degree against another human being. If this was a human being...
...because his gut screamed that it wasn't.
"Someone call for the Director!" he barked to the rest of the students crowded around them. "Now!"
"Oui, professeur!" responded one of the sophomores, Mademoiselle Montmorency, who quickly hurried into the central tower to alert Old Osmond.
It was at that moment that the creature moved. It moved in a way that was completely unexpected of it: instead of using its trunk-like legs, it compressed into the ground, shrouding the summoning grounds in foliage, dried shrubs of grass suddenly sprouting from the earth, a living blight moving towards where he and Louise stood.
Against his better judgment, Colbert held back from loosing any flames. Rather, he made to step away, taking Louise with him, only to suddenly find his feet rooted to the ground, swarmed by blades of grass stretching longer and longer until they reached up and coiled around his shins. More roots followed after, snaking over his shoes whole.
Louise gasped behind him and he saw vines wrapping around her legs, stopping above her knees. Her grip on his arm tightened as she became increasingly frantic, biting her lip to stifle a scream.
To Tartary with restraint! He had to act now!
He opened his mouth and felt a tiny pressure tap the tip of his tongue.
Colbert froze—he couldn't say the incantations. The faintest sound choked out of his throat as his mouth hung agape. Something was robbing him of the words that enabled him to manifest his magic. He glared at the thing before him, recognizing the hum of energy radiating from it...that was preventing him from acting. Sparks escaped the tip of his staff but that was it.
He was being restrained from casting his magic.
By the Founder, the creature was restraining him from casting his magic!
He grit his teeth, trying to discern what kind of silencing spell had struck him, while his eyes traced the shape rising out of the shrubbery dancing in and around their legs. It emerged to its full height, that dry pine smell piercing his nostrils. Colbert forced himself to stare up at the being, through its hood of leaves, right through the net of dead foliage, into the shadow, right in its...
...there was no face.
Louise was screaming in her mind. This was the most frightening experience in her whole life. Her summon towered over her—she could swear it was twice as tall as Professor Colbert—its face concealed under a shadowed mass of flora which by now she could tell was dead.
The thought came: what is this that was made up of dead life that moved? Simple, really: necromancy.
"Par les Fondateur," she gasped.
The foliage—some of which were decaying—wrapped around her legs were moving, rubbing against her thigh-high socks. Cold but not moist. Tight but not constricting. She could not move her legs but she could at least still wiggle her toes.
"Ma'amselle Vallière, are you alright? How are you feeling—"
"H-hey, uh, Zero! Are you s-seriously going to...?"
"Louise, verdammt, snap out of it!"
She didn't know what exactly she was thinking at that point. Somehow, she had gestured at the creature and it elevated her off the ground until she was at level with its bushy head. The rest of the Invocation flowed out of her lips. And then, with her eyes shut, she grabbed its locks and smothered herself into the dark mass where its face would be. Her cheeks smacked into something damp and sticky as she connected with something.
A calloused tongue wormed its way into her mouth and coiled around hers.
Some students had to admit that it did take a lot of gall to do what the Zero did. If Kirche's salamander was dazzlingly impressive and Tabitha's dragon majestically awe-inspiring, then Louise by far took the cake for having the most distressingly terrifying. The fact that Professor Colbert of all people was about ready to incinerate the whole thing on the spot proved that not even the staff were immune to its nightmarish aura.
Also, at the moment, it seemed no one but Director Osmond and whoever else was as old, wise, intelligent, and experienced as him had an inkling of what exactly their explosive classmate had summoned.
And so, immediately after completing the final clause of the ritual, the creature—a veritable golem of decomposing nature that bordered on necromantic—recoiled, releasing a bone-chilling noise. The best they could describe it was akin to two or seven voices rumbling in unison, ranging from a guttural roar to a high-pitched hiss. For Louise the Zero, however...
Well, everybody heard her screaming during the kiss, flailing and trying to pull herself free from her familiar. Then she fainted as soon as she was let go, her lips torn and blood running from her mouth.
-~oOo~-
Later that afternoon up until the evening, the Académie infirmary hosted a single patient and her indiscernible guardian. A few daring souls stood idle by the corner by the entrance, none of whom dared to approach the bed on which Mademoiselle Vallière was soundlessly unawake, her lower jaw wrapped in bandages.
The 'Grass Man'—as the students immediately began to call him—towered over her. Bound to serve her as her familiar, he was now under Divine mandate to protect and serve his new master until the inevitable cessation of its existence. As such, it was the only reason Professor Colbert could think of for why the golem stood unmoving, looking down on his student.
It was clearly powerful. To be able to silence a Square-class mage like himself—a near-indiscernible wave of energy that was faint but paralyzing. He recalled that brief sensation when his eyes met the darkness under those leaves.
