When I appeared before her she was lying on the floor with her cloak behind her leaving her body fully exposed with a book floating above her face. She noticed my arrival and looked up from the book, "Oh, you've recovered… what do you want."
"You know how infernal magic is mostly fire manipulation and summoning monsters?"
"What about it?"
"There's a spell to write a contract between preexisting monsters, essentially to make them the master's familiar."
"You want me to be your familiar?"
"You're already my pet and can't disobey me."
"So, what's even the point of the contract?"
"Normally kings sign contracts with dragons so the dragons can't come attacking in exchange for the king making it illegal to hunt the dragons. The spell is void if either side attacks. But under compulsion the people who sign the contracts can't go against what they've written as their agreement, there is a benefit to this contract though."
"What is it?"
"The people who signed it can speak to each other telepathically whenever they need to and can't not answer unless they're asleep."
"So, I'll be able to call you when I need to."
"Pretty much. And I can call in advance to make sure you're dressed when I summon you."
"Ah… you want to show me off as your familiar?"
"Not everyone can have a lich as their familiar. It's a cool thing to brag about but as you're a freshly born lich who still hasn't learned all the magic an elder lich knows they'll assume I got lucky when I found you instead of knowing I made you.".
"We just have to write it and sign it right?"
"The only components are a piece of parchment containing the terms of the agreement written with a griffon feather quill in ink made with the blood of both consenting parties."
"What if I don't consent?"
"The spell won't activate and you won't be able to call me but I'll still have full control over you"
"Right…"
"We both have to put in terms though so I'm going to have to agree to something too."
"Is that why you offered me a wish a while back?"
"No, I was just feeling generous."
"Ah."
After that little explanation, I prepared the components and wrote my condition on the piece of paper. "I agree not to kill her so long as she's not in breach of contract" and she began writing what I told her to write.
"I will not show myself naked in public if I can help it, I will not kill innocent civilians unless they can be perceived to be a threat. I agree not to injure anyone without cause, I agree to only eat people in the labyrinth where no one else can see it. I agree to be subject to my master's every whim at the moment he makes his whims clear. Even if he is in breach of contract."
With that I took the paper chanted the spell and the paper burned in my hand, once the spell was complete a new mark appeared on each of us. On my pinky fingertip was a small circle with the proof of this spell's completion, one of her irises turned into a similar circle. The greater the contract the more obvious the mark. I put in very little into my side of the deal whereas she wrote over complete control of herself to me.
I created a spear through my ability to manipulate the dungeon, "Time to test if this worked. Take this spear and ram it through my lung."
"Alright"
She took it from me and plunged it through my chest with no hesitation. In the next moment, the spear was in her chest and she was suffering on the ground while I was completely healed. I removed the spear from her chest once it had fully formed and she was left panting on the floor. She regenerated after a few seconds due to the space-time spell I cast on her when I made her, but she looked up at me with hurt in her eyes.
"Hey, you didn't even try to object. Don't give me that look"
"Sorry I forgot that's what happens when people try to kill you." She looked down she was still upset but it soon faded.
I held the spear aloft in my hands and remembered something, "I forgot to reactivate my space-time passive self-defence spell." I took out my spell focus and reactivated it. And then I looked down at my spell focus. "Force the pointed end of this spell focus into my abdomen."
"We're doing this again?"
"There's no real consequence for it."
After that I had her try to kill me once with a bunch of other weapons and basically reforged all my weapons and armours with the magics that protect me. It was a strange swirling design that clashed and fought like the depictions of my tattoos, my armour, my weapons I even made another spear and had her try to kill me with it.
By the time we were done, she was sitting angrily on the floor. "I needed to test something," I said as I took the spear made by me in the dungeon and reforged by the magic of my spells and teleported outside of the dungeon. The weapon looked like it could crumble apart at any moment but it held to form. Within a few moments, it began glowing and it changed. Any semblance of its original form was lost and it looked as though magic itself was what the item was forged in as opposed to rearranged materials redeposited in another location like the rest of my magic items were made.
