Emperor Belos announcing that he had taken an Empress came as a shock to nearly everyone on the Boiling Isles. It was a shock because the little knowledge people had about the kind of being that was Emperor Belos didn't tell them that he was something that had an interest in sexual relations; a shock further still when it was announced that the Empress was a human, of all things, someone he apparently met when he ventured to the Human Realm to unwind after vanquishing the army of Undines that launched an invasion of Penglai; a shock even further still when, four years later, it was announced that they had sired a child together, the first half-witch, half-human child of its kind and what was once thought to be a genetic impossibility.
It was less of a shock, but still a shock, nonetheless, when it was announced that Emperor Belos and his Empress had filed for divorce roughly around the ten-year mark of their marriage; coincidentally, it was around that time when the famous incident of all ice cream and alcohol disappearing from the Boiling Isles for three months started. Regardless, the Empress, who had only made a handful of public appearances, returned to the Human Realm, and it was assumed that she took the princess with her until the day it was announced that the princess would be making her public debut on the Boiling Isles. Everyone was abuzz with excitement and rumor-mongering, for they knew that such an event would be their very first glimpse into what life would have in store for them after Emperor Belos' eventual passing. There was a lot of pressure on the population as a whole to have it go off without a hitch, and no one was feeling it more than the people assigned to host the princess' debut.
It was because of that pressure that Amity Blight, the youngest child of the family who had been assigned to host the celebration, had been forced out of the house to mill about town until it was closer to showtime. Her parents said that they didn't need her distracting the caterers or the other people hired for the day, and they definitely didn't need her messing up their pre-game rituals, so when she got blamed for Edric and Emira stealing hors d'oeuvres from the kitchen and replacing their apple blood with the low-brow lager they saved for splashing on poor people in the country, it was decided that she needed to leave. She was fine with that, of course; being in the house that day would be even more insufferable than normal, so if she could limit the time she spent there, the better for her. She didn't want to go to call up Boscha because she wasn't looking to make herself feel worse, and she didn't want to go to the library because she knew that they hadn't finished putting in the new binders, and there was no need to waste her library time on inferior binders, so her only option was to try and pass the time in the playground.
That was where Amity ran into a giant otter. It was just sitting on one of the swings minding its own business, but it was still a giant otter, nonetheless. Amity felt that she would have been better off simply ignoring it, but it was sitting on her favorite swing, so against her better judgment, she approached it with a tepid, "What are you doing?"
"Swinging, I guess." It took the otter talking for Amity to realize that it wasn't actually a giant otter, but a dark-skinned girl wearing an otter suit. It answered a few questions, yet it raised a great deal more.
"Don't you have to actually swing on the swing to swing?"
"I'm too sad to swing, I guess."
"Then why are you even on the swing? Also, let's stop saying 'swing', already."
"I'm on the swing because I'm a sad otter, and I'm trying to be a happy otter, but I'm just a pathetic otter, at best."
"Come on, I'm sure you're not that bad."
"Ya-huh. I can't really care about anything, so that's why I'm a pathetic otter. Right?"
"That doesn't—" It took Amity a second, but she figured out what seemed off about the girl's words. "Are you trying to say apathetic?" The girl just stared at her for a few seconds before pulling the hood of her costume over her face.
"Great. Now I'm a dumb otter, too. Today sucks!"
"Well, why are you so sad, anyway?" The girl shook her head in a frenzy.
"That's part of stuff Daddy said I can't talk about right now, and that sucks, too!" The girl kicked up some dirt and nearly fell out of her swing in the process, and the only reason she didn't fall over was that Amity, much to her own surprise, kept her balance straight.
"I guess you're a clumsy otter, too." If her siblings were there, they probably would have laughed at her for making such a corny joke, so imagine her surprise when the girl actually laughed at the joke, itself.
"I'm still a sad otter, though," the girl said the instant she stopped laughing.
"Yeah, okay." The girl started looking sad again, so Amity took it upon herself to sit down in the swing next to her. "Whatever's making you a 'sad otter' involves your family, right? Probably them being stupid, I bet."
"Mega stupid."
"Oh, that's one of the worst kinds of stupid. I should know; everyone in my family is like that every day. My sister's annoying, my brother's slightly less annoying, but only because he directs a lot of it to my sister, and my parents, they just suck so much. That's just how a lot of families are, though: just a bunch of people making your life miserable without even really thinking about it." And that was all it took for Amity to be a sad otter in her own right, whatever that even meant.
"Other families are like that, too?"
"I just said so, didn't I?" It made Amity feel even sadder to have to say something like that; she was going to have to draw a lot of Azura fanart when she got home to cheer herself up.
She was still planning on doing that, but when the girl patted her on the head with one of her padded otter hands, the need to do so died down significantly. Coincidentally, her face started feeling warm, making her wonder if she was coming down with something, all of a sudden.
"I'm sorry your family sucks. You're sorry my family sucks, right?" Amity nodded her head while taking care not to dislodge the girl's hand. "Okay, so maybe if we try and make each other happy, we won't have to think about being sad, right?"
"Um, maybe?" The girl beamed at her as she kept patting her atop the head. At some point, she added her other hand into the mix and started using her head like a bongo drum, and when Amity put a stop to it, she found herself laughing more than she thought she would. "So I guess you're a rhythmic otter, too?"
"Yep yep yep! Wait, I'm not actually an otter, though. I'm—"
"Amity, what are you doing with some weirdo otter girl?" The good mood Amity had established with the girl had been sliced and diced like the gall bladder of a venomous tatzelwurm in the preparation of a fancy meat sandwich. And naturally, the one holding the serrated knife was Boscha, because of course, it was, and Skara and Amelia were even with her because of course, they were.
"I mean, I'm not with her, with her. I'm sitting here, and she's sitting there, so, yeah," Amity said. The girl looked sad to hear it phrased like that, but Amity was sure she'd get it, one day.
