Chapter 1: Who

At long last, Louise's turn to perform the summoning ritual came. A great deal of anxiety and preparation had all converged on this one moment. The moment when, finally, surely, she would show them she was not a Zero. The countless hours of study would finally pay off, her magic would finally work, she could finally rise above the jeers and laughter of her peers. Nervous didn't begin to describe her.

Yet she was determined. And so she did everything perfectly. The words, the expressions, the gestures, the runes she had carefully laid out upon the ground. The very thoughts in her mind pushed towards one goal.

"I beg of you..."

"My servant who lives somewhere in the universe!"

"Oh sacred, beautiful and strong familiar spirit!"

"I desire and here I plead from my heart!"

"Answer to my guidance!"

…

...

...

Nothing.

Nothing happened.

No familiar. No explosion. Not even the laughter of her classmates. A sense of unease rippled through the young mage, and judging by the conspicuous silence, it must have rippled through everyone else, too. Otherwise, there was no way they wouldn't be jeering her right now. But what did that mea-

Something happened. An instinct, warning her, forcing her halfway into a step back.

Then the world detonated, as if making up for lost time and lost mayhem. She heard screams. Hers or someone else, she didn't know, or particularly care at the moment. Louise's eyes were completely blinded by the flash, even as she strained to snap them shut and let them recover. No such mercy for her ears, and soon she heard nothing but the eternal ringing. She probably fell down, but she couldn't be sure with her sense of balance ruined- she could only vaguely feel the sensation of striking the grassy ground of the Academy.

Blind and deaf, Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière had a beautiful time to reflect on the rest of her senses. The explosion wasn't one of her normal ones. It had a taste and a scent. Blood and copper and ocean air and burning black powder. And it had a feel. It felt like hatred. It was wrong.

She didn't take the time to dwell on the details. There was no time to dwell on the details. Balance and hearing were returning to her. Slowly, she staggered to her feet, silently praying to the Founder that her eyes still functioned.

After she opened them, she prayed for the Founder to gouge them out instead. The Founder listened to neither prayer.

Around her, her classmates, her teachers, all scrambled. One way or another. Some ran as fast as they could. Others gritted their teeth, drew wands, cast wards and barriers against the threat. Others still simply screamed, or collapsed, or retched on the ground at the wrongness before them, or some combination of all three.

Normally this sort of pandemonium would have dominated her attention, but Louise all but ignored it in favor of what was directly in front of her... where that explosion had come from.

The ground had melted. Or collapsed? Or perhaps simply disappeared. It didn't matter. What was once the center of her ritual was now the center of an ocean. It would have been a disservice to call the body of black water anything else. Small though it was, it had depth, far beyond its apparent size. It truly felt like a tiny slice of the vast ocean at moonless midnight. That alone would have been enough to scare her, but...

The thing standing atop the water was on a completely different level. Ghastly hellfire of sapphire and emerald rolled around it... around her, for the figure was unmistakably a woman. Tall, very tall, and paler than most corpses, but a woman nonetheless. One could even pretend, for a moment, that the thing was human. With her eyes closed, one could go so far as to say that she looked peaceful, a corpse ready for burial. The strange, tight clothes she wore would certainly not look out of place in a coffin.

In both hands, she held a long, gnarled cane, made of some ebony substance not unlike her clothing, but thicker, almost.. chitinous. It rested atop the surface of the water, bearing the same casual disdain for submerging that the woman herself did. And then there was the... hat. The hat was a monster. She was wearing a monster on her head, above her pale white locks. It was a thing of that same black chitin, but unlike her clothes and cane it was... pulsing. The massive teeth that decorated the front- the jaw -of the beast chittered and chattered quietly, as if anxious to devour some hapless soul. Tentacles hung from the strangely shaped hat-monster, pale flesh swaying softly to their own internal rhythm. Atop it, things that looked vaguely like eyes burned, white mist trailing from them and into the air around her. On either side of the hat-monster, a set of twin... wands? Musket barrels? Things were mounted in strange, organic emplacements, and those emplacements swiveled, like mechanically aimed siege weapons, their twin protrusions scanning the crowd.

