"I can't believe we are about to do this."
Luz, with her hand still gripping tightly on Amity, was now starting to reconsider what she was about to do. Even if Hooty's astral body did traverse through the different realms, he was still a magical creature foremost. Eda poured the apple blood into a mug and placed it in Luz's open palm. Lilith did the same to Amity her cautiousness mirroring the human girl's.
"It will be fine," Hypnos assured the girls, "I will be traveling with you as well."
Amity glanced at Luz her face still being red due to being close to her crush. "Can we really trust this man?"
Luz gave her one of her goofy grins. "Don't worry, Ams; he wouldn't have informed us about Nyarlathotep and his plans if he was going to betray us."
Amity gasped internally. How she loved that girl and her stupid grins. Amity forced a smile on her face still nervous. "I believe you."
Hypnos took the bottle of apple blood and took large swigs out of it.
"Hey, I didn't say for you to drink the whole bottle!" Eda complained. However, she also couldn't help but be impressed with how the Elder God could take the potency of the beverage with one shot.
"Before we go, are there any more questions?"
Luz thought about it and spoke up. "Hypnos?"
Hypnos raised an eyebrow. "Yes? What is it, mortal?"
"You said that this mysterious stranger came and defeated Nyarlathotep thousands of years ago."
"Aye, I did," Hypnos confirmed. He threw the bottle of apple blood on the ground and it exploded into shards. "I assume that you would like to know who this person was?"
Luz nodded her head. He already knew her curious questions before she could even deliver them. He chuckled again whilst flickering at the whiskers of his beard.
"Why, it was a long-forgotten relative of yours, of course!"
Through the petals of the poppies, he once more conjured up an image of the mysterious stranger. This time, the figure pulled back their hood. Underneath it was a girl roughly around the same age of Luz. Her hair was longer which often forced her to tuck the bangs away. Her eyes illuminated a hazel brown likely from her latest encounter with the Crawling Chaos. Luz continued to stare at the petals mesmerized until they flickered away and disappeared into thin air.
"I should tell you this before we make our travel," Hypnos announced, "there are some gates far beyond that house incomprehensible horrors."
"And if we end up crossing those gates?" Amity asked.
"Pray to all space that you never have the misfortune of seeing what lies beyond in the abyss."
Hypnos's astral body disappeared from the apple blood taking its full effect on him. Luz and Amity observed the green, foamy residue floating at the top of their mugs. Luz then set her eyes on Eda. Eda gave her the thumbs up.
"You're gonna do great, Luz," Eda said.
"Just don't see things not meant for your eyes to see," Lilith added.
The two girls clicked their mugs together in a toast and took a deep gulp of the liquid. It was as Hooty described: unlike with how wine would taste once it aged, the apple blood was a nauseous, stomach churning abomination. They withdrew their cups to reveal that they both had "moustaches" on their top lips.
"I feel like I am going to be sick," Luz groaned.
"Drink some more of it, Luz," Eda said. She put her hand on her shoulder, "you're almost there."
Amity's vision blurred as her world was becoming topsy-turvy. She took another sip of the deadly concoction. Despite never ingesting apple blood before, the alcoholic beverage was already working on her delicate system and loosening her up. Amity gagged without provocation. Eda and King saw this and ran to get a bucket out of fear she would throw up the contents of not only the apple blood, but also likely any undigested bits of food she had eaten earlier. Instead of vomiting, gas rolled out of her mouth in an uncouth belch.
"Are you sure Amity will be fine?" Lilith asked.
"For now, she is," Eda noted, "but I'll probably need to make the two herbal tea once the effects wear off."
Luz fell on the ground from taking another swig from her mug. King ran over to her to check on her, only to be grabbed by the girl. She rubbed her fingers on his horns.
"King, I never noticed you had long ears before," Luz noted. She was fading in and out of consciousness.
King squirmed underneath her tight grip and felt that his small frame was breaking. "Eda, hit her with a sleeping spell!"
"She finished all the apple blood in the mug," Eda noted, "just give it a second."
Amity wobbled on her legs. While skilled street performers could walk on stilts without issue, Amity's legs were like those of wooden toothpicks that threatened to break. She made a half-gallop and fell along the side of the couch. She opened her half-shut eyes and glared at Lilith. Her cheeks grew tomato red once more.
"Luz, I need to tell you something."
Lilith leaned back on the couch unsure of what to say; the poor girl had sunk so deep under the influence of the apple blood; she was now convinced that she was Luz. Amity slid her hand onto one of the seats close to Lilith. Lilith rolled back to get as far away from the Blight girl.
"I know that I always came off as cruel, and bullied you for being a human, but I actually l-"
Before she could say anything else, Amity fell into deep unconsciousness. Eda stared at Luz concluding that she had lost consciousness a few minutes before Amity did. She laughed.