"Oh my God, and here I thought Willow was the dorkiest thing this side of the Isles," Boscha said, Amelia rolling her eyes a bit at the mention of Willow. "Offense intended, by the way."
"Now I'm a sad otter again," the girl whispered, tucking her head into her suit like a turtle.
"What do you guys want, anyway?" Amity asked, not having a good time to try and console the girl.
"Eh, we're just killing time until your party tonight," Skara said. For some reason, the girl perked up a bit at that. "Please tell me your parents aren't going to be playing any human music; that stuff's totally lame. I mean, Human Music is okay, but the rest is garbage." For some reason, the girl perked back down at that, for lack of a better term.
"If there's anything good coming out of Emperor Belos getting divorced, it's that we're probably not gonna see anymore dumb human stuff," Boscha said. "Their music is stupid, their food tastes gross, their indie games do nothing to make themselves stand out against their contemporaries and appeal to a mainstream audience—"
"Don't forget how dumb their shows and movies are," Amelia interjected.
"Yeah, that too! Like this one we were watching the other day made no sense! Seriously, why does Ross, the largest friend, not just eat the other five?"
"Probably because humans are dumb and lack any amount of self-preservation. Not like plants, of course."
"Yeah, humans are even dumber than plants! That's great!" Boscha said with a laugh. "That's your cue to laugh, too!" Skara and Amelia joined in on the laughter like the toadies they were; the only good thing about it was that they were so caught up in their own nonsense that they didn't even notice Amity wasn't laughing along with them. Nor did anyone but Amity seem to notice how tightly the girl was gripping her swing to the point that it seemed like the chains were cracking inside of her hands.
"Yeah, yeah, humans are dumb. How about you try picking something that's not such an easy target?" Amity asked.
"Don't tell me how to live my life! If I wanna laugh at humans, then I'm gunsta laugh at them."
"Yeah, she's gunsta, Amity!" Skara said.
"Almost makes me wish there were some humans around for me to try this on, but I guess it's better that we don't have too much of their stink floating around. At least the Empress left before she could stink things up too badly, right?"
It was at that moment that the girl jumped off of her swing and punched Boscha right in her third eye. She fell to the ground with a thud as she cried out in pain, Skara and Amelia observed the entire thing in shock, and Amity did everything in her power to hold back just how happy she was to see something like that transpire. She had dreamed about this exact situation more times than she could count, and the only difference that the reality of it all offered was that she wasn't the one doing the punching.
"Fm'latgh, mnahn'hlirgh!" She also hadn't imagined her or anyone else shouting at Boscha in R'lyehian, of all things, yet that was exactly what the girl was doing.
"I am not a faulty toaster! I don't even know what that means!" Boscha said as Skara and Amelia helped her up; Amity wasn't an expert on R'lyehian yet, but she had a feeling that Boscha didn't translate things correctly.
"You're a jerk, and now I'm an angry otter!"
"More like you're a dead otter!" Boscha ran at the girl and the two fell to the ground in an impromptu wrestle. Biting, pinching, noogies, hand placements that would have been interpreted sexually if they were a few years older, they were playing all the major hits, with Skara and Amelia cheering Boscha on through the whole ordeal. Even ignoring the small amount of kinship Amity was feeling with the girl that may or may not have been related to Willow, Amity didn't want to see things escalate to the point where someone could get seriously hurt, so against her better judgment, she jumped into the mess and did what she could to try and pry the girl off of Boscha, even as Boscha and the other girls told her to "stop helping the enemy".
It took some heavy pulling and strength of will, but Amity eventually succeeded in prying the girl off of Boscha. Part of her, anyway. Her arm, to be exact, which had somehow gotten dislodged from the girl, otter sleeve and all. It was quite the weird sight to behold, especially since the girl appeared to be far too young for her limbs to be removable.
It wasn't her arm, though. Rather, it was some sort of sleeve made of flesh and skin, and when Amity looked at the girl again, she saw that she had removed said sleeve to reveal a black, elongated tentacle writhing about where her arm should have been.
The utter contrast of the sights before her almost made her sick.
"Hey, can I have that back? My daddy says that I'll get better at keeping my skin attached when I get older, but it's really hard to grow back, so can I have that back?" The girl asked it all with a completely innocent tone of voice, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary with what was happening.
"She's a freak! Some kind of demon freak!" Boscha was of the opposite mindset, and Skara and Amelia showed a similar thought pattern when they screamed in kind. Amity would have joined in if she weren't so confused by the situation, a feeling intensified by how sad the girl appeared in response to all of the screaming.
"Don't just stand there! Let's go before she slimes us or whatever freaks like her do!" Boscha said. Amity tried to protest, tried to do anything in objection to Boscha, but before she knew it, Boscha had chucked the girl's arm in her face and dragged Amity away from the playground with Skara and Amelia following close behind; her hand felt disgusting to the touch, like she was fondling a pot of boiled cabbage.
Before she knew it, the four of them were far away from the playground, and the girl with the tentacle who dressed like an otter was little more than a sad-looking speck. It was only the second time something like that had happened to her, yet it was still two times too many.
Once Boscha finished giving Amity the rescue she hadn't asked for, there wasn't anything Amity wanted to do for the rest of the day, especially not with Boscha and the rest of them, so she went home, taking care not to cross paths with her parents in the middle of their pre-game rituals. The rest of her afternoon was spent drawing Azura fanart as a means of blowing off steam, but even that didn't go as well as she had liked when so much of her mind was occupied by how she was once again powerless to keep someone even remotely happy. In that regard, it was probably better than things went terribly with her; she was a nice girl, and she deserved better than to get involved with someone like Amity, even if she was a weird tentacle girl dressed like an otter.
