I wonder how big a grin I was wearing at that point. I wonder how wide my smile was, as I watched Margot get into the swing of things. The young mage mightily and tyrannically smashed apart everything that stood in our way.

Forget everything I said about being bored watching her kill monsters in that sewer. Looking at the way things were turning out now, it seemed that the boredom from before was just because she’d only been warming up.

Now that Margot was really into it. She was like a pint sized, red-headed, chainsaw of magical death. Tearing up everything in her path. Her training leaking into every movement and decision as she slung spell after spell into the darkness of the sewers.

“[Wind Claw]!” chanted the young mage. Sending a set of three razor sharp streams of air tearing through a crowd of trogs. The creatures dying before they were even able to muster up and charge our position.

“[Ice Bomb]!” chanted Margot. Casting a spell that sent a large ball of ice flying towards a group of slimes. The ball of ice exploding into a cloud of white powder that froze everything in its midst. Leaving the slimes as shattered fragments of frozen ooze.

“[Lightning Bullet]!” chanted Margot. The sewer tunnel momentarily lighting up as she sent a large bolt of electricity screaming down the concrete tube where it hit the bloated chest of a broad-backed trog-brute, one of the larger specimens of trogs. The trog’s mouth and nostrils smoked. It’s eyes popped, and then it collapsed. The creature briefly giving us a view of the blackened wall behind it, through the smoking hole in its chest.

By this point in time were deep underground. We’d long veered off the expected the path. Wandering into a part of the former-underground vault that was supposed to be sealed off when the state decided to repurpose the vault into a sewer. Blood and ooze splattered the sewer walls. Trogs and slimes died by the dozens as they were swarmed.

Margot, my cute little contractor, was showing a new and enchanting side of herself. Despite normally being so unsure of herself, despite normally being so mild and timid, when you really set her off she could be quite scary. All whirring teeth and roaring engine. A beastly mage. A killing machine. A beautiful instrument of destruction.

It was something of a relief really. Before I might have merely hoped that the two of us would be a compatible peer. Now I knew without a doubt in my mind that my supposition was correct. She and I were almost certainly going to get along in the long term.

This wasn’t something I did. No, no, no, I can already feel some people out there thinking that. Imagining that this was my dark influence. On the contrary. She was already this way to begin with. This was already who she was to begin with. Forceful. Focused. Talented. The earlier her, the one that had docily remained her family’s captive had just needed a little drive. She’d just needed a little more greed. Almost dying without changing anything, without doing anything that mattered to either herself or the world at large, must have changed that.

“[Inferno Beam]” chanted Margot. Summoning a horizontal column that spiralled down the tunnel. Reducing everything its path to ash.

[Oi, oi, slow down, killer. I thought we were avoiding flame based attacks to avoid causing an explosion in case we met any gas pockets?] I said. Speaking to her through our mental link.

“[Nuclear Explo-...]...Oh, uh...sorry.” said Margot. The cold and steely, slightly feral, expression she’d been wearing clearing as my voice cut through the fog of war that had been filling her head.

“Nah...It’s fine. Even if you’d cast the spell. I’ve been maintaining a kinetic field around us to keep things from getting too crazy so it technically doesn’t matter...but you know better safe than sorry.” I said. Waving airily to put the woman at ease.

“Er,...th-, thanks. Sorry again.”

“You say sorry too much. Anyone ever tell you that?” I said.

“Yes. My Aunt. Sorry…”

My expression soured. I didn’t like having anything in common with someone who could do what she’d almost done to Margot to a relative. I didn’t like having anything in common with a woman who could hurt a child like that.

First I felt upset, then I felt like I was being childish for being upset. I looked around at all the corpses. Some of them smoking. Some of them frozen. Others in pieces. Others filled with holes. Then with a thought I pulled them all into my storage.

“Question.” I said.

“Sh-, Shoot.” said Margot.

“Why do you chant your spells? I pretty sure you’ve run through at least five simulations where you would have learned chantless magic during your virtual lifespan. I’m also pretty sure you’ve done some extensive reading on the subject in your actual life.”

“Well...Don’t laugh okay? You have to promise.”

I gave Margot a look and then I shrugged.

“Fine. I promise. I won’t laugh.” I said.

“I think it’s cooler.” said Margot.

“What?” Not sure I understood what she was saying.

“Calling your attacks is what the heroes always in comics always do. So I figure I’ll do it too because it’s not like it hurts anything. I mean I’m already using a shortened chant so I can just call the name. And it helps me not freak out about all the blood and slime and the fact I’m in a dark, damp, stinky, sewer. Killing real living creatures.”

“.....”

I didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing. Simply regarding the young woman in a way that might have been more appropriate if she’d spontaneously grown another head.

“You promised not to laugh. So-, so don’t laugh...Please don’t laugh?” said Margot. Blushing furiously.

I tapped my chin and thought on her words. A sigh escaped me, as I realized that I might have been wrong again. It seemed like even if she wasn’t entirely sane, she definitely wasn’t as crazy as I was. It was a lonely thought, but it was also probably for the better. We’d have probably burnt this whole damn world to the ground if we actually were the same kind of crazy.

