It was the most utterly complex circle Seras had ever drawn, and trying to draw it purely from the instincts granted to her by an Awakening stone was a constant trial on her nerves. Especially because Dundee kept stopping her to point out odd spots in the formation he believed to be in error, only to later see how the next round of nonsensical scribbling completed some clever little rune.

  Worse yet was how the information was being revealed to Seras. Instead of having one grand pattern to draw out the instinctive instructions had her laying the circle down in pieces over several different layers. At the end Seras had one grand mandala-like ritual circle, but every step to get there relied on utter nonsense layered on top of each other.

  “Fascinating, I’ve never seen a ritual executed this way. I don’t think it was even necessary to follow the steps as we did. Just drawing it like normal should suffice,” Dundee commented.

  “It reminds me of an old art style back home. Artists would take cans of spray paint and spray these great splotches of color, then they’d go over the first coat with a second one in a different color, by the end of it you usually got this impressive picture at the end.”

  “Hmm, yes, I think I know what you mean, an art style less concerned about adding in minor details and more about broad strokes that come together at the end to create something intricate and eye catching. Do you think its indicative of what kind of familiar you’re summoning?”

  “Its called a Spark of Madness,” Seras said flatly.

  “Yes, hmm. Are you ready to begin?”

  She nodded her and took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, then she began the lengthy incantation for the summoning. “There is no form to the universe, no shape which it must take. All things are chaos in motion, there is no fate, no destiny, no luck good or bad. I call to a single spark of the infinite chaos, oh being of creation’s mania, great muse behind the mad and twisted. Come to me, fill my head, throw all things into disarray. Let us break all pretense of sanity, all illusions of order, and bring forth a world spun from mania.”

  As she spoke each word the circle began to glow brighter and brighter, when she was done it began to flash with every color imaginable, and some Seras didn’t even recognize. Colors of a spectrum that didn’t belong to this world or her own. They flashed and cycled in a pattern Seras couldn’t follow, was incapable of predicting.

  The outer edge of the circle began to form a barrier of magic as the rest of the space filled with flying sparks. Their movement and trajectory almost reminded her of the chaos of motion often used in the model of an electron field, because even as the sparks bounced through the space at random there were clear places were they traversed most often. The field warped, and began to contract inwards, it warped and changed, until the patches of more traversed space began to take a humanoid shape.

  The field continued to change, and the spaces where the sparks seemed to form a humanoid shape looked like they were reaching out to Seras. Against her better judgement Seras reached put and touched the not-hand. For a brief moment it looked like the sparks were smiling, and then they were gone.

  All the lights, the binding magical field, and the sparks, all vanished at once.

  And all that Seras was left with was a single box of blue text in her HUD

  Spark of Madness has been successfully uploaded to your Cyberware, integration complete

  “Well, that was… certainly flashy,” Dundee commented.

  Seras opened her mouth to respond, but the voice that came out wasn’t her own, it was brighter and more cheerful. “I do like to make an entrance!”

  She snapped her mouth shut at the foreign words leaving her throat.

  Dundee gave her a puzzled look, “that wasn’t you, was it?”

  Seras shook her head.

  “he, ig nee yor voice to-,” the foreign voice from Seras’ lungs tried to speak despite her shut mouth, but Seras pressed a hand to her neck to constrict her lungs and halt the muffled sound coming out.

  The voice stopped speaking, and then her HUD opened up a text message

  [Spark] -well that was rude.

