Welcome to Chapter 2, released a day after the first one. Don't expect this to happen a lot, as I said earlier I wrote a lot of these ahead of time. In fact of the three I am posting in quick succession this is the last one I finished. Won't lie, a fair bit of this one is more a part 2 to how part 1 came out and using natural cliffhangers. So of the three this is probably my least favorite one, but hopefully 1 and 3 make up for it.

CHAPTER 2

Luz had no problem with the fact that she was clearly being fed by way of coupon. She and her mom were masters of coupon usage, and she herself was the best at finding the things and using them. She also had no problem not asking exactly 'what' the texture of this sandwich was supposed to be and just enjoying the taste of it. Which was quite good.

Eda finished twirling her fingers around, a glowing circle expanding out into a bubble around the two.

"Good the obscuring spell is up. Now no one who shouldn't will bother us. No cops, no glory seeking challengers and no flesh eating monsters. Covers overhearing and catching us on the corner of their eyes too. You can drop the hoodie kid."

She eagerly did so, questions bursting out of her before she could even fully de-cover her ears.

"Did you just cast Muffilato!? Why are you on the run from the cops?! Should I be concerned about that?! What is in this sandwich because I haven't really looked too closely…"

The older woman put a finger to her mouth to end the questions.

"Okay I don't know what 'muffylato' is supposed to be, disagreements with established policies and a few bits of larceny a week, no." She didn't answer the part about the sandwich.

"Are you sure about that last one?"

The woman laughed.

"Trust me kid, there are maybe four people who I can think of right now who could actually scare me. One's not going to leave his castle, one's too busy finding pointy shoes and gullible students, the third's back in the human realm and owes me 500, and the fourth's a human paper bag in a leopard skin."

Those last two caught Luz's attention.

"There are humans that are that scary?"

Eda laughed at that.

"Yeah I'm surprised at that too. See kid here the general idea that anything strange on earth is caused by some of our world leaking over. That does happen as we are responsible for giraffes. We aren't, however, responsible for the magic penguins."

"Giraffes? Penguins?"

"Formers on us, bunch of freaks. The birds, not to be confused with regular, boring, penguins…whatever those are…are not. Turns out the earth has its own bunch of magic users. Where the Boiling Isles have witches, the human realm has the Magicians of the House of Life."

"WHAT!?REALLY!THATISSOAWESOMELIKEMAGICISACTUALLYREALOHGODYOUVEGOTTOTELLMEWHATTHEYARELIKEARETHEYLIKEDRESDENORPOTTERORTOSHKAORZATANNAORCONSTNATINE…."

The witch put another finger on her mouth.

"Never do that again. I have no idea what you just said, and I'm sure I wouldn't actually know what you said if you actually stopped to breathe in that entire bash of gibberish. Now if you want a full history you are asking the wrong witch. I was only with them for a month and I had other things on my mind than researching their full history. So long story short I was minding my own business at my stall a while back, wondering what was taking Owlbert so long to get back with stuff from the human world."

"Owlbert?" Luz asked before she yelped in surprise as Eda's staff suddenly shook as the owl figure on top hopped off and turned into an actual owl. The bird hooted in greeting and she cooed at the adorable little guy.

"Owlbert, Luz. Luz, Owlbert. Anyway, he was taking a while and I was worried some dog was chewing on him again so I popped my head in to take a look and you would not believe my shock when I found a bunch of guys with staves pointing at me with magic like I've never seen before. They asked me if I was an associate of some demon from 'Oregon' and I said I never heard of 'Oregon' and to give me back my Owlbert. One of them tried to attack me with a giraffe he made out of his staff and I got really furious and flung him into a tree. So a big old fight started."

"An all out crazy magic fight. I wish I could see it." Luz felt like her eyes were sparkling with the mental image of crazy magical fighting.

"…If you are stuck here long enough I might show you a picture of it. Anyway they called in reinforcements and I kept kicking butt because they seemed very confused about what sort of magic I was doing and why it 'hurt really bad'. I didn't get how it hurt so badly until one of them nailed me with something and it stung like a boiling rain downpour. Somewhere in all of the brawling they blew up my portal and then bound me up with some ribbons and I screamed a lot. Really hurt too, and then I passed out. Then I found myself in some place called Egypt that seemed to be really hot."

"I've read a lot about it if you want to know something about Egypt." Luz offered to share some information of her own.

"Good, thanks, do not need the brochure. So I wake up and I'm in some big room filled with stuff and an old guy sitting near a throne. Really old, bunch of funky heiro-whatevers…"

"Hieroglyphics?"