For its part, the crowd was still terrified. But no one moved to attack the walking nightmare in their midst, despite the feeling of hatred that flowed from every pore, seemingly seeping into the ground. Teachers did not earn their position by being rash, and Professor Colbert in particular restrained his fellows from attacking. Plenty of defensive spells were being cast, of course, and plenty more were being readied.

As for the students, most were either paralyzed with fear or had too many people in their way to try for a shot.

Then the nightmare opened her eyes, a deep, endless sea of blue from which the sapphire hellfire burned, boiling from each socket and slowly drifting into the air. Hateful intelligence examined her surroundings.

The pale one looked from side to side, carefully judging the strange humans who had surrounded her, in the strange place she had arrived in.

Two sets of people. Both wielding... pointy wooden sticks, for the most part. Barely even a proper weapon, but it seemed that the sticks (and the occasional analogue for one in the form of a sword or perhaps a flower) possessed more power than their physical potency. Under the apparent direction of those sticks, barriers of fire, earth, water, and air all sprang around her, shielding many of the humans. They were... thin, yes, but to conjure such things out of nowhere using naught but those four elements was nonetheless impressive. Serpents of fire, coiled and ready to strike. Beings of stone or metal summoned from the earth to do their master's bidding.

One group, much more numerous. Young. Uniformed. Many of them feared her. It would be easy to panic them, if she wished. But there was one in particular that stood out to her. A little girl, smaller than even most destroyers. Hair the color of cherry blossoms, eyes a color not unlike bricks or terracotta. She was at the front of the crowd, staring and gaping at the pale one, and the pale one could feel a link to her. Curious.

The other group was mature, sometimes even elderly. They wore no uniforms, but several of them had the air of practiced soldiers about them, in contrast to the civilians they were surrounded by. They used the same wands as the younger ones, but they seemed either more powerful, more skilled or both, for it was clear that their conjurations were markedly more impressive than their younger compatriots. The pale one picked out one that interested her, a bald man whose serpents of fire lay waiting around him. He was one of the elders who must have been a soldier, at least at one time. Right now, he was the leader. True, he did not seem to be the most skilled of his fellow elders, but he spoke with the authority granted only by a crisis such as this, and it was clear he knew his way around a battlefield, directing them to set up barriers, to find strategic positions or create them, to guide the young ones away from the danger.

Many of the young ones looked to the elders for guidance at this frightening juncture. Many of those elders were nervous, perhaps even just as scared as their young ones, but keeping a brave face because it was necessary.

Students and teachers, she concluded. Then this strange place (a thought in the back of the pale one's mind said 'castle', which led unbidden to the thought of the human's red-garbed carrier) was most likely a school of some kind. Perhaps for teaching the use of those conjurations they wielded?

Further clarification would have to wait. They were becoming increasingly agitated. Left unchecked, they would most likely attack the pale one. That was... not a bad thing, but there were things she wished to know.

Slowly, the pale one opened her lips, and spoke.

"Wait."

If there were any eyes that weren't yet glued to the abomination, they turned that way at the sound of its – her – voice. That same cold fury they had all seen and felt now flowed within the nightmare's words, echoing through the mind.

Fingers were crossed, breaths were held. The teachers readied themselves to fend off the imminent attack.

The burning-eyed woman slowly lifted her hand, raising her cane and pointing to the trembling, pink-haired girl who even now remained at the front of the crowd. Louise bit her lip, feeling the cold, merciless fire gaze into her. She had hoped that maybe she could stand up to this... nightmare. Control it. Claim it as her own. That such a thing would most likely be heresy did not occur to her. It didn't matter, though. Only the voice kept her from falling into sobbing regret at the unholy abomination that had answered her call.

"You brought me here."

The words of the monster were not a question. Nonetheless, the young noble could only nod, both to confirm and to try to break eye contact even for a moment. Maybe it would get the fearful tears out of her eyes. It did not.

"Why?"

And under those eyes of frozen hellfire, Louise whimpered, and told her. Through sobs and shudders, the girl spoke, forcing the words out one after another. Barely audible, yet the nightmare heard. Barely comprehensible, yet the nightmare understood.

Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière. Scion of one of the great noble houses of Tristain, the Vallière -powerful, wealthy, and second only to the royal family itself in bloodline. Daughter of Karin the Heavy Wind, one of the most respected and feared soldiers on the continent. She had a lot to live up to- and had failed every time.