Hours went by without anything eventful occurring, and soon enough, it was time for the princess' public debut. Amity was stuffed into a purple dress that only her parents thought looked good and thrown into the loud and obnoxious affair that was their party. Amity's parents were talking politics with all of the other adults who were hoping to use the night as an excuse to curry favor with Emperor Belos, Boscha and the rest of her group were talking Amity's ears off with some sort of inane drivel, Edric and Emira were running around tying the shoelaces of waiters together in the hope that they would fall over into plates of spaghetti, it was a general smorgasbord of things that made her sick to her stomach, although that could have also been the Nemean lion sliders she was certain were undercooked.
"—so it's like, why are you having me put in all this work for an invisibility potion if it's not even going to smell nice? Who wants to drink a potion that smells like ass, you know what I mean, Amity? Amity? And you're not listening," Boscha said.
"Look at that, you are observant," Amity said while the two of them hung out against a wall with Skara and Amelia.
"Huh. Didn't realize it was too much to ask for the girl who saved your life from a freakish freaky freak thing to get a little bit of respect."
"Yes, because all it takes to be a hero is to run away with your tail between your legs, right?" Skara and Amelia each let out a small laugh, Amelia even spitting some of her salad onto the floor, but they both stopped the second Boscha shot them a glare with two of her three eyes. Her parents truly were having her keep good company, Amity mused.
At that moment, all reverie and merriment of the celebration was interrupted by the front door of the manor flying open and Kikimora, assistant to the Emperor, standing in front of everyone. Kikimora used her magic to make a blood-red carpet roll out from nowhere, and with another quick spell circle, hellish trumpeting and the most garish of guitar riffs began to fill the air. Melodies that melodic could hardly be interpreted as anything but the signal of their Emperor's arrival, and sure enough, the ground outside contorted into a giant mass of flesh that fixed itself into the shape of a horned, demonic skull with large fangs and black flames where its hair would be. Ghastly wails cried out in tandem with the skull opening up, and the surrounding lights illuminated the figure of Emperor Belos for all to see. He had traded out his usual clothes—save for his mask, gloves, and cape—for a white tuxedo with coattails that rolled onto the ground, but it was hard to see him as being any less imposing than usual even if his bowtie wasn't tied properly.
"No, wait for the ramp, my little orr'e," Emperor Belos said as the jaw of his vessel slowly stretched out toward the ground. "It's not your turn yet, and besides, they love the slow ramp. Nothing gets the masses more excited than a ramp just slowly extending down." He appeared to be speaking to someone, but Amity, and apparently the rest of the guests, as well, couldn't see who it was, nor could anyone understand why he didn't realize that the microphone on his lapel was picking everything up. Of course, if no one was willing to bring up how he failed to properly tie his bowtie, then it stood to reason that no one would dare say anything about that; it helped that he wasn't wrong about all of them loving the slow ramp. "My faithful subjects. How are we all doing tonight?"
"I love you, your majesty!" Someone cried out.
"And the Emperor acknowledges your existence, random citizen," Kikimora said. Said random citizen let out a cheer and Emperor Belos let out a sigh.
"You know, ever since my… divorce, there's been a lot of talk about how I've lost my touch; how I've gone soft; how I'm not the evil dictator you all know and fear and just unstable enough for a coup to be put into effect. Well, guess what? That's all a collective of completely stupid thoughts to have because I am just fine! Kikimora, tell them how many attempts on my life I put down this month."
"Thirty-seven, my lord."
"Thirty. Seven. Could an emotionally distraught man stop thirty-seven attempts at starting a coup? No, no he could not, which is why I'm fine. Sure, I've gained a few pounds over the last few weeks, and I've spent more time in bed with my soaps than I probably should have, and I've gone just a tad light on the recent torturings, but I'm still operating at full capacity here! I got myself dressed for tonight, didn't I? Kikimora, didn't I do a great job dressing myself for tonight?"
"Yes, for the most part," Kikimora said. Her eye went pale the second the words left her mouth.
"What does that mean? Do you not see how great I look? What could possibly be—" Emperor Belos looked down at himself and finally took notice of what everyone was trying to avoid bringing up. "My bowtie is askew. Well, this is embarrassing. Here I am making a big thing about how I have it all together, and I'm just strutting around with this whole mess." Emperor Belos went at his tie with the ferocity of a lion going at its next meal, but nothing he did made it look any better than it did before, and it sometimes came out looking worse. "Come on, what even is this? I can subjugate an entire civilization under my heel, but I can't tie a bowtie? This is just like me, though. Magic and totalitarianism are fun and easy, but anything outside of that is hard and confusing, so no matter what I do, it all just falls apart at the seams! Just like this stupid tie!" Suddenly, he stopped everything he was doing, and his bowtie slipped out of his hands and fell to the ground.
He then started crying. It was a disturbing sight to behold, both because of how uncharacteristic it was of the man and because it wasn't believed that he was even physically capable of crying.
"I'm a failure of a man. I couldn't do something as simple as keeping my family together, and now it's all fallen apart. Just like my tie. And all I can do is try and dress it up like everything's okay, but that's only how things look on the surface. Just like my tuxedo. Oh God, why is my formal wear such a perfect metaphor for my life? Why did me being a snappy dresser have to come at such an expense? It's not fair!" Down at ground level, Kikimora could be seen rolling her eye, and Amity couldn't blame her for that. The crying was unsettling enough, but hearing him wail like a child just made it all rather hard to look at. Amity was no different in that regard, although a part of her hoped that it would last long enough for the party to just be canceled, outright.
In the midst of all of that, a small hand emerged from the shadows of the Emperor, who was now kneeling as he cried his heart out, to pick up his bowtie and tie it around his neck, the bowtie now looking as immaculate as the rest of his outfit. The hand then patted Emperor Belos on the head, and with that, he stopped crying and wiped the tears away from his mask.
