"Mate in three."
Raven scanned the board, then sighed and tipped her king over. Looking up, she saw the smile on the face of her yellow-robed aspect.
"You focus too much on a single area of the board." Knowledge said gently. "You try and outmaneuver me wherever the main conflict is and fail to notice how changes there affect the board as a whole.
Raven nodded, but before she could demand another game, a hacking cough caught her attention. All seven of her Emoticlones had joined her in loves domain, a perfect replica of Azar's living room. Looking to the side, she winced as she saw the source of the coughing. The pale and sickly form of Happy sat at the other end of the table, wrapped in a blanket and being fed soup by Love, who hardly looked healthier. Sloth and Rude lounged together in one corner of the room, while Fear sat by herself in the opposite corner. Brave sat with them at the table, and while she didn't look sick the way Happy and Love did, she did look utterly exhausted.
Raven felt tears try to well up in her eyes but suppressed them firmly.
"Fourteen years." She whispered to the yellow aspect sitting beside her. "I've lived in Azarath for just over fourteen years now, surely someone other than Azar will realize I'm not just a monster."
Knowledge looked down, then laid her hand on Raven's shoulder.
"I'm sorry Raven, but after fourteen years, the odds of any sort of major change of heart among the Azarathians is vanishingly small."
Raven squeezed her eyes shut. She knew the people of Azarath weren't evil, she'd spied on them from the shadows far too often to believe that. She'd watched children playing together in the parks and felt the innocent joy in them. She'd watched a mother walking down the street to the temple, cradling her baby, and had felt the bone-deep love for it she gave off. She'd seen a woman carrying groceries home have the bottom of her bag rip open and watched as people not only rushed to help her pick up the groceries but actually volunteered to carry them home for her. And that knowledge just made the fact that those same people only felt a mixture of hatred, disgust, and fear when they looked at her all the more painful.
Azar wasn't like that of course, but she was so busy there, and there was so little time that just the two of them could share. Recently Raven had found herself spending more and more of her time in Nevermore. While she was fairly certain retreating into her own mind wasn't precisely healthy, going somewhere she knew she wasn't going to be bombarded by waves of hate and disgust grew more and more appealing every day. And then, of course, there was the fact her powers were unlikely to lash out while her mind was in Nevermore, and that was important as she was finding it harder and harder to muster the will to control her powers.
"I don't know how much longer I can keep going."
It was an agonized whisper, and not even the squeeze Knowledge gave her shoulder could truly lessen the pain. Her next words, on the other hand.
"I've been thinking, and I may have found an option. It's unorthodox, and it certainly has risks, but it's theoretically sound."
Raven's eyes widened, and, for the first time in a long, long time, she felt a hint of hope.
"Tell me."
"Well, while we've thought about running away to earth before, the problems we've always run into are that we'd have no place to go, nothing to do, and recently, that our powers have become less controlled."
Raven nodded, and Knowledge continued. "Well, it was that last problem, and something from that grimoire you read a couple of days ago that gave me the idea. It would neatly deal with all three problems, so I think you really should consider it."
Raven blinked. "Why wouldn't I?"
Knowledge paused for a moment before finally whispering. "Because it relies on your demonic nature."
Raven felt despair wash over her as she opened her mouth to reject the idea out of hand, only to be stopped by Knowledge's raised hand.
"Wait, I know how much you hate that part of you, but just listen. This isn't something specifically demonic, it would work just as well if our father had been, say, one of the Fay. It relies on us being magical, not specifically demonic."
Raven sighed, but after a moment she nodded at Knowledge to continue.
"Well, as I said, this would help with you control problems, it would, in effect, partially bind your powers. In addition, not only would it secure you a home, it would even effectively get you a guide."
Knowledge paused a moment before finally blurting it out.
"You could let yourself be bound as a familiar."
Raven felt her mouth drop open slightly, and her eyes widened.
"The restriction of a familiar's power," Knowledge continued hurriedly. "Is usually used to protect the master from the familiar, but for us, it could be used to augment our own control. Our mage would be responsible for feeding and housing us, and we'd have their entire lifetime to get used to earth and our powers. And it's not like we'd be going in totally blind, you're supposedly able to feel the souls of the people looking for familiars, so we won't end up with someone truly intolerable."
Raven paused for a moment, thinking of all the risks and ways this idea could go wrong, but then she heard another cough and looked at the sickly forms of Love and Happy, and the exhausted form of Brave.
"Yes."
Knowledge's eye's widened as Raven suddenly stood up and walked towards the door.
"Wait, you're planning on trying it now?"
Raven nodded firmly. "Yes, we're doing this now, before you come up with all the reasons that this plan's crazy."
"Actually, I've already thought of."
"I don't want to know." Raven cut Knowledge off. "I'm going to grab the few things I want to take with me and write a note to Azar, then were trying this."
Reappearing in her small bedroom, she quickly piled up her mirror, books, and the other things Azar had specifically given her. She then spent an hour agonizing over the note for Azar, finally managing something short, but heartfelt. Returning to her room, she absorbed her body and the small pile of belongings into her soul self, then tried to do something she's never done before, jump through the void to another world, and specifically, to that worlds ether.
Silent tears ran down Azar's cheeks as she reentered her house. She'd felt the girl who's truly become a daughter to her leave the dimension, and knew at once what she'd decided to do. She found the grimoire on magical creatures she left out for Raven to read and put it back on her personal bookcase. She'd hoped it would inspire Raven to try and call a familiar of her own, but with how much pain she'd been in, Azar had decided that either option worked, as long as it helped Raven. She'd spent the last decade trying to get her followers to see Raven for the girl she was, rather than as the demon that spawned her, but she was all too aware of how thoroughly she'd failed at that. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she sat down to read the note Raven had left her.
Raven floated through Earth's ether, feeling the souls of those calling for a familiar. She recoiled from a particularly slimy strand of power and continued to drift, sampling strand after strand. She had no idea how long she's been drifting when a particular strand brushed against her wing, it was alive, vibrant and unlike anything she'd ever felt before. The soul she felt through it certainly wasn't the pristine thing Azar had strived for, no, she could feel the imperfections and blemishes, but somehow, they just improved the flavor, made it more, alive.
She spun, latching onto the strand with her talons, and as she did so, it expanded, engulfing her. Surrounded by it, she felt it trying desperately to bind her to it and to tie itself around her power, but she quickly realized there just wasn't enough of it. Just as panic started to gnaw at her, she heard Knowledge's calm voice at the back of her head, and did as she suggested. She carefully started to guide the energy, weaving it into her magic. Once that was done she helped her new mistress bind her power. she ended up with her own power effectively binding itself for the most part, with the vibrant energy serving mostly as joints.
She sighed in relief as the process completed itself and she was pulled through the power. As she left the ethereal and entered the physical plane, she slipped back into her body. She landed on her knees, in the middle of a complex pentagram and looked past the yellow hexagon table that served as a resting place for the open grimoire, and up into the pink, feline eyes of her new mistress.