"Yeah that's the word. I don't care though. So anyway the old guy with his funky shapes and his leopard skin asked me what a witch from the Boiling Isles is doing on earth and everyone but me is wondering what the heck that is. So the guy has this girl, Zia I think her name was, read off some dusty old info bit about it that is centuries out of date but gets the run down and all the guys around me are still confused and I'm questioning what these people are and why their magic binding ribbons burn like a brand. Apparently the magic of Magicians and Witches do not get along because one is all about 'Ma'at' and orderly things while my magic is naturally tinted by 'Isfet' and chaotic and I still don't get it."

"It sounds like an Order and Chaos thing. I've seen a lot of stories like that where the powers that are opposed to each other aren't good or evil but are more about one being stability and the other change. If you take either to an extreme you have bad things like authoritarianism, loss of free will, complete anarchy, and utter selfishness. It's the sort of thing you need both of or you get problems."

Eda clapped once she finished.

"Kid that explanation sounds about right and I like your explanation better than theirs so I'll go with yours. Actual words and not a bunch of 'Ma'ats' all day long. Anyway I complain they broke my portal a bunch, they complain I was crossing the worlds a bunch, I say I was just taking stuff no one wants to make a quick buck and then this one guy goes on about the loss of matter to another plane and I got bored of it so I told him to shut up. He asked the guy, some 'Iskander the Chief Lector' to kill me, and he said no."

"'She is not a harbinger of Cipher or Aphophis but just a citizen of another world' he said, and told me that they'd help me get home. I asked how long because I have a roommate and a security system and he wasn't sure. I complained and then the Zia girl glared at me for 'disrespect' and then I laughed at her glaring at me….something something boring talk about possible prison cells before some 'Nome' called for backup involving some monster and something something I get roped in and helping and do a stupendous job at helping so I get to merely be highly watched instead of locked in a cell. So a month goes on, I talk a bit about these here Boiling Isles, I have some misadventures, I accidentally nearly eat some people and get a new prescription, you know normal 'I am stuck in another world stuff'."

"The last one doesn't sound that normal. I don't want to eat people! Especially by accident!" Luz exclaimed as Eda laughed.

"Trust me kid no one does. Anyway that's probably not going to be something you have to worry about. Probably. I'd bet on it with snails at least. Anyway I got back home and have been home since, perhaps the only person here that knows that the human world has secret magicians and without my main source of income, but also without my main expense so…."

Luz stared at her hands.

"So am I a magician? I opened some magical door and traveled to another world."

"Probably not." Eda said simply with a shrug. Luz looked at the woman in confusion.

"But you just explained everything didn't you? Earth has magic, and I magically traveled to another world. So I can go home before my mom freaks out at me missing the same way you got back here." Luz thought it was pretty obvious as the older woman held up the pen.

"Two reasons. One is that your 'amazing packing' is clearly some sort of storage spell, but it isn't a magician's 'storing in the Duat'. Going in that trick at best feels like putting my hand in boiling water and at worst I need to regrow my skin afterwards. I didn't hurt myself grabbing your stuff so it isn't what magicians do. Second is that when you do magic the way they do to teleport you have to do it a very specific way or else you ask for trouble like failure or death or something. Tell me kid, did you open a portal with or near a pyramid, obelisk, or other such thing that is apparently 'Egyptian' enough?"

"I opened a door weirdly. I tried to do it since I got here to go home but I get really cold or really hot places instead of home. So if I'm not doing it like a magician, then what am I doing?"

Eda shrugged.

"I don't know. Anyway you want to come back to my place and meet my roommate? You aren't going to get any closer to figuring it out here and my place has couches and it is not like you have anything else to do other than get lost and possibly eaten by something."

…

In Eda's not at all humble opinion things had gone pretty well, at least until she lost her head. That sounded a lot worse than it actually was, and if she described what happened to the human before the fact she'd have freaked out as badly as she did when it happened in front of her.

She introduced Luz the human to King and Hooty and King was called cute and adorable against his wishes.

They broke into the conformitorium to get King's crown back and make the little varmit happy. Luz emphasized with the prisoners and she was rather uncertain about just leaving them there despite her 'weak nerd arms'. She couldn't fault her for that, it wasn't like she lacked empathy. If she didn't she would not be risking her life for a paper crown. It was just she was better at ignoring it for the betterment of those she cared about. She'd say the human would probably learn that some day, but that was kind of depressing to think about.