"Yes, that's right. I'm not completely ruined, am I?" Belos asked, slowly getting back onto his feet. "Yeah, I'm not out of the game just yet. I still got it in me to rule over all of you with an iron fist if I so choose! There's still evil coursing through me, and I'm not going to let something like the love of my life leaving me forever get in the way of that!" Amity wasn't sure if it was right for them all to be cheering for that, yet here they were, doing just that. "But enough about me and how great I am, because tonight is supposed to be about the little girl who just helped me regain my footing! Ladies, gentlemen, and those of unspecified designations and species, I present to you your crown princess and my special little girl, Luz Thanaroa Noceda!"
The darkness behind Emperor Belos was illuminated with bright light and finally revealed to everyone their crown princess. She was a young, dark-skinned girl with round ears—a side effect of her human heritage—whose face was covered in the ceremonial markings of the eldritch gods and was dressed in a white ballgown that fluttered about from what was clearly ethereal silk woven into it, a look that would have been a little more mesmerizing if there wasn't a tutu awkwardly draped over it. Her father's magic hoisted her up onto a throne of fire and brimstone and, thanks to the ramp finally reaching the bottom, they made their way to the ground level, the princess energetically waving at everyone the entire time.
"Didn't think our future Empress was going to be a clown, but here we are," Boscha said as she and her father made their way into the manor.
"Knock it off, Boscha. Not like she's that bad, anyway," Amity said. She sincerely meant the last statement, as there was something about the princess that she couldn't help but like. Something familiar, in fact.
"What, you think she's gonna hear us from all the way over there? I bet those ears of hers don't even work." Boscha laughed at her own joke and made Skara and Amelia follow suit. "But yeah, she's the princess, so we gotta respect her, even if she looks like a dork."
"Kinda reminds me of that kid from the park today," Amelia said, her eyes focused entirely on her salad.
At that moment, Amity could have sworn that her eyes had flown right out of their sockets. It certainly felt that way, and what was worse was that no one else seemed to be reacting the same way.
"Hey, she kinda does. They've got the same dopey face and spindly little arms," Skara said, clearly not putting it all together.
"And that face paint she's got on reminds me of how that girl was speaking R'lyehian. Weird that she'd do that when only Emperor Belos and his associates ever make a habit of using it," Amelia said, clearly not putting it all together.
"'Cause she was an idiot, that's why. Who gets all mad from people like us talking smack about humans, anyway? That'd only make sense if you were human, but the princess is the only one of those left around here," Boscha said, understanding the situation just as poorly as her friends. Once again, Amity couldn't help but think about just how good her parents were at choosing friends for her, especially with how it took Emperor Belos and Princess Luz making their way to the center of the ballroom for them to don expressions even remotely similar to Amity's own.
"The princess is the weird tentacle otter girl from the park, and we treated her like a freak for that," Skara said.
"You think?" Amity asked.
"The princess is the weird tentacle otter girl from the park, and I said she was dumber than a plant," Amelia said.
"You think?" Amity asked.
"The princess is the weird tentacle otter girl from the park, and I got into a fight with her, threw her skin in her face, and basically told her it was good that her mom left her!" Boscha said.
"Yeah, no kidding!" Amity said. With the three of them now aware of what was going on, Amity felt free to let herself freak out over the situation she had put herself in. Her body felt cold, her mouth was trembling, her breath was getting staggered and rapid, she honestly thought she might die if Emperor Belos didn't get to her first for having a part in upsetting his daughter. It was a moment like this that made Amity remember how her parents had instilled in her the notion that Blights needed to face their problems head-on and without fear.
That was all the motivation she needed to head for the nearest exit.
"Hey, you can't leave us!" Boscha said as Amity continued to do just that. "We need to come up with a plan for—"
"Hey, I remember you guys! You're the girls from the park!" It was the innocent voice of Princess Luz that distracted Boscha and allowed Amity to make her exit into a connecting hallway. Peeking behind a wall, she saw the princess sitting atop her throne in front of Boscha and the rest of them, Emperor Belos standing between them with an eerie calm oozing from his body.
"Is that right? Are you the girls my daughter had a rather… unfortunate encounter with, today?" Emperor Belos asked. The lively atmosphere died in an instant as everyone became fixated on the confrontation at hand. His tone was far calmer than it had been all night, yet somehow, it was now at its most unsettling.
"Uh, um, uh." Boscha kept muttering things of that nature while Skara and Amelia shook in fear next to her.
"Come now, child, speak. I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt in assuming you're not the quivering whelp we all know you to be, so speak. Now." The air seemed to vibrate around the Emperor and the princess; less so from the princess, but it was still there.
"We didn't mean to—If we had known who she was, then—"
"LIAR." Emperor Belos bent down in an arch with such speed that the air crackled around him and Boscha and her friends fell to the ground; if Amity was ever sure that someone was going to die, it was now. "I might not have what falls under the legal definition of eyes anymore, but I can tell when someone is lying through their teeth, which I also don't technically have."
"W-What?"
"My daughter, whom I love more than life itself, wasn't supposed to leave the castle until tonight, yet she decided to sneak out on her own to be away from me. That was bad enough on its own—" Emperor Belos turned away from Boscha and back to the princess, "I'm not still mad about that, sweetie, it was completely my fault—" Princess Luz looked like she was going to say something, but it went unsaid as Emperor Belos immediately snapped back into his old position, "but you just made it infinitely worse. Why? Because I had to be cursed with the sight and sound of my daughter crying about how her first real encounter with girls her own age ended with her being brought to tears. Do you find something amusing about my daughter's tentacles? Do you think it's fun to tear at her skin sack while it's still in the process of molding?"
"W-What?" Emperor Belos bent down so far that he slammed into Boscha's head and pushed her onto the floor; the sudden impact was somehow hard enough to knock Skara and Amelia to the floor, as well.
"Say something else!" Emperor Belos said as the shadows began to lengthen and fire started to shoot out of the floor. "Say something with even a modicum of intelligence to explain your misdeeds!"
"W-Wha—"
"Stop. Doing. That! Have you really received such incompetent parenting that you've been taught it's okay to answer a question with a question?" Amity could see Boscha's mothers doing their best to slip away from the crowd as Boscha and the rest of them started crying. "Oh, I'm sorry, did I hurt your feelings? Doesn't feel too good, does it? A little too late to draw from my pity well, though!"
