-GONG, GONG-

Gilliam woke with the same gasp of terror he has done the last few days. The bed is comfortable but... that alarm clock... Parts of him wondered if there was some form of volume button for his room. He would like to mute it but then he’d be late for everything.

His heart pumped like he was going into battle and fast enough to be registered as dangerous... Oh how he still looked forward to the moment he got used to this...

His brain was... not as fast booting up as his heart. Where his heart got a kickstart without equal, his brain on the other hand needed a moment.

Sitting up on the side, his feet touching the floor, his brain started realising what was going to happen today. Waking up considerably in a few seconds he started looking forward to things instead!

Getting ready with a happy face was a bit strange, a welcome kind of strange but strange nonetheless. He’s never been a morning man but this had him excited.

He was out of his room with a full bag, well before the second bell, speed walking down to the mess hall. Grabbing something random at speed as he was too mentally elsewhere, wondering what kind of creature he might get, what kinds he didn’t want and.. Well.. His mind was racing.

Eating whatever random things he put on his plate he started analysing possibilities. Though he was limited by his imagination and the new creatures he had seen in this world, he kind of went through them and made a checklist of yes and no.

Few things made it on the no-list, slimy and seemingly useless creatures went on the no list, pigeons, insects, fish and the like. Though dismissing fish as a thing did sadden him a tiny bit considering his goldfish back home, he really hoped someone found and took care of it.. The yes-list was practically anything else, even mundane creatures from his own world would be fine, a dog or cat would still be good. So at least he didn’t have too high hopes.

Looking around in the room well after the second bell had rung he saw people flooding in, many had their familiar with them, the ones that had the smaller kinds like mice or anything you could carry on-body. The ones with tiger-sized familiars or larger couldn’t bring them in, but many of them opted to take their food outside to spend time with their magnificent or weird creatures.

His mind was so focused on this that he almost managed to not react as the third bell rang.

Mentally waking up from his daydream he realised that not only was his plate and mug empty, but the third bell had indeed rung! He sprung from his chair and made his way according to the directions.

It seems that the ritual was done underground, the central tower didn’t only go up, it also went down. So making his way into the central room, to the central column he entered the staircase. It did indeed have a spiral staircase going up but the one going down was where he was to go.

Walking down a rotation he opened a door into a tiny room, a man in light armour, a sword at his hip and a staff standing in a corner looked at him as the door opened. He was sitting on a chair reading something.

“Name?” his voice was rough and his face had definitely been punched many times.

“Err... Gilliam Gibson?” Gilliam replied uncertainly, he had not been down here before so he had no idea what to expect.

The man flipped his book to the first page, between the first page and the cover he had a list he read through.

Without looking up from his book he explained the next steps.

“Yep, you’re good. Go in there, first door to the right, the familiar room is straight ahead.”

Flipping back to the actual part of the book he seemed to ignore Gilliam from that point.

Uncertain he walked around this man, not wanting to disturb him, he walked through the next door and didn’t manage to relax a little until the door was closed behind him.

For some odd reason that man, that guard was a bit scary... Something just felt off about him. Ignoring this for now, Gilliam headed down the hallway, taking the first door to the right which led into another hallway. There were several other doors along this hallway but there was a slightly fancier door straight ahead. The one straight ahead also had ‘Familiar Ritual’ written on the door. Next thing he realised he stood with the familiar room opening it he entered as instructed!

Inside was a surprisingly bland room. It was a rectangle shape, another door on the opposing side from where he entered, a desk with a 30-something year old woman with long blonde hair and that was about it. The walls were the same stone as the rest of the academy and... Gilliam expected more.

“Gilliam?” the woman confirmed with him as he closed the door.

Gilliam just nodded, a bit out of his familiar waters here. She didn’t seem to mind or react much, just took some notes.

“Do you know how the ritual is going to work?” Eyeing Gillima she asked her question with the tone and speed of someone who has asked this a hundred times before.

Gilliam shook his head. “Only what was listed in the introduction manual and letter”.

“Ok, then I’ll explain. First, you will enter that room, in there you will find a very complicated series of magical circles, go into the center circle and just release mana slowly until the crystal in the center of the wall opposing the door lights up. At this point all you should do is relax, the circle will handle the rest”

This also had a very, very practised tone to it. Which just hints that this has been a thing for quite the time and always worked.

“Should your familiar be exceptionally large, the room has plenty of space on the side which will be used, so there is no need to be worried. Also, should the familiar be too large to exit through the doors we will get a teleporter to bring you outside.” she added at the end.

Which is a very nice thing, Gilliam did shudder for a second imagining doing this in a too small room.

