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Rule of Steel.
Inhale.
Rule of Steel.
Exhale.
Louse Valiérre repeated the words like a mantra, part of her desperately wishing to do away with the law ingrained into her by her mother that forbade her from completely losing her composure and just let it all out.
The Springtime Familiar Summoning. Her last chance to prove that she has a place at the Traistain Royal Academy of Magic after every single one of her attempts at casting a spell resulted in a violent magical reaction, after being pinned with the moniker of ‘Zero’ for the number of spells she had managed to cast successfully.
She didn’t know what would happen if she failed that too, having enrolled in the Academy instead of undertaking the lessons expected of her to become the lady of the house and managing the home as her role of her betrothed’s wife-to-be. If so, Louise would be lacking in both aspects and dared not dwell on the consequences.
But she was a Valiérre. She would face this head on with dignity, even if she would not succeed.
The Rule of Steel demands it.
The pink-haired girl anxiously researched anything related to the ritual well past midnight, only to come to the conclusion that she would simply have to speak from her heart and hope for the best. Zerbst, the redheaded cow that has been fraying Louise’s nerves ever since she entered the Academy, tried to get a rise out of her as usual as the students waited for their turn, but she was too exhausted to react.
Louise didn’t even notice how she was momentarily forgotten about by her teacher, nor how the rest of the student body laughed at that.
So with bags under her eyes and trembling hands, she walked up to the silver ritual circle after the professor called for her and raised her wand.
“Pentagon of the Five Elemental Powers, heed my summoning, and bring forth my familiar!”
The ritual circle visibly reacted by lighting up, but seemed to stutter out immediately, without even a small explosion that usually follows an attempt at casting a spell.
“Ha! Figures Valiérre can’t even summon smoke!” a student jeered from the side.
Louise’s knuckles were white from how tighty she held the wand in her hand.
“Go ahead and try again, Miss Valierre,” Professor Colbert, one of her eccentric, though kind professors, told her with a placating smile after glaring at the jeering student. The balding man didn’t look at her with pity and thus made his lessons one of the more tolerable ones, if only because he found her inability to cast any one spell properly fascinating from an academic standpoint.
“Many students added a personal touch to their summoning incantations, so perhaps adding a twist of your own would make it work,” he suggested.
With another steadying breath, the pink haired girl nodded and raised her wand again. Her trembling hand steadied, anger and indignancy granting renewed energy.
Fine. If they wanted original, she’ll give them original.
“ Steel and blood to the foundation! My ancestor is the Holy Founder Brimir! ”
The septagram lit back up, now brighter than for any student that used it before, silencing the unsubtly chuckling crowd.
“ Let rise a wall against the wind that shall fall. Let the four cardinal gates close. Let the three-forked road from the crown reaching unto the Kingdom rotate. ”
Once, Louise’s mother showed her an ancient-looking book of fairy tales that she was only allowed to read for one afternoon. They were about the adventures of a hero who the family believed to be their ancestor, and their equally heroic familiar. The few lines about the Springtime Familiar Summoning stuck to her for some reason, which she remembered with clarity to this day for some unfathomable reason.
It was only now that she felt thankful for that particular quirk, grinning as she took in the stupefied expressions of the people around her.
“ Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill... ”
However, as the ritual went on, the brighter the light got, the more serene Louise’s expression became, as though falling into a trance. Unknown to her, she kept on chanting past what she remembered, adding verses she has never heard or read.
“ ...In accordance with the approach of this holy ritual... ”
Both the students around the courtyard and the professor stepped away, in awe from the positively massive amount of magical energy they felt being poured into the ritual circle.
“ ...I shall attain all virtues of all of Heaven... ”
Afterwards, if one would ask Louise about the strange chant and what possessed her to make declarations bordering on blasphemy, then she would look oddly at them in genuine confusion, telling them that she doesn’t remember saying anything beyond asking her familiar to come forth from somewhere in the vast universe.
“ ...seven heavens clad in three words of power, arrive from beyond the boundary of nothingness, my lifelong companion! ”
As the summoner’s words finally aligned with what she intended to say, the oscillation of the magical energy in the circle reached its culmination and bright light engulfed everyone’s sight as the students cried out.
When someone stepped out of the smoke, however…
Smoke billowed, which was quickly blown away by the supervising professor. For a long moment, panic shot through the pink haired girl, fearing another failed spell.
‘She’s beautiful.’
Such was Louise’s first thought upon seeing the person stepping out of the smoke.
‘ She’s so pale ,’ was the second.
Her hair had the tinged white of pearls, and her skin was like snow. Her eyes however, were the palest of gold. Louise was reminded of the white peony flowers in the gardens around her family’s estate.
Her body was too slender and delicate to call her a swordswoman.
She was garbed in clothes of a foreign fashion, with a strangely cut white robe that reached just above her knees held together by a belt of black cloth, and had an open jacket of sky blue with billowy sleeves. Louise wanted to say that the girl wore black, knee-high boots, but in reality they were more like sandals with shin guards. Finally, at her hip, hung a curved sword in a sheath of white.
