It had been six months since the unlikely duo of Morrígan and Murphy had found themselves tied to one another. In that time they had spent the vast majority of it with Morrígan teaching Murphy how to utilise the power she had bestowed upon him. Though her teaching methods were equal parts explanation and trial by fire. Quite literally at times.

But no matter the challenge Morrígan threw at her little human. The lieutenant met every one with vigour and passion. She had earned herself more than one broken tooth learning that the Canadian had quite the powerful left hook.

Their time had also been spent with Murphy teaching the Depthborn ancient how to better mimic humanity. As well as how to fight like them, should more mundane threats arise that they had to deal with. At first, Morrígan dismissed the idea of learning how to fire such primitive firearms. Especially when her recently re-crafted armour had paracausal weaponry. But she had begun to enjoy the feeling of the weapons punching her in the shoulder, and the smell of gunpowder in the air.

It was a more brutal and primal way of fighting that, while hopelessly useless against her kind. She could respect and enjoy. Especially the very heavy, to a human anyway, rifle that Murphy had acquired for her.

It was unnecessary for her to use, and would never be capable of harming any of the threats in the unknown. However, it was the thought that counted. And she was fond of the weapon, having rebuilt many components using more sturdy materials from other realms to ensure it was capable of surviving her channelling her power into the weapon.

What she enjoyed most about the weapon was how it felt to shoot it. The feeling as it punched her in the shoulder hard enough to shatter concrete, the smell of ozone as the air and atoms were charged into a beam of pure energy. And the sizzling sound as the energy melted and burned the targets it hit. 

At the moment, they were testing Murphy's reflexes. Morrígan and several dozen of her taken souls had taken up positions surrounding the Canadian. Morrígan herself was perched atop the highest tower of their arctic fortress. The black walls that had become their home since their fateful encounter provided excellent firing positions for this test. 

The ancient woman brought her eye up to the scope of the weapon and looked upon the face of her companion. She lined up a shot on one of his now blood red eyes, a trait that had come around as the human strengthened his connection to her power.

Morrígan watched him sidestep a shot from one of the Taken that was behind him. Followed by another shot that he rolled to avoid. It was while he was recovering from the roll that she struck. She pulled the trigger on her weapon and felt her body jerk from the recoil. But Murphy had become faster in the time they had been together and reacted to the beam of energy with fractions of a second to spare. He twisted to the side and just barely managed to bend backwards to let the beam sail past and obliterate the arctic landscape behind him.

She allowed herself a small smile of pride at the progress her human had made. Had she taken that shot when they first met, the Lieutenant would have been vaporised along with the landscape. Standing from her perch she snapped her fingers and her large rifle dissipated from reality before she leapt from the tower and allowed her human facsimile to grow her wings to glide upon the Arctic air to land before her companion.

"You are getting faster."

Murphy nodded and brushed off some dirt from his clothes. "The Taken are getting better at shooting. It looks like the training is working for them as well. Their shots are more accurate now."

Morrígan nodded with a grin. "I allowed your former soldiers to regain some of their free will, in exchange for their roles as commanders of the lesser Corrupted."

The Canadian nodded firmly. "I appreciate that. It will never really be easy to get over that my men are now basically dead and enslaved."

Morrígan frowned slightly. "It is a better fate than what could have befallen them."

The Depthborn crossed her arms over her chest and Murphy eyed her for a minute. Having rebuilt the draconic armour that had been destroyed using Depthsteel to replace the previous materials. Morrígan had begun to change her human appearance to reflect that. While sparring or training, she appeared in very durable armour that covered her chest, arms and legs. Though it was impossible to miss the fact that not only the armour, but her underclothes left her toned abdomen exposed. 

Not that it would matter, her body was far more durable than the illusion of the armour would have been. She often wore a ballistic mask that covered her nose and jaw while she was training with him, but currently wasn't wearing it.

Murphy sighed softly. "I know"

Morrígan was about to speak again, but was cut off by one of her Taken humans appearing before them. "Delta Bravo sighted twenty klicks off the southern shore. Two ships in the vicinity, one already destroyed."

Murphy scowled and looked towards Morrígan who simply shrugged. "Time to show me just how well that training has paid off. Little one."