“So, I enter, stand in the circle, release mana slowly until the gem glows and then stop. After that I should just wait.” Gilliam bottomlined it just to make sure it was all correct.

The woman simply nodded in response, it seems like he had it down.

“Ok, that sounds simple enough... so... should I just go in.. or..?”

After the explanation was done there was this odd pause of what to do, was there more or...

“No, as long as you understand what you are going to do, and as long as you do not overcharge the circle, everything should be good” She smiles.

“Wh... what happens if I overcharge the circle?” Gilliam very, very hesitantly asked.

“Oh, you know. Not something good.” She.. didn’t answer but the pressure she put on it didn’t have Gilliam at ease.

“Understood.”

He didn’t ask anything more, this just turned terrifying enough as it was.

Turning and entering the other room was not an issue, but Gilliam had to stop and take in the sights before he properly entered. The room was indeed covered, completely covered in magical circles. A quick glance found several ones that had to do with stability, connection of time and space, something related to communication, something to do with the spirit or something... All in all this was indeed a super complex multi-layered structure of magical circles. Someone has used considerable time making this, both making the structure but also engraving it and filling it with the needed gems and whatnot.

Stepping into this wondrous creation he could only feel a mix of excitement but also some inferiority in here. There were so many things in here that he didn’t even understand. On one side that sounded like a reason to learn, on another it was oddly humbling.

But, that was for later!

He walked into the center circle, it was very obvious where he should be standing, and he started channelling mana. This felt the same as channelling mana into his own magic circles, just a bit weirder. There was a certain amount of feedback when you were nearing the cap of what the circle wanted or could handle, but for this circle that didn’t happen. This must be what the crystal was for.

Standing there, not wanting to overload anything, he took it slow and steady, focusing on the crystal as he let the mana flow from his body into the circle.

It took several minutes of constant channelling, not wanting to overdo it he wanted to do this calm and collected.

Being super focused on that gem, when it suddenly lit up he was startled letting out an extra pulse of mana by mistake before he was able to stop it. He started to stress, did, did he break anything? The magic circles around him started glowing, brighter and brighter. There was an odd hum he had not heard from magic circles before and this didn’t feel right. It took several seconds, there were a few circles that pulsed, some pulsed red, some pulsed purple, these were smaller circles, he didn’t know what any of them did.

Then suddenly one of the smaller ones pulsed white twice and remained stable white afterwards, the larger circles started changing colours in a scintillating pattern before everything in the room pulsed powerfully once.

Gilliam couldn’t see anything, his eyes were readjusting from the light to the darkness, there was some weird smoke that smelled like a forest, was that part of the process?

Since the magic circles had stopped illuminating the room Gilliam looked around for his to-be companion... But there was nothing there? He couldn’t see anything but.. No.. wait.. He could hear something?

Flapping, but it was very, very tiny. It was clearly flapping and not buzzing like something small would do; it just sounded odd. Like a tiny bird. Perhaps it was a sparrow or something?

Due to the bright light before and the sudden darkness now it was too dark for Gilliam’s eyes by contrast, he channelled energy into a light sphere and let the smoke subside a little.

Turning towards the flapping that was now to his side he locked eyes with a small, weird creature.

It was about 6cm (~2.36inch) tall, looked like a harpy of sorts with feathered white wings as arms, a single clawed finger on the joint where the wrist would be. The humanoid shape was present but its head was ever so slightly enlarged, large pointed-oval shaped solid-purple eyes. Its skin was dominantly covered in white snake-like scales, not everywhere; there was still skin around certain areas of the body. Oddly long and pale blonde hair reaching its mid back, with the hair and body physique it’s definitely a female. Her legs are triple jointed, with a hip, backwards-facing knee-like joint and an ankle. Easiest comparison would be to a small earth-bird; like a sparrow. This comparison is also valid for the feet, which have one stronger toe facing backwards and three facing forwards, all of them with tiny claws.

Her back seems to have tiny spikes extending along her spine, ending up at her tailbone where a long seemingly prehensile tail extends, covered in the same white scales as most of her skin.

In short, a tiny scaled harpy with a tail...

She managed to hover surprisingly well, just hanging there, flapping her little arms, looking at Gilliam.

“... Hello...” Gilliam managed to finally get out.

The little creature smiled widely, showing a toothy smile with small fangs. “Master!” it flapped and flew surprisingly fast, crashing into Gilliam’s face, remaining stuck to him by holding herself in place in his hair.

Saying that Gilliam was surprised was an understatement. “Wait, hold on...” he tried to get her off his face, but with her small size he was afraid he’d crush her if he used any force.

In the end he got her loose, ending up having her sitting in his palm looking at him happily.

