Overly Familiar Pt. 02 Ch. 02

"I'm simply saying..." Matt began with a bemused smirk. "...just having all of those tentacles moving in different ways would be a chore, much less trying to coordinate all of that while feeling it. It's an intriguing idea but I don't see it working practically."

Mara rolled her eyes. "Coordination is all about muscle memory. I'm sure you could figure it out. We'd all be more than willing to experiment with you."

Matt let out a small chuckle. "Yeah, I bet you would. Anyway, we can talk more about that later. Business before pleasure."

"Says you." Mara purred. "I easily mix them both." But despite her jovial nature, the demon was clearly focusing on the matter at hand now. However, she wasn't kidding about mixing pleasure and business. Sure, Matt took hunting very seriously and to an extent, so did she. Mara was very aware of how important this was to him, but she wasn't going to pretend that she didn't love the freedom of being able to let her demon flag fly for a time.

Her heart was pounding in her chest as she focused. She knew it could be as long as a week before she got this opportunity again. And while Laila had been correct in that all of the familiars could technically do this, it would still come easiest to her. So, she wanted to show off a bit. After all, it hadn't been easy to convince the girls to give her the first hunting trip when she'd had so many others, but she could be very convincing.

"That's the one." Mara said confidently, pointing at the mansion in front of them.

"They always have such nice houses..." Matt mused thoughtfully.

"Well if they aren't successful, then they aren't doing it right..." Mara murmured, before she noticed the glare from Matt. "Not that there's a right way to do it. You know what I meant."

"Attic or basement?" Matt grumbled, glaring at the extravagant house. It was always one of the two.

"Basement." Mara nodded, holding out her hand.

"How bad is it?" Matt asked, taking the offered hand. For just a moment, he could see a flash of his nightmares with the dream Mara beckoning him into the abyss. Welcoming him into a world of pain and torture from where he'd never return. He was easily able to shake off the thought. Even still, he really wished his subconscious would get its shit together. He didn't need this popping up during a hunt.

"It's pretty bad." Mara answered solemnly. "Her despair is so...hopeless. She's been completely broken. Who knows how long she's been down there?"

"All the better." Matt stated with a sharp nod. "Let's do this."

"Yes Master." As Mara summoned her magic, the duo became engulfed in flames. Demonic teleportation was like any dangerous skill. The mechanics of it were pretty simple, but the devil was literally in the details. Navigate to the "in-between" as Mara liked to call it, where the fabric of reality was especially weak, and then poof, you can go almost anywhere in the blink of an eye. Well, technically where you can go is limited to the magic you can pull from, but considering how massive Matt's magic pool was, the amount of magic was never an issue.

But while navigating through the in-between itself was quite simple once you knew what you were doing, there were also a lot of ways it could go wrong. It was why Matt always piggybacked off of the pro instead of doing it himself. Sure, he had the power, but he was still learning how to use it. And while he was confident in his healing abilities, he'd rather not lose chunks of his body in a botched teleportation. Not to mention, from what Mara said, the in-between was definitely not a place you wanted to hang out in.

Both hunters were intact as they reappeared in the basement of the mansion in another burst of flames. It didn't even take a second for them to adjust to the darkness. But they immediately felt the dark magic weighing them down and looked at each other curiously.

"Holy shit. That's some pretty strong warding." Matt commented. It had taken some getting used to. The first few times he barged in on a warding spell not even half as strong as this one, it had made him physically sick. Which was the point. Most normal people would have avoided that magic right off the bat. The basement would have seemed scary or eerie to them. Whatever it took to repel them from what was inside, the feeling getting steadily stronger until they couldn't handle it or simply couldn't move anymore.

"I'm really looking forward to finding who made it. Or at least who maintains it." Mara replied lustfully, "Maybe they won't run this time."

Matt rolled his eyes. As if Mara didn't like a good chase. But regardless, he ignored the forces of magic constantly buffeting against him and his demonic familiar as nothing more than a particularly strong wind. He acknowledged it but it wasn't more than a minor inconvenience. The warding wasn't important to him. It was a dragon in a dungeon. It wouldn't be there if it wasn't protecting something.