  Seras screamed.

  ~~~*~~~

  “Fascinating, obviously summoned familiars can inhabit many parts of their summoner’s body. I’ve seen one’s that merged into a person’s aura, eyes, bones, hair, blood, and even heard of one that inhabited a man’s groin. But a familiar that lives within the strange augmentations you have made to yourself is certainly a new one for me. What would have happened if you weren’t the way you are?”

  [Spark] may I tell him?

  [Seras]- do you really need to borrow my voice to do it?

  [Spark]- at iron I am greatly limited to just your Magitech augmentations.

  [Seras]- fine.

  Seras opened her mouth, “it’s a non-starter, without the proper Magitech augmentations for a familiar like myself to inhabit then the summoner would never receive the right power. A random awakening stone can have the potential to summon one of my kind, but without the right conditions for the power then they develop something else.” The voice that came out was certainly not her own. It was far more energetic and cheerful than hers.

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  “I never considered that, has it always been that way, or are you just a unique familiar?”

  “I am as unique as any other familiar summoned from the deep astral,” Spark chirped with Seras’ mouth. “But yes, that is always how is been. It why the people of this world have never to my knowledge summoned a familiar that inhabits a person’s Glubok or Vttrrnnk.” That last noise was one clearly not meant for human, or human-like mouths. It was more akin to two rocks in a blender.

  Seras closed her mouth and then spoke with her own voice, “confirmation bias. People of this world only imagine familiars that can inhabit aspects of themselves because that’s the only kind they see, while strange alien species will see a different spattering of familiars.”

  She closed her mouth and then opened it once more to respond to her own words. “Alien is a relative term to your existence as a humanoid interacting with other humanoids, or Elvinoids, or Smoulderiods, or-,”

  Seras shut her mouth and retorted to the words ‘she’ had just said, “I get it. The cosmos is infinite and my perspective as a human color’s my experiences. This is so weird.”

  “Hmm, quite,” Dundee agreed. "To be frank, this is much less than I was expecting from a ‘Spark of Madness’. After that incantation I was expecting something less coherent.”

  “Thank you, I have been a familiar for many others before and have much experience dealing with beings of physical reality. And to clarify ‘Spark of Madness’ is just one of infinite interpretations of my name. I’ve also been called ‘Muse of Infinity’ ‘Spark of genius’ ‘Great ideation’ and ‘Grook’.”

  Seras frowned, she could tell from Dundee’s bland face that each thing Spark had said was in a different language, most got automatically translated for Seras, but… “Grook?” she asked.

  “Hmm, must not be translating, I guess your world lacks even the basics of such a concept. The point is if I were to write my name in the universal language of the cosmos then one could put it into terms they understood best, though every interpretation would be a diluted and lesser variant of my true name. But Spark will do.”

  Seras sighed, “and you need to use my voice to speak.”

  “Well, only if I want to be heard by others. Again, I am still limited by your rank restrictions. Right now I can only occupy and control one of your systems. Like your voice, or the clever little computers in your head, or hands.” Spark stopped speaking and waved one of Seras’ hands to demonstrate. “At bronze rank I’ll be able to do much more, and at silver I can even temporarily move into other sophisticated electronic systems.” Seras felt her eyes glance about the room without her input, “I don’t think that will come up very often though.”

  Seras pressed her hand to the bridge of her nose, “fuck!”

  [Spark] -what’s wrong, you seem very unhappy with my capabilities

  [Seras] -I’m not thrilled about having some magic AI thing controlling me

  [Spark] -not an AI. I am a full-fledged being that came into existence so long ago that you don’t even have the proper concepts to describe when. I am a spark of the Celestial Book, great Astral being of magic, knowledge, and discovery. I am a literal embodiment of Brilliance, of ideas with great ramifications. But if you’re uncomfortable with the lack of control then there are ways to resist me. It’s easy enough to learn. Even if I were to grow strong enough to take control of your whole body you would quickly learn to resist me and even take control of aspects of my being.

  [Seras] -really?

  [Spark] -Yes. But I can also resist if I so choose. One of my previous binder’s did so, I was very upset by it.

  [Seras] -shit, that sounds rough.

  [Spark] -thank you for your concern. It was a most unpleasant century of waiting for him to die.

  [Seras] -What?

  [Spark] -he was gold rank, on the verge of diamond. I had to wait until his lifespan ran out.

  [Seras] -he never made it to diamond?

  [Spark] -I wouldn’t let him. Familiar bonding puts many restrictions on our existence, but even we retain free will. Without my help he never finished the final step into diamond.