Oh, yes. She had worked very hard. And she had excelled at her other studies! Louise was excellent at many things. She was just completely useless at the one thing that mattered to her: her birthright. The use of magic. Others summoned serpents of fire or turned stone into brass or flew on the wind or brought forth towering waves. All Louise had ever managed to do was explode, no matter what she tried to cast.

They called her the Zero. Because her success rate had, so far, been zero.

Through all the stammering and sobbing and whimpering and pleading, the nightmare's eyes flickered with... something. Some hint of emotion. It might have been sympathy. It might not have been. There was no one there who knew her well enough to understand, and few people who were even watching closely enough to see it.

The summoner herself, of course, did not see it. Or anything else, for that matter. Her eyes were drowned in tears as she spoke.

"-and I-i-i was g-going to summon a f-familiar and w-we'd finally know my a-aptitude and I w-wouldn't be a zero and they w-wouldn't expel me and Mom would be p-proud and I d-did everything right b-but I s-s-summoned y-y-y-you I d-don't know why I'm s-s-s-sorry please don't kill me pleasedon'tkillme-"

"That is enough. I understand."

Her eyes cleared in an instant as her head shot up to meet the eyes of the nightmare. The monster was... not smiling. Not making any facial expressions. Yet somehow, it seemed just a touch friendlier. Well, no. That wasn't quite true. It would be more accurate to say the monster had become slightly less murderous.

"You are mortal, correct?"

Louise could only nod at the question.

"And this binding would end when you died, correct?"

Another nod. The nightmare replied with a nod of its own.

"Then there is no issue. I will be your 'familiar'. Come."

It did not need to move in order to beckon to her. Louise shuddered. She glanced around.

Behind her, her fellow nobles awaited her answer with trepidation. She saw her mortal enemy, Kirche von Zerbst, that dark-skinned, flame-haired, far-too-busty, shameless, carousing, whorish Germanian... shaking her head and shouting. Louise did not hear it, but she could tell from the Germanian's face that Kirche was begging for her to stay away from that monstrosity. The pink-haired girl didn't know what to think about that.

Little Tabitha, she of the shining light blue locks, the silence, the staff and the books, looked as she always did. Focused, staring at the nightmare. Trying to read it. To decipher how to kill it. If the nightmare noticed her attention, it did not react.

Her teachers. Professor Colbert's face had hardened, the serpents of flame still lingering ominously around him. When he caught her eye, that face grew even more grave, and he gave her a small nod. She thought he mouthed the words 'do it.' Certainly, if he did not want her to do it, he would have stopped her, or moved to contain the nightmare. For all her failings, real or imagined, Louise was definitely not a fool. If she did not... deal with this monster, someone else would have to deal with it. And that someone clearly did not feel confident that he and his coworkers were up to the task.

More than anyone else, she heard her mother's words guiding her. Just her imagination, she knew- what she thought Mother would say. But guiding her nonetheless.

'It is a warrior. It respects strength. Show it strength.'

Even in reality, Karin of the Heavy Wind was a woman of few words. Honestly, Louise wasn't sure she agreed with her imagined Mother's assessment. This nightmare, a warrior? But the young Vallière did agree that she needed to show strength here. She needed to show her peers she was not a Zero. She needed to bind this creature to her will.

She stepped forward.

Around her, the students had been murmuring, though she had tuned it out. Now their murmurs grew louder. Was Kirche shouting again? No, it didn't sound like it. For a moment Louise considered glancing aside to confirm, but that, she knew, would be hesitation. Weakness. Instead she lifted her eyes –

– And shuddered as they met with the nightmare's own. Deep blue burned cold into her soul. The pink-haired mage stumbled to a halt before she had hardly begun to move. Those eyes of frostfire, staring at her, expressionless and motionless, like the gaze of the damned judging her hating her-

No! Focus!

Louise shook her head quickly, and took another step.

Then another.

The walk to the nightmare on the black ocean seemed to last an eternity. Fortunately, it did not. Those burning eyes did not consume her. By the time she reached the shore, she felt the sweat dripping down her face, but it was better than it could have been. She was not burning in the cold fire. She was not being shoved into the endless abyss in front of her and left to drown. She was merely face-to-face (technically more chest-to-face) with some sort of... intelligent undead or other terrible monster. Who was about to be her familiar. She prayed silently for Brimir's protection against those unfeeling eyes, just within arm's reach.

