The nihilation would not be sufficient. The spell was a tool and it wasn't the right one for the job. The enemy was too far away and they needed to get closer. The obstacle needed to be removed and to achieve it they had to reach it.

  Distance was determined by the amount of space that separated two distinct points. If there was no space there was no separation. Their intent forced the power within them into a new shape that would annihilate the space between them and the obstacle when they called upon it.

  "There is no escape!" they howled as their magic lashed out against the very concept of separation.

  The distance between them and the target collapsed with an ear-shattering crack. One moment they had been so far away and the next they were in Garuda's face and reaching for his neck.

  He leapt away from them before their fingers could close around his throat. Did he think he could keep evading them forever? Foolishness. The void was inevitable and he was about to learn that the hard way.

  "I am Garuda, the god killing storm, and my wings stall the heavens and earth!"

  Crackling lightning shot towards them from his raised hand. Did he think a light show would give them pause? The lightning held the intent to strike them down and so they just had to deny its intent. They forced their will upon the power surging through their hands and let it fly with one word.

  "Nihil!"

  The intent was stripped from the conjured lightning and left it beholden to physical law. The arc struck the vertical pole next to them and grounded itself. It had been the more opportune conductor and so the lightning had chosen the path of least resistance.

  With an opening secured they immediately threw themselves into action and charged towards Garuda once more. He kept throwing lightning at them as they ran, but each bolt veered off course as they denied the intent guiding the arcs.

  "Nihilate!" they screamed as they wrapped their hand around his outstretched arm.

  Not even they were spared the devastation. The nihilation flayed their own hand in an instant, but Garuda's arm had fared far worse. Where the forearm should have begun there was only a dripping bloody stump.

  "Argh!" he cried out in pain as his brain processed the loss of his arm.

  He delivered a brutal roundhouse kick to their side that sent them tumbling into the wall. The wall curved around them as the metal gave way under the sheer force of the impact. That should've been the end of them, but something was keeping their broken body from completely falling apart.

  "We will break you down until there's nothing left to destroy!"

  They threw their body at him in a maddened frenzy. Punches and kicks flew from them without pause. There was no technique or plan to speak of, there was only sheer uninterrupted brutality.

  When they felt something soft they latched on to tear it loose and when they struck something hard they hit it with the intent to pulverize it. Blood sprayed all over them as they slowly tore their opponent apart piece by piece.

  They didn't even stop flailing when their feet left the ground. Garuda had somehow grabbed them by the throat despite the fact his remaining hand should've been entirely useless.

  "You've been a most worthy opponent, but you will not kill me on this day Al."

  A knee struck them in the stomach and forced the air out of their lungs before the grip on their throat tightened considerably. Something was very wrong. They could feel their heart straining under some immense pressure before everything went black and their now limp body hit the ground with a low thud.

  "Looks like it's Al's victory."

  Jane could feel it the very moment Al went into cardiac arrest from the constriction. He had fought way past his limits and had fought viciously enough to render the opponent's victory a pyrrhic one. She could restart Al's heart at her leisure, but Garuda looked like he would need some powerful magic to properly regrow his missing flesh.

  "He is a vicious beast that one," Garuda chuckled before a wheezing coughing fit overtook him.

  "He is no more than a weapon, and even without him I could easily finish you off in that pitiful state you're in."

  She moved over to Al's unconscious body and gently squeezed his heart with her intent before she began manually pumping it with her magic. In time his heart would once more beat on its own, but for now she would do it for him. He had only just started becoming useful and she wouldn't throw away a tool that could be easily salvaged.

  Garuda's eyes went wide as if he had seen something unimaginably vile and utterly revolting. He narrowed his eyes at her as she sat there slowly relighting the faded life in Al's ruined body. Sensing his gaze, she turned her head to look at him.

  Garuda's body was a mess. His cracked ribcage was exposed due to the large palm sized chunks of missing flesh on his torso, the stump of an arm on his right side leaked blood like a dripping faucet, and his left eye had been popped like an overripe grape.

  "If this hadn't been my defeat I wouldn't even have given you a chance before I strangled the life out of you witch."

  She smirked at that. The immortals claimed they would use any means to ensure their own survival. Up to and including the darkest of arts, but for some reason her ingenuity had been beyond the pale in his eyes.

  "You let that bother you when you would have willingly let a warlock live had they not gotten in your way," she stated coldly.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "I do not respect overseer politicking, but what you've done is despicable," he spat.

  She let out a long sigh. Of course the immortal couldn't comprehend how clever her solution had been. Not only had she found a perfect weapon, but she had made it practically impossible for anyone to turn it against her. Morality was an afterthought for proper mages and she refused to fail her mission.

  "I grant him joy and affection, which is honestly far more than something like him deserves."

  "Al fights for you as if you're his everything, and you consider him no more than a tool for a petty revenge that you yourself should have seen through to the end!"

  Al's heart had resumed beating on its own as Garuda threw his platitudes at her. She retracted the intent and drew back her magic before getting back in her seat. Did Garuda really think his empty words would make her change course?

  "He would have ended up as a red stain in the school courtyard had I not intervened and somehow I'm the monster for not being wasteful."

  Garuda stared daggers at her while she crossed her legs lazily. Al was a useful tool and she kept her weapon in good spirits with all the sickening affection she gave it. She cared for it like a prize winning pet and shouldn't that be enough for an undeserving animal like Al?

  "You forced a familiar bond upon another human soul through deception, witch!"