The princess started shouting something in R'lyehian, but rather than fumble her way through a translation, Amity decided to stop observing and get back to running away in terror. Nothing was on her mind other than "I'm gonna die!" and various variations of that being repeated over and over again, and she wasn't in the mood to try and come up with anything else. All she needed to do was find a way out of her house to at least put off her impending demise for an hour or so.
As such, it stood to reason that she would run into Edric and Emira on her way to who knew where, the two of them trying their hardest to get splotches of spaghetti sauce out of their clothes; it was nice that someone's night went well, she supposed.
"Whoa, slow down, Mittens, where's the fire? Also, you know where we can find some club soda or something?" Edric asked while wiping a napkin on his pants.
"Your brother was supposed to have some on hand for this exact situation, yet here we are, without a single bubble to our name," Emira said, mimicking Edric's actions against her dress.
"I don't have time for this. I really, really, really don't have time for this," Amity said. Amity tried to maneuver around Edric and Emira, but Emira slammed her leg against a wall and blocked off her escape route, because of course, she did.
"Let me guess: you and three stooges picked on someone whose parents are really high up in the government, and now they're throwing a fit about it?" It was correct, but also incorrect. "Oh, Mittens, when will you learn not to do stuff like this?"
"Says the girl who just spent the night getting people to trip over their food."
"Hey, I helped!" Edric said. "Those shoelaces didn't tie themselves, you know. Sure would have been helpful if they did, though. Also woulda been kinda cool."
"Will you just—I don't have time for this! I gotta go, now." Amity tried and failed to move Emira's leg out of her way and continue her escape, much to her own annoyance and aggravation.
"Now now, this is a good thing. Getting chewed out for your mistakes can build character, Mittens. Of course, Ed and I would never let that happen with us, so you've gotta make up for our share of the fun. Who knows? Maybe a little verbal thrashing will help loosen that stick that's been jammed up your butt your whole life."
"I can't do that if I'm dead!" Amity quickly looked around and breathed a sigh of relief; she wasn't so loud that she revealed her location to Emperor Belos, but that didn't change the fact that she needed to get away from everything even sooner than possible.
"Come on, you're not gonna die just for messing with some kid. It's not like you messed with the princess, or anything," Edric said. Amity couldn't see the look she was giving, but based on how her face was feeling, she was certain that it was contorting in a way that created an image that was truly hideous with its conveyance of terror and anxiety. The way that Edric dropped his napkin and Emira put her leg down at least told her that they figured out what she was getting at.
"You bullied the princess, didn't you?" Emira asked.
"Well, I was mostly just adjacent to the bullying, and a lot of it was unintentional because we had no idea who she was because no one had ever seen her before and she was wearing a cute otter suit that went well with her face, I don't know where that came from—"
"You were still part of it, Mittens! Rationalize all you want, you were still part of it!" Edric said in a tone as panicked as the look on his face.
"I know that! That's what I was trying to tell you!'
"Well, say it faster!" Emira said. "This isn't just you and your goons messing around with the daughter of some major coven witch, Mittens, this is the princess! The heir to a throne currently occupied by a man who can wipe us all out with a wave of a hand!"
"I'm aware of that!"
"The thing he hates the most is anyone or anything that offends him in even the slightest way. Remember that time that a barista at a Witchbucks didn't use soymilk for his coffee, so he got bad gas, and then the next day, that place was turned into a crater? That's going to happen to you!"
"And us, too! Don't forget that the entire franchise was destroyed overnight!" Edric said. "Mittens made the princess cry, and now we're all gonna die because we're related to her." As if Amity needed another reason to be mad at herself. "Or at least go to jail forever, but I don't want that, either! Neither of you should have to go to jail, and more importantly, I'm not gonna be able to make a shiv to defend myself. I'm terrible with my hands! That's why I wanted those shoelaces to tie themselves!"
"Yeah, well what about me? Do you know how long someone as sarcastic as I am would last in prison? Such a long time," Emira said. "We need to go. Now."
"That's what I've been trying to do, you know!" Amity said. Edric and Emira looked genuinely apologetic when she said that; it figured that it would take something like this for them to show some compassion for her. "Where are we even going?"
"Far Far Away."
"Yes, but where, exactly?" Edric asked.
"No, the place called Far Far Away. It's as the name implies, and it's protected by an ogre god who's rumored to be the strongest being in the universe, so it's perfect!" Emira said.
"Yeah, except for the fact that all citizens are required to be up to date with pop culture references to live there. Mittens wouldn't last five minutes there!" Edric wasn't wrong, but Amity still wished that he phrased it differently. "Wait, I think there's another place that's about the same distance away. Starts with an 'M', has a lot of talking monsters—"
"You mean the place with the crazy butterfly demon that tried to destroy all magic for insane reasons?" Amity asked.
"Good point. We want to live, but we don't want to live that badly," Emira said, a rare comment that Amity actually agreed with.
"We could go to the place with the talking frog people. Or the one with the talking duck people. We'd probably have to tell them we're hairless monkeys, but I think it could work," Edric said.
"We don't have tails, Edric!" Amity said.
"So we say that we cut them off!"
"Or that we're apes, you blockheads," Emira said. "Look, it doesn't matter. We just need to leave right now before Mittens' mess catches up to us, so let's go!" Emira hoisted Amity onto her back, grabbed Edric by the hand, and started running down the hall faster than Amity could have ever dreamed to do.
"It's probably because you're in a panic, but there's a closer exit due west of where you're going." Everyone and everything came to a halt as an unfortunately familiar voice filled the air. Amity knew that Emira knew that not turning around, while the more desirable option, was pointless in the grand scheme of things, so all three Blight children ended up being turned around to see Emperor Belos standing in front of them and Princess Luz sitting idly by in her throne behind them. Completing the terrifying image was Boscha, Skara, and Amelia standing underneath the princess' throne, shaking and quivering like an infant Cerberus pup experiencing hellfire for the first time.
