"Are you serious about this?" Chandler asked, looking her directly in the eyes. "Are you sure that you know what this entails? Binding of souls, if I die, you die?" Before leaving for the fight, Lucky had asked if he would bind her to him. She nodded now. "I'm going to have to do a little research on this, I've never actually bonded a variant before."
     "OK." She looked unconcerned.
     "What you'll get from it—a little bit of speed, a little bit of toughness, your senses improve."
     "To be honest with you, Chandler, I'm not interested in what I get from it. I..."
     He looked at her curiously. "You're worried about me?"
     "I just want to... protect you," she said quietly.
     He let that pass and went on with the explanation. "You'll become a lot more empathic towards me. You'll know where I am. You'll take everything I say with more weight—it's not that I'm controlling you, it's that I'll mean more. It's important that you be aware of that, I could step in and take over, though it wouldn't be easy. It's much easier to do that with animals."
     "Could we agree that you wouldn't do that?"
    "I wouldn't," he promised. "Unless you're being mind-controlled, and I would be able to fight on your behalf and try and free you. This isn't free," he warned her somberly. "There are risks. Let me work out a ritual for how to do it properly, I don't want to have an unsuccessful familiar bond with a supernaturally powerful variant. You can understand my reasoning?"
     "Yeah."
     [Thank you for once again blindsiding me! — Brian]
     "In a lot of ways a familiar bond is closer than marriage," he continued.
     "What would I do for you?"
     "Whenever I'm in trouble you'll know it. There are times when you'll get flashes from my senses, know when I'm in danger—even perhaps when I don't. In some ways this will work mostly to my benefit, because ordinarily the familiar's senses are enhanced, and they can feel with those senses around the mage as well. Adding that to your already-enhanced sensory ability is going to be... impressive. It's harder to kill me, because the closer I get to death the more of my pain you take." Silence. "Now mind you, that balances out—when I die, it's because both of us are dead."
     "I've never said this to anyone before... never thought it, but... it would be an honor to die for you."
     Quiet. "I—I don't know exactly how to respond to that."
     "Not necessary."
     In the silence lay implicit promise.

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