And then he saw her. While you couldn't visibly see them, the chains were there. The woman was on her knees, looking over to their sudden appearance. As was always the case when Matt found a "muse", his heart broke just a bit at the moment their eyes met. Mara wasn't using hyperbole. Though the woman was looking at him, her eyes were dead. She had nothing left to give. No curiosity. No fear. No fight. She simply waited silently for whatever they chose to do to her as she would have anyone else.

Teriana had been the first to open his mind to the idea. As gods and goddesses were formed whenever enough people decided to worship something and agreed upon a form and name for said deity, they were only as powerful as their worshippers' faith allowed them to be. For every Zeus, who despite not currently being worshipped as much is still widely known enough to keep the faith alive, there would be a goddess like this. A minor one weak enough to be enslaved and turned into a muse if you knew how.

As Mara had said earlier, there was no telling how long the goddess before him had been forced to be in this basement as she was used again and again for the benefit of whatever asshole was currently abusing her. It made Matt sick, but he knew from the moment Teriana had said that doing this had fallen out of practice, that it probably hadn't. Laila and Mara had confirmed his suspicion. It hadn't fallen out of practice. People had just become much better at hiding it.

And so, Matt's hunting trips had been born. He'd use Mara's ability to track negative emotions and find muses and while he freed them, Mara would "take care" of those responsible. It was a win/win. He got to do something good. To make a difference in a way that doesn't trigger an apocalypse, while also feeding Mara's demonically sadistic tendencies in a way that he didn't mind.

As Matt walked over to the kneeling goddess, her blank stare remained on him. It made him feel even worse. Instead of seeing him as her liberator, she was assuming he was just another in a long line to use her. Once he was a few feet away from her, the heaviness of the warding instantly lifted. This was actually a very bad sign. That meant that he was currently inside a magic barrier strong enough that the warding wasn't needed in this area. It was obviously an easy to get in and hard to get out type of situation, but he'd deal with that later.

As no one would put this much effort into protecting something and not be aware that it had intruders, Mara remained outside of the barrier, waiting eagerly for someone to pick a fight with her. Meanwhile, Matt was close enough to the goddess to make out her strong, exotic facial features. She had an olive complexion with long black hair. Her brown eyes continued to follow his movements as he covered her in his jacket. As much as he had grown very used to nudity, he hated to see it on this goddess. It's one thing if she wanted to be nude, but nothing about this situation was her choice.

"What's your name?" Matt finally asked, placing his hand on hers. Like Teriana, this goddess had an aura surrounding her and the moment he touched her, a surge of affection and lust went through him. She was a lust goddess. And far from the first he'd found this way. Lust gods and goddesses were probably the most popular muses to take, along with ones based on skills like music, art, writing, and of course, prosperity deities. Matt had found himself rather disappointed in some of the celebrities who had been involved in this practice.

"Ishara." She answered almost robotically, the three syllables clearly displaying her accent. He couldn't quite place it, but with deities coming from literally all over, there was no telling where she was initially from until she told him.

"Okay, Ishara. I wish there were an easier way to do this, but I've found out the hard way that...this is the best way to go about things. What I'm about to do is going to be very...personal, but I need you to be in a more stable state of mind and there's no way I can ask for your consent right now. So, I'll apologize ahead of time."

As Matt had expected, despite the earnestness of his words, Ishara had no reaction to them. With a sigh, he kneeled down to her level, pressing his forehead to hers. Matt hated this part, but it was necessary. Ishara's memories suddenly flooded into his mind and she immediately shuddered, clearly feeling him in her head.

"I'm...so sorry..." Matt said sincerely, "I wish I could just...take this all away. But that...gets messy. So the best I can do for you is to take your trauma and box it up for you in digestible chunks. It will all still be there but...basically I'm magically putting you through years of therapy in a few minutes if that makes any sense to you."

"I keep telling him that he could make a fortune with that ability." Mara mused, casually watching the display. She caught a momentary look from Matt before replying, "I know, Master. I know. Behave."

Matt turned his attention back to Ishara's mind. This was something that had just come to him after the...unfortunate first attempt at simply freeing a goddess without fixing her mind beforehand. Trauma was a powerful motivator. But Matt realized he could help with that. When Matt kept his powers to healing, be it physical or as it turns out, mental, he had a natural affinity to it and didn't need to actually learn spells. His familiars attributed this to how often he used his healing before he even knew he was using magic to do it. Even so, this was a complicated process, even with the affinity.