"G-Good evening, your majesty," Emira said "Looking very sharp tonight, that's nice."
"Hope you've been enjoying the party; our parents might suck, but they know how to throw a banger," Edric said. "Unless you're not enjoying yourself, in which case our parents suck at throwing parties as much as they suck at, um, not sucking?"
"Were you two at the local playground this afternoon?" Emperor Belos asked. Edric and Emira shook their heads in unison. "Begone from me, then; I have no business with the likes of you. Leave the small one, though." For what it was worth, Edric and Emira hesitated for a few seconds before complying with Emperor Belos' demands to the letter; Amity felt a little happy to know that she had proof that her siblings at least tried to love her before she died a grizzly death.
"You think I'm going to kill you, don't you? Good assumption on your part, child," Emperor Belos said. "It was the same assumption that these three whelps came to when I confronted them, and just as is the case with you, they aren't wrong to assume that I would wring each of their little necks for what they did." Boscha and her group let out a cry as they kept shaking about underneath the princess' throne. "However, I'm not going to do that." The utter suddenness and unexpectedness of the reveal made Boscha and her gang stop shaking so abruptly that they all fell over.
"Y-You're not gonna kill us?" Amity stammered out, the words sounding so foreign against her tongue. "Why not?"
"Because of my daughter, that's why." Emperor Belos turned his head up towards his daughter, who was looking down on them all with a nervous look on her face, one that Amity was certain she had figured out the meaning of.
"I-If I'm going to die, then I guess it makes sense that it be by the hand of the one whom I slighted." Amity bowed down and prepared herself for what was to come, essentially just an extension of what she had been doing for the past few minutes that would ultimately be the last ones she would ever experience.
"What? No, no, no, stop that!" Princess Luz said; it seemed that the princess wanted to look Amity in the eyes as she snuffed the life out of her. "Please stop looking so sad! I'm not gonna hurt you! Any of you!"
It was hard for Amity to keep herself from falling over in shock, but she somehow managed to do it, much to her own surprise.
"Yeah, and you would have known that already if someone had just come right out with it," Princess Luz said, shooting the Emperor a glare.
"I was getting to that part. You have to keep them on their toes with an air of menace, you know," Emperor Belos said.
"I don't want menace, Daddy, that's your thing!" The princess started pouting and the Emperor's body language started getting frantic. He erased the princess' throne with a wave of his hand and brought her down to the ground, and when he saw that she was still pouting, he started patting her head while offering up a slew of apologies until she stopped pouting and started drumming her tiny fingers against his forearm.
Amity had never felt so confused before in her short, but not as short as she thought it would be, life than she was at that moment.
"S-So we're not in trouble?" Boscha asked, her and her group still clinging to the floor for dear life.
"No, you're not in trouble," Emperor Belos said with a sigh. "If it were up to me, I'd have your limbs pulled apart by oxen running in different directions, force-feed you your own skin as it's slowly peeled off of you, and then take a small tea break as I come up with other punishments for the rest of the week." Amity let out a small whimper that was immediately followed by the princess slapping Emperor Belos on the back. "But it's not up to me, it's up to my daughter, and even though an important Belos Bulletin of mine made it clear that there's no value in showing mercy to your enemies, you and your families all get to live. Be happy for that." Princess Luz stuck her tongue out at the Emperor before walking over to Boscha and her gang, the girls looking up at her like starving kittens.
"W-We're really not in trouble? E-Even though we were s-so mean to you?" Boscha asked.
"Yep. I mean, I'm still mad about all the stuff you said, but you're saying you're sorry, and I think Daddy scared you a bunch, so we're good. Beating up everyone who doesn't like you might be what Daddy likes to do—"
"And it's an effective strategy!" Emperor Belos interjected.
"—but I don't want to do that, that's not fun. Besides, it's not like you stabbed me or tried to overexcite my egg repository, so I don't know if it's really worth it to hate you all. I'd rather spend the effort starting over and being friends, wouldn't you?" Princess Luz's ethereal silk ballgown fluttered about in the air like a colour out of space as she gazed down at the three of them, as if her clothing was trying to accentuate the kind words she was trying to get across to them. Amity saw and felt the innocence and sincerity she saw and felt from the girl when they first met in the park, and judging by the way their faces lit up, she could tell that Boscha and her friends were seeing it and feeling it, as well.
"""Princess Luz!""" If there was any lingering doubt about it, then the way they threw themselves onto her feet in tears squashed it all.
"You're so wonderful and forgiving! We don't deserve your kindness, so thank you so much for blessing us with it!" Boscha cried.
"Human music is actually really good! I love 'C-Moon' by Paul McCartney!" Skara cried. Amity also liked Paul McCartney, but now wasn't the time for that.
"I'm sorry I said humans were dumber than plants; you can be just as smart as plants if you want to be!" Amelia cried.
"I tried a bagel the other day and I actually liked it! No, no more lies; I loved that bagel! Thank you for allowing me a chance to do that all over again, Princess Luz!" Boscha cried.
"Um, you're welcome. Also, you're all getting snot on me. I know that sounds like a weird thing to complain about when my tentacles are covered in their own mucus membrane, but I don't care," Princess Luz said.
"Oh, we're sorry! Please use even a fraction of your graciousness to forgive us!" Skara and Amelia mirrored Boscha's cries to the best of their abilities, but as it turned out, Boscha was far superior when it came to brown-nosing.
"Um, should I be groveling, too, your majesties?" Amity didn't know why she decided to draw attention back to herself, but it felt weird of her to not do that.
"Yes," Emperor Belos said.
"No!" Luz shouted, making the Emperor recoil, of all things. "You guys, too! Stop rubbing all over me like a cute clowder of kitties! And stop with all the dumb titles, too!" The Princess—Luz, rather—kept surprising Amity at every turn, and she didn't know what to think of it all.