“Master!” she again stated in her high pitch, tiny voice.

“You’re the familiar I summoned?” He was confused, not dissatisfied, just confused. He had no idea what kind of weird, but oddly adorable creature that sat in his hand.

“Yes! Master summoned Savia.” she replied looking incredibly happy, scampering over to grab one of his fingers, latching on in a hug.

“Wait, wait, hold on. Savia? Your name is Savia?” Things made a bit sense, the process was not super specifically explained but he did read that the ritual would contact potential familiars and sort of ‘explain’ to them what this was.

Sentient familiars had confirmed that before that there is a weird voice, feeling and weird knowledge in their mind explaining to them what the familiar ritual will entail, and they can agree or not. Nobody knows what happens if they refuse, but it was explained that the ritual was set up in a way that refusal was a possibility. The theory behind this is that it causes better bonds and better matched familiars.

With this in mind, and the fact that she is talking and has a name and everything. Odds are that ‘the voice’ explained it to her and she agreed to it, understanding the concept of the familiar ritual.

That might be some of the runes that have some telepathic component to it.

The little creature looks at Gilliam, still clamping herself to his finger.

“Savia is Savia, like Master is Master.” She smiles like this is the most obvious thing ever.

A smile grew on his lips, this isn’t the big terrifying thing he halfway expected, in its stead he got an adorable little mini harpy thing. There was this strange feeling as well, like an external happiness. When you become happy seeing other people being happy, something like that but on an oddly more personal level. This might be the familiar link thing, she is happy so he gets an external happiness shared feeling thing.

But that logic, since he’s getting kind of stoked at this she should probably be feeling it as well, this was interesting!

Being way too busy inspecting this little creature Gilliam actually forgot to leave the room, he just looked at this odd creature that looked back with pupilless eyes, sharing a weird moment. Though there was an enjoyment and intrigue factor to this he also just felt a bit confused. She had clearly accepted this, and he had accepted that he would become the master or owner of some creature. But the fact that she was sentient kind of complicated it, it wasn’t slavery but it felt oddly close to it. This is something he would have to think about at some point.

As he had a look at the small needle-like spikes from her spine the door opened, startling them both.

In came the woman from the hallway.

“Mr. Gibson, congratulations on your ritual’s success. However I need to be blunt and have you leave, there are preparations needing to be done for the next student.”

“Oh.. yeah.. Sorry, I was just.. A bit focused on something else.” He forced a smile and felt super awkward, almost like he was caught staring at something or someone he shouldn’t have. He nodded as part of his excuse and left the room, but on the way he stopped with the lady and sort of confusedly asked.

“So.. now what...?”

The woman smiled a bit but at the same time sighed.

“As we discussed before you entered, you should have the rest of the day, if not weekend off. So the two of you can get used to each other. Both of you are confused, and this is a new experience. You are bouncing your confusion back and forth making you even more confused. This is normal. Just go outside, let her loose, let her explore, go with her and just be with each other.”

She smiled honestly in the end. “I’m also not sure what she is so... might be worthwhile asking around or learning more, could be nice just in general.”

As she replied this she also sort of ushered Gilliam out of the room, without giving Gilliam any moment to ask anything else she closed the door behind him.

Parts of him thought this was a good idea... he would probably just be asking her questions all day if not... She has clearly been through this before.

However, once his focus again came back to the little creature in his palm, the little creature squatting in a weird sparrow-like sitting position, she just smiled back at him and he couldn’t really do anything but smile back. This was cool and interesting, he had weighed the positives and negatives before so past-Gilliam already handled this. If what the familiar lady said was true, him being a bit weird at the moment was normal, probably related to the linking of emotions and souls with another creature.

He hadn’t realised that he had kept walking during this, and he suddenly found himself standing in the central room of the tower. Well, there were seven exits to pick from, the closest one at the moment was the Air field, so might as well go out there!

Letting Savia sit in his right hand he opened the door with his left, he couldn't take his eyes off her as some kind of fragile glass figurine, he didn’t want to drop her. Not properly considering that she was probably very adept at flying based on her hovering and crashing into his face after the ritual.

It was still early morning, the sun hadn’t hit the highest point of the day yet so this field was very sunny compared to the others, showing a slight glistening effect in Savia’s scales. As they exited the door she squinted for a few long seconds before she opened her surprisingly large eyes properly.

Finding a decent place to sit he just plopped himself down, he wanted to know so many things but didn’t know where to start.

She just sat there looking at him confused, not having let go of his finger since she latched on down in the basement. This staring lasted for a solid few minutes before a bird flew past them, seeming to trigger some fear response in her. This sent a weird spike of some weird feeling in Gilliam. Parts of him wanted to just go hide from the bird, another part wanted to crush it in the air...

