The Steep Path Ahead [Familiar of Zero AU]

[shadenight123]

Chapter Sixty

Albion was a cold country.

Saito wasn't thinking it because of the cold shower he had suffered through, or the freezing winds that had proceeded to dry him -and probably give him pneumonia too. Albion was a cold country because the mists, the humidity, the cold winds in the air all made it feel like one of the coldest places on which he had ever set his feet on.

It wasn't even the worst part of it, the cold. Albion was a cold country, but it was also a dead country. They had ended up dropping down near a border of sorts, upon loose rocks that had crumbled under their feet as they made their way further away from the edge and thus to stabler ground.

"This is a horrible way to start our adventuring," Josette said with a sniffle, shaking like a leaf and with both hands around her arms. "It's cold-" she whimpered, a sneeze interrupting her.

"Even the dead wood is wet," Louise said in disbelief, grabbing a stick from the ground and twisting it, letting droplets of water fall from it. "Well, only one way to go about it." She pulled her swordwand out and began to chant amidst the dreary and barren moor. A few shining spheres of light began to spread across the spots where Louise's swordwand passed, soon becoming a line of light. Then the light expanded, encapsulating them all.

It was like moving through a hot air maelstrom, and when it stopped, everyone was dry. Louise instead simply cheered. "There, I knew I could get the right strength to the spell-"

"Louis," Saito hazarded, "You practiced this before, right?"

"Well," Louise looked sideways and coughed lightly, her hair all standing up in an afro. She wasn't the only one though. Everyone else had pretty much the same hairstyle, but at least their clothes were dry. "I just applied the usual 'Vaporize' spell, only, I tried to make it weaker."

Saito laughed nervously. "Vaporize, uh-that's how you call that explosion thing that can make orcs headless?"

"Well, I could call it 'Wham-Wham, Head-Away!' but I think 'Vaporize' sounds better, don't you think?" Louise remarked, inclining her head to the side. "I might not know Levitate, but I sure as hell know my way around turning enemies into chunky bits!" she held her chest up in pride, her voice rough and 'manly'.

"So we could have ended up blown to bits?" Jeanette asked, her voice kind of wavering at the thought.

"But we didn't, because Mister Louis is a strong and great adventurer!" Josette said with stars in her eyes. "And big brother Jacques was so cool against that fire dragon, wasn't he?" she continued, looking up at Jacques who blushed and scratched the back of his head, definitely embarrassed by the praise.

"We need to find some form of roof over our heads," Louise said, "You don't want to sleep outside during the night," she added, looking up at the dimming light. "Light's fading pretty fast too."

"We are higher than the rest of the continent," Captain Morgan said. "Light comes later, and goes away sooner, and it's generally colder. Oh, and windy, there's a lot of wind, humidity, rain...well, you know, the usual Albion weather," he chuckled. "You either love it or hate it, and normally everyone hates it. 'Country forsaken by Brimir' after all, isn't just a fancy nickname."

He began to trudge through the moor's soft mud. "Can't do much for the ship business I guess, but again, I was planning on making it my last trip."

"Do you know where you're going at least?" Saito asked.

"Nope!" Captain Morgan said, "But my trustworthy compass shall tell me where the North is!" as he spoke, he held his compass up for everyone to see. He smiled as he looked back down at it, and frowned. "And it's going in circles. Great. Right. Well-anyone has a better idea?"

"Smoke trails," Jeanette said, turning her eyes towards a sparse amount of trees beyond which smoke could be seen. "A lot of smoke trails. Maybe we haven't ended so far from Londinium after all?"

Saito's bad feeling intensified the closer they reached the dreadfully dead woods. "The trees have been burnt," he said softly. "It wasn't wildfire," he added as the corpse of a fire dragon could be found slammed through at least a dozen of charred trunks.

"The battle must have happened recently," Jacques said, his hand on the belly of the dead beast. "It's still warm."

"Well, this explains the wild familiars," Captain Morgan said with a sigh, wiping the drops of humidity off from his forehead. "Their masters were killed recently, so they just went wild against everything near them."

Josette looked around slightly afraid, but then moved up closer to Saito, and grabbed hold of the edge of his left sleeve with her index and thumb. "Uhm-" she whispered, "I'm sorry, but-are there going to be scary things ahead?"

"Don't worry about it," Saito said with a smile and a thumb-up, "If there are, I will protect you all."

"Like you protected the ship, Saito?" Louise remarked with a dry chuckle. "Keep on the lookout. There might be specters-or...do you remember what type of creatures ate the dead?"

"Three-Eyed Vultures?" Saito hazarded, only to receive a shake from Louise's head. "You're the one who read the book on ingredients for fun. I simply carried it around!"

"Reading a few pages wouldn't have hurt!" Louise snapped as she cracked a branch under her foot, soon reaching past the forest. "Oh," she said softly. "Hey, Saito...was there anything about the animated corpses?"

Saito furrowed his brows and as he stepped right by Louise's side, his breath was taken away.

Moaning, gurgling masses of dead were shambling about with their arms held high, their bodies reduced to rotten flesh that still moved on somehow.

"Well-at least they're slow," Saito said in a whisper, the smell of rot hitting his nose like a hammer.

Upon a dreary dead horse, a skeletal remain of what had once been a scorched man simply turned its empty, lifeless eyes upon them and then pointed a half broken lance towards the assembled group by the hill. The shambling corpses stopped shambling.

They began to run like crazed, blood-thirsty monsters.

"Those aren't just animated corpses!" Louise yelled, "They're Undead!"

"Isn't that the definition of Undead? An animated corpse!?" Saito yelled back, his bow in hand as he threw a lone arrow at the closest of the corpses, who didn't even bother with it, keeping itself on course.

"Of course not," Louise snapped back, swishing her wand forward as thin beads of energy detonated ahead of them, vaporizing the Undead on the spot. "Undead are the product of advanced Water Magic! An animate corpse shambles about, but an Undead can fight just as well as the living - and you need to use a strong Cure Spell on one of them..." she took a deep breath, "Or vaporize them into nothingness, I guess."

"I-I know the Cure Spell!" Josette said, clutching on to her staff. "If I may be of help to you-"

The undead horseman had reached upon them in a flash, but as Jacques' giant hammer of iron slammed him away, Saito whistled in appreciation. "Hey-can you do anything for me?" he asked, holding his dagger up.

"Yes," Jacques answered with a curt nod, touching the dagger as part of his iron hammer diminished, making Saito's dagger a large sword. "Can you handle it?"

As the sword ended up being sharp on both sides, Saito smiled as the runes on his left hand activated to their full strength. "Course I can, hey partner! What's the plan!?"

Louise huffed, tapping her foot on the ground as she took in the advancing army. "Well, why not? Here's what we're going to do!" she pointed at Josette, "You! Make a Cure spell, while you, Captain Morgan-"

"Oh, call me Bleu, it's shorter and more to the point," he winked. "I'm a Line Water-Wind, if that can help-"

"It can! No, it's great!" Louise nodded. "Help her with water. This is a story that my m-master taught me! Water transmits the Cure faster, and it's effective against the Undead-"

Saito yelled a battle cry rushing down with Jacques by his side, both warriors striking at their foes with enough strength to send them flying back. They clapped hands once, and then smiled as the undead that drew near ended up receiving blows after blows that reduced them to paste or to ribbons.

"Create water, insert Cure, throw Cure with Wind," Jeanette nodded. "Got it. What about you?"

"I need to chant," Louise said firmly, holding her swordwand tightly. "I need to chant a very, very big spell."

Slamming both of her feet on the soft dirt, she hoisted her swordwand right in front of her. She took a deep breath, and then closed her eyes. It wasn't that difficult. She didn't need to memorize the words for her spells. They just came to her from deep within. When she allowed the chant to go on, she could feel the power thrumming beneath it.

It was such great power, brimming like the thundering clouds, ready to unleash a thunderstorm, that she feared if she didn't keep it check, it might just kill the whole world. As it was though, perhaps it was time to see just how long the chant that her soul chanted was, and how deep and far the wells of her Willpower could reach.

Meanwhile, as the chant kept going, Saito's body twisted as he slammed the greatsword through the ribcage of a once soldier who didn't as much as shake. Thankfully, the blow was strong enough to cleave it in half. The lower half didn't stop advancing, and neither did the upper one.

He didn't need to be the one to deliver the finishing blow, however.

"Jacques!" he snapped, jumping on the back of the giant and past him, swinging his blade where new undead were brimming by the score. It seemed as if somebody had grabbed a whole battlefield worthy of dead and dropped them right on their path. The horses were the most dangerous, because they didn't stop unless their legs were chopped off, and even then, their massive mouths could still hurt.

A limbless horse's mouth managed to grip onto the armguard of Saito, making the boy snarl in pain as he sliced the lower mandible cleanly off to free the limb, blood dripping down from the wounded flesh.