There was also this fragile air about the girl that made one think she seemed like she could be blown away by the wind tugging at her black scarf at any moment.
‘A snow spirit…? No, there’s no way,’ She told herself, shaking her head for a moment. ‘A noble perhaps? Some sort of foreign warrior princess?’
Before Louise could worry too much about having summoned foreign nobility though, the pale girl spoke, silencing the murmurs around the courtyard.
“Servant Saber,” she spoke with an accent that couldn’t be placed, “At your summons, I have come forth. I ask of you, are you my Master?”
Broken out of her daze, Louise blushed in embarrassment, belatedly realizing that she fell on her butt. Quickly dusting off her skirt as she stood and schooling her expression, the pink haired girl answered with as much dignity as she could muster.
“Y-yes! I, L-louse F-françoise le Blanc de la Valierre summoned you!”
Which wasn't all that much if one took her stuttering and shaking hands into account.
And to her chagrin, the way her familiar replied made it even harder to maintain that little dignity.
“Then that completes our contract. My sword shall be your sword, and your fate shall be my fate,” she affirmed with a nod. ”Nice to meet you, Master!” she then greeted with a blindingly bright smile, in complete contrast to the aloof impression Louise got mere moments ago.
Before she could decide how to react as she squinted from the metaphorical brightness, Professor Colbert called out to her.
“Miss Valierre! Complete the ritual!”
“Ah! O-of course! Pentagon of the Five Elements, bless this being and make her my familiar!” she hastily recited as she placed her lips on the pale girl’s.
Right after, when Louise stepped back, she heard a sizzling sound, and saw runes etching themselves on the back of her familiar’s hand through the gauntlet. Seeing that, she let out a shaky breath as her shoulders sagged, feeling a great weight fall from her shoulders.
She did it! She was no failure of a mage and a noble! She had finally cast a spell as it was intended!
“M-master…”
The pink haired girl looked up at the swordswoman at the odd inflection, only to find the blonde looking away abashedly, her cheeks red as tomatoes.
“Not that I think you’re not pretty or that I know about this sort of thing, Master, b-but we only met. Isn’t this a bit too fast? Or is this just how you greet people in this country?“
Louise blinked for a moment before comprehension crashed into her and she could do little more than bury her face in her hands.
“My, my, Valiérre, I didn’t know you liked the fairer sex!” a voice she recognized as Zerbst’s shouted from the side, only serving to make her blush intensify.
“I-it’s not like that!”
~~o0o~~
As they walked through the halls towards Louise’s room, she couldn’t help but sneak glances at her familiar. Her mind churned with questions, unable to decide which to ask first.
Saber, as she introduced herself, was simply much too pretty to be a mere commoner. Even if one attempted to ignore the pearly white hair of hers -a color which she had never seen before- her paleness and delicate features stood out. She even had the slanted eyes that Louise had only ever seen on Siesta, which were enough to make the male student population regard the maid as an ‘exotic beauty’.
And don’t even get her started on that sword of hers. Louise knew very little of commoner weaponry, but even she could tell that the exotic flower-shaped guard was of exquisite make.
Yet, the pink haired girl’s near-assuredness of her being a noble was in conflict with the pale girl’s first words after her summoning.
‘At your summons, I have come forth.’
Complete confidence in the purpose of her summoning. Louise couldn’t imagine any noble willing to swallow their pride to complete servitude to another in this manner. As far as Louise could tell, Saber had little to no issue with the situation she was in.
Louise’s mind raced as she considered the possibilities. Could she be a disgraced noble? A bastard child child of one, perhaps? If so, one would undoubtedly find the prospect of being under the direct employ of house Valiérre advantageous.
Her glances weren’t meant to be subtle, and even less so as her mind was occupied, but it still chagrined her when Saber caught her staring a little too long and managed to make Louise look away with a smile that left red tinging her cheeks.
She cursed internally. The rosette would admit that the loneliness and ridicule hasn’t made her stay at the Academy easy, but did it really affect her so much that a kindly smile was all it took to make her flustered?
“Saber, are you a noble?” Louise decided to finally ask once they entered her room, forgoing any subtlety as to reassert herself after getting embarrassed twice in front of her familiar.
“A noble?” the pale girl repeated, as though befuddled by the question. “Nothing as such,” she denied, her expression shifting into amusement, “Perhaps I had the chance to be one, once upon a time, but it doesn’t really matter anymore.”
The mage nodded slowly as she interpreted the answer, boxes being ticked in her mind.
The latter guess, then. The swordswoman was probably a bastard child that tried and failed to get formally acknowledged as part of her father’s house. She seemed hale and healthy though, and the quality of her clothes was nothing to scoff at, so at least the noble had the moral fibre to take responsibility and ensure the child he had sired was raised well.
“Where are you from, then?”