"She should count herself lucky that Luz didn't get to hear what she was about to say."
The two sisters gathered the girls and appointed King with bringing out the bed mats.
"Ah, why does it have to be me?" he complained.
"We need to make sure that these two girls are safe," Eda explained, "and you're more likely to get away from any potential danger due to your smaller frame."
King grunted from the irritation of being reminded that he was a small boy. "Ugh...fine..fine."
"Amity? Amity, time to wake up."
Amity's eyes shot open. What happened prior became nothing more than a blur to her. For all she knew, she was just at the Owl House talking about astral travel. She was handed some odd beverage and told to drink it, but then after that...poof.
"Amity?"
Luz was within length of Amity's mouth and looking her over. Amity panicked and collapsed backward. Before she could say anything else, Amity felt something odd about her surroundings.
"Where are we?"
Amity and Luz were in another plane of existence. They were of a three-angled dimension filled with clouds and thick vapor. Yet more odd, there were multiple doors beyond the eyes could see. Through each door, creatures exited through them. Creatures of odder geometrical shapes and sizes. Maddening, indescribable, alien bodily structures described the creatures' attributes. Through the black void, their tentacle appendages writhed through the darkness and vanished.
"Oh, glad you finally woke up," a voice proclaimed.
They turned to see that Hypnos was there in the void alongside them. "Odd, isn't it?"
"I imagine that these creatures come to the Boiling Isles all the time," Luz hypothesized.
"Well, the Isles are a boiling point after all," Hypnos said.
Luz stared at her hands with further understanding. Like Hypnos, her skin was now a translucent hue. "And this is my soul?"
"Indeed; your physical bodies are snuggly tucked away back in your dimension. Now, follow me."
The two girls followed the Lord of Dreams through the misty vapor and towards the doors. Each door led to new dimensions. It struck the girls that the monsters they were witnessing migrating between worlds likely had different, comprehensible shapes native to their homes. Some doors grew darker and were engulfed by the blackness of the void.
"What happens to those doors that disappear?" Amity inquired.
"It means that the Outer Gods had breached those worlds and consumed their realities," Hypnos answered. "Those worlds are now forever dead and decay once every living thing is driven to extinction."
Luz frowned. "Are you suggesting that this would one day become the fate of the Earth?"
"Do you really think the universe would care if your world ceased to be?" Hypnos asked "we are all insignificant specks in the grander scheme of things; once we are no more, the universe would have little reason to care."
Luz's stare faltered. With the bluntness of his answer, she felt no further need to probe him for more explanations. At any time, at any year, the Earth - and the demon realm for that matter – will be eaten by one of the unknowable Outer Gods and there was nothing her wild magic could do to stop this inevitable reality. At the corner of her eye, Luz saw a door unlike all the other doors upon doors they had encountered. An exceedingly ancient door made of petrified cedar.
Luz's soul floated towards the door. Amity was busy having a conversation with Hypnos she barely noticed that Luz was no longer following them. Amity glanced behind her back, her eyes widening in horror. "Luz, what are you doing?"
Luz grasped the knob on the door with her right hand when Amity floated over. "Hypnos said to not go off on your own."
Luz saw ancient encryptions on the door's frame. "Hey, this is written in Egyptian hieroglyphics."
Amity squinted her eyes. "What is that? Some human thing?"
"Oh, that's right you wouldn't know what that was," Luz noted, "just think of them as writing letters, but they use pictures instead."
The old gods of Ancient Egypt decorated the top of the door's frame. Ra held the sun between his hands whilst a serpent was on his heel. The steady process of mummification was also illustrated in full detail. Against her better judgment, Luz turned the knob counterclockwise until she heard a click.
"Luz, I don't think this is a good idea," Amity said.
The door swung open and let out a rancid smell of inexplicable nature. Luz did not let that deter her, and she floated in. Amity fidgeted contemplating whether to follow her or Hypnos. Her heart was overtaking her rational brain and became the victor. Amity sighed and levitated.
"Wait for me, Luz!"
The large size of the door paled in comparison to the room. It had a vast space to it. A small torch on the ceiling illuminated the dimension. Throughout the large space, there was an arrangement of shelves more than the eyes can see. From what little they could figure out; each shelf was dated back during certain periods of unrecorded history. Luz placed her feet on the ground and walked towards one of the shelves.
"Look, there's something there."
Luz knelt and withdrew the object. Amity floated over to Luz to look at it as well.
"It's some rag doll," Amity observed, "made of some kind of grain."
They levitated down the row of shelves finding more possessions: clothing; toys; ancient books and other oddities. Luz noticed a wand as being one of the collectibles on the farthest side of the shelves. Luz grabbed it to better inspect it. "It's similar to the ones you get back on the Isles."