"Undeath doesn't transmit through bites, I hope!"

"I hope not, Mister Saito," Jacques said with a rumbling, polite, but terrifyingly tired voice as he fell down on one knee, his body badly mangled by bites and seeping blood all over. Just as an undead warrior seemed keen to slam its sword through Jacques' body, Saito's greatsword easily deflected the blow on the ground, before a kick made the creature push its weight back, if slightly. The limb that held the blade popped free, but didn't let go of the sword until Saito's boot crushed the fingers off it.

A shower of water struck them from behind, making Saito gasp as tiredness and soreness began to disappear, accompanied by Jacques' deep breathing as he stood back up, the wounds closing up with sizzling mist.

"This is Josette's Cure spell," Jacques said, hoisting his hammer up. "And now-" the 'water hose' ended up slamming in the Undead closer to them, which soon toppled over, dead.

"Well," Saito remarked with a small smile. "This evens the odds a bit."

The flapping of wings as undead drakes began to lift off from the end of the battlefield made the boy groan.

Why had he opened his damn mouth?

Why had he opened it!?

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Sixty-One

If it had been hard keeping at bay the Undead on the ground, taking care of those in the sky proved to be quite difficult, if not impossible. At least, until Jacques gave Saito a curt nod and showed him the flat side of his hammer, his muscles tense and the unspoken words of 'Climb Up' being exchanged between the two men.

Saito gave Jacques an understanding look, and clenching tighter his greatsword, he jumped upon the hammer that soon began to spin with him on top.

The throw would have been Olympic material, at least in Saito's opinion, and as he spun in mid-air like a devastating Sonic The Hedgehog wannabe, the young Japanese boy couldn't help but cheer as he felt the impact of the greatsword against the hard bones of the closest dragon shatter them, allowing him to pass through.

Still holding on to the sword, his feet up in the air as the blade had dug deeply into the rotten corpse that was now falling to the ground -a whole wing ripped into being completely useless- he swapped his hold to plant his feet down on the back of the best, yanking the blade free just as another Undead dragon came for him with snapping, rot-filled fangs. A blast of water hit the creature's face, making its eyes go slack as it closed its mouth shut.

Saito took that as the cue to move upon it, and rush all the way to the tip of its tail with a bellowing scream, reaching for yet one more flying dragon who diverted his attention towards him.

The sun was starting to make Saito sweat, even though it should have already gone beyond the horizon of Albion. From his vantage point up above, Saito could barely steal quick glances at the amount of Undead crawling below them. Josette was doing her best, aided by the others of the group, while Louise seemed keen on chanting, whatever spell she had in mind quite long.

Twisting his blade so that it would stick against his foe's mandibles, Saito planted both feet on the creature's snout, pulling the blade to the side as it also diverted the course of the creature, moved not by pain, but by the primal desire to devour the flesh of the living. The cruel gaze that animated its eyes suddenly went away though, mostly because Saito screamed as he pushed the blade further down, splitting the mandible and the skull as he proceeded to rip the dragon in half all the way to the tip.

His left hand shone like the blazing sun that was now over their heads, even as he ended up in a free-fall, he spun with his greatsword, impacting with thunderous fury against one unlucky knight upon a dead griffin.

The impact rocked the very ground, sending deadly shrapnel to rise across their immediate surroundings as the boy gasped for air, his vision all kinds of blurry.

The Undead did not give respite. They were foreign to the concept of 'mercy' or 'awe'. It didn't matter to them if a boy had done the impossible, or survived the odds. They cared for the flesh of the living, and they would have it, no matter what seemed like a daunting task. Like a sole body, hundreds of hands half-rotten and half already skeletal moved closer with a feral-like stance not unlike that of hungry wolves.

Saito swung the greatsword, but the light coming from his left hand began to flicker. His heart thrummed like an airplane's engine, but the swing that caught a couple of skeletons could not complete, forcing him to step back as wicked claws began to rip into the clothes that were unprotected by the armor.

A blast of water reached him from the side, and as he rushed in that direction, the corpses beneath his feet were wet and slippery. His foot stumbled down on a wet arm, and as he fell face first in the mud, the Undead were upon him in a second of hungry, ravenous desire.

The scorching sun above his head began to descend just as his vision was obscured by rotten, yellow teeth covered in dark crimson flesh.

Louise finished her chanting, her swordwand deftly descending down in front of her. Her Willpower was utterly gone, but the blinding light that spread high in the sky could easily be seen from every direction of Albion.

Josette stopped chanting, as did pretty much everyone else. Jacques' massive frame took that as the cue to transform his hammer into an armor around his frame, which he used as a mean to tackle the Undead upon his way to Saito's fallen form, shielding him from the upcoming blast.

The miniature sun impacted the ground with a simple fizzle, but then it cracked asunder, and exploded in a shower of light that encompassed the whole battlefield, vaporizing on the spot the entire army of Undead, covering everything into white candor.

The cold Albion breeze was replaced by a warm summer-like wind for a brief moment, and as Louise gasped for air, her swordwand planted on the ground and her hands gripping on to it to keep herself steady, she was sweating profusely from the effort.

Not a single Undead remained upon the battlefield. Not a single corpse, or speck of grass, dared to show itself. There was only a large iron lump that soon receded back into the typical iron slab that belonged to Jacques, the man in question, and Saito beneath him.

"Is...Is Saito all right?" Louise asked, her breathing uneven.

Josette squinted her eyes, and as she saw Jacques carry the boy, who appeared to be pretty much in the same condition as Louise, she smiled, "Yes! They're both fine!"

"Good," Louise said, her body wobbling to the side. "That's...really good."

Louise flopped down on the side, her breathing evening out as she was grabbed quite quickly by Jeanette.

"She's out cold," Jeanette said in a whisper.

"He is out cold," Bleu said with a little cough.

"It's not like the Gandalfr has incredible hearing," Jeanette muttered. "He definitely didn't hear me having the 'hots' for him from below deck."

"Or maybe he did and he played it shy," Bleu added with a smile still on his face, "Now, now, keep the character up my dear," Bleu removed his hat and waved at Jacques' nearing form. "Oh my! Is Mister Saito all right?"

"Knocked out," Jacques said gruffly. "Fought like a man possessed-lifted a greatsword weighing more than him with ease."

"They really are something, these experienced adventurers!" Bleu said cheerfully.

"Are they going to be all right?" Josette asked, her voice worried as she looked from Jacques to Jeanette. "We'll need to find a place to rest-"

In the far off distance, movement could be seen amidst the trees on the other side of the battlefield. There had been some stragglers, and while a good deal away, they were now closing in.

"Closest city is that way," Bleu said, "Hopefully we won't find this sort of stuff in Londinium. Seriously, what the hell happened? Damien better have an explanation," he added in a whisper.

"Hey now," Jeanette hissed. "You warned me against-"

Bleu gave her a friendly glare and a finger against his lips, and Jeanette grew quiet. The boy then winked, and began to hurry up. Without another word, Jeanette did the same with Louis slung over her shoulder.

She might have appeared as a frail and youthful adventurer, but she hadn't become a knight of Gallia because she looked cute.

Like everyone else, she owed her position to Lady Charlotte.

So if Lady Charlotte told her to act like a weak girl secretly in love, she would.

Although she had no idea why.

Hadn't the Gandalfr's skills already been put to test by Lady Charlotte herself?

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Sixty-Two

For a refreshing change of pace, the first one to wake up from the fatigue induced sleep turned out to be Saito. He awoke to a depressingly bleak reality of being carried between the strong arms of Jacques, rather than with his head resting on the lap of a cute girl, but he was still alive, so things couldn't be that bad.

His vision was slightly blurry, but he could make out buildings of some form.

"Uh?" Saito groaned as an aching pulse hit his head, soon followed by a full-body pain that seemed to sink deep into his muscles. "Where?" he gurgled.

"Mister Saito woke up!" Jacques said, his voice carrying quite the hurried tone in his words. Near him, Josette took a deep brief of relief.

Captain Morgan -Bleu- struck with his boot a nearby door and cracked it open, allowing them entrance before Jacques flung Saito at him, and turned to close the door with a wall of dirt. "The windows too!" Bleu exclaimed, as Saito's vision finally put in where they had ended up.

Once, it had been a normal house, perhaps a whole building filled with rooms for the poor to live in. Now though, it was as if it had come out of a splatter movie. There was blood everywhere, and bits and pieces left behind to rot away -a couple still twitching.

From upstairs, a corpse shambled its way down, only for Jeanette's daggers to easily slam through the Undead's legs, letting it fall down the remaining stairs. Josette's staff was shining a soft white light as it gingerly touched Saito's forehead, and then moved to slam with strength against the back of the Undead's neck.

The corpse remained down, finally 'dead'. Saito's body was still in pain, but he could move now, at least long enough to stand back up and take a deep breath.