~~o0o~~
“Oh, it’s not on this map,” Saber said as she examined a map Louise rolled out on her desk. “Do you have a bigger one?”
“But...that’s the biggest map of the Known World I have...” the pink haired girl muttered, staring at her familiar. Was she from Rub Al-Khali?
“Huh...things are really different around here...” the pale girl commented, not noticing her Master’s state of bafflement. “I am from some islands beyond the eastern end of the continent called Japan.”
“Beyond the eastern end of the continent...” her Master repeated after her, trying to comprehend the distance. “W-what is it even like over there?” she asked, unable to hold back her curiosity.
The Servant adopted another thoughtful expression as she looked through the windows.
“The main difference would be that things seem...peaceful in your country.”
“War?” Louise guessed hesitantly.
“Civil war, perhaps, but even that is stretching it,” the familiar reminisced with a grimace. “Nothing but wanton manslaughter,” she added, glancing at her sword as she did for some reason.
“Maybe things would have been different if we had some mages to throw spells around,” Okita mused, thinking about how vastly different fighting with other Servants was from her experiences in life.
“Y-you can’t cast any magic? Or the other nobles?”
“Oh, we didn’t have anything like that. If you look at my Parameters you would be able to tell that I have an E Rank in the Mana stat,” Saber confirmed, smiling wryly. “I may not be able to shoot beams out of my sword, but I shall swear that I will be the best swordswoman you have ever seen!” she declared proudly, showing another blindingly bright smile that nearly made Louise squint again.
“But I-I...you...” her Master appeared to stutter with a pinched expression, her hands clenching and unclenching periodically.
“Are you well, Master? Is something wrong?” Okita immediately asked with concern, seeing the strange reaction. She reached out with a hand, only for her summoner to step back.
“I’m...” the pink haired girl began again, but seemed to give up when her trembling shoulders sagged. “Just...leave me be for a while. I’m feeling tired,” she said instead, taking off her blouse and skirt, and throwing them in her familiar’s hands. “Go and have these clothes washed.”
“Oh...okay, Master! I wish you a restful sleep,” the Saber appeared to hesitate for a moment, but accepted the order with a smile before walking out and closing the door after herself.
The moment the door closed Louise let out a shuddering breath. She definitely didn’t also sniffle, because nobles don’t sniffle.
There went her dreams of rubbing into everyone’s face that Louise summoned something amazing, proving to those who had mocked her that she was better than the student populace in something other than written test scores.
With a flick of her wand and a mutter of a spell, the flower vase sitting in one of the corners of the room broke apart in a conflagration of heat and kinetic energy, leaving nothing but soot behind.
She’ll just blame it on seeing a cockroach.
Rationally, she knew that her familiar didn’t mean it that way, as the way things were in a place so far away were just different, but it didn’t make the feeling of having been deceived, having her hopes raised and dashed cruelly sting any less.
‘Dammit,’ she cursed silently, ‘Founder dammit! I had summoned someone little more than a commoner soldier!’
More importantly…
Why did she hesitate just now?
Her familiar acted very kindly, in a much more genuine manner than she would get from the servants in the Academy who are obligated to act that way. But even if it was a balm on her soul after a lonely year at the institution fraught with failure and mockery, that shouldn’t have been enough to make her hold back like that.
It begged the question. Why couldn’t she bring herself to give her familiar a tongue lashing and dole out punishment even so? Louise wasn’t stupid, she knew her own temper.
The pink haired girl glared at her reflection in the polished floor for a few moments before a thought occurred. There was something...familiar about Okita that she couldn’t place.
‘Is it…’
‘Is it because she smiles like Big Sister Catt-’
She shook the thought away, rubbing her eyes.
‘No, it couldn’t be.’
Louise sluggishly climbed into her bed and was out before her head hit the pillow.
~~o0o~~
Okita hadn’t the faintest idea where she was summoned to.
But that was fine. It was fine if she didn’t really get it.
(And hey, she’ll take two foreign moons in the sky over a ring of light.)
All she ever needed was a Master to serve and an enemy to kill.
And she got a powerful Master indeed this time, capable of summoning a Servant without having a Holy Grail shouldering the bulk of the cost of such a feat.
Though as a person who thrived in conflict and violence, Okita didn’t really know how to feel about being summoned to such a peaceful place. Everyone she saw on the way was much too at ease for there to be any significant conflict going on.
Both in life and in the instances she was summoned before, it was always in times of great turmoil, be it a civil war, a grail war happening during a world war, or a war against the extinction of humanity itself.
The surrealness of the situation made her wonder if she got a karmic reward of sorts. Get summoned in a time of peace after what she went through, and have a vacation of sorts?
Though it remained to be seen if she was once more summoned because the World needed her in some shape or form, it was so very clear how her Master needed Okita.
Okita wasn’t sure what made her Master angry, but she’ll just have to do her best to support her new Master.
Oh hey, maybe that black haired maid over there could tell her where to take the laundry to wash.