Chapter 3 - Filomena Goes Off

June 30

Filomena had long wondered why everyone was so obsessed with their time as a familiar. Serving at the whims of someone else was not something she had ever felt the need to do. Certainly not for a boost in magical energy that she had never really felt the lack of. When she had wanted more, she simply underwent the process to cultivate the increase herself, and she had never fallen behind any of her peers.

This had led to much teasing by her femtagh sisters in the frozen wastes at the southern edges of the Hollow Lands. And so, she had stubbornly refused until the day she felt drawn in by a mysterious call. She had immediately known it was a familiar summoning, but there was something missing.

The protections and guards that normally accompanied a summoning ritual were not there. This had not been a ritual, but a spontaneous casting. At first, she had been affronted by the nerve of the mage, so she had been determined to answer the summoning and teach this arrogant human a permanent lesson, but when she had arrived in the dark, dusty basement her ire had been halted.

“Please, I need help,” the terrified voice had said.

It had not been an arrogant mage, but a scared child. The summoning had clearly not been intended, she had just been scared and instinctively calling for help. Something touched Filomena’s frozen heart in that moment, and she had instinctively frozen time for all but the two of them.

Filomena would answer the cowering child in time, but first she had needed to know what would cause such desperation. She had examined the basement critically. Nothing had seemed out of the ordinary until she got to the stairs. A murothoid had been walking down the stairs covered in human blood. She had pinched her nose and held her breath as she passed the creature. Murothoids were barely sapient, and were little more than bloodthirsty animals.

She had walked past the frozen monster, making sure not to get too close despite the narrow steps. After she had passed, she had taken a deep breath of cleaner air. She had followed the practically visible trail of bloodlust that had gone up another set of stairs. She had been halfway down the hall when the unmistakable, metallic scent of human blood reached her.

When she had seen the carnage that the murothoid had been responsible for she had understood the situation immediately. The child that had been huddled in a hidden corner of the basement had seen her murdered parents. The monster that was responsible had been chasing her, and she had unintentionally summoned Filomena. She had closed the door to the bedroom, and returned to the basement.

With a small gesture, the large wood and glass artifact that the child had been hiding behind scraped the concrete floor as it moved away. The girl had tried to make herself smaller.

“Open your eyes, child,” Filomena had said, trying to keep her voice warm and comforting.

The girl had only shut her eyes harder.

Filomena had known that she couldn’t do anything to help her for free, and the cheapest way was to sign a familiar contract. For some reason this didn’t repulse her as it had done in the past. She could bend the rules a little and deal with the murothoid before the contract was complete, by the logic that if her summoner was dead there could be no chance for a contract.

It was a risky gambit and she could get in a lot of trouble if it didn’t work, but for some reason she was intrigued by how much she was drawn to this helpless child. Ultimately, the girl had come to her senses and agreed to forge a familiar contract after she dealt with the murothoid. And this is how Filomena gained her name.

The police eventually arrived, and both Filomena and her mistress, who it had turned out was named Maxine Oldstone, were brought to the station. The police had separated the two of them, which had annoyed Filomena. She didn’t fully understand why she felt so protective of Maxine, perhaps it was just a consequence of the familiar contract? Regardless, she knew her rights as a hollow and had remained silent until the representative from the Hollow Lands arrived. She found herself hoping that her mistress was doing the same.

She could of course clear them of any wrongdoing in an instant, but she knew better than to trust human police. They were even better at twisting the truth to suit their own purposes than the cleverest hollow.

Before too long, the representative arrived, and with their supervision, Filomena told the police what happened.

“And what about the other murothoid body? The one you didn’t disintegrate?” the policewoman asked.

Filomena thought back to what had happened, “I don’t recall a second murothoid. Or even seeing a second body.”

After an intense line of questioning, they were freed, but they still had to wait for someone called a caseworker to take them somewhere else. Filomena had offered to bring Maxine to the Hollow Lands with her for safety, but she was refused.

So, they sat silently on an uncomfortable bench. Filomena wasn’t sure what to say to her new mistress. What did you say to a human that had lost so much in such a short period of time? She determined that her best course of action was to wait for the human child to say something first.

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The two of them were ultimately brought to the dwelling of her mistress’s extended family. She disliked them immediately. There was something sinister about them, that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but she kept her feelings to herself. Perhaps some humans were just like that.

She began doing housework with the maids of the house. She wasn’t particularly averse to it, but the other hollows in the house gave her a wide berth. She pretended she didn’t hear them whispering around corners or where they thought she couldn’t hear. She was used to the gossiping from her sisters, and these new hollows didn’t have anything to say that she hadn’t heard a thousand times before.

It took longer than she would have thought for her mistress to say anything to her. Filomena had always heard that human children liked to chatter like little nonkae. They would go on about any and every thought that popped in their little heads. Was her mistress broken?