Amity took the wand to give her opinion. "It doesn't only look like one, it exactly did come from the Isles; it feels like it was crafted from one of our trees."
"If it was from the Isles, then that would mean"
The realization became crystal clear to the two girls: all of the artifacts placed on the endless shelves came from the Boiling Isles. Judging by the withered appearance, many of the objects littering the dimension were infinitely older than ones that could reasonably be interpreted as being more relatively recent.
"No one that we know could have created this world to act as storage," Luz noted.
"Except for Nyarlathotep," Amity added.
Luz turned to leave, but she noticed something additional on the eldritch shelves. A piece of a horn. She seized it with her fingers and held it in front of her face. Bleached white; likely half a thousand years old at that. The horn had a noticeable crack in it. From what it appeared, the horn was ripped off starting from a tear towards the base of the appendage. "Amity, come look at this."
She passed the artifact to Amity. Amity too brought it close to her eyes and took note of the unusual way that the horn was ripped off. She held her thumb and index finger against her chin and tapped it. "That is pretty funny."
"What is?" Luz asked.
"A broken horn," Amity emphasized, "who else do we know has a horn missing?"
"Yeah, that's true," Luz confirmed, "the only person I know that has a broken horn is King."
"Did King ever say how he broke his horn?"
Luz shook her head. "No, the subject of what happened to his horn never came up before." Luz placed the horn in her pocket. "It's like he never noticed that he had one."
It had been months since Luz entered the demon realm and became the apprentice of the Owl Lady. She knew nearly everything about the little dog-sized demon. She knew what his interests were; what his favorite foods were; his megalomaniacal designs. But not once did King ever mention the whereabouts of his missing horn. True, perhaps King was in some accident prior to Luz becoming a permanent addition to the Isles, or – worse yet – he could have been attacked and the assailant tore off his horn. Whatever the reason, King was not offering any answers. At the back of Luz's mind, the more sensible answer became perfectly frank: King could easily have forgotten the circumstances of his missing horn.
"I am convinced that this is King's horn," Luz declared, "we need to get this back to him so it could jog his memory."
"You guys!"
The two girls instantly saw Hypnos. His round, large black eyes had an odd, alluring trance to them. His bushy eyebrows descended with a scowl. "I told you guys to not go off."
"We're sorry, Hypnos," Luz said with sadness in her voice, "but we ended up finding this dimension."
"Yes, I can understand your curiosity very well: every time Nyarlathotep laid waste to the Isles, he would always collect souvenirs from the ashes of the villages he destroyed. He considered them to be enough for "proper sacrifices"."
Luz drew into her pocket and slipped the horn out. "Amity and I think that King is the rightful owner of this horn piece."
Hypnos scratched his beard. "I believe so...you are intending on having him get it back?"
"He doesn't remember what happened to his horn, so I think this could get his memory back."
Before he responded, there was a flurry of a messy, thick mass of hair. It jumped onto Luz's arm and gripped its teeth on the horn fragment. Sweat began to form on Luz's forehead.
"AH! Rat! Rat!"
Sure enough, it was an unshapely, horrid, rodent that was crawling on Luz's arm. But ratkind paled in comparison to this beast. A small, human head was in place of an ordinary rat head. Its hands were those of a tiny baby topped with ugly, black claws filled with evil intent. The rat stared at the human girl for a split-second to sample her fear before bucking down the arm, and heading towards the hem of her shirt, before escaping with its prize.
"What the heck was that!?" Luz shrieked. She floated over to Amity and hid behind her. Amity's cheeks and skin tone turned crimson red. She felt her translucent heart beat at a fast rhythm again. She immediately shook herself out of it.
"It has the horn! Get it!"
They chased after the rat fiend with Hypnos hardly keeping up. More of those bizarre beasts exited through the portals of the doors. The three were momentarily blocked by the tentacled, multi-eyed eldritch beings, and yet, the rat giddily bounced on the backs of these same creatures and walked in the void with a strut.
"I think it's heading for the Earth," Luz yelled.
The rat stopped at one of the doors. The door slowly undid its hinges. From their position, they saw a blue marble. Amity tried to memorize what little she saw of the marble and turned to look at Luz. "Is that the Earth, I take it?"
"Yes, I can see the continents from here," Luz noted.
The door opened wide enough for the rat to squeeze its sickly body through it. Luz and Amity darted towards the door whilst trying to understand how to control their spiritual forms. The rat sensed them approaching and looked at them. It gave an inhumanly wide grin exposing its rows of teeth. It then flicked its tail and jumped through the portal.
"Blasted rat!" Luz screamed.