The windows of the ground floor had meanwhile been barred by rock pillars, which Jacques had created with surprising ease.

"We are safe for now," Jacques said.

"Back doors?" Saito hazarded. "In zombie movies-there is always a backdoor, or a cellar-"

The rattling from a side door was soon met with Jacques' quick thrusting of both hands on the ground as the earth rippled, allowing a wave of dirt to form right in front of the door, barring it from ever being opened. The man sighed in relief.

"Well, this is clearly the difference in experience showing," Bleu said with a cheerful smile, tipping his foppish hat at Saito. "We'll be in your care once more, Mister Adventurer."

Saito nodded, his eyes looking around his 'party' for Louise. She was knocked out cold on the back of Jacques, sleeping soundly and strapped on tightly. "He-He won't wake," Josette said in a timid voice. "He's not hurt-just...tired? The Cure spell can heal wounds, and sores, but if he's unconscious-"

"It's all right, he already did a lot so he's earned his rest," Saito said with a chuckle, tapping his chest with his right fist, and letting his gauntlet reverberate against his breastplate. "Trust in me then, Adventurer Saito will see you all to safety...if someone can tell me what's going on though."

"Oh-Uhm..." Jeanette's face blushed lightly as she neared him, "W-We sort of ran all the way here," she said timidly, fidgeting with her fingers and looking shyly away. "Y-You were r-really amazing back then!" she added, both hands to her chest and her face bright red.

Compared to Josette's 'innocent cuteness', this 'maiden cuteness' was pretty much a guaranteed critical hit. Still, Saito couldn't help but hold on his ground even as he felt most of his rationale slip away.

"I-I think so too!" Josette said suddenly, her eyes all stars and shining jewels. "I-I mean, the way you went to help brother Jacques and how you swung your sword, and then you were thrown in the air like-like 'waaah'," she moved her hand up, "And then you went 'kabam! Swish! Swish-Swish-Swish!'," she made a gesture with her hands similar to 'spinning', "It was just so cool! I couldn't help but stare in amazement!"

There was the sound of broken wood, as the dirt holding the main door of the building closed began to shake.

"Let's move upstairs," Saito said. "Then we can see about getting to another building from the roof," he added.

"Uh-We are nearly out of Willpower, Mister Saito," Josette said with an 'ashamed' look. "B-But we can hold our own in a fight if it comes to that!" as she said that much resolutely, she held her staff in both of her hands, fires of determination brimming in her eyes.

"Yeah! Don't underestimate us just because we're girls," Jeanette added, the daggers she had thrown returning to her hands thanks to light breezes of wind. "We trained really hard to become great adventurers!"

Saito simply laughed as he pulled out his dagger, taking a deep breath as he felt his muscles tense and then relax. It was probably for the best if he didn't overuse his familiar power, or he'd end up fainting again and now was clearly not the time for that. As he carefully sidestepped the corpse and began to walk up the stairs, he muttered a quick prayer for the deceased, bowing his head slightly as he passed the dead body by.

The stairs creaked as the stench in the air made Saito's head feel heavy, or perhaps it was the lingering fatigue. It was impossible to knock-out an Undead, and if they were as fast as the living, then the only thing he could do was to dismember them in order to take their 'weapons' away.

This meant cutting off their heads and their arms, and hoping they wouldn't kick them to death.

Someone on the upper floors had apparently had the same idea as him, since the number of limbs that were rolling about was pretty high. Sure, the arms were merely pulling themselves across blindly, but they appeared to latch on to anything vaguely resembling a limb, forming a sort of dangerous floor he really didn't want to trudge on.

"We could levitate over them," Bleu whispered, "But Jacques' a bit too big for the hallway."

Jacques had been doing his best to 'shrink' as much as possible, but even he couldn't do miracles. He was carrying around his weapon and Louise, so-

Saito blinked. "Hey, can you make other things with your iron slab?"

Jacques gave a single nod, and thus, Saito smiled. The stairs where at the far end of the hallway, and as everyone carefully stepped aside, Jacques transformed his weapon into a 'ball'. "Now," Saito said, "We push."

Captain Bleu smiled with his rapier in hand. "I have just the spell for pushing."

"We need to conserve Willpower," Saito pointed out. "So...We push the old way."

Jacques planted both arms on the sides of the ball and gave a curt nod. "Stay behind me," he said with a grumble, Louise still peacefully asleep on his back. "I will open us a path."

And then he charged with his feet stomping on the floor, the sphere of iron crushing to paste anything on its path, even the random Undead that had peeked from a nearby room to stare at the reason for the noise coming their way. The sphere changed near the end in a morningstar of sorts, which Jacques yanked back in order to let it arc over their heads and slam down on the floor behind them, cracking it apart in a shower of splinters and creating a natural rift between them and the Undead that had begun to pour out of the doors.

"We climb," Saito said grimly at the numbers coming through the main door one floor below -and which the hole had aptly showed them. "We climb fast," he added, taking to the stairs two steps at the time.

It was as he was about to turn the corner that Josette's staff grabbed him by the feet and pulled him back, "Be careful Mister Saito!" she exclaimed as he fell down, stopping an inch away with his nose from what seemed like a wire, an absurdly sharp wire.

There were hooks planted on the floor, and wires all around the hallways. Somebody had taken great care in the job done, and as Saito couldn't help but think of a way to prevent all of this work from being destroyed -they needed to pass, but this as a way to stop the Undead seemed pretty great- a figure appeared from the other side of the hallway.

"Color me impressed," a very familiar voice said with a warm tone, "If it isn't Sir Saito!"

"M-Marteau!?" Saito exclaimed in wonder, staring at the man on the other side of the trapped hallway. "What are you doing here!?"

The ex-chef laughed, his white hat replaced with a leather cap and his figure a bit leaner than before. His armor had a slightly chewed-on appearance, and the cleavers by his belt had seen a fair share of use, but he still seemed in high spirits. "Why, surviving the end of Brimir's patience of course! What about you? Is your partner-" Louise' head peaked from Jacques' shoulder, still asleep, "Oh, I see-there he is!" he laughed. "Well, just a moment," as he said that, he moved near the hallway's side where a large wheel seemed to have been placed with a couple of nails and some bits and pieces of scrap.

As he began to turn it, the wires stopped being in tension and all fell down. "Careful with the hooks, those I can't remove!" he added as Saito managed to nimbly jump past them, the rest aptly choosing to levitate their way through. With a few quick cranks, the wires were tensed once more.

As soon as he was done, Chef Marteau turned towards Saito and lunged, his arms as big as logs squeezing the boy's life out of him, or at least, 'amiably' doing so.

"Boy am I glad to see you!" he laughed cheerfully, moving him right and left. "I knew the moment I saw the light out of the window that it could only be Sir Louis and his magic, and I couldn't help but hope you'd be coming this way! Oh-Oh how much I prayed the Gods for it to be true!" he sighed in relief, holding the hug which was starting to turn quite awkward.

"Ahem," Bleu coughed politely. "Could we...have an explanation of what's going on here? And...presentations?"

Marteau smiled, and happily let go of Saito, "Please do come in! It's a bit cramped, but it's the best I could find in such a hurry."

And as he gestured to the room he had come out from, they stepped inside.

The room was indeed cramped, especially with Jacques.

Well, Jacques and a group of scared young children huddling together with what looked to be a beautiful, bountiful, blond-haired girl with a large hat over her head.

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Sixty-Three

Marteau took a small breath, and smiled kindly to the worried-looking girl. "Don't you worry now, Miss Westwood, this fellow here is going to get us out of trouble real quick, him and his partner are some of the finest lads I've ever met," he winked at her, which did little to reassure the girl, but she did grow less fearful, trying an awkward, but quiet, smile.

"Well," Marteau said, "Guess I should start from the beginning. You see, Sir Saito, I was going my way when Miss Matilda, the Headmaster's secretary at Tristain's Magic Academy, stopped me asking if I wanted a job. I could feel it a mile away that it really mattered to her, but she couldn't leave to do it. I don't know how she found me so quickly since I had barely reached Tristain, but she was quite worried about her sister here," he pointed at the blonde. "She needed someone to go and fetch her from this cursed place, since it was starting to get too hot for her, but she couldn't just up and leave, and then there was the matter of the orphans which Miss Westwood, bless her heart, really, took care of-"

That would have explained the children, most of which were now quietly looking at them, a few even shyly smiling at Bleu or Jeanette's tender smiles, or at Josette's cheerful waves of her hands they answered with light giggles.

"So off I went. It wasn't hard. Being a mercenary for hire and with a past of it, I had all of my experience to go with it. She gave me this old box, saying to open it near the woods of Westwood and go around until Miss Westwood came to fetch me," here his voice dropped slightly, "I know little about magic, so I guess it's pretty standard fare to hide a fair maiden in the woods, I think."

