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Most mages couldn't summon a familiar until they were sixteen at the earliest- eighteen was more common, with most having managed to summon a familiar and make a pact by twenty-five.
A familiar was a final test of sorts; either you were powerful enough to have a familiar or your magic would fade by the time you were thirty.
It was tricky magic, and not something wise to attempt without full understanding of the sigils used and their meanings. More than that, it involved a sacrifice of life essence, something that would cause severe illness for an adult with bad health or a curse.
Those average, normal people weren't Drakes. Tim conveniently ignored that severe illness to an adult with bad health would probably do far worse to him.
He just needed to pull something vaguely impressive and draconic; true to the name, every man of the Drake family had some sort of dragon.
Usually, they were faerie dragons or pseudo dragons, as real dragons (as well as wyverns, wyrms, and their ilk) were more likely to eat the summoner than anything else.
Granted, his father had a small calligraphy wyrm which refused to listen to him and tried to eat his face off, but all of them did.
He would even be happy to be like his mother's family, with their magical foxes. Much less impressive than a drake, but Tim privately thought a three-tailed fox that obeyed his mother without question was a better bet than a wyrm that liked to disguise itself as a pen and attempt to bite its mage's fingers off.
Another attempt left him with nothing but nausea and a lot of chalk and candle wax to clean.
Even Tim, at the Grand Old age of eight wasn't foolish enough to try twice in a day, so he cleaned his things and left the basement, unsatisfied.
With his sudden dizziness, he wouldn't even be able to try and find Batman tonight.
It fit, he supposed. His parents didn't want him and made it clear he wouldn't be part of the family without a good familiar (damn uncle Eddie and his slightly magical neon blue chicken). Why would a magical creature want him either?
---
"The boy is far too skinny! Once the portal is large enough, I'll fatten him up- none of you louts get any ideas," shrieked the Night Hag commonly known as the Lunch Lady.
"I, THE ALMIGHTY BOX SNEEVIL, SHALL BE HIS FAMILIAR," shrieked the Sneevil near her shoulder. Then shrieked and climbed up on Skulker, the flesh golem's arm as Cujo the hell hound reacted to his high voice.
"And risk losing the greatest hunter in existence? No mage that powerful at such a young age could resist me," he snarled. A stray maggot crawled from the stitches on his lips only to fall onto the broken pieces of armor imbedded into his chest and arms.
And who could blame them arguing, even as Ember the Banshee screeched her own claim? After all, children of that age could do everything right, but never had enough magic to open a portal at all. For one, even a weak one, to open?
When the child hit his sixteenth year, he would have power beyond belief, they were sure.
Boxy the Sneevil, the only living among the creatures of the Plane of Darkness and Death assembled around the remains of the portal, shivered suddenly.
"Klemper, you can't have him!"
A snort echoed and massive white clawed hand pressed into the purple rocks nearby. "Not Klemper, Boxy," rumbled the dracolich. Purplish, dessicated skin, patterned with stars from his time as a void dragon hung in patches from the sharp nodes of his spine. The inside of its body was black as pitch wherever it was left uncovered by bone except for two glowing green flames where his eyes once were.
"I think I might like this one," Phantom rumbled.
"Whelp," said Skulker, though Phantom hadn't been a whelp for millennia, "you're a dragon. Everyone knows the pride of your kind- surely you wouldn't want a human."
The dracolich snorted, hoarfrost spreading on the ground before him. "No. No, I like this one. He's mine, unless you'd like to fight me for him."
"I certainly shall," shrieked Plasmius- a living dragon, which would be rare in these parts, but for his strange obsession with Phantom.
"And on that note dearies, I'm going to go curse a few fools," shouted the Lunch Lady, flying away on her broom.
"Wait for me," shouted the Sneevil.
"I shall have-"
"It's a human," said Phantom abruptly.
"What?" Asked Plasmius, spreading out his ear fins. Surely he must've misheard.
"The summoner I'm interested in. It's a human," Phantom explained.
Plasmius gaped. "A... demigod human?"
"Not as far as I can tell, no."
Slowly, the blue storm dragon began to back away. "Phantom, little badger- maybe don't spend so much time near the Sea of Madness. I'm going to talk to your parents about this."
Phantom laughed outright at that.
"And your sister."
He clamped his jaws shut with a rattle. "You wouldn't dare."