  "It's really no different from what the Autumn witches do to all the spirits in their possession, and I'm so bad for cooking up an interesting solution with one of the few pieces of their magic they saw fit to share with the rest of us."

  He clenched his remaining fist in rage. It was clear he felt some strange kinship with Al, and in all honesty it disgusted her. A pathetic thing like Al wasn't even deserving of pity. If she was lucky he would somehow manage to kill the matriarch of the Autumn clan one day, and then she would finally get to experience the relief of crushing his disgusting black heart into a filthy pulp.

  "I thought I had been sent to kill the last young witch of a dead clan, but you're less human than the lowest most despicable forms of life."

  "Plenty of lower lifeforms are efficient, as am I," she chuckled.

  Garuda's flesh began knitting itself together before her very eyes, leaving his body covered in a patchwork of nasty scars. It was an inefficient and brutish attempt at healing that would be hard to correct in the future and what had driven him to perform it she could only guess at.

  "These scars he left upon my body will make sure that I remember him always and will motivate me to reach even greater heights."

  "Would you look at that! Another pointless platitude from the immortal."

  "It will be an eternal reminder of the good that once dwelled in that man before the day comes when you decide to dispose of him like the pitiful tool you think he is!" Garuda growled before tearing a hole in the door beside him.

  "What separates me from creatures like you is that I have my honor!" he declared as he threw himself out of the moving train.

  "Pitiful..." she muttered.

  As the train stopped she hoisted Al's heavy form onto her back and began making her way back to her home. After what felt like an endless trek she managed to reach the doors of the mansion and dragged herself inside with Al still hanging onto her.

  She gracelessly threw his limp body down on her bed and breathed out in relief. The guy was as heavy as a pile of bricks due to his imposing musculature, but the discomfort of carrying his unconscious body was a small price she had to pay for a durable tool like him.

  After breathing out in relief she slouched down in one of the armchairs in the hall. The mansion was deathly quiet except for the slow breaths that echoed throughout the hall. The place had once been so full of life and love, but now it was an empty shell like the clan itself.

  She was the last Winters witch and therefore the de facto matriarch, but the esteemed position felt so pointless when she was the last living member. Once she would have dreamed of that honor, but now it was a many years long waking nightmare. If only she could have joined her beloved family in death during the fall.

  Her mother had told her to live on, but what kind of life could she really have while on the run from the vengeful Autumn witches. Ending the war once and for all by slaying their matriarch would be the only way for her to ever have peace in this life.

  Al had been a most convenient discovery. She had encountered the future warlock a year ago while she had been commuting to her former school. Right then and there she knew she had struck gold. The plot to force him to emerge and then put him under the modified familiar bond had taken months of preparation.

  There would have been now way to control someone like Al after they emerged so she had altered the familiar bond to become a perfect leash. Al could only sense her direction and distance with it. But she could read his surface thoughts, sense his emotions, and even force his body to obey should she have to. In addition, it also prevented him from acting on his feelings should he ever begin to despise her while also amplifying all his positive emotions directed at her.

  It was by all accounts an ingenious solution. A living weapon that would serve her loyally through thick and thin while only requiring her to shower it in affection. One day her kind words and the kisses might end up being insufficient, but she would simply have to deal with the sacrifices she would have to make when it got to that point. All in all, a small price to pay for revenge.

  Sometimes she wondered what Al actually looked like. She imagined he was most likely quite ugly, but she would never know since her eyes could only see the soul. Soulsight could be a curse, but to her it had been an amazing blessing. Always seeing the soul dwelling within meant that she knew most ordinaires she encountered better than they would ever know themselves even if they one day emerged.

  The fact Al's soul had no distinct features on its dark two-dimensional form had meant he had somehow managed to hollow himself out on a metaphysical level. It was a great boon seeing as it had granted him innate knowledge of a magic most destructive, but had also made him so easily susceptible to her manipulation.

  What really concerned her was his violent streak. Inspiring him to do violence had always been part of the plan, but the terrifying part was that he seemed to be born for it. An impulsive sociopath that had suppressed himself for years with a trauma induced dysthymia. Even the part of him that cared for his sister manifested itself as an urge to inflict violence on others.

  Perhaps the shadow concealed a violent beast dwelling within or maybe the darkness that made it up was representative enough of a being meant to cause harm to others. At least Al could kill without a hint of remorse and maybe that was enough.

  "Well isn't that ridiculous."

  Al was dreaming of her as always. Ever since she had started broadcasting her image into his dreams, she had been forced to witness the most sickening things coming from his side of the bond.

  It was so utterly pathetic how he pined for her. He was so unimaginative and starved for easily reciprocated affection that he spent his entire time within his dreams curled up in her embrace.

  "I would do anything to wipe away the sadness you hide from me, Jane," he whispered to her representation within his dream.

  Her heart felt like it had stopped. When had she slipped up? It must've been in the backyard when he had been wrapped in her embrace underneath the starlit sky. The wave of emotions coming from his side of the bond hit her faster than she could bring herself to shut off the connection.

  "Stop it!" she screamed out on the verge of tears as she felt the echoes of his emotions worm their way into her core.

  His love for her was fake. It was a convenient control valve for managing his behavior and motivations. Perfectly engineered and near flawless in execution, but it wasn't real.

  "You're subhuman! You're not even capable of love!"

  The tears were flowing down her face like a waterfall. Her entire body was shaking with anxiety. Why couldn't he drop the lovesick puppy act for one fucking moment?

  "Stop trying to wipe my tears away, you're no more than a tool!"