Once the portal to the Earth was completely within view, Luz jumped into it headfirst. Amity held her hands up to the sides of her face. "Wait for me, Luz!"
Hypnos rolled his eyes. "Teenagers always jumping into things without thinking."
Hypnos bolted after the flustered Blight girl and slammed the door shut.
Back on the Boiling Isles, the physical bodies of Amity and Luz were placed on a bed mat. Lilith and Eda looked over them in silence. King was still poking Hooty's unconscious body with a stick.
"You did that for five hours, King," Eda complained, "he's gone."
"I am almost kind of jealous, really," King said, "if Hooty is really surfing through planes of existence right now, I would've taken the apple blood too."
"For what reason?" Lilith asked.
"So I could rule over all dimensions," King boasted, "all creation will cower before me!"
King laughed, but his laughter came out as petite chuckles.
"Oh, yes, I am sure creation will be scared of you," Eda snickered and rolling her eyes.
Lilith knelt down to better inspect Eda's apprentice. "Are you sure she will...be well when she gets back?"
"Luz is a tough girl, sis. I am completely confident that our Luz – and her girlfriend – will return in one piece."
"I hope so," Lilith lamented, "I still hadn't made amends with her since...well, you know."
Eda understood. "Sis, it had been likely months now since that incident happens; Luz isn't the type of person to hold grudges."
Lilith went to say something only to be disrupted by a sudden sound. "Did you two hear that?"
King shrugged. "Must be Bat Queen's son tearing up the basement again."
Lilith shook her head. "No, that sounded more lik-"
BAM!
The front door to the house was kicked down by a battering ram. Eda noticed a sigil on it and sighed in irritation. "For Titan's sake, it's the Emperor's Coven."
"They probably found out that Hooty was incapacitated," King replied.
King ran to collect his toys and dashed back into the room. "Minions! Barricade us!"
He tossed some of the stuffed animals towards the door, but they plopped on the ground. Eda and Lilith both gave a disappointed glare at King. King crossed his arms and pouted. "Well, I don't see you doing anything to help."
Four of the imperial guards broke their way into the house holding staffs laced with electrical wires. They cornered the three inhabitants with little difficulty and held them there.
"Any slight movement, and you will be given a full electrical shock in accordance to the law," one of the imperial guards threatened.
Lilith inhaled and exhaled. "If the Emperor had sent you because of some bounty on my head, please remove me and leave the other two alone."
One of the imperial guards scratched the bottom of his helmet. "50,000 snails is your worth." He mumbled contemplating on whether or not to take up the offer.
"Enough."
A hooded figure in a golden mask entered through the door and waved his hand to signal for his men to lower their weapons. "It is such an occasion of meeting you, Owl Lady."
"What do you want?" Eda demanded.
She got down on the floor and covered the two girls. "If you are trying to get either of them, you will over my cold, dead, body!"
"We do not want anything that ghastly," the spy replied, "I have informed Lord Belos of your encounter with one of the gods to have the human girl and her friend traverse the planes."
"Well, you are too late," King noted, "the two are almost to Earth as we speak."
The spy stared at the two girls' sleeping bodies. "Please, the Emperor demands an audience with you two."
Eda shook her head. "Never; I ain't havin' any of that with the "Emperor"."
"You heard the man!" another imperial guard yelled.
He charged his staff and showed off the sparks of it to the grey-haired lady. "I love this job!"
The spy clutched his staff and withdrew it from his hand. The guard backed up upon seeing that the tables had turned on him. He held up his hands to protect himself. "Sir, what are you?"
The spy shocked the guard with the full force of the staff. Electricity surged through his body until he collapsed on the ground adjacent to the girls. The remaining guards, undeterred, held up their weapons. Two came from the side but were quickly outmaneuvered. The masked man delivered another surge of electricity to the second guard. The other one, he forcibly pried the weapon from his hands and decked him in the face. The mask of the imperial guard flew off revealing that he was a boar-like creature underneath. He stared at the final guard who turned heel and made a break for the door.
The masked man grabbed the helmet of the downed boar man and pitched it with strategic precision. It collided with the back of the skull with the other guard. He collapsed to the ground with a thud. With the threat taken care of, the masked man resumed his duty. Eda and the others were speechless.
"What in the.." Eda said.
"I am well aware of what Belos has in store for the Isles and the Earth." He wiped some dirt away from his cloak. "Please assist me in taking down Belos."
"How can we trust you?" King asked, "sure, you beat the stuffing out of those guys, but you would probably get the drop on us."
He looked at Amity for a minute. "There are people that I care for if you are willing to indulge."
Eda and Lilith gave understanding looks. "Fine," Eda said.
"I will pretend to cuff you three and will present you as my prisoners, just follow my lead."