Just what exactly are you? Undead? For sure, un-living. But those leaves... They look dead yet they sway in a still room. Brimming with...un-life?
The professor glanced behind him, seeing Sister Catalina muttering a prayer over a string of beads in her hand. He could hardly blame her; the Iberian healer was still in her first few months here and already she had to witness something that closely resembled a Tartaric being. A maid was standing behind her, whispering her own prayers a little louder. Siesta, he recalled the maid's name was. She had been assigned by Director Osmond to assist Miss Vallière as soon as she was released from treatment.
Colbert quickly composed himself. His previous hostility towards the Grass Man had been tempered somewhat. The thing harmed Louise—he cannot let that completely slide. Still, he was now becoming increasingly curious. Director Osmond had yet to personally meet with the girl but he had witnessed everything through his surveillance mirrors up in his office and found it prudent to limit his personal intervention unless necessary. After all, on top of this interesting new chapter in the history of the Académie, the centenarian director had 'much work to do.'
That left Colbert alone to address the issues arising from this. With a deep breath, the professor mustered over to Louise's bed, noting in the copious amounts of vegetation entangled around her. Unknown magics made it that a thick patch of grass, weeds, and moss were now growing out of the marble tiles, swaying in a hall where no breeze could be felt as all the windows were shuttered. The closer he got, the more he discerned a small vinous tree that had sprouted around the two. Then again, it was dry to the touch, all the more so dead.
"Dead leaves?" he mouthed absently.
The Grass Man turned to face him.
Colbert stiffened. Founder above, that darkness... I can't even see its eyes. Does it even have eyes? For sure it has a mouth...with teeth. What else could nearly rob young Louise of her ability to speak?
Even with the setting sun shining through the glass, there was little light that could penetrate the thickness of the foliage that comprised its outer layers. The professor doubted that so much as holding a candle to its face would reveal anything. Or perhaps it would reveal too much...
A thorny vine snaked around his right leg.
Colbert stopped short of the edge of Louise's bed, grimacing at the needles pricking through the fabric into his skin. "With all due respect... Your master is my student. I only wish to see to her safety and well-being."
The Grass Man stared at him.
The professor ignored the needling in his leg and pushed up his glasses. "... May I?"
After a moment, the vine slithered away from his foot. The branches growing from the bedposts, however, twisted and bent to form a cocoon around the bed, limiting physical access to the sophomore. The professor, however, was able to catch a strong blue glow shimmering through gaps in the foliage. Interesting.
Louise stirred.
"Ma'amselle Vallière?" He cleared his throat. "Louise?"
Louise cracked open her eyes. The last thing she remembered before waking up was some horrific overgrown chomper biting her tongue off. Thankfully, it was only just a dream. A terrible nightmare, come to think of it. Alas, she was awake now. Today was the day of the Invocation Familière Sanctifée and she needed to prepare. She needed to...put on her...
She was already in her uniform. Louise opened her mouth and...why was her whole jaw wrapped in bandages?
Why was she in the infirmary?
Why was everything covered in grass and leaves and dead underbrush and—
Oh dear Founder above, it was all real!
She made to scream upon witnessing her familiar rustling at the end of her bed but only managed a muffled squeal. That was when she heard Professor Colbert calling out her name from behind a mesh of jagged branches and thorny vines.
"Are you alright? How are you feeling?"
Louise could only mumble, reaching out to grip her cage.
Her favorite teacher did his best to reassure her, reaching out to rest his hand over her fingers. "We are doing everything we can to figure this all out. The director himself is personally combing through all our records to discern the details we need."
She felt far from reassured and she held tightly onto his hand. Professor Colbert looked to her summon, silently pleading. Louise did as well and she saw...a faint blue glow in that nothingness that was its face.
The branches moved, undoing the mesh that kept them apart.
Louise eased back onto the bed as the professor was now allowed by her own familiar to get closer to her. She continued to struggle against the bandages, noticing Sister Catalina watching anxiously from the doorway. Does she think I'm a necromancer? Does Father Stephen think I'm a necromancer?
The eccentric Académie deacon might be having words with her about this soon alongside Director Osmond and probably the entire school staff. Founder forbid, Mother might deign to personally interrogate her about this as well given that Louise may have blasphemed the Invocation by summoning a creature bearing hints of the forbidden arts!
"I understand your distress," Professor Colbert continued. "I as well am struggling to comprehend all this."
Please tell me I won't be burned at the stake for this, she silently pleaded.
"I and the Director will do our best to disprove any falsities arising from this. I know for a fact that you conducted the Invocation with the purest of intentions. No one could have anticipated this. Not especially your mother."
Mother will sever my head to give to the Inquisition! Louise wanted to cry. Yes, she did summon something. Yes, she finished the Invocation. Yes, she had bound the summoned to serve her for the entirety of her meager existence. Yes, this was all very real. But why did her familiar have to be an undead treant?