He supposed this was why there was time set off to get used to this, it sounded like you might need to relearn a few feelings and learn how to handle the new stimuli, so a good idea.

“So, Savia-” he started, she turned towards him attentively, causing Gilliam to chuckle once before continuing. “-You don’t like birds?”

“Savia doesn't like birds... Birds eat Savia.” She sounded honest about that part, which makes sense.

The spikes on her back hints to some defence mechanism, her small size could easily become a target to certain birds and other small-game hunters.

“Where did you live before?--- What did you do?---” A list of questions started spewing from him now that the conversation was started.

He also found out that when she referred to anyone it was always a name, never a ‘he’, ‘you’ or other words like that. Based on her explanation she used to live in a forest with others of her kind, though they were smaller, dumber and had different wings. Her kind are swarm creatures, living in a giant swarm that both aids hunting but also survival.

She can bite with venom, also inject poison through her spine spikes if she wants, but she controls this so there is no danger to anyone unless she wants to. This was very important in the forest as her swarm hunted with venom, eating anything they came across. At the same time it was a survival of the fittest and her swarm had been attacked more than once, they were dwindling.

‘The Voice’, as she named the thing that explained the familiar ritual to her, explained that she would become someone's servant, someone with magic, who would protect, care for and feed her. This was also why she started calling Gilliam for Master, that’s what the voice explained. That was enough for her as it was a vastly better life than the survival lifestyle.

She knew what magic was, she had seen others use it before, so she knew that a magic person could protect her from birds!

Introducing himself she could pronounce his name easily enough but seemed to prefer calling him master. Parts of him had to admit that he liked it but at the same time it felt a bit...

However, Gilliam became very intrigued by all of this so the latter mentioned discomfort faded fast. She was not just a different race, that part he could handle with the others he had seen around, but she was different in many other ways. Being a super tiny flying swarm creature also gave her very, very different problems and views on things. He always liked other cultures and people in a ‘not me’ kind of way. Meaning that people that were different to him in ways he could not experience was oddly interesting to him. How life was different for them with whatever made them different from him.

Now, this creature was not only different, but incredibly different. This was already a good day, this was just making it way, way better!

“What other things can you do?” Gilliam asked after the other details were discussed. She had already explained that she had venom, though Gilliam was too big to hurt, he would just get a little sick.

“Savia can bite, Savia can fly really fast, Savia can see in the dark!” She sounded super proud as she listed her list of abilities.

The nightvision idea was intriguing to Gilliam, but he also wondered how fast she could fly with those tiny wings.

“Can you show me how fast you can fly?”

As soon as he asked, it was like he gave candy to a child, she smiled brightly and beamed in pride. Taking a few steps of his hand to the side she sort of tipped herself over so her tiny weight had her fall over the edge.

She took flight with her tiny arm-wings and started flying around.

To her credit, she was pretty fast, especially for something that small. The speed was comparable to sparrows back home. Gilliam didn’t know the exact speed but he had read somewhere that they could fly in the upper 40km/h (~25mph+) somewhere, she was surprisingly acrobatic in the air as well. It seems that her tail worked as a rudder when turning, allowing for sudden sharp turns seemingly without effort. She came back after a few rounds in the area and ended up hovering in front of Gilliam like before. She didn’t even seem particularly winded. He held out his hand again and she landed gracefully.

“Master, Master!” She shouted out as she seemed to just have remembered something. “Savia has clawfeet! And long tail!” She lifted one of her legs and showed her feet to him, a few seconds after she waved her tail in weird patterns.

“Savia can climb and hang onto things!”

Bird-bouncing over to his pinky she grabbed hold of it with the tail and let gravity tip her over, she ended up hanging upside down from his finger, something Gilliam found oddly amusing. After which, almost to prove a point she grabbed onto the same finger with her tiny feet and let go with the tail. She struggled a bit more due to the size of the feet compared to his finger but it was still amusing nonetheless.

Lifting his other palm close to her she let go of his finger and landed on her back in his palm with a little flomp, legs splayed in the air and a wide smile on her face.

She was incredibly adorable.

“So, Savia, have you lived with humans before?” It was time he showed her his new life. It was not going to be the modern marvel he was used to, but he could show her magic and the academy.

“Savia hide from humans. Humans attack. Savia always hide.” She still smiled and seemed oddly happy now. Might be that her sense of security has increased so much with this bond that she’s no longer stressed out by it?

“Well, since we’re probably going to be here a while, let me show you around. We can start by getting some food.”

Like a spell in its own right, the mention of easily accessible food had her practically glow in excitement.

This was indeed going to be a good day.