Time went by and suddenly it was Friday again. Margot was in one of the apartment’s media rooms. She was playing a VR game. Thanks to her newly improved interface she didn’t need to use a headset, or divepod, to play the game. Monty came in and flopped down on the sofa as he tended to do.

Ordinarily, the two would do their own things in separate parts of the apartment, but at least once a day one would end up drifting towards the other. Then they’d quietly enjoy each other’s company while still continuing to pursue their own interests.

Margot sat on the lush carpet. She was comfortably curled into a ball, and leaned forward as she used her interface to pilot a green-haired girl. A fairy dressed like a j-pop idol, with rockets instead of wings. Maneuvering the fairy as one would pilot a spacecraft.

Her little fairy danced between the relentless shower of bright green orbs that were being fired in her direction. Margot fired back at her aggressors shooting down adorable clockwork beasts that were firing at her character.

Eventually, her little fairy made it to the level’s boss. Another tiny, cutely dressed illustration. This one was a pink-haired, wearing a maid outfit, and surrounded by floating spears. Her spears weren’t hard-hitting, or particularly fast. The thing that made the boss a challenge were the unblockable, non-negatable, warp spears the boss would fire.

The black warp spears would knock her character out of bounds into the dangerous boundary are. An area where everything was pretty much on fire and staying too long resulted in a number of negative status effects.

The white spears didn’t do damage but they’d basically anchor themselves in place as white bubbles. They were more like level modifiers than actual attacks. They created hazard areas that made the level even more chaotic by emitting spears in sync with the boss. They also redirected the boss’ spears catching them and angling them toward the fairy, whenever the spears happened to pass through the white bubbles.

“Hmm…”

Margot gazed at the white spears and white bubbles speculatively. Watching as the white bubbles both spat out their own spears and caught and redirected any of the spears that were fired by the boss and failed to hit Margot’s fairy.

Margot felt the beginnings of an idea coming on. Before she’d started playing, she’d been in the training hall. Running through one of the hall's more difficult scenarios. The training hall was capable of morphing its space and contents to create realistic simulations where the only thing that wasn’t real were the injuries and deaths.

Margot had just spent the last fifteen days in the hall’s dilated time flow, roughly three hours in real-time, trying to force her way into a heavily secured facility. The facility was guarded by an elite force of mages, and martial experts that been kicking her ass quite thoroughly each time she ran through the scenario.

Not for the first time, Margot found herself appreciating the fact that in the real world when she had to do something extremely dangers there was almost always someone watching her back. The only times she was alone was if she chose to be. Margot felt warmth and comfort as she thought about it.

At the same time, it was still very frustrating to lose. She refused to accept not being able to clear the scenario. If she could figure out a spell that could do what the white spears did her problems would likely be solved. A spell that was not itself an attack but could provide support fire, while also magnifying and redirecting the spells she cast, would surely be able to help her clear the scenario.

This would be a way to overcome the inherent shortcomings of fighting on her own.

Margot’s little green fairy was able to survive the pink maid’s barrage of spears. Stealing victory from the jaws of defeat, by deftly staying close enough to the boss to make the white bubbles meaningless. Taking care to hang far enough back that the fairy could still dodge and maneuver during the sequences where the level was absolutely filled with maid’s glowing spears.

The pink-haired maid exploded. Then there was a cutscene that was more or less nonsensical because writing hadn’t been a particularly strong talent of the game’s developers. Finally, the game granted her a rating for completing the level and an allotment of points that was partially based on that rate.

“A-minus? YASSS! I’ll take it…” said Margot. Satisfied to have managed a rating higher than B and C ratings she usually got in this unusually difficult game.

This would normally be followed by Margot quick saving and continuing onto the next level. However, today Margot decided to save and exit instead. The game closed itself, and Margot shut down the VR console that her interface needed to run to play the game without equipment.

Margot shook her head. Rubbing her glabella because leaving the VR environment after a long session was a much more jarring than closing one of the interfaces AR windows.

Her interface was too good at making her senses believe what they were seeing, even if the visuals weren’t the least bit realistic. Margot considered asking Monty to make some adjustments on her interface to rectify the issue. However, a part of her decided it would be better to leave it alone. She suspected that this could be a sort of learning tool.

Thinking further along those lines made her consider her next training routine for after she completed her current scenario. She’d never really explored illusions because her eyes of truth would generally protect her from their influence. Still there ‘were’ ways for her senses to be fooled or at least misguided.

Margot had a hunch that purposefully exposing herself to this experience would help inoculate her to such attacks. She also suspected that gaining experience with unreality would help her pinpoint the key difference between the real world and all the pretenders. If that later suspicion proved true, her powers as a mage would reach even greater heights than before.

The walls of the media room shifted, with the main wall swallowing up the shelves and the furniture that were placed against it. The now bare wall, then transitioned into being a high-definition television screen. Rather than get up and look for the remote, Margot used her interface to change the screen’s input settings to draw from her pc.

She opened up a streaming app and choose a show that wasn’t great but was at least inoffensive enough that she didn’t mind letting it play in the background. Then she got up and turned around to face her familiar. Walking towards the man, who’d been idly dozing on the couch for the last hour and a half.

Today was Friday, which meant it was feeding night. The night where they went through the ritual of renewing their bond and renewing Monty’s store of limited actions. Though they were technically taking things easy, so Monty didn’t really need to restore his number of limited actions, there were benefits to continually renewing their bond and feeding power into their tether.

Margot wasn’t sure, but she suspected Monty was using the excess energy from the continual feedings to hasten her growth. Refining her vital essence, and then passing it back to her in a higher-quality form. The result being an increase in the efficiency of her aether cultivation and a boost to her overall physique. A benefit that was further built upon by each concurrent feeding.