He chuckled next, "And boy what a fair maiden, isn't she one?"

Saito couldn't help but agree with a nod, Jacques actually doing the same until Jeanette's foot stomped down so hard on his own to make him wince and freeze. Meanwhile, Louise's feet began to massage Jacques' kidneys, small muttered curses making the grown-up man swallow nervously, glad he was not the actual receiver of them.

"And that's when things started to go down the drain. It can't have been more than a few days ago, but all of a sudden, the dead didn't want to stay dead anymore. By the time I had Miss Westwood and all the orphans lined up and ready to go, well..." he swallowed thickly, "I'm just a normal man, not a knight like you or-"

"Mister Saito's a knight?!" Josette said excitedly, her eyes wide. "Woah-just like the stories!"

"Oh, ops," Marteau brought a hand to his mouth, "Shouldn't have said that?"

"It's not important," Saito replied. "What happened?" he asked next, his voice a whisper.

"I managed to reach the city gates before they closed them at least," Marteau said with a hint of pride. "Had it all set up with a friend in Londinium. You might have met him shambling downstairs, poor old Sartre retired after an arrow got him in the family jewels," all the men in the room winced in sympathy, "He was never the same afterwards, but at least he wasn't as bad as Scarron. Poor bloke lost it all to a mercenary with a large hammer that-"

"Enough-" Saito winced in sympathy, and phantom pain, "Enough."

Marteau chuckled, "Sorry, Sir Saito, it just helps to talk about lighter things-"

"Then what must have happened isn't really something we want to know," Bleu said.

Marteau took a shuddering deep breath. "I got them safely in here, but the stupid captain of the ship we had hired wouldn't budge. They weren't going to sail until the day was right, and the blockade made it all the more difficult to do so. I think the blockade's in act to keep these things down, I guess. Such a plague of Undead-one has to wonder who's the one leading them all and why. Nothing short of a plague from the Gods themselves could make this happen. Perhaps it has to do with the death of the rightful King of Albion, but those are just the tales I heard from the few that passed below our windows..."

Marteau shook his head. "I don't think any made it outside. We've been lucky we weren't planning on showing ourselves out much, what with the war and how pretty Miss Westwood is, I know how some men think just because they've got a symbol on their chests that allows them to arrest people, so I-well, I did my best," he pulled his leather cap off his head, and sighed, clutching it. "I don't know if you can, but can you at least bring a few children away with you?" he pleaded. "I know I'm asking a lot, Sir Saito, but-if there's not enough space on the ship then-"

"We don't have a ship to leave," Saito said. "We had one getting here, but-"

"But it went down," Bleu said. "However, I am a capable captain, and I am a Wind mage just like Miss Jeanette here," he tapped his chin. "If we can reach the docks, and if there's still a ship working, we can leave this blasted place behind." He sighed. "Truly, one has to wonder where the mages all went to allow for such a thing to happen-"

"They were probably the first to die," Marteau said. "It's usual fare to hit the nobles first in a battle, so the majority of them died during the civil war-and those who didn't are probably safely tucked away on the ships of the blockade, holding them aloft with Wind Magic."

"Leaving innocent people to die," Josette whispered with her hands to cover her mouth in horror, "How-How despicable!"

"It's probably because nobody thought that there could exist a mage capable of controlling so many Undead at once," Bleu said, taking his hat off and kneeling in front of 'Miss Westwood' with a warm smile, his eyes however on a young child who was clutching on to the older girl like a lifeline. "Hello, fair lady. My name is Morgan Bleu, but I am Bleu for my friends. May I have your name? I always ask the name of the people who are going to board my ship."

The child looked away from Miss Westwood's bosom with a fearful look, but at Bleu's warm smile sniffled a bit, and then whispered her name out quietly.

"Ah, that is a pretty name, Miss Marie. Now, you have nothing to fear, because you see that man over there? He's so strong, he can cut in half dragons! And that boy on my friend's back? He's so strong, he wiped out a whole army of Undead just outside the walls! I know it's night now, so it's a bit scary, but tomorrow morning, we'll all be out of this dreadful place and on a flying ship. And I'll be the captain," Bleu spoke softly, his voice not wavering once, "But I'll need someone to hold on to my spyglass for me," he added, pulling out from his breast pocket a small copper cylinder. "So-How about you become my First Mate?"

The child looked at the shiny object, and then at Bleu's smile.

She gripped at the spyglass with a small shy smile, and that was all that Bleu needed.

He stepped away next, a mouthed 'thank you' coming from Miss Westwood as the child had been the most scared of the lot.

"If Louis gets better by tomorrow," Saito said, "He can probably level up the road from here to the docks."

"That wouldn't be wise," Marteau said. "The ships that are blockading the port aren't there just for show. The only reason they haven't blown up the whole city is that it's their capital, so they kind of need it -and we're close to the palace, which means there's all sort of important documents in it, coupled with-"

"The palace is nearby?" Saito asked, his eyes now firmly determined.

"Well, yes, it's just down the street, but Sir Saito-" Marteau's words were cut off by the boy's firm shaking of his head.

"Marteau, Louis and I haven't come here just for sightseeing purposes," he said in a soft voice. "And if Louis' knocked down, then it's up to me to finish the job. I'll have better luck at night. I can't see the Undead, but the Undead can't see me in turn, can they?"

"If you say so, Sir Saito," Marteau whispered, "But if one of them acknowledges you, then they all will."

Saito shrugged. "So what if they've got a hivemind? I've survived worst odds, and the blockade-it's only on this side of the island, isn't it?"

Bleu's eyes snapped open in wide realization. "Oh-Oh I see now!" he smiled, "The Reconquista has this port blockaded, but the Royalist side might let us go if we bring them something of worth! Maybe they haven't been hit by these Undead as hard as the Reconquista has been, after all Newcastle's is a fortress city, while Londinium was a pretty big port city-there's a difference between having a moat and not having one-"

"Yes, now stop babbling. You are scaring the children with how excited you are, Captain," Jeanette said with a low hiss. "We could all go together, it would be safer-"

Saito shook his head, "You are all low on Willpower, and this is something only Louis and I can do. He's knocked out, so-" he smiled, "I'll do fine. I'll stick to the rooftops until I reach the palace. Marteau...can you lend me a couple of hooks and a rope?"

"Sir Saito...is this so important you would risk your life on it? This is quite close to suicide, and the only reason I am not saying it is, it's because I am an optimist," Marteau spoke in a whisper, as if not to scare the children.

"I'll be waiting for you lot on the rooftop of the palace once I'm done," Saito said. "Bring the ship around and you'll find me there."

"I can see I won't easily convince you otherwise," Marteau muttered, "So I can only hope whatever you're doing is worth it," he added.

Well, he was going out in the middle of the night to seek out five letters that could pretty much be hidden in secret compartments all throughout a palace more than five times a large sized mansion.

However, he didn't need to find the letters as much as ensure their destruction.

Louise was out, so there was only one thing he could do.

He just had to set the palace on fire.

He knew from experience that the kitchens of the Magic Academy had oil and fat to spare, and those things?

Those things could burn.

He couldn't help but chuckle quietly to himself at the thought that he would be greasing the walls of a palace filled with Undead just to set it on fire.

If he said so himself, this was the most suicidal plan of all suicidal plans.

Thus, it was guaranteed to work if he made it work.

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Sixty-Four

Hiraga Saito was not a spy. He had not trained in parkour. He knew absolutely nothing about how to pick a lock, or how to appear inconspicuous in a crowd of dead people. All that he knew was that as long as he held a weapon in his hand, he could go faster than normal, swing harder than normal, and do things slightly better than normal.

Sometimes he also did thing quite inhumanly better than usual, but those were rare exceptions.

True to his thoughts, the Undead were shambling all around the roads below, but not one of them had reached for the rooftops. A few times, Saito had to hide and hold his breath inside a chimney as an Undead Dragon had flown about, but after the second time, he had emerged so covered in soot he could easily blend in with the surroundings.

It was if nobody bothered cleaning their chimneys.

Course, he had climbed his way up to the roof by crawling inside a chimney, dagger clutched tightly in his right hand, but the runes' flicker was easily hidden with a good dose of soot and dust.

Saito was glad he wasn't allergic to it.

He was also glad he had grabbed the rope and the hook, because swinging from one rooftop to the other wasn't always easy, and his knees were starting to plead with him for mercy -a mercy he could not concede them.

If he had to ponder on why he was doing it, then the answer would be pretty simple.

He was doing it for Louise's well-being. This mission was important for her and her family's future, and while it was true that she had been the one to bring him over, he had been the one to touch the damn green portal. They had gone through enough stuff together now that it was long since past the 'recriminating' phase. It had happened, it was water under the bridge, it was time to turn a new leaf.