The Canadian frowned. "You aren't going to help me?"

Morrígan shook her head. "You want my help? Prove to me that you can handle the weakest of my kind."

Murphy glared at her and clenched his fists. "Fine, but I want the fortresses weapons online and ready to strike the target on my mark."

The taken man looked to Morrígan for her decision. When she simply nodded in affirmation, The buildings and weapons that made up the base began to glow a crimson red and those that could began to point towards the location of the depthborn.

"Well, you can at least give me a ride there."

Morrígan smirked and grabbed him by the back of his collar. "As you wish."

Murphy grunted slightly as he was suddenly lifted off his feet and into the sky. Morrígan rocketed off in the direction her Taken had indicated and it was not long before they could see the smoke from the wrecked ships. Only one was still moving, currently being chased down by a massive beast resembling a cross between a crocodile and an octopus. 

Morrígan flew over the fleeing ship and dropped Murphy. She chuckled and practically sang to him. "Good luck~"

The lieutenant growled and reached out for the threads of reality and gripped tightly to slow his descent and land on the deck of the fleeing vessel. Some of the crew looked at him in bewilderment and fear but he ignored them. He had far bigger problems to worry about.

He looked up and realised that the beast was now looking directly at him. Its scale would have been impressive, had he not known Morrígan. He had little time to consider that it was only a few hundred metres in height before its eyes narrowed. As if it could sense the connection he shared with Morrígan. It let out a savage roar and increased its pace to close the distance with the ship.

Murphy drew his rifle and took aim at the beast. Allowing his instincts and training to take over he pulled the trigger and began putting round after round of neutron energy blasts into the creature's hide. He targeted the eyes first, and successfully blinded one of the eyes with a shot, the charred and melted eye hardly even phased the creature. It roared in pain but continued its charge. 

The ship lurched to a stop and Murphy noticed the tentacle thay had wrapped around the stern of the ship. It fought the engine with relative ease and something exploded in the bowels of the ship, knocking the power offline.

Realising he had to do something fast, Murphy slung his rifle over his shoulder and drew his combat knife. Allowing the superheated power of a neutron star envelope the blade and lengthen it into a sword. Without hesitation, the Canadian charged towards the tentacle and began to slice through it with the blade.

The depthborn whelps flesh gave way to the blade easily enough, but there was a lot of it and time was running out. Murphy let loose a roar as he swung the sword up and unleashed a wave of energy from the blade. The powerful attack cleaved through the offending appendage with ease before continuing and leaving a deep gash in the beasts neck. The ship rocked again as tbe tentacle released it and the beast roared in anguish. Bleeding from its eye, neck and tentacle Murphy was astonished at just how much punishment the thing could take.

But continue it did, bringing up tentacles from beneath the ship and punching through the hull and up into the deck. The two appendages began to shear the vessel in half, dooming the crew.

Murphy shook his head in annoyance before summoning a wave of ice to freeze the tentacles in place before leaping off the side of the ship and landing on one of the frozen limbs. The beast eyed him with unbridled fury and tried to throw him off, but he simply drove his sword into the tentacle and began to run up towards its head. Cutting through its flesh the whole way up until he reached its head. It made to snap at him with its jaws but he simply blasted them snout of the beast with millions of volts of electricity.

This caused the beast to rear back in pain and expose its neck, still bleeding from the attack before. He drove the sword into the open wound and began to hack away. Before he could do anything substantial Murphy was sucker punched by a tentacle which sent him flying back into the sinking ship.

Murphy groaned in pain and noted that his left leg was bent in the wrong direction and he felt pain in his ribs. Wincing as he looked back towards the beast as it was beginning to regain itself for another round.

Punching the deck and channelling the healing light within him he gritted his teeth as his bones knit themselves back together and he pulled himself to his feet. Holding his hand out and curling his fingers, he began to create a ball of distortion energy. The gravity of the miniaturised black hole began to rip metal from the deck and warp the hull.

He waited for the whelp to close in for a lunge with its massive jaws before hurling the ball of energy into its maw and throat. The subsequent explosion tore a gaping hole through both sides of the depthborns throat. Cutting off its agonised roar as its vocal cords were rented asunder. 