  [Seras] -Why’d he do it?

  [Spark] -that is a very long story, and I’m afraid telling you in full might alarm you. I can already tell from the active centers in your brain that you are uncomfortable with my presence. Please don’t be. You and I have a great future ahead of us, I do not want to start our partnership off on the wrong foot.

  “Ahem, are you speaking through, what did you call it? Textsings?” Dundee said after coughing into his fist.

  “Sorry Dundee, it’s just less weird this way,” Seras apologized.

  She felt a tickling at her throat and Seras grudgingly opened her mouth, “sorry for my rudeness. It has been some time since I’ve been around physical beings.”

  “No need for apologies, I was just confused is all. If I might, you are the first of your kind to ever be summoned to this world, correct?”

  Seras felt a bit of buzzing in her head, it felt like Spark was humming as she did some quick searches. “Yes, Pallimustus has never had the correct conditions for a being like myself to appear here.”

  “As I thought, then, if you don’t mind, could you tell me what benefits you can offer your summoner, for clerical purposes.” He said as he drew out a pen and paper.

  [Spark] -is that alright with you?

  [Seras] -Why wouldn’t it be?

  [Spark] -all sorts of things, tactical advantages, compulsive secrecy, maybe you just don’t like this guy.

  [Seras] -Nah, its fine. Dundee’s been good to me and helped me get your summoning materials together.

  “Seras said she agreed so I have no qualms in sharing. As I am I can only offer limited support, I can see through her eyes and help analyze what I see, I can help her in cognitive realm by allowing her a bit of my own processing speed, and I may even be able to assist in whatever project she pursues.”

  [Seras] -wait, so you are like an AI?

  [Spark] -I feel insulted.

  [Seras] -sorry, but everything you just described sounds like an AI program from my world.

  [Spark] -and you walk on legs, that makes you sound a lot like a bug.

  [Seras] -that’s not the same thing.

  [Spark] -impatient silence.

  [Seras] -fuck, how… how did you send me an emotion? And yeah, I see the hypocrisy in what I said.

  Dundee glanced up from his notes, “what do you mean by help her in whatever project she pursues? Do you mean you can help teach her what you know?”

  “…yes.”

  “That wasn’t a confident answer.” Seras quipped.

  “That’s always a sticking point with each new binder.” Spark retorted with Seras’ own voice.

  “How so?”

  “Well, because I am a being of the Astral, I am ancient beyond time and have walked uncountable worlds. In this limited vessel I can only think so fast, but unbound I have both infinite time to think and infinite processing speed.”

  “So you know everything?”

  “Pretty close.”

  “So, what’s the catch?”

  “The catch is I don’t give you all the answers, I just help.”

  “What, like, no answers at all?”

  “None that matter.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because its not about the knowledge, its about the pursuit and insights gained. If I just gave you all the answers to parrot… do you know what a parrot is, oh wait, I just found a reference for them in your data cache. If I just gave you all the answers then you’d be little more than a puppet, a pretender to other’s accomplishments.”

  “Is that like a hard rule, does the Celestial book not want you spreading information like that?”

  “That too, but the choice is my own.”

  “Gods this is strange,” Dundee chimed in after watching Seras and Spark talk to each other from Seras’ mouth.

  “See, I told you,” Seras said pointedly. She looked at him and then directed her next words to Spark, “no, I know what you mean, I have firsthand experience of giving out great discoveries that weren’t really my own. But I’m not exactly a magic researcher, I’m more into making things than pure discovery.”

  “Like I said, I can assist, but my assistance will always be as limited as I say it is.”

  “Then why bother helping at all, why not just let me do it all myself?”

  Seras felt her own lips quirk up, “because I’ve seen people do the mundane and ordinary things a million times over. I have watched the invention of fire over eight-teen dozen times. What I want to see is something new, and if I can offer that one single spark to fuel the ideas buzzing around you head then I will.”

  Seras frowned, “I don’t have that many ideas. All I’m trying to do is recreate the weapons from my world.”

  “No, hmm, give it time, you’ll do something fun eventually, its only a matter of time.”

  “How are you so certain?”

  “Because I saw it all there, the potential bubbling within your soul as you flew across the astral. A Magitech cyborg on a mostly magical world like Pallimustus, one with an essence that can’t normally be found on this world. You’ll do something fun and unique, and I’ll be there when you do.”

  “That I can believe,” Dundee added, “one conversation and you’ve already changed the trajectory of my whole career.”

  Seras flushed under the genuine praise from both of them. Danm, now she had to do something kick ass or else she’d just look pathetic after all this praise.