So now he was doing it because he was genuinely trying to help his friend, Louise, who would be in a pinch if they failed to complete the mission. He also was relatively sure that if he started a big bonfire, it would keep the ships of Reconquista busy with it, and allow them to leave far more easily. Maybe it would even break the blockade, making it possible to head straight for Tristain on the double.

That was, of course, if the letters were in the palace and not aboard one of the ships.

But while Saito couldn't be sure the letters were inside the palace, it was better to just burn it down as a safety and then proceed from there. It wasn't like they could prove it was Tristain that set their palace on fire in the middle of a frigging zombie apocalypse. And if the letters were indeed there, then it would all be for the best. If they weren't, then Reconquista was still going to lose whatever there was of precious inside their 'government' seat.

And if the Cardinal wasn't satisfied by that? Then he'd just have to send a group of templars to do the job with their holy light spells that did extra damage to the Undead, because this was the most he could do.

The palace was, surprisingly, not on a hill. It had been built with a large square in front of it that gave no cover, and the amount of Undead that were rummaging around made it pretty clear that when they had attacked, a lot of people had tried to enter the palace to stay safe. There were crude barricades in place, but the gates had been trampled and opened up, and a few Undead dragons swished their tails around the gardens, monsters of various nature pretty much doing the same.

The main gate and front doors had been pried open by a powerful force, and it was pretty clear that the ground floor would be packed to the brim with corpses. Saito clutched the dagger with one hand and the hook and rope with the other. He slid down the rooftop of the house closest to the palace's wall, and then rushed across the street like a blur, jumping and throwing at the same time his hook, allowing it to grip against one of the windows' iron bars of the first two floors.

He didn't stop there though, his feet planted on the surface of the wall began to move upwards, his free hand easily holding on to the rope. Marteau sure knew his way around knots. Had he been a sailor, perhaps?

As Saito climbed up, he planted his feet on the window's bars, and held both of his hands up to the ledge of the third floor window, not touching it by a good hand. Taking a deep breath, his eyes tearing up from the effort in his muscles, he flexed his legs and jumped, holding on to the ledge and pulling the rest of his body up.

He came thus face to face with an Undead on the other side of the window, both of its eye-sockets empty and yet staring at Saito's very soul. The boy had the dagger between his teeth, which was the only reason he didn't scream in fear, and merely tightened the hold on the ledge.

His breathing erratic, his heart pumping at a thousand miles, he pushed the rest of his body on the ledge, and then looked to the side, where a small decorative balcony was. He jumped, pushing with his right hand against the wall for an added push. His feet landed on the ledge, but his arms flailed as he ended up nearly losing his balance on the wet marble. Holding on to the side of the wall with his left hand, he took a deep breath, carefully pulling himself back up.

He spat the dagger back into his left hand, and proceeded to fiddle with the lock. It always worked like this in movies. There was the iron hook that went into the iron circle, and if one managed to pull it out with a thin enough-and the window was open.

Saito felt like a moron, and would have slapped himself on the forehead if not for the fact making any noise, especially with a blind Undead just a window away, was not a smart move.

He crawled inside slowly, letting the light of the twin moons illuminate the room he was in. It was a sort of small congress hall, with lots of wooden seats flung aside and a few corpses rolling about on the floor, mostly moving back and forth between a clattering window and the rustling pages of a book.

Careful not to make too much noise, he walked on the lush carpet below him a single step at the time. The kitchens would be in the back, on the ground floor. The servants always came in from behind, and if he could find one of those 'servants' service tunnels that led from the kitchens directly into the dining rooms, then he'd be set for a quick job.

Marteau had explained to him that it didn't really matter if he greased the whole building. He just needed to burn down enough of it that the rest would crumble anyway. Grease fire wasn't easy to put out, and there was always a barrel of grease in the kitchens.

A lone shadow passed over Saito, making the boy cling to the wall he had been following until then. An undead Gryphon cawed slightly from the rooftop nearby, and then flapped both of its wings, one of the two half torn off, and flew away. Holding his breath, Saito kept walking.

He had a faint hint of a plan, and not even a map of the place.

On the other hand, he could walk from one side to the other of the palace, and climb down.

The Undead weren't really thick in numbers within the palace's upper floors however, but again, perhaps the nobles had held on long enough to be evacuated aboard the flying ships, leaving behind only those too slow to reach the rooftops.

It was possible that the higher Saito went, the less Undead he'd find.

He opened the window and looked down, his expression one of mirth as he saw a treetop reaching all the way to the second floor, which meant that if he dropped from there, he could safely land in the palace's backyard.

It would then be a matter of finding the kitchens, but he could do this.

Clenching his left fist around the window's curtain, Saito swiftly sliced away most of it, proceeding to tie an extremity to a door's handle, and clutch on to the other side as he dropped down to the second floor.

He could have tried circling the palace whole, now that he thought about it, but this way was probably safer. 'Probably' being a key term, since in survival games with zombies, one never knew when they'd pop out from the shadows.

Case in point, Saito had been expecting a 'scare-jump' the moment he found the servants' door for the kitchen, and as he slowly opened it, the back of the chef came into view. The chef was a portly man, who had died and was now standing there with his eyes looking at the broken down door where a barricade made of the kitchen's table hadn't been enough.

Keeping his breath steady, and glad the man hadn't turned at the noise of the door opening, Saito went back outside.

A rock in hand, he hit the trunk of it lightly while hiding behind the door.

As expected, the Undead Chef rushed for the noise with a quick gait, stopping only once it became clear it had been nothing more than a branch rustling about. Perhaps alerted by the Chef's movement, a few more hidden Undead came out from the corners of the kitchen, drawing near to the man's frame in front of the tree trunk.

Well...that had been a lucky choice.

Stepping inside, Saito proceeded to most aptly close the door of the kitchen. He wasn't going to make it back up the same way he had made it down with a barrel of grease, and he doubted he could pretty much lift a whole barrel of it.

What he could do was grab a pot very, very quietly and fill it up, before quietly driving the dagger through the wood with a few sharp turns -as if it were a screwdriver- and let the grease pour out on the floor. He stepped back, and moved near the ashes of the once burning cooking fires.

How did the chefs lit so many fires at the same time?

And the answer was easy.

'Magic'.

Chefs had a magical version of 'matches' which lit up with the push of a button. At least, high-class chefs had such a thing. Those who didn't had good and old sulfur matches that did pretty much the same. Saito was incapable of doing a lot of things, but he was more than capable of lightning up a match. As he carefully made his way out of the kitchen through the broken door in front of him, he kept dripping grease on the floor as far as he could.

The whole purpose of 'Servants Quarters' was to keep them as separated as possible from the 'Nobles Quarters', which meant that while there were stairs that led directly up to the Nobles' rooms, they were for the most part centered around the maid side of the Servants Quarters.

A small curtain did in fact cover up a stairway that went upwards right outside the dorms of the female servants, and Saito didn't have to bother looking for a map because the Undead lingering around that area were positively female.

The grease finished, the pot empty, Saito lit the match up and watched as the fire began to spread, before throwing the pot straight against the head of the female servant closest to the stairs, taking that moment of distraction to literally disappear up the servant's stairway.

First part of the plan, setting fire to the palace, was now underway.

The second part of his great plan, 'find out where the letters are while making your way to the rooftop' could now begin in earnest.

There were a lot of flaws in his plan, like, for example, the presence of flying Undead who could reach the rooftop, or the flames propagating faster than he could climb the floors, or the risk of more Undead piling up on him than he could face, but all of those neat drawbacks and flaws to his 'great plan' didn't enter Saito's mind one bit.

He had to reach the top floor.

He just had to.

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Sixty-Five

Saito's luck ran dry the moment he stepped out of the servant's stairway. The servants themselves would have thought about using such a method to quickly escape together with the nobles, so the nobles had, in turn, done something to prevent the majority of servants from slowing them down.

They had simply put up walls of rock and dirt and allowed the Undead to eat the servants, even as they had probably begged for help.

The walls had then crumbled, but the vast amount of Undead that surrounded Saito the second he stepped out of the stairway told him that the second floor was not a place to stay by idly, or to stay by at all.

Undead were as fast as they had been in life, only without that silly thing known as 'having to catch one's breath'.

Saito needed to catch his breath, but he could outpace all of them, especially so if he took an alternative route that the Undead couldn't follow. When the cawing sound of a Gryphon was accompanied by the beast slamming through the window, squawking indignantly at his sight, just like the rest of the Undead hot on his heels, Saito did not hesitate.

To hesitate was to die, especially when you were running from a horde of hungry brain-eaters.

So, Saito jumped right out of the broken window, the Gryphon pursuing him with both of its rotten wings flapping open. The boy hadn't jumped however meaning to go right ahead, but had jumped with the intention of doing a back flip once his feet had firmly planted themselves on the ledge of the window.