"Easy now. At the moment, no one is accusing you of dabbling in anything unsavory."
Not openly. She hugged her knees to her chest. I probably didn't even summon anything. I probably created something new out of the earth and gave it life. Was that not the textbook definition of necromancy?
"In case you were wondering, your classmates have taken the initiative to appropriate a name for your familiar given that you are currently indisposed of doing so."
She rolled her eyes. Great. Someone else has to name my familiar for me.
"They call him...the Grass Man."
Louise sniffled. How creative.
Louise barely slept that night. So much had happened today that, regardless of all that had transpired and all the stamina and willpower and mental energy that had been expended, she was far from drowsy (it ate half my tongue). The light of the dual moons only illuminated the source of her insomnia (it has to be a cursed treant).
The Grass Man stood in the far corner of her dormitory. Watching. Breathing. Guarding. His 'aura' coated everything in an undergrowth of dead brown foliage, effectively transforming her quarters into a convoluted patch of dry autumn shrubbery. Her bedposts were coiled in thorny vines, sprouting jagged branches that formed a 'protective' web around her bed.
The hay bales she had set up beside her bed in anticipation of an animalistic being had been devoured by the shrubs—she saw with her own eyes that they swayed in their own right. Her windows were had been shut since this morning.
Everything about the Grass Man was purely bereft of life yet he moved of his own volition. He could not possibly be undead because he was immune to the purification runes regularly maintained by staff on a weekly basis.
The leaves were dead. The bushes were dead. The vines were dead. But he wasn't dead in any way. Neither could he be undead. There was no odor of decay. Only piercing pine scent and the smell of overflowing tree sap. She could barely smell her own sweat without having her nose assaulted with stinging maple.
Louise gulped. What did I just summon? Founder above, why? Why did it have to be like this? I could have just settled for a dog, even a cockroach would be a modest gift. Her eyes, now heavy with the absence of much needed sleep, locked on the dark mass under a heavy scalp of foliage. Grass Man, they called you. An accursed mix of golem, treant, and whatever it is that the staff can't even figure out yet. Just who or what in Tartary are you?
A cynical part of her whispered in the recesses of her mind that she would be getting her answers, even those she never wanted, in the days to come.
-~oOo~-
Académie secretary Marie-Justine Longueville let out a tired sigh; she had been poring through several tomes since the middle of the afternoon. One of the damned brats had summoned something completely unknown and now Director Osmond was digging through the annals alongside Professor Colbert to find answers.
The three of them, so far, had come up with nothing save for a few similar cases here and there, some vague hints, and a couple false leads that nearly gave them all a collective headache. Professor Colbert was more exhausted and still quite shaken up from having to personally deal with the abomination that was the Grass Man. Longueville honestly could not fault the students this time for their naming conventions—she had seen the damn thing with her own eyes when its master had been brought into the infirmary.
Apparently, the sealing kiss of the Invocation ended up in a way that nearly deprived the explosive student of her ability to speak. Longueville shuddered at the mental image and nearly jumped when she heard loud knocking followed by the door creaking open.
"Ah, Monsieur Diacre," greeted the director. "Do come in."
The secretary to see the Académie deacon Father Stephen striding into the office.
"Making progress on our little endeavor here, I suppose?" he said with a smile.
Professor Colbert chuckled. "Slow progress for a significant endeavor, Monsieur Diacre. What brings you here at this time of night?"
The deacon grinned then shut the door and locked it. He then sat himself on a chair and crossed his legs. "... The Grass Man reeks of death. It is difficult to ignore, especially when the wisps of the unholy linger outside the sanctuary."
Longueville, who was by now returning the scrolls and tomes to their places on the shelves, resisted the urge to roll her eyes. This servant of the Church could really do with letting up on imposing the Pope's rules. It was bad enough getting Sister Catalina and her fellow healers to keep quiet about the whole thing; now they had to deal with the school's priest who was more steadfast in his loyalty to the Church than to anyone else.
"Perhaps you can keep ignoring it?" the director snorted.
"Not for a price. Merely because I find myself in good graces with very capable stewards." Father Stephen withdrew a roll of parchment from his coat. "I am running out of words to replace in my draft to the bishopric. No doubt the rumors will reach him about some unholy magics manifesting here. They would surely take notice now that it involves the Invocation and the Vallière name. And we all know La Grande Tempête does not usually take kindly to slander."
Longueville wondered what exactly the Grand Tempest would do if this turned into a scandal.
"What do you make of this then?" challenged Director Osmond. "What are you going to say to her if she comes knocking."
"I will say that it is a test from the Divine."
"Oh, wonderful. Drag in the Inquisition, why don't you?"
The Académie secretary felt that she had to intervene here. "Excuse me, Monsieur Diacre, but is there anything you need? It is quite late and we are all dreadfully in need of some rest."