"It's not fair that they're all in here. They just want to be themselves. Why does everyone think that being a weirdo is so bad?"
Luz had asked.

She probably could have thought of some deep and meaningful explanation of how people fear the different, how power comes from control as a few makel a thousand cower, with a few snide remarks to give it flavor if she had the time, but she didn't.

But then she got her head cut off and there was a big old fight and the warden wanted to date her (...she was going to take a shower when she got home…) . She gave Luz her staff to fly away and she had wondered what were the odds of her actually getting far away and what were the odds she'd do something to 'help, or help, out of a sense of morality.

The mob of prisoners that attacked the warden, or were blowing stuff up elsewhere, suggested she started a prison riot.

She smiled as she watched some nose thing jump up and down on a bound Warden Wrath before turning to look at the human higher up, before she realized the girl was still in danger.

"LUZ!"

A dozen guards had just showed up in front of her. The girl, shaking, did not do the smart thing and hop off the ledge with her staff and fly to her, but point it at them unsteadily.

"Stay...stay back! I have magical power!" she bluffed so badly that Hooty could tell. "I'll...I'll flog you into frogs! I'll use my Patronus! Brisingr!"

The first sign of something not being right in that scene was Owlbert suddenly spinning off her staff and flying away in a panic. The second was her staff glowing red in several places, a red she had seen referenced by the House of Life as 'Isfet'.

The third was the blast of blue fire flames that suddenly spat out of her staff without a magic circle that engulfed the guards and everything behind them in a screaming, hissing, unnatural fire that hissed red smoke.

"Oh Titan use the shield spell!"

"No no try a water spell!"

"It's not working!"

Fourth was that Luz immediately dropped like a sack of bricks and rolled off the side, and was only saved from death by Owlbert reconnecting to the staff and lifting her up from her stomach, and even then she had to wait several very long seconds to tell that it was the case.

She stared at the burning stone fortress as Luz was flown over to her.

"Well, today was eventful."

…

"I'm hungry."

She was amazed that was the first thing she said when she woke up, but it was and she was immediately offered some sort of fruit by King the adorable. She thanked him as she took a bite of whatever it was and devoured it in seconds as Eda leaned against the doorway, holding her staff in hand.

"Wait Eda, what happened to your staff!? It's all burned and stuff, did the Warden use his fire breath on it?"

The older lady laughed.

"Kid, when would he have had a chance to do that, you had it the entire time."

Oh.

"Oh wait did I burn it somehow?! I am soooo sorry!"

Eda laughed again.

"You did it setting the Conformitorium on fire and by complete accident, so I'll let it slide."

Setting it on fire…

"Are you saying I did magic?!" She asked in amazement, staring at her hands in amazement. She did magic. She did magic!

"...Completely accidentally, but yes. Best guess on my end, and it is only a guess but it is one of mine so it is bound to be a good one, is that you manage to tap into some of that human magic I was talking about earlier. Probably with my staff as some sort of jump start."

"I though you said I wasn't one and that however I got here…" she began as Eda shook her head.

"Still different things. All humans can use that stuff, but most don't know how or even that it exists. Wasn't worth mentioning before because I wouldn't know how you teach it. They didn't exactly let me near the rugrat magicians back in Egypt after all."

She stood up, hands buzzing and eager to do something.

"Oh this is perfect! If I have magic I can open a magical portal back home…"

"Nope! Nada! Do not even think about it." Eda quickly interrupted.

"But…" she began, thoughts of her mom worrying about her quickly coming to mind.

"Kid you know what I do know about human magic? It doesn't work like my magic, meaning that you don't have a limit. If I run out of magic I can't do any more until I rest for a bit and build up more magic bile."

Magic what?

"What you did doesn't have that limit. If you push yourself too hard you'll burn yourself out like a raisin and die. You fainted by setting some guys on fire, what do you think will happen if you try to open a portal between universes with a power you don't understand?!"

She eeped as Eda nodded.

"Sadly human, you are stuck here for a while. Fortunately you are stuck with the only person who knows what the heck you just did to any degree and I have just enough experience to give you a crash course in not killing yourself. You should actually figure out what the heck you did the first time with the doors and your freaky packing powers to get home in my opinion, but while we figure that out I'll give you a general course on how not to kill yourself. Which, fortunately, becomes less of a problem the more you do it so it's just going to be me having you do things until you are so hungry you want to eat King or you fall asleep."

"Hey!" King complained.

"Me, eat someone that cute? Never!"

Eda laughed a little more.