He did just that, like an Olympic athlete who was doing the tall-jump, and held on to the ledge of the window of the floor above. The horde one floor below could jump, but not as tall as him. The Undead dragons that stalked the rooftops, apparently, could simply jump down and roar at him.

Perhaps yes, he should have thought a lot more about his great plan of 'finding the letters'. No, seriously, he should have.

He couldn't though, not when he was just about to become dragon-food. As the dragon came for him though, Saito jumped right atop his snout, and without even breathing, proceeded to rush across the whole length of the creature's body, jumping off its tail and landing straight through the window on the other side of the courtyard, cracking it open and covering himself in deadly glass shrapnel.

The wounds were many, but none deadly -and he wasn't wearing armor just for sport.

If only he hadn't dropped his shield back with the ship, perhaps he would have had more luck. Still, he couldn't stop and ponder about it. His heart was beating like crazy, and time was running out. The dragons were turning towards him, but then they stopped with their heads through the broken window, growling and snarling and sniffing the air.

Saito was not on their radars any longer.

With a last threatening growl, the Undead dragons snarled and returned back up to the rooftops, leaving a frozen in place Saito to bless the back of the full-plate armor that was a lonely block of fused iron standing there just as decoration, but good enough to block out the sight of the Undead dragons.

Him being covered in soot, ashes and smelling like grease had probably helped.

Carefully sliding free of the armor, he could see the plumes of smoke emerging from the first floor where the kitchens were, the popping explosions of the barrels of oil and grease mixing together into a fire that could hardly be doused with mere water.

The Undead didn't even seem to care that they were on fire, and as Saito waited a brief second to watch, a burning maid simply shambled about uncaring, spreading the fire across the furniture and the paintings, not really caring either way.

Maybe he should have thought the plan through better.

"Up we go," Saito whispered to himself, quietly sticking close to the wall. He really should have been looking out for the stairs, or for indication on where the stairs were. By the time he did find the stairs up to the fourth floor, the fire had already spread to the second floor, and didn't seem inclined to stop.

Well, if he said so himself, the 'set fire to the palace' part of his plan was getting along quite nicely.

It also helped that the Undead had no sense of self-preservation at all, utterly not caring about whether the flames were burning them to ashes or not.

The fourth floor wasn't the last by a long shot, but it had way less rooms, and way more stacks of paper. If the fires spread up to this floor, then the palace turning into a charred crisp would be pretty much set in stone.

The few Undead that shambled about weren't even much of a trouble, mostly rotten or outright putrefied. Whatever 'plague' there had been, the oldest Undead had come from here. Maybe this explained why it had turned the city so quickly into a death trap. It hadn't spread from the outside to the inside, but from the inside to the outside, striking the mages first and then moving on to the commoners, hitting the 'army' stationed outside last.

It didn't explain how Marteau had managed to get everyone into the city at first with no one none the wiser, unless the Undead had been corralled outside to meet with the army, and spread it there and then?

Marteau had said the 'Undead' could be controlled. But for it to spread in such a way, such a wicked, desired, way...

The fifth floor was pretty much the last floor of the palace of Londinium, and the main office of the Reconquista's resistance was at the far end of a hallway that had no guards, and no people, remaining.

Saito couldn't help but feel unease at the sound of a soft, female sobbing coming from beyond the door however.

He knew about ghosts, and specters, and he had heard of female wraiths, and potentially there were a lot of creatures that could appear as females -like demons, Saito knew demons were real-ish in this world, something about an old flame of Louise's father being one, or something of the sorts. He hadn't asked for clarification when the man had threatened his manhood if he tried anything untoward with his daughter, and had cited what he had done to that old 'demon-possessed' flame of his.

All that Saito knew was that a sobbing woman, at the heart of a Zombie Plague, could not be a good sign.

He simply had to be careful not to startle the Witch then.

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Sixty-Six

Saito dearly hoped the 'Witch' logic would not apply unless he showed a light in front of her face. As he carefully creaked the door open, the sobbing continued undisturbed, coming from a corner of the room that had been apparently ravaged by a veritable hurricane, broken bits and pieces of furniture everywhere.

"Go away!" the voice screamed in a shrill and raucous voice, "GO AWAY!" Saito closed the door abruptly, and then blinked, and decided to open it again, stepping inside.

"Are...Are you alive?" Saito asked carefully, taking a few steps closer to the sobbing wreck that was apparently half sprawled on the floor and half clutching the ripped off top of a sofa, her long dark hair a mess. Her eyes were dark too, but her skin unhealthily pale.

"I can't believe it," the woman simpered quietly. "Of all the things-a looter? You must be-you must be one lucky boy-" she chuckled with tears brimming from the corners of her eyes. "Amidst all this chaos, you reached all the way here?" she added, "How did you do it? Did you crawl beneath a box till my doorstep? What sort of-how did you manage?" she looked every bit like a woman possessed by a vengeful ghost, the tears having long since gone dry from her red eyes that threatened to burst, and yet there seemed to be nothing more than placid resignation in her voice now.

"I just...climbed up," Saito answered, "But I guess I can get you out. You don't look like you can stand on your own-and there's a fire in the lower floors-"

"A fire?" the woman said softly, "Perhaps it's better this way," she added. "It has been so cold since my love died," she looked out of the window, her smile vain. "He gave me this ring as proof of our eternal love," she added, showing off a flawless jewel in her right hand. "Don't you think it's beautiful, Mister Looter?"

"I'm not a looter," Saito said. "I'm an adventurer," he added. "I'm looking for something here-something important to my country-"

The woman answered with a soft chuckle, and a shake of her head, "Countries...I don't care about countries...I care only about my love, and he was taken away, see? He was taken away from me," she gingerly touched her forehead, as if perhaps there had once been a circlet atop it, "and now that he's gone, there's nothing left for me. My family is...far away, and they're all stuffy bastards," she added with a snort, rolling her red eyes. "I was so lost without my love-I didn't know what to do," she whispered quietly to herself, her eyes staring right at the ring with a small, warm smile. "So I did what he would have wanted me to do."

Saito furrowed his brows, "Hide here?" Saito hazarded.

The woman chuckled. "Mister Adventurer, you are really funny," she added. "But what is it that you are looking for?" she asked next.

"It's letters," Saito said. "I know it sounds stupid," he added, "But-"

The woman's eyes widened, "Are you-are you a knight of Gallia then?!" she moved fast, quite fast for someone in her condition, and as she grabbed on to Saito's hands, her own clasping tightly around them, there was the smell of rotten flesh all around her. "Tell me! Are you one of the King's knights? Did the King send you!? Is it him!? I-Was it because I was not-why did he!? Tell me! TELL ME!"

An Undead dragon roared from the nearby window, flapping its wings, but just as Saito was about to turn towards it, the woman lifted her ringed hand and within mere seconds, the dragon disappeared into ashes, nothing left behind.

Saito stared, gawking. Now this explained why she had been left untouched in the middle of the Zombie Plague.

She had a ring that could pulverize the Undead!

"I-Well, I'm a Knight of the North Parterre-" he said, "I was sent-"

As if suddenly burned by fire, the woman pushed him away, "The North Parterre? Then you're one of her knights! That little wench! What of my King? What of the King of Gallia? What happened to Joseph!?" the woman asked angrily, her expression terrifying to behold, so much so that Saito took a step backwards.

"He-He's dead," Saito said. "I'm sorry for your loss-"

The woman laughed bitterly, a hand to wipe her tears away from her face. "You are sorry for my loss!?" she held her ring aloft, "Kneel!" her voice was cold, filled with dread. It was a commanding voice that could hardly be countered, and as Saito ended up doing just that, his knees refusing to obey him, the woman laughed. "You rotten knight of that little bitch -that little head-smasher- oh, oh I guess you don't know, you don't know because she never tells, the little haughty bitch, but I know her secret, I know it, because my dear love told me! Ah," the woman laughed, definitely mad.

She waved a hand, the hand that held the ring, "Did you know that Water Magic controls a human's body? It can be used for Healing spells, and also for Curses. It can be used for forbidden magic like Necromancy, and good magic like Cure. It can also be used to control a body's limbs," she narrowed her eyes, "Stab your leg."

Saito's hand moved up, much to the boy's wide eyes. There was no 'compulsion' to obey, and there was no actual 'mean' to fight the order. It wasn't as if he controlled his muscles, and was fighting a battle against them. There was no fight at all. His hand raised itself up, and then came stabbing down with all the pain that it entailed.

Saito closed his eyes and screamed as the dagger burrowed itself deeply into his flesh, making him cry out in pain.

"There, that's good! You should cry too," the woman said. "Just like I have cried these days without my love." The woman began to walk closer to Saito, sashaying her hips, "I will drain your life out of your body," she said with a soft smirk, "And then I think I will take one of the dragons that can still fly and head down to teach that little princess a lesson." She tapped Saito's chin. "How does it feel to know your pretty little princess is going to be eaten by a big, bad undead dragon? Or maybe, first I'll use this Water Firstborn magic to rip her limbs off, maybe I'll make her rip them off herself! Wouldn't that be a glorious spectacle? A doll ripping its own limbs off?"