Plasmius flew and Phantom took to the stormy skies behind him.
---
He tried again and again, week after week, month after month, with no success- until, to his surprise, he felt a sudden pain in his chest. He woke up to all but one candle burnt out completely and the alarm for his self imposed Bat-watching schedule beeping angrily on his watch.
He tried to sit up only to find himself much too high- he was looking at the shelves at the wine cellar from the top, not the bottom.
He shivered - the lone candle didn't share much light up here.
"How did I get so high?" Tim wondered to himself.
Sharp objects poked at him painfully as the ground beneath him moved. Tim found himself holding back a cry of terror at the massive fanged skull that faced him.
"That would be because even with partial intangibility, I am much too big for your house," the monster rumbled.
Wait.
It wasn't trying to eat him, and he felt a strange sensation in the back of his chest. He'd only heard it described before.
"Are you my familiar?" He breathed, not daring to hope.
"One and the same," the dragon rumbled. "I have many names, but you, little mage, can call me Phantom."
"Hi Phantom," he whispered. "I'm Tim. Can we be friends?"
"The best of friends little mortal," the dracolich rumbled. "Why, I think you and I will be friends forever. When you're a little older, I'll teach you how to make a phylactery, and we'll make sure of it."
"You're a true greater dragon," the boy said quietly. "I know I'm supposed to offer you my magic to saus- sist-,"
"Sustain?" The dragon asked.
"Yes! To sustain yourself. But I don't think I have enough for a creature like you to be interested," Tim said sadly. This was how his first real friendship and the life of a mage ended- summoning the wrong familiar.
"I wouldn't expect you to," the dragon replied. "I propose something a little backwards. I will share my magic with you and you will share your soul with me."
And had Tim been raised by parents who loved him and been allowed to make friends his age instead of skipping grades halfway through the year, perhaps he would've set aside the life of a mage.
As it was, the boy saw two options before him: be kicked out, abandoned, and shunned like uncle Eddie, or make his family proud as the first person in almost 15 generations to have a true greater dragon as a familiar.
And besides, what was a soul? It wouldn't kill him to have it gone.
"What does that mean?" He asked, and cursed himself inside his head. Surely he would upset the dragon with all his questions!
The great beast pressed a bony nose to his forehead, gentler than Tim had perhaps ever been touched outside of on2 of his first nannies, before his parents decided six was far too old for one.
The boy reached up and placed his hand on cool bone, stroking back and feeling dried, leathery skin. "I am no demon, little one. I will not devour your soul, but you have something I can never have again," the dragon explained.
"I will never feel the sun on my skin or the wind under my wings," he said. "Never again will I feel the water of a lake against my scales or the warmth of a mate near. But should we share- my magic and a bit of your soul- what you feel, I will also."
That sounded much more agreeable. "But won't you get hurt? Like if I skin my knees or hurt my hand?"
"Merely a part of life," the dragon reassured him. "Besides, you will have warm baths and hugs and all sorts of things that make up for it."
And Tim?
Well, Tim agreed- and went to throw a blanket in the dryer to warm up from the cold basement. He wouldn't ordinarily, but the strange part in his chest that rang as Phantom was awfully pleased by the idea. And just for him, Tim chose the softest fleece blanket in the house.
"Phantom? Why aren't I getting sick?"
Not that Tim wanted to be sick- hardly. But it was something everyone said they felt after summoning a familiar.
"Are you familiar with reincarnation, little one?"
They didn't start that class in school yet- that was a senior level course, and Tim told him so.
"An old friend of mine paid your debt for you. He made me promise a long time ago I'd not leave whomever he became alone, and so I have kept it. And so we shall be friends for a very long time, as we were in the days when I had scales and fins," rumbled the dragon.
After all, after feeling his old friend calling once again, how could he resist? The other dragons thought him mad for binding himself to a human the first time, but their worries hadn't stopped him before, and now, long dead, they wouldn't stop him now.
"What do you do for fun, Tim?"
"Well, it's almost time for me to try and find Batman and Robin! But oh, they'd see you."
Though the skeletal maw had no lips to move, Tim got the impression his new friend was smiling. "And what is invisibility magic for, little friend? Come, let's have some fun."
And if, years later, Phantom ate the Joker alive and he was forced to explain to Batman while his son was in surgery just what a nine year old was doing riding an undead dragon into Ethiopia?
Well, that's a different story.