"But, of course. Apologies, Ma'ame Longueville. I will get to the point." The priest handed the director his parchment. "As I said, this is my current draft explaining my stance on Ma'amselle Vallière's familiar. I have done my best to present a favorable image for the school."
Director Osmond unrolled the letter, snickering as he read through it. "... You're good at lying, I must say."
"Word arrangement. I am only using hypotheses gleaned from texts published by the Church to build this defense. There have been countless summonings since Brimir's time that involve far more grave conditions. This is not the first nor is it going to be the last case of a person calling forth a creature of death or un-death or whatever it is they're going to call it. That's a good enough defense to start with."
"If you weren't a priest, I'd say you'd make for a fine lawyer," remarked Professor Colbert. "Even during mass, your orations tend to be hypnotic."
Father Stephen nodded, gesturing with his open palms at the ceiling. "A Brimir-given skill."
Longueville interjected once again. "Truly. Is there anymore?"
"Allow me to engage with the Grass Man. The soonest. Tomorrow would be nice."
The director scoffed. "You're going to exorcise it?"
"I'm going to converse with him."
"You sound like you know him," the secretary jabbed. "Pardon me, Monsieur Diacre. Perhaps you have seen something similar in your clerical studies? Something to alleviate our burden?"
"There is a woodlands to the eastern marches of the Germanian Confederation," the priest began. "The deeper you go, the more accursed they get. Hundreds of miles in and you may find yourself in what is more commonly known among our Germanian brethren as the Darkwoods."
Longueville raised her brow. She had heard of the Darkwoods; most people east of the Ardennes did. The place existed but the tales surrounding it were more myth than reality. Still, under the general public records chronicling what was known about the rugged east, the trinkets that trickled through to the rest of Halkeginia bore its fair share of alleged curses. A good enough reason for why thieves and fences were hesitant to take anything sourced from the Darkwoods.
Director Osmond leaned over his desk as did Professor Colbert who planted both his hands on the varnished yew as the priest continued.
"Settlers and travelers cursed with the an incurable plague, villages left to rot as they were consumed by the trees, roads vanishing as quickly as they were laid. Savage dogs, raging elks, mushroom men, swamp creatures, living shadows, banshees, chompers..."
"Get on with it," the director ordered.
"I ask for permission to converse with the Grass Man. Just to confirm my own theories on him."
"I doubt the Grass Man has a voice with which to speak," the professor rebutted.
Father Stephen only grinned. "Everyone has a voice. Some are just...too unique to be heard."
Professor Colbert and Director Osmond shared a weary look. The two educators conversed in hushed tones, debating briefly, before acquiescing to the deacon's request. Meanwhile, Longueville wondered if she would be witness to the first casualty attributed to the Grass Man. Father Stephen, in the few months she knew him, could be as stubborn as he was devout. Yet, when he glanced in her direction, she suddenly had an uncomfortable gut feeling that he probably knew far more than he let on.
Later, as they retired for the night, Longueville walked with Father Stephen to his quarters as it was on the way to her own.
"Ma'ame Longueville, you may want to invest in perfumes," he suddenly said before entering his room.
"I beg your pardon?"
"One confirmed detail about the creatures of the Darkwoods is that they have extremely powerful senses of smell."
Longueville planted her hands on her hips. "And so?"
The priest eased into his unlit quarters, the light from the hall seemingly struggling to dispel the darkness within. "I'm just saying that...they can sniff out Earth mages faster."
With that, he locked himself in, leaving the Académie secretary a little too disturbed for her liking. Shaking off his remarks as a cruel joke, she paced back to her own quarters, slamming the door shut and casting a quick cantrip to light up her room...
...and finding dead leaves scattered everywhere.
Longeuville suppressed the scream that rose up her throat. This had to be a sick joke. Some kind of prank by those stupid students. Nothing in here was out of place save for all this foliage. She furiously swept them off the sheets until she came across the spare wand that she kept hidden in a locked box under her bed—a back-up given to her by a Reconquista contact in the Tristainian army to help her with her mission.
It was chewed up and discarded onto her pillow.
ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: June 25, 2014 (original incarnation); October 29, 2023 (current incarnation)
LAST EDITED: October 30, 2023
INITIALLY UPLOADED: February 14, 2016 (original incarnation); October 29, 2023 (current incarnation)
NOTE: This is a rework of an older one-shot. The initial concept was Louise summoning a guy in a ghillie suit but the spell backfires in that the man fuses with the suit and then mutates into something more.
This newer version came to me when I was playing Darkwood, a top-down indie survival horror game. This wasn't meant to be a crossover but the more I rewrote this, the more I started using elements of Darkwood to the point that I just decided to sow Darkwood's setting with Zero No Tsukaima's setting to see what I would get. And it's right about that time of the year again so this is another attempt at the horror genre.
Hope you enjoyed it.