Saito hissed in pain as he could feel the blood pour up from his throat and into his mouth. His throat convulsed lightly -was he about to retch? Was this his end?

Just as the woman's right hand touched his cheek, and the ring began to glow, Saito opened its mouth.

A spear of pure water speared through the woman's mouth, making her open her eyes wide from sheer shock as the water seemed to have a will of its own, spreading through the body and making her tremble as her eyes rolled back behind her skull. For a brief moment, nothing seemed to happen as Saito's mouth clicked to a close, the taste at the back of his tongue quite similar to that of lake water, if mixed with a bit of blood.

Then the woman's eyes reverted back to the front, but they were no longer dark.

The eyes were blue.

"Thank you, Gandalfr," the woman said in a soft voice, like the murmur of a river. Water began to pour out of her eyes and nose, even her ears. "You would do best to avert your gaze," she added softly. "This...will not be pleasant to watch."

Saito was not fast enough.

He had no idea what was going on, so all that he could do was watch.

He really should have heeded the woman's counsel.

Really.

Should.

Have.

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Sixty-Seven

When Saito was done retching in a corner, the 'thing' that stood in front of him was a sort of carbon-copy made solely of water of the woman that was now splattered all around the room, and much of which had been splattered on him too.

The ring that had been on the hand of the woman was now firmly tucked away within the strange water-creature, right where her heart was, and pulsed softly with warm, blue light.

"P-Please don't do that to me," Saito asked, staring in fear at the creature in question.

The water creature gave him a puzzled look, "Why would I do that to the Gandalfr?" it asked. "The Gandalfr is no thief, and deserves no punishment."

"My...My name is Saito, not 'Gandalfr'," Saito hazarded. The water creature inclined its head to the side.

"The flesh changes, but the inside remains Gandalfr," the creature said. It turned its head towards the window next, and slithered towards it with unnatural grace, "I owe you a favor, Gandalfr," the water-thing said, tapping on the glass as it melted off, the ring shining briefly. Within mere seconds, the Undead that were shuffling about disappeared into ashes.

The Water-Woman turned back to face Saito, and slithered quickly towards him. "A part of my whole self was carried through your body to recover my ring. I apologize if I caused you undue harm in my haste to recover what was mine," it added, furrowing its brows as the wounds began to seal, the dagger easily removed from the leg as not even a scar remained from the encounter. "But I had trust in the Gandalfr' strength," it added.

"I'm...not really getting it," Saito said, "But I guess...I have a few questions-like-how? W-When?"

"I am not familiar with your conception of time, Gandalfr," the Water-Woman said. "For me it was barely the ripple of a single breeze," it added. "The young blue-one was right."

Saito blinked. "You mean Charlotte?" he hazarded.

"I know not the mortal names, nor do I care about remembering them," the Water-Woman said. "But I would not have listened to a mortal's proposal," it added. "Gandalfr, if you have no need for my aid now, I will return to my lake."

"Wait!" Saito exclaimed, "There is something you can help with-I've been looking for these letters, there should be five of them, with-"

"The letters you seek are...were, on the mortal I just punished," the Water-Woman said, looking down at the stuff that Saito had no intention of remembering for the years to come by. A single tendril of water rose from amidst them, pulling up the five letters and restoring them to their original form.

"Well-they should have been destroyed anyway," Saito said, swallowing thickly as the Water creature did just that, turning them into such a drenched state that not only were they unrecognizable, but outright useless once they were further ripped to shreds and assimilated into her being.

"My debt is returned," the Water creature said, and abruptly shot herself out of the window and hit the ground, where it spiraled like a massive hydraulic jet through the road and off Saito's side.

"Well," Saito said, "That's...a new thing, I guess." He chuckled nervously as he turned, and as he watched the thick smoke rise from the stairs in his direction, he groaned. "Right, the fire," he added. "Stupid me," he turned towards the window, coming face to face with Josette standing atop her staff as if it were a witch broomstick.

The young girl giggled, "Do you need a lift," she said cheerfully, "Sir Saito?"

"It would be appreciated!" Saito said hastily, jumping off just as the flames reached the carpet of the last floor, engulfing the whole palace in flames. As Saito held on to Josette's waist, trying his hardest not to fall, the girl giggled with ease.

Saito sighed, watching the fire he had started spread like a hungry beast through the rooftops nearby. "Did you know Londinium is mostly made of wood?" Josette said offhandedly as she flew low, keeping away from the high altitudes were a couple of galleons had moved in to check the situation. "If the fire is allowed to spread, it might burn down the whole city."

"Oh," Saito blinked. "I didn't know that."

"I didn't either," Josette replied. "Bleu knows a lot of things-so we're leaving right now before we all end up burned to a crisp. How did you do it, Sir Saito?" the girl asked curiously. "I mean-I'm sure you used your cool moves with your dagger! Like, 'kabow', and 'kazabam'! And maybe you did a bit of 'Chaka-Chaka!'," as she spoke, she moved her hands too, making Saito gasp and hold tighter to her. "No? Isn't that what you did?"

"Can we talk about something else?" Saito hazarded. "I'm not feeling well, I saw...some bad stuff."

"Ah," Josette said. "All right!" she chirped, coming to a halt in front of a small ship that had been apparently broken out from its hiding place, "We found one more survivor in the city!" Josette added shyly as Saito descended nimbly on the deck, looking around and trying to find his bearings. He really needed to hit the sack. The only reason he was standing was because he hadn't let go of the dagger yet, but he was sure the moment he did, he'd crash down hard.

"You can head downstairs," Jacques said. "I put your friend in the last room on the left," he added. "You should go sleep."

Nodding numbly, Saito headed down the hallway and past a few cots filled with children sleeping away peacefully, one of which was still clutching on to the spyglass gifted to her by Bleu. Finally, he stepped through the last door and dropped his dagger on the floor seconds before tumbling, face first, on the soft mattress laid bare in front of him.

Louise, who had been having one of her nightmares, simply turned around and clutched firmly the head resting against her stomach. With a satisfied expression now on her face, the sleeping girl didn't as much as open half an eye-lid.

She simply kept sleeping of happy things, nice things, good and warm things.

And not of having her heart ripped out by Saito's sword with him screaming curses at her.

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Louise was not in a happy mood when she woke up clutching Saito. She wasn't in a happy mood because Saito was outright covered in blood, and bits and pieces of living human beings. They were on a boat, a boat that was flying, and the boy was sleeping off his tiredness. As she carefully slipped away from the bed and stretched, she stared down at her blood stained clothes and at Saito's blood-covered appearance.

It was as if he had bathed in the stuff, seriously unhygienic, and outright disgusting.

She didn't have the will to wake him up though. There was probably a reason for them being on a flying ship, and considering there wasn't a locked door standing between Louise and the hallway, it meant they had managed to escape while she had been unconscious.

Once more, Saito had probably saved her and everyone else.

Well, she had done her part with the Undead army. She couldn't consider her role in the entire thing just a passing by side-character slot. She had done a lot.

"Now I'm even thinking like the idiot," she grumbled with a slight hint of affection, shaking her head as she washed her face, and then gripped her wand to remove the stains. How did the 'Clean Blood' spell go?

She tried the small chant, and it failed.

Well, no surprises there.

"One would think I'd get better," Louise mumbled. "Even back then, if I had known the Levitate spell-perhaps Saito wouldn't have needed to save me."

She resorted to using a small towel dipped in water to get most of the mess off her chest, and while she was sure her clothes were now irremediably stained in crimson, she didn't really care much.

She had slept in far filthier clothes, and played in the mud more times than she could count.

When she stepped out into the ship's hallway, below deck, she came face to face with a child.

"Uh-" Louise said, and blinked. "And who are you?" she asked in her manly-man voice.

The child blinked back, and smiled, "I'm Damien, big brother!" he said. "I've been waiting for you or Sir Saito to wake up!"

Louise owlishly blinked once more, and frowned slightly. "Sir?"

Damien nodded. "You are both knights! The big burly chef said so! And knights are to be called 'Sirs'!" the small boy said with a cheer.

Louise needed something in her stomach before she bothered going back into the room to kick Saito's head in for having spoken out their true nature before even completing the mission. Had he said it all the moment she had been knocked out? Seriously, the boy couldn't keep a secret if it was a matter of life or death.

Then again, the 'big burly chef' made her think of someone else, so perhaps she'd end up kicking Marteau in the shins if it turned out it was really him. The boy was kind enough to show her where the small kitchen on the boat was, but there was no burly man rummaging around it.

