I woke up after a restful slumber. I heard the sounds of soft snoring at my side. After the passage of a few weeks since my last journal entry, it had been nearly two months since Margot and I became a ‘thing’.

It was hard to tell how serious we were getting because we were already thoroughly invested in each other’s lives before we were a thing, and neither of us were very good at disclosing our feelings.

That just made making a purposeful effort to be upfront all the more important. I had no interest in letting Margot and I spend a century and a half dealing with a mire of miscommunications.

I’d learned that lesson from the vast number of failed relationships that had come before.

I q-stepped out of bed. Pleased to find that the power draw was almost negligible. Short-range teleportation was never anything too major for me, but now I could do it without worrying about the cost at all.

Margot had progressed in leaps and bounds in the past couple of weeks. I could see it in the changes within her physique, which had grown robust, muscular, and hardy. I could also see her growing strength in the changes to her shadow.

Through her hard work and maybe just a little help from the repeated, increasingly intimate, contact with my peculiarity, She was rapidly becoming something more than human.

Shortly after we’d discussed the job, she’d come to me asking which element could be most readily used to control the spaces around her. Naturally, I answered space. Space was the most all-encompassing thing there was. More absolute than gravity, more absolute than time.

Margot impressed me by asking what flavor of space she should try to master. I wasn’t aware that the mortals of this world were cognizant of the various forms, or ‘flavors’, of space. I answered Night, or Nyx. One of the quote-unquote ‘high’, or compound, elements.

She asked what Night was and I showed her. Night was an element that all the real heavy hitters amongst the immortals had to master to some extent. It was too useful not to. The night element held a bit of every other element including space and time, madness and sanity, love and hate, light and dark. One could find all of the basic or primary elements hidden within the endless depths of the evening gloom.

I gave Margot a bit of my Nyx, my night-element magic, to study. A nugget of night-element spatial aether that was torn free from my innermost being. I passed it to her through our tether.

With that little nugget of nyx, Margot was able to develop a Nyx of her own. It wasn’t fully developed but I could see that she was already making progress, her shadow was now much more than a shadow.

The girl was a very hard worker. Even now, as she slept, she was working. Rather than merely sleeping, each night when Margot slept she’d make use of the vast store of simulated lives that I’d archived in our library. She’d download a life onto her interface during the day, and then live that life during the night.

With the growth of her mind and soul had achieved since the days where we’d first met, Margot could now endure simulations that were over three hundred years in length. Thus for the last twenty-two days each time she’d collapsed into bed after allowing me to ‘exhaust’ her, she’d gone right back to the millstone. Absorbing three hundred years' worth of life experiences each passing night.

In terms of what experiences Margot had taken in they varied. Sometimes treading old ground, sometimes entering new territories. She’d absorbed more experience as soldiers, mages, fighters, spies, and cultivators because there were certain similarities shared between Ki and Nyx.

She’d also absorbed the lives of a weaver, a malevolent fairy, a circus clown, a poet, a nightclub security guard, a circus clown, and a slime, as in the sometimes cute, sometimes gross, monsters.

For Margot, it didn’t matter if the life was similar to one of the others she’d lived. It just mattered if it was a life that she could gain something from, with experiences that could enrich her knowledge base.

I tried to do my best supporting her hard work. The difficult part wasn’t motivating the girl, it was keeping her from burning herself out.

I would often end up having to coax Margot into goofing off with her beloved games and animes when I sensed she was on the verge of overdoing things. I’d even become a bit more of a gamer myself because of it, and there were at least three animes whose earworm opening songs would stick with me for the next few centuries.

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Margot woke up. She was in bed alone which left her out of sorts. This made her laugh at herself because it had only been a month or so and she was already at the point where it felt strange to wake up in bed and not have him there.

Margot sat up and put on her glasses because while she’d reached a stage where she could willfully control her vision, her true-sight had also increased as her strength had, adding to the amount of strain controlling her true-sight put her under.

Margot swung her legs out of bed. Sighing as she looked down at their pale length. Her body had changed a lot in the last few months, but annoyingly she hadn’t grown much taller.

At the present, she was five-foot-seven just barely over average height. She showed no sign of growing taller. Instead, her body seemed to have been focusing all its development in making her denser. Compacting her muscles and bones as the magic made her stronger, leaving Margot with the troubling thought that she might one day find herself shrinking.

Margot yawned and stood. Picking up the overlong t-shirt she’d discarded and left on the floor because she couldn’t be bothered to put on pants. She wandered into the kitchen following her nose. It was a short trip thanks to the intent-based spell that controlled the layout of the house.

“Morning…” said Margot.

“Morning, beautiful.” said Monty.

Margot blushed, wondering why that still got to her after so many repetitions. She pulled up a chair for herself and then lowered herself down onto it. Crossing her legs beneath her. Perching on the chair cushion like a cat.

“So today’s the day.” said Monty.

“Yeah…”

“It might be a while before you can eat this well again... Any special requests?” said Monty.

“Anything’s fine.” said Margot. Meaning it. Monty was a talented cook and after months observation she found he was also something of a show-off. Letting him do his own thing often ended in spectacular results.

Breakfast was rich quiche made from the milk of storm-horn auroch and the eggs of a wyvern, with a side of buttery scones filled with soul berry jam. Later the black-haired man and orange-haired woman would leave the apartment side by side.

Monty was dressed sharply. Wearing a black tuxedo and top hat. His obfuscating glamour deactivated because where he was going it’d actually work against him to try and hide who he was.

Margot wore her mantle in its choker form. A t-shirt, a sweater, a pair of jeans, and some combat boots. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and tied with a scrunchy that was a little more than just a scrunchy. She also carried a satchel, the kind one might take for a plane trip, or a long overnight visit.

As they stood at the threshold of their apartment door, Monty looked over at Margot with concern in his eyes.

“Ar...Are you really sure about this?” said Monty.

Margot smiled and shook her head.

“Of course I’m not...But let’s do it anyway, shall we?”

“Just remember...I’ll be watching you every step of the way.” said Monty.

Margot smiled.

“Do you think I’d have the nerve to do something this crazy if that wasn’t the case?” said Margot.

Now it was Monty’s turn to smile.

“...Yes.” said Monty.

Margot sighed as the door opened itself for them.

“Mhm...You’re probably right...But knowing you’re watching does make me feel a lot better about my odds. Now let’s go give a bunch of immortals a very, very bad week.” said Margot. Stepping through the door into the hallway outside.

“Yes...Let’s.” said Monty. Interfacing with his dark-eye network to start up the spatial-transfer sequence.