Ch. 1 Homeward Bound
There were three major principles to being a Familiar.
One: Loyalty. A Witches’ or Warlocks’, Sorcerers’, or Sorceress’ Familiar is unfailably loyal to his or her Master. You obeyed until death or such time as said magical entity expelled a Familiar from service…usually by death.
It was a prevailing theme in the community.
Two: It was a Familiar’s destiny and responsibility to seek out such a creature, or go to the highest power that aligned with the Familiar’s prospective beliefs. Anything less was considered a waste of lifespan, a waste of talent, and a shameful prospect to most families and genetic groups.
—Not Adam’s, but his family had been pretty weird by most standards.
Three: A Familiar was to hold a strict ‘look but don’t touch’ policy amongst the other Familiars and respect the status quo. You were not to interfere in another Familiars’ tasks unless you or your master were in direct danger or risk of life, limb, sanity, or property.
Now, a Familiar could be, well, pretty much anything. A cat, a dog, a rat, whatever really, and ability-wise, they were much like a Shifter, and yet nothing like the hairy mongrels. Every Familiar was born with an animal form that they eventually acquired in puberty. Their magic blossomed around the same time, and then, a big bad Witch or whatever it was could fly in on their broom to sweep you off your feet when you came of age…
…Blah, blah, blah.
In Adam’s humble opinion, the whole system sucked.
For one, he liked his freedom, and for two, Adam was stuck with a form that, unfortunately, was neither convenient in the human world at large, nor on the flip side, very majestic or inspiring of confidence.
It wasn’t like he could have had a secondary body as an owl, or hawk, or a cat or coyote: something with mystical connotation; something impressive, noble, or mighty like a horse, or graceful and elegant like a deer.
He wasn’t a natural-born Wolf, with their built-in Pack support system, and ability to give the middle finger and laugh over the idea of that Familiar bond with a human person.
Nope. Adam was a Fox Familiar, and by default, and kind of by choice, had always been a bit of an outcast and just a touch of a loner because of it.
It was a learned mistrust and affliction. He had lost his father in a hunter’s trap, just —SNAP— the damn bear trap had snapped his dad’s neck one day while out hunting small game. That fast, Adam’s entire life had shifted at the tender age of seven.
He remembered his mother spending endless days mourning her lover, and making that fateful choice to pack up her son, head into the city of Portland shortly thereafter, steel her spine, and reach out to the local magical community to try to find a suitable Master.
And thus Adam’s circle of Hell was born.
He had gone from living as a free creature, running in the hills of Washington, cavorting with the butterflies, and watching the stars with bright, curious eyes, to being thrust into the chaos of city living. He had been forced to go to school with human children to get an education outside of homeschool, and then had to deal with Daniel Miller.
Daniel had been a drunk, a piss poor excuse for a Warlock, and made a goodly fortune swindling people in card games and pool with cheap magic tricks.
And because Portland had limited witchy options but a plethora of vying Shifters, his mother had been rejected on the principle of her many fallacies. Her weak power base, her advancing age and widow status, the child that came attached—whatever it was, people weren’t keen on jumping the broom with her.
Safe to say, finding a decent Master had proven difficult for Gretchen Crowley.
To be fair, his mother had also lacked viable skills in a city environment. She had been a housewife in the mountains, relying heavily on Adam’s dad to handle their prosperity with his day job as a mechanic. Their kind was rare as it was, and so they hadn’t had a People or a lot of family to fall back on. None that Adam knew of, at least.
She hadn’t known how to live and make money in the real world, and since she had rejected a life of servitude in favor of finding and running off with her father as a teen, well, that was all there was to say about it.
And Daniel had been a fucking monster.
Long story short, it had been a terrifying time in Adam’s life. It had left a deep, endless scar on his psyche, and needless to say, soured him on the whole concept of Witches and their Familiars being a cohesive unit.
It was slavery; indentured gratitude for a higher protector that could just as easily be a dictator. Unfortunately, Adam knew how his mother’s story had ended, and it was unfortunate indeed, to say the least.
Then, in the most ironic twist of his life, he had gone ahead and run into a man who had made Daniel look like Mr. Rogers. It was bitter to admit to how fast he had swallowed Domin’s bait, but he surely had paid a price for it, nightly, daily, every minute under that man’s sway.
Adam had known that that son of a bitch was going to kill him eventually, or make him wish he was dead, so he had run, and he had taken something very special to the asshole on the way out the door.
His Grimoire, Domin’s portal to both worlds. His careful collection of newfound castings and old spells passed down from generations of Warlocks and Witches, Seers, and all kinds of scary things for almost a thousand years.
Adam currently had it safely bound in a t-shirt in his backpack.
He had stolen in, opened the doorway back to Earth, to the familiar world he had grown up in, and hoped to God Domin never, never found a way to follow him back through. Even if he did, Domin would need a lot of stuff to find him in this world, the spells currently in Adam’s possession, and Adam was banking on that fact while he ran for his sanity away from the obsessive creep.
That had been a year ago.
He had been running from those memories, his life, his everything he was for so long, he barely recalled what it was to not be in motion at this point.
But this was it; his last destination.
His final resting place, and maybe a really good place to hide. A place to start over from scratch and stay hidden far, far away from populated areas, and more importantly, magical dillholes that wanted to subjugate him and his power.
He watched the hills of North Dakota rolling by through the bus window, fingers anxiously twisting the iron pendant on his chest. He was achingly tired on the last leg of his very long journey. It had been almost twenty-four hours since he had last slept, but the idea that this was his final stretch was such a relief.
Adam knew that if he could just make it a little longer, he might at least find a quiet area to rest his weary head here, in short order.
There wasn’t much waiting for him, but he had gotten a job at a small shop he had seen online on a horse and cattle ranch. Shoveling shit probably, some grease monkey jobs on tractors, but the pay was decent, and it came with a small, furnished residence on a family named The Colsons’ property.
It was supposedly about an hour walk from the bus drop-off in a tiny town called Peaceful, ironically enough, but you know, Adam could use a little peace in his life.
Bonus, but the landscape was almost whimsical and truly beautiful out here.
Until that day, he had never been to the Dakotas and knew squat about it beyond that it was one of the least populated states in the US, but he couldn’t have told you why.
The area was wild and had a very untouched, very ancient vibe that almost made a man’s bones ache. The deep stretches of green forests and the heavy, weighted sight of old growth all but screamed the land’s isolation from the rest of the world, and that was exactly where Adam wanted to be.
New start, new Adam Crowley, in a brand new land of unknown adventure…again.
He sighed and looked out at the distant peaks of the Turtle Mountain plateau.
He supposed he’d see what happened.