"Who. Are. You." Louise's voice came out flat, and slightly similar to a tiger stalking prey. The girl with the physics defying breasts turned slightly, and she gasped at the sight of the masked adventurers with eyes that could kill, and a gaze that was directed straight at her...unfortunate appendages.

"I-"

"No, a better question would be," Louise said gruffly, "Just what are you to have-to have them so big," she added in shock, all traces of sleep gone from Louise's face.

The girl clutched the hat on her head tighter, and looked fearfully at the male adventurer who was in the process of keeping a keen eye on her. "I-I was born like this!" she said. "Please-please don't tell-"

"It's not like I can tell or not," Louise snapped. "Anyone can see them!" she added, gesturing at her. "Like, I can see them from beyond the kitchen! I could see them from the deck above! You'd need to be blind not to see those things!"

"B-But they're my ears!" the girl wailed, "They aren't that big!"

"I'm not talking about your ears!" Louise snarled. "I'm talking about those things!" she pointed at the girl's breast, tapping one with her right index finger. "How are these things natural!?"

The blond-haired girl blushed fiercely and her eyes were all teary by the time Louise realized that being with a mask on her face, and her being as flat as a washboard, she appeared like the intimidating male adventurer that she had wanted others to take her as. She was thus a male adventurer who was in the process of touching a breast from a scared, probably traumatized, girl who had been saved by Saito and the others with all due probability.

She blamed her slightly sleepy self.

"You made Big Sister Tiffania cry! Prepare to die!" a young boy said, jumping in from the side out of nowhere with a spatula in hand. The spatula didn't as much as hurt as it impacted against Louise's mask with a resounding 'clank' of steel against steel. The young boy was quite visibly shaking, but he still held his ground.

He had to be young because he was half Louise's height -which made him small of course, and young.

"I-I didn't mean to!" Louise said, hastily swatting away the second swipe of the spatula. "It was an accident!"

"Enough Julian! Enough!" Tiffania said, grabbing hold of the small boy and pulling him away from his renewed assault. "Don't be rude to the kind adventurers who saved our lives!"

"B-But he was being rude to you!" Julian said, "Nobody gets to be rude to big sister Tiffania!"

Tiffania giggled lightly, "He was just...shocked. He woke up just now, Julian. You must be considerate of others and try to understand how they feel. Waking up in a strange place, with no memory of how you got there-that would be scary, wouldn't it?"

Julian stopped his yells to think about it for a bit, giving Louise ample time to settle herself.

So not only was she well-endowed, but she was also kind of heart?

It was impossible.

Strangers could not be this kind!

 

[shadenight123]

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Louise managed to splutter out an excuse that the definitely abnormal girl accepted with a small smile, all the while holding back the little rascal that could learn a few tips on being a good boy from the orphans Louise had known of.

She stepped out into the sun and winced as she used an arm to cover her eyes.

"Oh, Sir Louis has woken up!" Josette said cheerfully, waving her staff from near the helm where Captain Bleu was, the man and his foppish hat being accompanied by a young girl with a spyglass in her hands.

Marteau was amidst the sails, but she would have words with the ex-chef later. As it was, she wanted to know what was going on. It took the combined efforts of Captain Bleu and Josette to get the most out of it. She had been knocked out slightly before Saito had, but the boy had then woken up and decided in his stupidity to complete the mission without even bothering to think it through, and had somehow managed to end the Undead plague in the capital city of Londinium all the while burning down the palace itself.

He had then managed to reach, thanks to Josette worrying enough to go look for him, the ship that Captain Bleu had found while venturing towards the docks in an effort to get started on restoring power to the windstones. They had found a survivor, a child by the name of Damien, and then had set off once Josette had returned.

Jeanette was still sleeping off her exhaustion of Willpower from powering up the ship with every little ounce of magic she had, and Bleu wasn't in better conditions, but someone needed to stay at the helm to guide the ship.

The problem was that below them was no sea, but the ground. The typical moor of Albion's soil was all that Louise could see around her.

"Well, the blockade is quite extensive since most of Reconquista was forced off the land," Bleu said as he clutched the helm tightly. "So we are moving through the land route towards Newcastle. Hopefully the Reconquista won't have kept up the pressure against the Royalists, but just in case it has, we've got two flags!" Bleu added cheerfully with two fingers raised. "One with the symbol of Reconquista, and one with the symbol of the Royalists! We've got both of them up right now with Marteau standing by."

The man sighed, "Course, it's possible Newcastle fell to the Undead and there's no one left. If that's the case, then we'll just have to gather what fresh supplies of windstones we can and head off back to La Rochelle!"

"That is nice," Louise said with a nod. "Now excuse me. I feel the need to wake up my partner just so I can beat him unconscious a few times."

"But why?" Josette asked, clutching her staff as she began to follow Louise, who had a thunderous fury to her steps.

"Because the idiot nearly succeeded in killing himself," Louise replied. "Whatever he did, however he did it, he was covered in blood from head to toe, and that's clearly not normal, is it!?" Louise snapped. "Why didn't anyone give him a wash when he came back? My clothes are all ruined now-" she grumbled, not really caring about the clothes.

Josette simply giggled. "Oh, that is right, Saito is Mister Louis' important partner. Of course you would be worried about him, but should you really hit him? He is a hero who saved Albion from the Undead that plagued it! Maybe you should reward him with a kiss!" here Josette nodded to herself, "That's how it is in stories! The sleeping beauty, woken up by the kiss of her true love!"

"He could have died," Louise said curtly, staring right into Josette's eyes. "Do you know what it means?" she added icily. "When you're dead, you're in Founder Brimir's arms forever. There's no coming back. You can't just turn back time. A dead person is dead forever," she narrowed her eyes as Josette seemed about to interrupt her, "So I am angry. I am angry and I am hurt that he could not wait for me to wake up, and I don't care if he succeeded now, because if tomorrow he does the same and he fails, then I'll be the one left to pick up the pieces of his scattered corpse to sew them back together, and then I'll have to present it to his family saying that he died bravely," Louise's breathing hitched for a brief instant, "but they would rather have their son back."

"But you still don't have to hit him," Josette pointed out. "You could talk to him!" she hazarded, her smile set on her face.

"He's the type of guy that if you don't kick him once in a while doesn't learn the lesson," Louise said. "And I'm not going to blast him off the side of the ship. I'm just going to slap some sense into him. He'll understand it's because I care."

"Why not hug him then?" Josette said with a cheerful clap of her hands. "It's better than a slap, and it's still a great show of caring!"

Louise spluttered, her rage turning into smoldering ash through the sheer innocence and cheer of the girl in front of her. "No, that would be something he'd like," she added with her 'manly' voice. "I can't have him think he'll get rewards if he does that."

Josette blushed. "L-Like k-kissing?!"

Louise turned crimson herself. "T-That's not something you should worry about!" she snapped hotly. "You need to find a good man willing to court you properly and then move on to discussing the terms of a dowry, and finally-"

"That's complicated," Josette said, sticking her tongue out, "And boring. Aren't you and Sir Saito together without that silly stuff?"

Louise spluttered, flailing her arms around. "We are two manly men!" she said hotly and 'roughly'. "We are not supposed to marry! And anyway-we are travelling to bring him back home to his family. He was separated from them a long time ago, so-"

"But...but you love him, don't you?" Josette said softly. "So-so I'm sure if you asked, he'd stay with you!" she nodded, her voice clear of all doubts.

Louise bristled. "I-I do," she said in the end. This was 'Louis' the adventurer after all, not 'Louise'. "But it's not meant to be, and it can never be. That's all there is to it. It's better this way, less people will hurt."

Josette frowned, and then shook her head sadly. "Well-I'm sure Sir Louis put a lot of thought into this!" she added. "But Sir Saito really did what he thought would be best for you, Sir Louis. He kept looking at you when he decided to go burn the palace down," Josette smiled warmly. "I wish I had someone who cared for me that much. I mean, I love my brothers and they love me too, but someone who cares in a-in a different way, yeah," she nodded, visibly pleased, and then cheerfully stopped midway through the hallway to Saito's room. "I'll go see Jeanette! Maybe she woke up hungry, and that would make her grumpy~"

Leaving the bizarre young girl behind, Louise stepped inside the room where Saito hadn't as much as moved. He hadn't removed his shoes, or his armor, and frankly looked as if he had showered in blood -now that she had spent some time outside, the smell inside the room was positively disgusting. He still had the guts to sleep peacefully with his arms around a pillow, smearing it with dried flakes of blood.

"Enough is enough," Louise muttered, stepping into the kitchen where a half-startled abomination slightly jumped aside at her passage. She grabbed without a word an empty pot, filled it with water, and with a chunk of soap for good measure walked back inside her and Saito's room, a towel slung on her shoulder.

She had cleaned enough clothes and children back in the orphanage.

One blood-covered boy would be no different.

She'd still be allowed to marry after doing this.