Chaos Bender

Getting familiar

Nix came within 30 minutes of us walking. Crow hasn't shown up yet, making made me wonder what took him so long. Nix immediately transitioned to human form and hugged Alex.

"Oh master Alex ! I heard your call and tried to reach you as fast as I could, but all the doors and windows were locked. Then I heard nothing and looked around, but saw nothing. I didn't stop looking until I heard your call again ! I'm sorry master Alex, I will never leave your side again !!" Nix was sobbing

"Hey it's ok, everything is alright. We just, ugh. Hit a few road bumps."

The bonds between familiars and wizards were eternal. Until death they say, kinda like marriage. But I didn't know much about familiars themselves. I was supposed to learn about them along with Alex, but the teachers denied me that privilege. Now's as great a time as ever.

"So umm. What came first ? Human or, umm, Phoenix ?"

They both stopped immediately and looked like I was stupid, I felt even dumber for knowing I deserved it. Just asking questions out of the blue might not have been the best course of action.

"Is he always this rash ?"

"Yeah. I don't think he'll stop it anytime soon either." Alex glared at me. Yeah probably should start thinking this stuff through.

"Well," Nix began as if she was seriously gonna answer that. "I don't remember that far back."

"It's OK", Alex said."It was a stupid question anyways."

"Yeah, sorry", I said, obviously regretting my decision."Why are you called familiars ?"

"Oh ! It's short for spirit familiars, or animal guides. Our known history goes all the way back to the sixteenth century. But we've been around for as long as wizards been. When wizards were first discovered by humans, so were we. Although wizards were known as devil worshippers, we were known as demons. We were also called other things; vampires, werewolves, shape shifters, but the formal name for us is familiar."

"But, how does the whole human slash animal thing work ?".

"Umm. Well. As you can see, I seem like an average human; no beak, no tail, nothing that would separate me from the next human. But in an instance, notice I could shift into my animal form. It doesn't hurt or anything. We don't choose what we turn into either, we can't naturally change how we look as humans and we can't change our animal. "

"So how can you change your human form unnaturally ?"

"The same way humans do ."

"Yeah genius", Alex said. I decided to ignore her.

"What about the relationship between familiar and wizard ?"

"An everlasting bond. The familiar and wizard must mutually agree to be bonded. After the bond is made, the wizard and familiar share powers and abilities. The more spells and stronger abilites one of them gets, the more that is shared."

"Awesome, so let's say you didn't want your bond anymore. Is their any way to break it ?"

She looked at me in sudden surprise, then thought for a moment.

"Well you'd have to kill your familiar to break the bond, or kill yourself if you're desperate enough. Once your partner is gone, so are any shared powers or abilities. I've heard once that if your partner died unintentionally by you, then you keep your shared powers and abilities."

"Wow, so if it's not your fault you keep the added powers, cool !"

"Well I'm not too sure on the details, sorry. "