Then Louise looked up to meet the gaze again.

"After I say the words, I need to... K-kiss you. On the lips, ideally." At any other time, the nervousness would have surely been from embarrassment. At kissing another woman, perhaps. At kissing anyone. A Familiar or a noble or a commoner or a soldier or a man or a woman or a lover or an enemy.

Right now, Louise stuttered out of fear, slipping through the hardened mask she wore of her emotions. To her great relief, the nightmare nodded. This was bad enough without having to make a fool of herself to reach the towering woman-thing's lips.

She steeled herself yet again, and spoke with practiced ease.

"My name is Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière. Pentagon of the Five Elemental Powers; grant your blessings upon this humble being, and make her my familiar."

Then she closed her eyes, not daring to look into the depths of the Abyss as she leaned up to kiss the nightmare. The nightmare, for its part, leaned down to reciprocate, and their lips met with little issue.

Though it still almost shocked Louise's eyes open. The nightmare- no, her familiar – was cold. So cold. No heat in her body at all, save for that which drained from the pinkette's own face. At least the ghostly woman did not seem to be freezing. It was probably no worse than kissing a corpse.

That thought did not help. At all.

"It is done."

Louise took a step back and slowly opened her eyes. Before her, the familiar was... frowning. Not, thankfully, at her. Rather, the woman was staring at the back of her hand, watching golden runes trace themselves upon it. For her part, the pink mage was simply overjoyed that the frown on her newly acquired familiar's face was one of thought and not displeasure. And that she was done kissing the lips of what was, by all appearances, a sentient corpse.

"This is the mark of the familiar, then."

Louise nodded. Behind her, Professor Colbert stepped forward, his guard finally lowered at least partially. He was still wary, and as the nightmare-familiar looked up at him, the pink mage thought she could see a hint of … approval in the blue-burning gaze, sweeping over his held wand and his careful gait. More specifically, it was a look she had seen many times in her mother. Respect for the skills of a soldier. Perhaps that imagined Mother was not wrong after all?

Professor Jean Colbert had a long Springtime Summoning Ritual was a major event, after all, and a major event meant major preparation. And major paperwork. Neither of these were things he lacked experience with. Indeed, he didn't really mind all the work. It helped to keep him from growing anxious about the Ritual. All sorts of things could happen.

That Louise Vallière would finally succeed in Summon Servant, that was one such possibility.

On the other hand, that she would summon a nightmare... not so much.

As of right now, Professor Colbert was having a bad day. He had barely managed to keep the students and teachers from attacking the... woman-thing that Louise had summoned outright. In truth, he wanted to do it himself. The sheer feeling of wrongness that came from her as she stood atop dark water, black cape fluttering in the wind (perhaps created by her unholy fires)...

But Louise had summoned this... affront to God and the Founder. The woman-thing said as much herself. Now that she had summoned her servant, tradition dictated that she bind it.

On the one hand, tradition did not, as far as he knew, have much to say on the subject of sentient, seemingly undead monster-women.

On the other hand, the Familiar binding would (hopefully) control this thing until they could... figure out what it was. They did not know if they could kill it, even if it most likely deserved to be killed.

In the end, when Louise looked to him for guidance, he'd given her a nod. Colbert's decision had paid off- so far. The student had reached the woman-thing without incident, and was even able to complete the spell seemingly successfully.

"It is done."

Now the woman-thing spoke, looking down at her hand with a rare expression: a frown of thoughtfulness.

"This is the mark of the familiar, then."

For her part, Miss Vallière nodded. As for the professor, he stepped forward, still gripping his wand tightly. He thought he saw... approval in the thing's eyes, no matter how fiendish and unnatural they might be. She or it was judging him, and found something they liked. He only hoped that was a good sign.

"Indeed, it is. If you do not mind, I would like to take a closer look. For... administrative purposes, the exact mark must be recorded."