Part of the difficulty was that after a minute or so, Ishara became aware of what he was doing and started to fight it. After all, being numb was how she was able to get through this ordeal. He was taking that away. The second mistake he'd made in the past was stopping at this point. That...somehow got even messier. As shitty as it made him feel in the moment, he had to keep forcing his will on her mind for her own good.

It was an ordeal, and despite the number of times he'd done it now, it had never become easy. Everyone's mind responded to trauma and abuse differently, so he had to figure out how to navigate it all on a case by case basis. But eventually he got the hang of how her mind flowed and it was just a short matter of time after that.

By the time they were done, Ishara had stopped fighting back but as she looked up to him, her cheeks glistening with her rediscovered emotion. "W...why...why would you do that? I-"

"Because I had to." Matt interrupted with a kind smile. "I couldn't free you without freeing your mind first."

"Free me?" Ishara choked out. "You were in my head. You know I'm not free. He'll never let me go. None of them will. Whatever he told you to make you do this was a lie. All you did was make it so that he can hurt me more..."

"For which you have my everlasting thanks." A voice called from the door that Matt and Mara had never used. "I must say that I'm very intrigued. The fact that you were able to teleport here was impressive enough, but to move around so casually with my wardings. Yes. Very intrigued."

Matt could feel Ishara moving behind him. It was as if she were making herself as small as possible. He could actually feel her panic as she silently sobbed onto his back. It wasn't the same way that he could feel Mara's excitement through their connection, but with the empathy anyone would have with someone that terrified. Glancing over to Mara, he made sure that his will was for her to wait and let their mystery mansion owner talk a bit. He could tell she got it from the slight pout on her lips.

"You're not my usual...type...but I must say I'm very intrigued by your power. Especially with whatever you just did to my muse."

"She's not your muse anymore." Matt corrected, standing up to get a better look. "And I'm not a god, so whatever sick shit you're thinking about right now can fuck right off. We'll see how intrigued you are when you realize I'm not actually stuck inside this barrier." Stepping closer to the line of magic, Matt pressed his hand against the invisible force.

"Oh? So, you willingly walked into the barrier because you were sure you could escape? Would that have something to do with your formidable pet demon over there?" The man motioned over to Mara, finally acknowledging her.

"The funny thing about my warding is that it's two-fold. It keeps people out, but if I wish..." Raising his hand, the man made a fist, murmuring some words, and then the warding throughout the room became visible, with a green hue, almost like a fog. The fog immediately swirled around Mara, concentrating into itself and turning into chains that forced her to the ground. Mara immediately became an explosion of fury that was only quelled when Matt shook his head in her direction. It might have looked like he was protesting the fact that his familiar had just been chained but it was basically a silent, 'Not yet.'

"I do hope she wasn't your only trump card." The man coyly smirked.

"I have two more, actually." Matt said casually, more to himself than to his 'trapper'. "But the two of us will be more than enough. We always are."

"Ah...so it is you. Freer of muses. Righter of wrongs. Punisher of evil. I've lost some people close to me due to your antics if this is true. To think it merely a boy and his demon. We are going to have a very...long...conversation about how you will...pay me back."

"Freer of muses. Righter of wrongs. Punisher of evil. First of my name. The unburnt. King of the Andels and the first men. Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea. Breaker of Chains. And Father of Dragons. Say it all or don't bother." When all Matt received from this was an albeit earned roll of the eyes and quiet chuckle from Mara, and a confused expression being the only reaction from the man, Matt sighed. "Oh, fuck you, that was a good reference."

With that, Matt pulled back his fist and punched the barrier. The entire mansion shook from the force of the blow and there was a clear shimmer from the force but other than that nothing changed, much to Mara and Matt's surprise. "Holy shit! That is a good barrier!"

The man chuckled in amusement. "I'm glad it meets your approval. You'll become quite well versed with it in the years to come. My family has put quite a lot of effort into keeping what's ours. And in case it wasn't clear. You are now ours."