"I mean, if you don't want us to grovel, we can stop groveling, but I don't know if I can do something that hides how greatly I revere your personage," Boscha said, Skara and Amelia nodding along with her as all three of them stood back up off the ground.
"No, that's not—Fine. Daddy says it's best to do what makes your subjects the most comfortable. I don't wanna think about you like that, but still, go ahead." Boscha and her gang cheered and jumped about at Luz's proclamation, and Emperor Belos nodded with joy at his daughter's actions.
"Um, me not having to grovel is one thing, but when should I start doing my own apologies?" Amity asked.
"There's no need for that, girl," Emperor Belos said. "Did you not think about why you were so lucky to not be threatened in the same way that they were?"
"I thought it was best not to push my luck any further than it already had been."
"Smart girl, very smart. Still, the actual reason for that is because my daughter says that you were the only one who wasn't picking on her, even trying to diffuse the situation at a certain point. That is the truth, right?" The walls started converging into flesh around them and the Emperor's shadow gained solid mass as it encroached on Amity's body.
"Y-Yes, sir! It's the truth!" Amity braced herself for the worst, but the worst ended up being a shadowy pat on the head before everything around her returned to normal. All of it went unnoticed by the rest of the people in the hallway as Luz kept trying and failing to get Boscha, Skara, and Amelia to give her a little space.
"Then it's all good. It's all good because you aren't a rotten little heathen of a thing." That couldn't be any further from the truth, Amity mused; if not that, then she was just spineless, which was arguably worse. "Still, if you want your own personal emotional reconciliation, then go ahead and have it. Children whose names I have no interest in learning! Leave the premises at once!" The girls all jumped back and hit their heads against the wall.
"Daddy, stop scaring them! Could you guys go back to the ballroom, though? We can hang out in a bit, I promise," Luz said.
"Okay!" Skara said.
"Can do!" Amelia said.
"You're the greatest thing to ever happen to me!" Boscha said, her comment far louder than the other two. They all kept saying more things of that nature before Luz finally managed to get them to run off.
"When all is said and done, child, you're the kind of person my daughter should have in her company. Do your best to not make me change my mind about that." That was the last thing Emperor Belos said before he contorted into a pillar of flesh and melted into the floor. All in all, it was still surprising that Amity wasn't dead, not that she would ever dare to challenge that.
"Hello." Luz's voice took Amity out of her own head for a moment, and a moment was all that was needed.
"H-Hi," Amity said. It was all she could bring herself to do as she stood multiple feet away from Luz, not making a single attempt to get closer to her.
"Please don't tell me you're scared of me. Or worse, that you're gonna start crying and groveling like those girls did."
"I won't, I won't! I'm too confused to degrade myself like that! And I'm not scared of you, I'm just, um, confused? Wait, I already said that."
"I guess you're not a liar, then," Luz said with a laugh. Amity tried to follow along without making it sound too awkward, but she didn't know how successful she was at that.
"I'm just, I don't know, confused that I'm still alive? I heard all the stuff you said about how you didn't want to hurt anyone, but I thought I was going to die, which is why it was so hard to process. I mean, you're the princess, and I was mean to you—"
"No, you weren't! You were the only one not being mean to me, and I'm so, so, so, so happy about that!" Luz interjected.
"Y-Yeah, so you've said." Her face was feeling warm again; she needed to remember to take a spoonful of panacea with her chocolate milk before she went to bed that night. "Still, I was just standing there, not doing as much as I could have been doing, and that's the kind of thing that can still get someone mad at you. Like your father. Who is the most terrifying person I have ever seen in my life."
"Eh, once you get to know him, he's not that bad." It was surprising how much Amity found herself agreeing with that. "You get why I was saying he sucks, though, right?"
"Y-Yes? Yes, yes I do." Amity still couldn't be certain that she wasn't in the middle of an elaborate trap, yet she kept going into it, regardless.
"Seriously, who goes that far with the whole overprotective dad thing, anyway? I swear, if I had actually been allowed outside of the palace before today, I still wouldn't have any friends, and it'd be all because of him."
"At least he's not making you be friends with people you don't even like like my parents do. I told you that my parents suck, right?"
"If those are the girls they make you hang out with, then that's probably the right thing to think." Luz laughed again, and that time, when Amity copied her, it felt truly natural; a probable good sign. "Oh, but if you think my dad's bad, then you should just never meet my mom!"
"The Empress is that bad?"
"The worst! She's always coddling me like, never letting me dress myself when we go to parties, making sure my skin is tied down extra tight so suction cups don't poke through, like I'm a baby, or something! And she's way worse with Daddy, too! He'll have you thinking that he's the biggest guy around, but Mommy will always shut him up whenever he's being stupid, and then he'll throw a tantrum like a little kid!"
"Are you serious?" Amity wasn't even trying to contain her laughter at that point.
"Super serious! One time, she was holding her slipper up, and she—" Luz cut herself off with her own laughter, and after a few seconds of that, it was clear enough to Amity that she wouldn't hear the end of that story; she was okay with that, though. "But you know, every day with Mommy and Daddy was still lots of fun. They always knew how to make laugh together better than they could apart, and even when they'd fight, they'd always make up and get back to loving each other by the end of the day. But then they forgot how to do that, and now? They're divorced."
All of the levity in Luz's voice disappeared in an instant, and with it came tears welling up in her eyes. Amity could only stand there and watch in a state of empathy.
"I don't get it, Amity. I know that parents fight sometimes, but why did they go so far with it this time? Daddy's always talking about how strong he is, but he couldn't do anything about this. Now they're talking about me being with Mommy most of the time and only being with Daddy some of the time, but I don't want that! I just want us all to be together all the time like we used to be!"