And a closer look might give him more insight into the thing's nature. He'd cast Detect Magic earlier, and found something. No surprise there. What surprised him was that he found none of the four elements. If it was indeed undead, he would have expected Water- not to mention the pool she had appeared on. Cold though they were, the ghastly flames that issued from her body spoke of Fire, or perhaps a well-crafted illusion of Air. The... thing she wore on her head seemed to be some sort of bizarre living machine, which would suggest an exotic form of golem, therefore Earth- especially when coupled with that strange black not one of those seemed to be present. Instead it was just... magic. Of some kind.

It wasn't Void, was it? Unlikely. Void had been the sole domain of the Founder Brimir, and was long lost to this day and age. Furthermore, Void was a holy thing, and this creature was about as far from 'holy' as he could imagine. Surely there was no way this monster was of Void...But there were no spells to detect specifically Void magic, since there was no such magic to detect. He couldn't know. And that unsettled him.

Colbert had heard a saying from time to time. Occasionally, he'd spoken it himself in his eternal quest for knowledge.

'When you take away the impossible, what's left, however improbable, is the truth.'

Now, what the truth might be left him contemplating a thousand heresies against the Founder. He hoped, prayed even, that this hypothesis turned out to be false, even if it left him with nowhere to begin. Ignorance would be a preferable alternative to that knowledge.

The woman-thing's voice saved him from further thoughts of heresies and excommunication.

"That will be fine."

And so the professor walked to the edge of the ocean where the familiar and the summoner stood. The pale woman-thing obligingly held out her hand for him, showing the glowing script with her usual expressionless gaze. He studied it, and frowned. Colbert had seen a lot of Familiar's marks, but...

"This isn't any mark I've ever seen. I am not sure it is even like any mark I've ever seen. And... forgive me," he paused, meeting her eyes and restraining his fear until she motioned for him to continue, "but are you not feeling any pain at the moment?"

She – it – tilted her head briefly to one side.

"A little. Hardly worth mentioning. Why do you ask?"

"Ah. Normally, the appearance of the Familiar's mark is notably painful, from what we have seen of it. With the exception of things that cannot feel pain, of course."

The nightmare nodded.

"You wished to know if I was such a thing."

"...Yes."

"I have had far worse pains than this."

Well, at least that answered one of his questions. The woman-thing did feel pain. She was just very tolerant of it. She was probably not an undead, then. But on the other hand...

Colbert couldn't help but ask the woman-thing, still examining her runes.

"So, what exactly are you, anyways?"

The nightmare turned slightly, cold fire gazing into the soul of the human before it. It... considered? hesitated? for a moment before it answered the professor's question.

"I was fallen. Now I am risen."

Oh. Well, then.

While he was still off-balance from that answer, the woman-thing turned again. Now her ruthless eyes swept across the crowd, scanning the students and teachers gathered there. Many remained huddled in fright, but it was a different kind of fear. Terror at a threat to your life is far different from creeping horror, and it was the latter that had replaced the former. For the most part. The nightmare must have known that they thought of her as malevolent, given the words she spoke to them. Quite pointedly, at that.

"So long as you do not threaten me or my master,"

She paused; her voice softening, if not her face.

"I do not intend to harm anyone here."

She turned to her master, giving the pinkette mage an expectant look. And under that merciless gaze, Louise finally spoke up, anxiety in her voice, shaking in her knees, fingers clenched tightly around her wand until her knuckles all but went white.

"Do you... do you have a name?"

The nightmare's lips curled upwards into a smile. And it chilled to the bone. The smile did not reach her eyes, of course. But unlike every other fake smile in history, it did not even try. Her smile wasn't trying to deceive anyone into thinking it was real. It said: I am smiling because that is proper for this situation. It has nothing to do with my emotions.

"I am Woe."

A/N

This story originated as a snippet on the SpaceBattles forums. It, along with a half-finished second chapter, and a companion piece, Silk Over Steel, featuring Yamato, were some of the first things I did on my own around there, after that one omake for Belated Battleships.

Porting this over was an utter pain. This is, however, unlikely to be the last Familiar of Zero fic I post here. I like the setting, and the premise allows for lots of Fun Crossover Shenanigans (which is probably part of why SB likes it so much).

This is a bit of an odd story. It satisfies my fetish for spookiness, but I'm really, really not sure where to take it. Original territory, frankly, I find somewhat terrifying at times. There are so many possibilities and it scares me, and this is the sort of thing that goes off the rails from Chapter One.