"That just means I have to try harder. Anyway before I endeavor to teach you a magic so opposite of our own it seems to make reality hiss when you use it I should probably explain to you some basics before I forget them. Anyway this is all I remember about human magic. First of all it is apparently done best in Ancient Egyptian heirowhatits, but you can do it any human language like English or Klingon well enough, just less effectively and efficiently…"

...

The Hermes Cabin was, perhaps, the most important cabin in all of Camp Half Blood. Near everyone who ever went to camp had to stay at it until their parent claimed them. With the unclaimed, the claimed demigods of minor gods, and the generally large number of actual kids of Hermes the cabin was the largest. If you wanted to win Capture the Flag you were at a disadvantage without the Hermes Cabin.

Also if you wanted stuff that wasn't available in camp you needed the help of the Hermes Cabin. The camp might have internet but ordering things was a no-go because of all of the mist and security and stuff. The camp store had stuff sure but...it was never everything people could want or need. There was only so much space between the spare shirts, toiletries, prisms for generating rainbows, first aide kits, and other essentials. If you wanted stuff that was more 'want' and less need you needed to go outside the camp and the best at that were the Hermes kids. They were fast, they were sneaky, they were good with money, and even better at stealing. It was good business too: they got money or other things and they got to stretch their legs and get stuff. Now if only that would work to trade their services for good cabin inspection grades.

There was always talk at camp if the whole 'sneaking stuff in' was truly under the nose or if it was some sort of subtle testing and training crud from Chiron. No one was going to ask so it would always be just a theory. What wasn't a theory was that Mr. D didn't care and probably was hoping they all died while off seeking the luxuries that were not at camp like doritos and stuff.

Speaking of doritos and stuff.

"Okay so for Demeter Cabin we got that anti-dandruff shampoo, the new book in that lovey dovey lumberjack series, two new shade hats for the sun, three six packs of Blam Berry Blitz, yuk...we missing anything?" she asked a couple of her siblings who had accompanied them on this big expedition. With things as they were at the moment at camp...people wanted to stock on stuff before it all blew up.

One of her younger brothers looked over the list before shaking his head.

"I'm not seeing anything Lucera. I mean, I still think we should have grabbed some whipped cream…"

She tabbed her bat to the ground, a sharp tap to cut that one off.

"Connor and Travis already have a box of the stuff with the first two cans labeled 'Clarisse' and one for Drew. Planning those two dangerous pranks is why I'm leading this one and not them. Now the Ares Cabin."

Her name was Lucera, daughter of Hermes. Given...current events she was the third oldest in the cabin who were kids of Hermes after the Stoll brothers. There were a few older campers who were unclaimed or children of other gods...but that was a whole other mess that none of them particularly liked it when Mr. D got off his butt and made it 'clear'. At least they could agree Clovis son of Hypnos was probably a poor choice for missions like this. It wasn't like leadership questions.

"Okay for the Ares cabin we've got the doritos, the new game controllers after last month's axe incidents, the new cat tree for Gouger the 'secret' Ares Cabin cat, dried food for Gouger, a new pair of leather boots, their subscriptions of men and woman's health and muscles magazines, a swiss army for the new kid, and a hydro flask."

"Is the cat a secret?" One of her brothers, carrying a bag of cat food that was half his weight, groaned.

"Percy Jackson doesn't know about it and Chiron hasn't said anything, so yeah it is still officially a secret cat. Anyway the Athena kids wanted coffee. Twenty pounds is probably enough for a while."

"We should have swiped that new coffee machine too..."

She shook her head.

"Security was too tight and they already had a coffee machine. Last one that got broke was mysteriously replaced by someone that was or was not actually Athena herself so they don't need another one."

That happened on occasion when the gods decided to help their kids in small subtle ways that was not actually parenting but was...something. It was rarely ever advertised but it did occasionally happen and the demigods in question tended to notice it. Once she had run out of tampons and it was either because of the father she had never met leaving a new box for her after a night of her realizing she had forgotten to get more or Connor and Travis and she much preferred it being from the absentee father than those two.

"….Also we got the new dry eraser markers, the new books in military history, political history, nautical history, and two new volumes of some comedy manga I can't pronounce."

Manga that kept their original Japanese name were obnoxious. Just use the dubbed name that you could actually say. Be more 'My Hero Academia' and less 'Boku no Hero Academia' or be called obnoxious.

"Also bug netting, camera traps, and a jar of pickles."

She nodded.