“It’s fine.” I said.

“Eh?” said Margot. Surprised. Apparently somehow having gotten the impression that I would mock her slightly silly idiosyncrasy.

“It’s fine. This is literally your first fight ever and you’re doing gangbusters...If you want to call your attacks. You do you.” I said.

“...En.” said Margot. Adjusting and readjusting her glasses. The uncertainness leaving her gaze and her aura surging as she seemed to fire herself back up again. Preparing to resume the slaughter she’d been engaging in before, with a whole new energy. Her eyes growing slightly unfocused as she used the interface’s minimap to plot where she needed to head to next.

*************************************************************************************************************

An hour later, I was following Margot as we waded through a watery, foul smelling mess. The sewer hadn’t exactly smelt like a field of flowers before but entering the heart of sewer where the trogs had made their camp brought things to a new level. I wasn’t sure which was worse the stink coming from the trogs, or the stench of congealed fat, trash, and fecal matter in the water. After giving it a second thought, I found that the trogs actually smelled worse.

“Hey, Monty…” said Margot. Looking at a throng of trogs doing something to a creature that wasn’t a trog.

“Yes, M?”

“What am I seeing?” said Margot. Sounding sick to her stomach.

“I do believe that seems to be a group of trogs sticking their wicks into a slime-king.” I said. My face unconsciously puckering up in response to the sight and the smell.

“Why am I seeing a bunch of trogs do...that...to a slime?”

“Because slimes are included amongst the “almost everything” that trogs can mate and procreate with.” I said. Briefly remember setting fire to a trog infected world where the creatures had somehow figured out how to procreate with trees. Distinctly remembering the moment I hurled the planet into a nearby sun because I’d realized that not only were the trogs mating with trees they’d somehow managed to figure out how to do it in a way that ensured that trees suffered as they did so.

“Ah...Okay then. What we do we do?” said Margot.

“Do you want to handle it or should I?” I said.

“How many of your limited actions do you have left?” asked Margot.

I was an aeon from beyond the void. As far as most realities were concerned I was a being that should not be. A higher-entity whose very existence was an affront to the will of the world. Being Margot’s familiar resolved many of the complications that would come from this state of affairs.

With this being the case, there were some compromises that had to be made if I wanted to “play mortal” and get a chance at increasing my strength without having to sacrifice the resources of an entire galaxy to do so.

Basically I had to follow the rules and those rules held that regardless of my actual power as a familiar I was generally limited by the strength of my contractor. Going beyond those limits would use up one of the three limited actions I had per day. If I used up all three limited actions I was then forced to keep things to small stuff, and I’d also need refresh our contract with another payment of blood and magic.

“Hm...Let’s see. Getting us all the way here to Pinedale cost us one limited action. Getting us back will cost another. And since using my psionics moderately and storing and retrieving things from my inner-spaces doesn’t really cost me much...Yeah, I’d say we have one free move we can make.” I said. Mentally calculating in my head.

I calculated things again a second time and then checked my sensors to see how heavy the world’s rejection of my existence currently was. General use of my powers and physique at a level that my contractor could roughly proximate was considered part of the free actions, but sometimes the rules on that were fuzzy. Thus if it wasn’t an emergency I usually only acted when my sensors showed that I’d still have a fair bit of leeway.

“So, you have two limited actions left?”

“Literally just said that, M.”

“Ah, right...Somehow it feel like there’s something super gross in that...heap...over there so I think I’m gonna let you handle it.”

I looked towards the horrific display of jiggling gyrations and vigorous humping and shuddered.

“Probably a wise decision.”

I stepped forwards and raised my arm. My hand forming a finger with my thumb forming the hammer. My thumb moved up and then moved down. Instead of calling my attack like a certain young mage I went for a simple and classy,

“Bang.”

A small aperture in space open up around the tip of the two fingers that served as the barrel of my “gun”. A mass of roiling, blinding white, particles burst free from the aperture.

As my attack roared forward, I used my psionics to bend and lower the amount of light reaching my partner and I so that Margot wouldn’t go blind. I also used a dampener field on the walls of the sewer to avoid a hefty repair bill from the town and too keep the town itself from being destroyed by my weiss cannon.

The trog village, the massive king-slime, and the trogs that were mating with it, were all instantly vaporized. Reduced to less than nothing. When the resulting cloud of discordant particles finally dissipated, there was nothing left. All remaining lifeforms in the sewer down to the normal sewer rats and a few sewer gators that I was kind of disappointed we hadn’t gotten a chance to fight, had been eradicated.

“......” was Margot’s non-response.

“Hm...Been awhile since I’ve used that one. Nostalgic. Anyway. We’ve got the sewer to ourselves now. Time to go collect our prize.” I said. Gently leading my partner by the arm because it seemed like her brain had stopped working, which wasn’t my fault because nerve function usually only got disrupted if happened to be in the path of an oncoming weiss blast.