"Uh huh." Matt mumbled, no longer impressed as he pushed against the barrier again. "Okay, I'm going to try something. Ishara, close your eyes."

Ishara followed the instructions as Mara did the exact opposite, her eyes bulging wide as a grin spread along her lips. Earlier this morning, Matt had tried to release angel wings like Laila had said would be possible for him. And it did work...kind of. They weren't really wings, as his soul was significantly more powerful than an angel. He'd probably be able to form wings eventually but until he learned to condense them, they'd probably take up the whole garden. His early attempts at condensing them had a rather interesting side effect.

As Matt closed his eyes and the man watched with a cocky intrigue, Matt released his "wings". It was less wings and more of an energy aura, that was an extension of a fraction of his soul. It also tended to cause a massive flash of light and obliterated magic used against him. And it would be clear to any magic user that it wasn't magic that caused the effect. It was just his soul. It was the power he displayed by simply existing. In short, it was a power flex. A massive power flex. There was a loud boom as Matt was wrapped in a swirl of energy that shattered the barrier and Mara's chains like they were a thin sheet of glass hit by a wrecking ball.

One thing Matt was unaware of was that even after he put his soul away, his eyes remained solid black. Matt wasn't a human, despite how often he resembled one. And his eyes made that very clear for those in the know. It took a few moments for them to turn back to normal, but both Ishara and the man had seen them.

"What the Hell are you?!" The man protested as he stepped back, fear clearly setting in from the display.

Meanwhile Ishara felt no fear. Only awe. "You're...the horseman of D-"

"No. No I am not." Matt quickly shot down, trying his best to keep the irritation out of his voice. It wasn't like his deep routed rejection of his title was Ishara's fault.

"Is it time?" Ishara asked, the awe now making way for inevitability. "Is this the end?"

"No. No, it is not the end, because I'm not-"

"You're War!" Ishara realized, looking at Mara.

"Nope. Not me. You must be mistaken." Mara replied, while smiling and nodding vigorously.

"Mara..." Matt sighed.

"Oh, come on, Master. No one ever believes you when you deny it."

Matt rolled his eyes. She wasn't wrong. When he went to see how well the man was following the revelation, Matt's eyes narrowed to see no one there. "We've got a rabbit."

Mara's eyes lit up in excitement. "I guess I should be vewwy vewwy quiet then."

"Have fun." Matt replied with a nod, watching as Mara took off after her prey. Despite her saying that she wished that more of them would just stay and fight it out, she clearly loved this part.

"What would the horseman of Death want from me?" Ishara asked, still clearly trying to wrap her head around the whole situation. You could almost see the lightbulb in her head go on. "Did you choose me to be a horseman?"

"No. They've already been chosen. I mean-... I'm not the hor-..." Matt let out a sigh. It was like trying to convince a dog expert that a Great Dane was a really big cat. He was just hitting a brick wall here. Well...the equivalent of a human hitting a brick wall. He'd personally found hitting brick walls surprisingly therapeutic. "Let's get you some clothes and then we can talk. I'd assume there must be some women's clothes in this place somewhere?"

"I don't understand..." Ishara questioned, the confusion clear on her face.

"You should be wearing more than a jacket. Sure, it's technically covering everything but-" Matt began before letting out a sigh. He knew what she meant. He'd been through this before. "Look, I don't suppose you could just take me at my word that I freed you because it was the right thing to do? And that the intrinsic belief you deities have that because I freed you from your enslavement, you somehow owe me a debt equal to the life I gave back to you isn't really a thing? Can you simply accept that you're free now and leave it at that?"

"I...don't understand..." Ishara repeated, the effort clear on her face that she was trying to, but it was like he was speaking a different language.

Matt let out another sigh. It'd be nice if once, just once he didn't have to find a workaround for this issue. Deities are so...odd when it comes to beings more powerful than them. "Okay. As the horseman of Death, I now own you and will at some point in the future ask you to do something for me that will be worth the price of your life. After I ask this favor, you will be free to do as you wish. While you wait for me to call on you, I want you to prepare for that and act as if you are already free. The world is most likely quite different from how you remember it. Explore. Find what makes you happy. Make up for the time you lost."