Prologue

Louise's hand trembled as she slowly raised a spoonful of soup to her lips in order to eat it. She was nervous, she realized. Within the dining hall, where all her peers were taking their dinner, she was the only one who felt such feelings. How could she not? Tomorrow was to be one of the most important days in her life thus far.

Tomorrow was the day of the Springtime Familiar Summoning.

In other words, it was the day when the second year students of the prestigious Tristain Academy of Magic were to summon their very first familiars.

Familiars. They were creatures summoned and contracted by a mage upon achieving a certain level of proficiency in their craft. Depending on the type of familiar summoned, the duties they could accomplish naturally differed, but all familiars possessed the same underlying directive: to serve and protect their master at all costs, even if it was at the risk of their own life.

But more than being servants and guardians, familiars were also something like an indicator. Mages would almost always summon a creature of their own natural elemental affinity, whether they knew what it was or not. For example, wind mages most commonly summoned a bird or other flying creatures, while earth mages summoned wolves, snakes, or other beasts that lived off the earth. Thus, the type of familiar summoned showed what a noble's natural inclinations were as a mage.

More than that, familiars also showed the level of power and talent a mage possessed. Only the most powerful mages summoned the truly amazing familiars, such as dragons or gryphons or manticores. The average mage summoned more ordinary and much less fantastic creatures, like frogs, dogs, or cats. The least talented and most incapable of mages almost always summoned very weak and fragile familiars, such as mice.

And it was for that reason that Louise was so nervous.

She knew very clearly what the other students and teachers thought of her in the Academy. She was, in their eyes, Louise the Zero – the worst mage to have ever graced the halls of the Academy of Magic. Nearly every day she was showered by insults from her peers, told to just quit and go home. Even her family, save for her older sister Cattleya, insisted that she give up on learning magic and just return home where she could be trained in the marital arts in preparation for her marriage to Viscount Wardes instead.

But Louise stubbornly refused to heed her detractors, even if her family was amongst their number. She was a noble, and a noble was a noble because they possessed the power to use magic. To give up on magic was the same as giving up on being a noble, and that was something that she refused to do. She was, after all, Louise Francoise Le Blanc de La Valliere, the third daughter of Duke Valliere and Karin the Heavy Wind. That was who she was. Her nobility was her identity. To reject it would be to reject herself, and how could she possibly do that?

That was why, Louise thought to herself with clenched fists, she had to succeed tomorrow. She had to summon something strong. She had to summon something amazing. She had to summon-

"Oh my, if it isn't Louise the Zero."

Louise looked up from her meal and scowled at the person looming over her.

"Kirche," Louise snapped venomously. "What do you want?"

"What? Can't a friend just come by and say hi?" Kirche said with a sly smile on her face. "I should have known expecting some basic courtesy out of a Valliere was a foolish dream."

"Be silent," Louise spat. "You and I are not friends, and we both know it. Now go away if you have nothing else to say."

"Oh, but I do have something else to say," Kirche said, still smiling. "I just wanted to wish you luck on tomorrow's summoning."

One eyebrow twitched on Louise's face, and against her better judgment, she said, "And what's that supposed to mean, Zerbst?"

"It means exactly what I said," Kirche snickered. "Good luck, Louise. Perhaps if you're lucky, you might be able to summon a worm."

Something snapped inside Louise and a strong need to stand up to the girl before her, to defy her, soared within her. She shot up to her feet to better glare up at the much taller Germanian.

"Do not insult me, Zerbst," Louise declared. "Just you wait and see. I'm going to summon an amazing familiar – the best familiar! I'm going to summon a dragon!"