She was interrupted in her work by the head maid, an argapish with a nasty puffed up attitude. She burbled her entreaty from the inside of a fishbowl on her head, gills flapping with every word. Filomena was ordered to return to her mistress’ room and attend her. There had apparently been an incident and she had thrown dishes at her family in some sort of fit.

When Filomena arrived in the spacious bedroom, Maxine was sitting on her bed silently.

“I was told to report to your room. It seems you’ve been misbehaving. I seem to have misjudged you,” she said, trying not to laugh. Truly she had chosen an interesting mistress. Silent but rebellious.

“I didn’t,” Maxine said harshly.

“Oh?”

She explained to Filomena what had truly happened. Filomena was appalled by the injustice of it.

“They did what?” Filomena stared at the small quiet child sitting on the edge of her bed, trying not to cry, “That seems quite cruel even by human standards.”

That was when she noticed the small cuts that covered her mistress’ hands. Filomena clenched her fists. Her mistress had gotten hurt because she wasn’t there to protect her. She had failed in her main duty as a familiar.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” Max cried, “We’re in a new house, there’s going to be an adjustment period, that’s all.”

Filomena could not allow this to stand. She was compelled not only by the terms of the familiar contract, but by her own honor to see this set right. It was simply unthinkable to do such things to a child. Something inside of her seethed.

She stalked the halls of the house. It was too large. Around her, ice formed thick sheets on the walls. Sharp points of ice forced themselves from the ceiling. She eventually found the kitchen. The head maid had clearly been trying to keep her away from where Max had been working. Was she in on this travesty?

As though thinking about her was all that was needed to summon her, the head maid appeared behind Filomena.

“Just what do you think you’re-”

Filomena pinned her to the wall with a gaze.

“I’ll only ask this once, fish,” Filomena spat, “Where is Derek Riddlemark?”

“As though I would betray my master by-”

“Pity.”

Filomena froze the bowl of water around the woman’s head in an instant, and only a moment later her body disappeared. Hollows’ souls were returned to the Hollow Lands when their physical bodies were destroyed. It was painful but nonlethal. The head maid would be able to be re-summoned later. This was quite a bit different to what she had done to the murothoid that attacked her mistress’ parents. He was actually dead. There was a difference, though to an outside observer it might appear to be the same.

She turned when she heard a whimper behind her. One of the maids that had been talking behind her back had come to investigate the noise. Filomena stomped toward the cowering woman.

“He’s in the drawing room!” she yelled, closing her eyes and pushing her hands out in front of her like a shield.

Filomena took one finger and lifted the woman’s chin. She opened her eyes in terror. Filomena smiled, and was about to thank her when the maid passed out for some reason. Weird.

The only problem was that Filomena had no idea where, or even what, the drawing room was. She was saved from having to find the maid by the incessant ringing of a bell from somewhere down the hall that adjoined the kitchen from the other side.

The head maid had explained that her master liked to use bells to call what he referred to as “the help.” Filomena had hated the idea of being called for like a dog, but figured she would have to put up with it for her mistress’ sake. Well, no longer.

She entered the room where the incessant ringing was coming from, to find Max’s uncle reclining lazily on a comfortable couch reading in front of a roaring fire. Despite the fact that it was summer, the room was cool. All except in front of the fireplace where it was warmed back up to what humans considered a decent temperature.

Filomena was from a frozen land and hated the heat more than anything else. She had been dying from the moment she was summoned, and wanted nothing more than to strip down to a bathing suit.

“Finally,” Derek said as she entered, not looking up from his book, “What is that horrible racket? I’m trying to read.”

“Is that so?” Filomena said coldly.

Derek put the book down, “Yes, that is so. Who told you that you could-” Derek froze upon seeing the angered femtagh behind him, not literally, though she would have liked that.

“I understand that you have been mistreating my mistress,” Filomena said in her most intimidating voice.

“I don’t think-”

“You’re right. You clearly weren’t thinking.”

“Now listen here,” the man stammered, trying to get to his feet.

“No, you listen-”

“Binding third tier,” Derek said, holding his hands in a contorted way that had to be difficult to maintain.

“...”

Filomena tried to speak, but nothing came from her mouth. She tried to move but her limbs wouldn’t obey her.

“Don’t even bother trying anything. Did you really think I wouldn’t be expecting that delinquent to try and threaten me? To use you to threaten me? After using you to kill my sister and that waste of air she called a husband?”

“...”

Filomena was flung through the halls of the house with a gesture. And when she landed at the feet of her mistress, the door to the room slammed shut. A complex magic circle burned into the wood of the door, and all at once Filomena could feel her connection with the Hollow Lands severed. She was magicless.