Margot lowered herself onto Monty’s lap. Unlike before, she didn’t sit with her back to the man. Instead, she sat facing him, not quite straddling the aeon.

She felt the blood rising to her head as her face became flushed, and was bemused by how embarrassed making contact with Monty had gotten. Despite little having changed compared to how things were before, the experience felt infinitely more intimate.

“Um… Drink up?” said Margot.

“Mhm? Oh, sure.” said Monty. Rousing and realizing what was happening.

Monty pulled Margot towards him. Pulling her into his embrace. Margot winced as she felt the familiar pinch of the aeon’s teeth sinking into her skin, then she shivered as she felt the odd but not unpleasant sensation of her blood being drawn out of her body. Then as Monty finished drinking his fill she had to stifle a moan as he ran his tongue over the puncture wounds.

This was a new addition to their ritual. The extra dab of saliva was mixed with a special something that hastened the healing process and made her body feel hot and cold at the same time.

Margot shuddered, trying and failing to keep her breathing even. This was usually the point that decided how the rest of the night was going to go. If she could resist aeon’s temptation she’d get off his lap and go cool down in her room before finding something else to do.

For the last couple of weeks, she’d been letting the aeon pull her in. Giving into the growing magnetism of his physiology and aura. Thus instead of dismounting her familiar, she remained where she was, working up the nerve to ask if he wanted to fool around, because despite being the one to make the first move in their relationship she still felt a little shy.

She honestly, kind of wished he’d take a more active role in starting things but according to Monty that would have to wait till either they were both very sure of where the relationship was going, or she, Margot, was much stronger. The strength a requirement to avoiding some ethical sticky points that appeared to be based in the fact that he was essentially a living embodiment of desire.

“Do...Do you want to… You know?”

“Mhm? Sure.” said Monty.

Margot met his gaze, her gray-green eyes meeting his dark green ones. She wondered how much of this was genuine, how much was Monty simply capitulating to her desires, and how much of what was happening, if any of it, was part of some subtle manipulation.

That was the problem with romancing a being beyond human comprehension...No matter what you did, you’d end up assuming something bigger in scope was taking place. Thus while Margot was one hundred percent sure Monty was on her side, she wasn’t entirely certain that his definition of being on her side completely jived with her definition.

` These thoughts and all others that might have been running through her head immediately vanished as Monty leaned forward, his lips meeting hers. His tongue exploring her mouth.

Whatever strange lust-demon mojo, the aeon had going on, didn’t just set her nervous system on fire. It atomized her mind...but in a good way. Momentarily short-circuiting her thoughts, till she could come up for air. They made out for three hours. Each hour felt like it was only a few seconds.

“Do you want to take this elsewhere?” said Monty. His voice becoming a soft growl as he finally took a more active role in things.

“I… uh ...Yes, I think I’d like that very much.” said Margot. Glancing to the side. Barely speaking above a whisper.

Monty stood, carrying her in his arms. She gazed up at his face and saw that his true visage was shining through. Its irresistible radiance pressing against her mind, making her blood feel like it was boiling.

He carried her out of the media room to the bedroom. It wasn’t always his bedroom, nor was it often hers. It was generally one of the growing number of guest rooms that appeared whenever they decided to do this kind of thing.

The intent magics that governed the apartment’s inner-space placed the room’s door across the hall from the media room.

Monty willed the door open and Margot was surprised to find that today the bedroom they’d be making love in, actually ‘was’ his bedroom. It had been that case the last time and the time before too.

Margot wondered if this was just a coincidence, or Monty trying to send a message. Which made her wonder if she should send some messages of her own. She considered and immediately quashed that line of thought.

She’d watched enough dramas and animated soap operas to know that healthy relationships weren’t built on assuming the other person was psychic…(Excluding relationships between actual psychics..of course.)

If this was turning into something more than a series of hookups, then they’d need to actually talk about where things were going.

Even if Margot was generally still quite meek as a person, her experiences in the past few months had taught her that straightforwardly going after her goals and directly asking for the things she wanted, and/or needed, were viable strategies.

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What had happened next felt fast and slow at the same time. A mixture of violence and tenderness, not unlike the formation of a planet or the birth of a new star.

The whole process took long enough that Margot was now pretty sure that Monty was able to dilate the flow of time for most of the rooms in the house. Otherwise, she would be losing entire days at a time each time she let the aeon take her to bed.

When they were down an exhausted but contented Margot, would lie in bed feeling her consciousness fading as Monty sat up in bed beside her. Staring up at the ceiling with the same thoughtful, faintly anxious expression he’d worn after their first coupling.

Margot struggled to sit up as well. Feeling her head swim and her thoughts transform into perfumed clouds. She didn’t know what to say to the man because she had many of the same anxieties. Wondering if she wasn’t putting their life together at risk by urging the two of them down this path.

She might have been more concerned but one day she realized that he overestimated her, just as often as she overestimated him. In a way, it made things both more and less frightening.

Things were more frightening because she’d kind of been relying on him having everything in hand, as part of some eldritch master plan when he said yes the first time. Then things became less frightening, because it meant that their interactions were a lot more genuine and unplanned than she’d initially suspected.

The prospect of Monty not holding all the cards and knowing how the game would end beforehand, made things less frightening because it meant she wasn’t just letting herself sink into a comfortable albeit enjoyable deception.

Which made things more frightening again, because it meant that the stakes were even higher than she’d thought. Margot and Monty were building a real relationship, which meant a risk of a real break-up if things went south.

Yet here they were in week five of their...whatever… and their lives hadn’t imploded. Their relationship didn’t look like it was on the verge of melting down.

Margot was well aware that a month was too early to say things were going to work out. However, the way things had been going gave her plenty of reasons to feel optimistic about her and Monty’s future together.