"Those too. Okay Apollo Cabin wanted vinyl cd's that I can't believe actual stores are selling now but okay, new microphones, some new Star Wars crud for that new guy from Texas…."

"You know I heard something about Star Trek stuff burning the moment it enters the Apollo Cabin. Wonder if that's true?"

"…Guess Apollo saw T.O.S."

Two of her siblings apparently heard a rumor that Apollo didn't like Star Trek.

"…Well don't steal something trekky to find out, especially not mine. Touch any of it and I'll beat you with my bat." She tapped the bat to the ground with a clink to make that clear "Okay so after the Star Wars crud …..well I don't know why Yew wants these things but I'm not judging him to his face. Anyway I'll say the same thing about Beckendorf's three cases of Blam Berry Blitz but mean it a lot more because Beckendorf can drink whatever he wants and still be cool. Other than that from Hephaestus….some couch co-op games, a new HDMI cable, a new remote, a cooler, and a romance novel that reads like the Aphrodite Cabin wrote it."

The cabin didn't need stuff like bits of metal and tools as the cabin apparently provided all they needed. They did apparently need their romance novels that were more purple than a roman emperor though.

"Speaking of them….you got all of the clothes they wanted? High-end Gabriel stuff right?"

"Yep! I'm now wanted in three towns!" one of her sisters said far too cheerfully.

"….Good. Anyway…."

The sound of a distant roar made all of them flinch. She held her bat up.

"…I'll go check that out. You guys get the stuff back. Don't die."

At her order they promptly scuttered away with the loot and her shoes sprung out a pair of white angel wings as she took to the sky.

…

The roaring became a bit more clear as she approached a dock area with only a single boat and three figures present as miniscule shapes. One of them being a lot larger than the others, and being the one making the noise.

"YES! YES! THIS IS POWER!"

The one shouting was a massive humanoid being, several feet taller than a man and bulky with muscles. A Laistrygonian Giant, whose name she probably would struggle to spell in English or Spanish even without dyslexia.

The giant was currently doing a pose that made him look like he was a Dragon Ball character trying to power up, and the way his muscles were tensing and bulging made it look like he actually was.

"AH HA HA HA HA!"

She stayed out of sight of the giant, hiding behind an advertisement for stealth as she watched the giant continue to get stronger and stronger. Two others were with him, two humans who were so calm that they clearly were on side with the giant and not at risk of being eaten by it.

She didn't recognize one, but even from as far as she was she could tell who the other one was. Her fists clenched as tight as a bear trap.

Luke.

"I COULD KILL THE SON OF POSEIDON! I COULD KILL POSEIDON! I AM UNSTOPPABLE! I AM THE STRONGEST…." The giant words suddenly turned into a sound like a balloon rapidly deflating. The pale skin of the giant gained a red hue, rapidly darkening as the giant's skin bulged. The giant then exploded, releasing a burst of red wind and monster dust in all directions. Luke and the other one covered their eyes from the blast, and where the giant stood there was only one other thing left. Some sort of sticker that looked like a fist symbol.

Luke picked it up, looking a little bothered.

"Well that was unfortunate. If we could augment the monsters with these power glyphs we'd be unstoppable. I suppose it was too easy."

"…So can only Witches use them? That's a bummer….but I guess we could work with that." The other demigod pondered.

"It might just be the Monsters. Perhaps humans and halfbloods can use them without a problem. We'll need a test subject though…" Luke pondered as the other one took a very visible step away from Luke. Not that it would be enough to stop the traitor if he wanted to. He held a hand up.

"No, not you. I have someone else in mind."

And Luke was now looking right at her.

"Hello sister."

Yes, hello Beta Luz. One thing I've noticed about the Owl House is it has a fair bit of...gaps in what you can adapt. nineteen episodes can only get you so far, but I am comparing it to a twenty-one (main) book franchise like the Riordanverse and Pokemon's eight gens and a thousand a hundred and fifty one main series episodes so...so in interest in expanding the story's potential scope I brought in Beta Luz as another demigod.

Because frankly if you are going to have camps of half-siblings why not bring in the beta designs as fellow demigods of your lineage! Well except for Beta Amity and Beta Willow and Beta Eda and...well you get the idea.

All I'm saying this chapter is small and it needed more than just finishing off episode one or dealing with episode two which is not one of my favorite episodes. Anyway speaking of which chapter three covers the space that is normally held by episode two.

Also as a heads up Luz will obtain her glyphs and they won't be replaced by Egyptian Magic. For a while Luz is basically doing the 'awesome but impractical' dance with the later after all and needs something more reliable.