This is a true magic item. All real matter has been completely removed from it and it exists as an expression of the spells used to create it. It still resembled a spear and could be held like a spear but it looked way more like my tattoos than I was comfortable with. The rod resembled the snakes ribbon and fire that constitute the magic circle and the grips and blade were decorated with overly designed icons of the battle being waged on my body. The main part of the spear resembled the nebulous cloud of space almost liquid,
It seemed to switch between solid and fluid at my command. The fire in the eyes mouth and sword of the warriors battling on the spearhead was hot to the touch, the grip seemed to heal me, and a necrotic flame arose from it as if to guard me, this is a really cool magical spear. Though that's just my opinion. It seemed almost weightless and moved at my whims, the snakes making up the bar of the spear could move and contort so my strike could curve if I missed or wanted to fake out my opponent, it could also wrap around an opponent's weapon if I wanted it to and extend the spear tip to slice off the hand holding the weapon as it's stopped by the bar.
Truly this is a sight to behold. In place of a pommel was a pike similar to the spear tip but it was made with the snakes' open mouths, fangs pointed down, the heads were encased in a similar cloud, except shaped like an octahedron pointed at the bottom. It can guard the snakes when solid and reveal them when fluid. I could take a chunk out of someone with this alone.
I returned to the dungeon and showed the fruits of our labour to my less than enthusiastic pet lich. "The test was more than successful."
"Oh good… you need me to make more?"
"Only enough to protect those I care about… though I guess if you want something, I can make it for you too."
"Then… tell me when you learn this spell and I'll tell you what I want you to make me" when she paused, she brought out her revised grimoire and showed me a page. None of the spells in her book had names so it was hard to tell where one spell ended, and another began but she pointed out to me where it began and where it ended. She also told me she'd need another book.
She was beginning to learn magic faster now that she was a lich and wanted another blank book to fill with spells. The book she handed me has the same magic circle that's on her chest on the cover. I wonder what it could mean.
I took the grimoire from her with me and went back to my girlfriend's house after making an armoury in the dungeon and locked away my treasures with some armour stands and designs for suits of armour with capes for the four of us as well as any weapons we could possibly want. Four of each except for the spears which we now had one of. I left a small podium with a piece of paper on it for the resident lich to write down her requests for when I ask her to try to kill me with them.
I sealed this room with giant double doors and a riddle above the door frame the answer to which was the password for the door. I contemplated summoning a demon to guard the treasure for good measure but figured it a bit excessive. No one comes down here on purpose anyway. And until I make it real none of the treasures in the armoury are useful anywhere but here… except for the spears. I left the one made without the space-time magic on display and hid the other one in the wall behind it.
Oh yeah reactivating a passive spell you've activated once before costs half the components you needed the first time. I forgot to mention it earlier.
I teleported back to my girlfriend's house and we began putting my stuff away. When she moved in she was traveling light so not much of her things were in the house and by the time we were done it looked more like my house than hers so we went out to buy some stuff together as a couple to make the house ours by blending our styles in the only way we knew how. By mimicking my tattoos and making the things that look like they'd usually clash appear to actually be in conflict with one another.
We designed the house to look like a harmonious sword dance. So every point of conflict met in the middle to design a look uniquely us. By the time we were done the house looked like a haunted restaurant but it was amazing.
After that I enchanted the house itself so if anyone broke in, it would send them to my labyrinth. The door doesn't even lead anywhere remotely close to my house. There's an old well by an abandoned house in the village I grew up with my girlfriend in. the door in the labyrinth lets out in the cave system at the bottom of that well.
By the end of the day, I was finishing off the cigar I started that morning and put out with my own blood when I had my pet lich stab me the first time earlier. I was watching my girlfriend happily cooking the ingredients we bought when we were out shopping from the corner of my eye. I sat in my chair comfortably reading my new grimoire leisurely with a glass of wine at my side table.
And I brought up what I wanted to say to her. "Mom and Dad said they wanted to train us next time we go to the dungeon."
"Can we go back to our old village to say hi to my parents first? They were a bit overprotective but it's been a year and I miss them."
I smiled at the thought of returning after all these years and replied, "yeah let's see your folks again."