Luz's shadow was writhing about beneath her feet and the walls around them appeared to be melting, all in tandem with Luz's sobbing. The same environmental effects her father used to invoke fear were now being used to just invoke a sense of sorrow and pity. None of it was anything Amity enjoyed seeing; she didn't like seeing it on Willow almost two years ago, and she didn't like seeing it now on Luz, nor did she enjoy the thought of not being able to do anything about it any more than before.
Nothing about it was enjoyable, so Amity pushed down her base instincts and closed the gap between the two of them with a hug.
Please stop crying, please stop crying, please stop crying! This is super nice, but it's also super embarrassing, so please stop crying! was the general train of thought running through Amity's head. Soon enough, she assumedly got her wish when the walls stopped melting and Luz's shadow stopped writhing about as if it were alive; she saw that as her cue to let go, though she took a little longer with it than she thought she would.
"I—I'm sorry if I overstepped by doing, you know, that, I just didn't—I don't like it when my—when someone I don't hate is sad, and I don't hate you, I actually kind of like you and it's not just because we both have dumb stuff going on with our families? Not completely, anyway? I don't know, I just—Did you know my brother and sister were going to run away with me when they thought your dad was gonna kill me?" Luz shook her head. "Yeah. They spend all their time either bugging me or causing trouble that they always get away with, but as soon as they heard I was in trouble, they didn't even hesitate to try and help me. I was too scared for my life to think about it, but it was really nice, and it showed me that despite all of our problems, they actually love me, and I think it's the same with you! Even if your parents are being stupid and are doing stuff that makes you sad, that doesn't mean they don't love you! Just because the way they feel about each other is different now doesn't mean the way they feel about you is any different, so, um, I don't know if I should tell you to just not be sad at all, but please try to be less sad!"
Before anything else could be said, Luz hugged her back so hard she thought her bones were going to break.
"Sorry, sorry! Are you okay?" Luz asked. Amity spent several seconds gasping for air, yet in spite of that, she still managed to give her a tepid thumbs up. "Okay, great. Also, thank you. That helped a lot; really did a lot to put things in perspective."
"Good to hear," Amity said between long gasps of air.
"I'm serious! It was so nice, even nicer than the other stuff you said when I was a sad otter. I've never had a friend try and help me like that; I've never had a friend do anything for me because I've never had a friend. Not one my own age, anyway. Lilith is my friend, but she's super old—like, forty, or something—and she always likes to play this game where she spends as little time around me as possible that's really only fun for her, so if we're gonna be friends, then I don't want to play that game. That is what this is, right?"
It was too much to go along with that idea. Luz was a nice girl, she didn't need to get dragged along into all of Amity's problems, both the ones stemming from her family and from herself. She would just end up getting hurt at some point, and if Willow was anything to go by, Amity would be the one to do the hurting, and then they'd both just be alone again.
"Yes. We can be friends if you want to be friends." Yet she still ended up saying that. She knew it would just end badly for both of them, but she wanted to be her friend, regardless. She didn't want to live her life only getting along with the people her parents told her to get along with; granted, it would be hard to imagine them objecting to her befriending the princess of the Boiling Isles, but Amity wanted it to be her decision, not theirs. A part of her couldn't deny the idea that she was being motivated by a desire to do with Luz better than she had done with Willow, but she didn't care; either way, she liked Luz Thanaroa Noceda, and she wanted to be her friend.
Luz Thanaroa Noceda responded in kind with black liquid shooting out of the skin around her chin. A little bit got on her face, unfortunately.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" Luz pulled a decorative handkerchief out of her pocket and dabbed it across Amity's face.
"It's fine, really."
"I swear, that never usually happens! I just got really excited, you know?"
"I get it. Sort of."
"It's not blood, by the way, it's just ink. Well, an ink-like substance derived from blazar nuclei mixed with plasmic resonance. Daddy says it's actually quite flattering to spew it on people, but I just think—"
"Please stop talking," Amity interjected. Luz did just that as she finished wiping her off and pocketed her handkerchief, her ethereal dress fluttering slightly beneath her tutu. "Do you want to go back to the party? We can probably see a waiter fall into a plate of spaghetti if we're lucky."
"Oh, I've always wanted to see that! Let's go!" Luz grabbed Amity's hand and started dragging her through the hall. The ink-like substance incident of just a few seconds ago made her remember that there was a slithering tentacle underneath that hand, but she still held onto it dearly, any and all feelings of confusion having long since vanished.
Even if it was all going to fall apart one day, at the very least, Amity wanted to hold onto that moment for as long as she could.
The chorus of "C-Moon" awoke Amity from her sleep with a smile on her face. Her dream about her first meeting with Luz had given her a blissful sleep, one that made her feel ever fortunate that their chance meeting had evolved into an eight-year-long friendship that got better with each passing year, in spite of the limited time they could spend with each other. She summoned her scroll from its pocket dimension to shut off her alarm and saw that she had a few text messages from when she was still sleeping.
Hey guys, Dad and I still have some of our kodoku left from last night. Wanna play with it? Come on, Amity, I know you love this stuff! was what Luz texted.
SAY SOMETHING, ALREADY! HOW DARE YOU NOT EVEN HAVE THE DECENCY TO KEEP THE PRINCESS ON READ! was what Boscha texted.
You ever think that she might be sleeping? was what Willow texted.
Oops! Sorry, Luz texted.
You have a lot of nerve making the princess apologize for something, Willow! Boscha texted.
Yeah, I don't really care, Willow texted, Boscha following up with a string of expletive emojis.
Get a room, you two, was what Amelia texted. The two then threw a series of texts at Amelia and left the conversation, presumably to go to the group chat they had with Amelia where they always tried and failed to get her to take back her accusations.
I just got up, but yeah, let's meet at the clubhouse later, was what Amity texted.
Yay! See you later, Choco-Mint! Luz texted almost a millisecond after Amity's text. Amity laughed before stowing away her scroll and getting out of bed to change.
If that dream meant anything, it was probably a prelude to another great day with the girl she cared about the most in the world.