At first, Murphy believed that such a wound would finish the beast off. But to his surprise and annoyance. The whelp was not dead. Murphy could hear the wheezing from the beast's throat as air was sucked into the hole that had been caused.

"You have to be fucking kidding me."

Murphy rolled his shoulders and slung his rifle back over his shoulder and took aim at the beast's face once more. He poured dozens of neutron rounds into its head, charring and burning its flesh. He struck gold when the beast coughed as its lungs sucked in its own blood, the uncontrolled movement caused its eye to become unprotected as it jerked its head to the side.

Murphy grinned as he watched the beast's last eye burn and melt. With it now blind, Murphy reached out with his power and pulled himself towards the hole in the whelps neck. Thinking quickly, he hoped that his gamble would work and he channelled all his rage and desperation into the power of Suppression and filled the open hole in the throat with paracausal ice. Sealing the wound closed and completely stopping the beast from breathing.

Murphy was knocked off the beast as it began to thrash about in an attempt to force air into its lungs. Not relenting, Murphy opted to continue to hammer the beast with neutron energy. Continuing to barrage the beast even as it sank beneath the waves as it suffocated to death and choked on its own blood.

Finding a large piece of debris to rest on he allowed the power to leave him and started to catch his breath. Watching out into the water he could see several survivors in the frigid ocean some in life jackets others in rafts. "Morrígan… I think it's dead… fuck me I hope its dead…"

He didn't get an immediate reply. Not until he saw some of the survivors in life jackets disappear beneath the waves. Initially he thought that somehow, the beast had survived its decapitation and was back to round two. But then he noticed the waves began to shift and roll and recognized the familiar sight of Morrígan's true form rising from the waves. The remains of the whelp he had killed in her jaws, easily being crunched and crushed by her immense teeth and allowing her to swallow the beast.

But he also noticed that the humans that had disappeared were in her left hand. He was about to question her when she simply raised them to her mouth and devoured them as well, causing the survivors in the emergency rafts to begin to scream. 

Murphy was too tired to do anything other than watch in awe at the display of her predatory instincts. He watched as she froze one of the rafts solid before pulverising it with two of her fingers. And another was simply pulled into a ball of distortion energy that crushed and compressed the raft and its occupants into an atomized nothingness as she chuckled to herself.

It was the last one that she allowed to get far enough away before she submerged beneath the waves once more, only to resurface before the ship with her massive, supple lips parted and tongue out slightly as the raft ran right into her waiting maw. With no chance of escape Murphy watched as Morrígan sealed her lips and any screams that he had heard were silenced, incapable of piercing her flesh. As Morrígan swam back over to Murphy he heard an audible and intentionally loud gulp. Despite the raft being far too small to be noticed in her throat, he was still enamoured by her display of dominance.

He simply flipped her off and groaned. "Those were innocent people!"

Morrígan grinned in devilish delight. "Indeed. And they would have frozen to death in these waters, or succumbed to starvation if that failed. Killing them now was a mercy that I granted them on your behalf. I would have simply let them suffer before."

He wanted to argue with her, but he knew that the Antarctic ocean was an unforgiving environment. The moment the survivors had fallen into the water they had been doomed.

"I hate it, but you're right.… you're getting better at your logical arguments than when we first met."

Morrígan laughed at that and gave him a smirk. "Well, acting on instinct and anger didn't help me with you. So I've had to change tactics."

The Canadian just groaned in acknowledgement. "Have I proven that fighting you to a standstill wasn't a fluke yet?"

Morrígan scoffed at that. "Not a chance, little one. However, you fought admirably. For a mortal. Now, let us return to the fortress."

Morrígan held out her hand softly and Murphy felt his body become weightless as he was pulled into her grasp. The familiar warmth that radiated from her body helped ward off the chill in the air that his body could not do alone with her power.

He tried to roll over but was too tired to move much and so he was stuck on his back as Morrígan held him against her massive chest and took off in flight towards their Antarctic home. The beating of her heart in conjunction with the beating of her wings began to lull him to sleep. And the last thing he thought before drifting to sleep, was how soft her breasts were.