A/N: Did I power through this chapter? Yes but lord does it feel good sometimes to pound something out. Sometimes that rush just comes to you. Anyways this also isn't the final chapter. We still have several more to go and trust me, when the story is genuinely done I would make it obvious. I messed up last chapter with the ending. I should've made it much more clear that there is still things to resolve. After all, there's an aedra and a daedra loose out there somewhere. Dialogue heavy this chapter but It needed to be done because good lord, these kids have issues and need to get them off their chests. More dialogue to come, Luz still has things to work out but they're getting better. Or worse, from a certain point of view.
"I'm not satisfied!"
Amity shoots Luz a questioning expression not that the human could see it. They're still stuck on Luz's flying broomstick for another ten minutes or so until they can reach Eda's place. The human was quiet for the ride up until now but the sudden exclamation certainly threw Amity for a loop. She honestly though that Luz wouldn't say anything the whole trip not that it bothered the Blight. Clearly there's some major issues Luz has to work through still. Honestly Amity has her own rubbish to handle as well.
Trauma is certainly a bitch.
"What do you mean? We got Belos out of our hair and Kiki's done for good. Sh'rk definitely ate her. I think that's satisfying enough for now!"
"No, I mean, yeah I know that. But still! I wanted more! I just-I just don't know how. Does that make sense?"
"Absolutely not but I understand. Look, Luz, I bet you probably wanted there to be more with that whole ordeal but honestly, I think it ended the way it needed to. Kiki's Belos' assistant. She was never a real threat, more like an obstacle on the way to greater threats. Heck, we're fourteen and we kicked her butt. We essentially helped Belos fire his secretary."
Luz huffs. The hollow feeling of victory has no sweet release. For everything to culminate in a royal job firing doesn't feel right. She doesn't like that. It's not fair.
"Listen, sometimes this is just how things go. Trust me, I know what it's like to live with unfairness. That's just life. Sometimes the people you hate get their comeuppance and sometimes they don't. Really all you can do is live your life and go on. Is it satisfying? Not always. But we're alive which is more than I can say for Kikimora. And Belos? You heard him. He basically gave us a free pass so long as we don't mess with his personal interest which is fair, honestly. We leave him alone he leaves us alone."
"...Yeah," She says after a moment. All the fiery, hot air seems to left her lungs. Luz is ready to simply relax for the time being. There's still a madgod out there somewhere and apparently another deity with an interest in her as well. She'll deal with them when the time comes. For now, she will enjoy the peace that she can.
"You're right. Damn it! I'm not satisfied but I guess I'll get over it eventually."
The Blight nods in satisfaction, "Right. That's the way to do it... maybe even the only way. So Luz, you kinda broke-down there earlier. I know it's been like, what, thirty minutes but do you wanna talk about it?"
"You know what? I do. But we also need to discuss somethings too, missy!" Amity winces at the light poison in Luz's tone. She knew her human wouldn't take her daedra business well. Luz continues, "But that'll be later. I just want to chill out for a while. We can talk about this stuff when we're not all, you know... all emotional and junk."
The Owl House finally appears in view. Hooty's long since passed out and any life within is as well. Just looking at the cozy, rundown shack of a building makes Amity's skin seem to melt from her bones. It's a far cry from the tiny palace she once called home but right now it's better than anything else. Titan, who knew a sleeping bag on a hard wood floor could seem so cozy right about now?
Luz pulls the broom down by the door and the both of them slip inside quietly. Edric's passed out on the sofa with a bunch of stinky bottles of Appleblood around on the floor and Em is... somewhere else but surely nearby. Those two always party with each other. Where one is the other is not far away. Amity rolls her eyes and tip-toes up the stairs with Luz to their room. They both slip into their sleeping bags and mumble a near inaudible 'good night' before the exhaustion of a long and emotional day catches up with them. Weariness hits their bodies like a charging beast and the cold embrace of sleep takes them away from the waking world.
Luz dreams of a city on fire.
Chaos. There is chaos everywhere. People scream and shout but she cannot make out any of the words or danger. All she can feel is the fear and the terror and the looming threat of an enemy she has yet to meet.
Fire rains from the sky and strikes buildings and people and the shouts grow louder before seeming to lessen yet the feeling of terrible, gnawing feeling only rises. She's trapped in a town square or an old world market of some kind. Crowds of people race around her but the trampling seems to kill more than the fire does. The heat makes her blood feel like its boiling. Bodies smash into her, arms flail and she faintly hears inhuman growls and voices rising above the terror.
And then the screams go quiet as an army of monsters tears into the crowd.
They're beasts of unrecognizable form and size. She sees things like classic devils with sharp claws rip people's guts out and fest on them. Another creature like some mix of a velociraptor and a crocodile leaps into a crowd and tear their bodies asunder like a blender. Claws rip into flesh and terrible fangs bite clean through bone. Something knocks her to the ground, a fleeing man of wealth who doesn't make it far. A ball of fire consumes his head and the body falls to the ground sans the appendage. Through the roaring inferno of fire that forms a wall in the middle of the ground she sees a dark robed man. It takes her only moments to realize it is not a man. Spikes jut out from the bald, red-skinned head. Black face paint seems to accentuate the terrible, snarling and all to self-pleased expression of violence clear on the demon's face.
It locks its terrible eyes with hers and smiles with a mouth filled with rotten, pointy teeth. I raises a hand and she can feel the air charge with magic. She closes her eyes and screams as a blast of thunder sounds... but she feels no soaring pain. She cracks an eye open to see the smoldering corpse of the devil lifeless on the ground.
A figure hovers over her like an angel. It is a man wearing basic, clergy-like robes but simply looking into his eyes melts all the terror away from his awesome display of magical might.
The eyes are filled with nothing but kindness so foreign yet so familiar it feels divine. A complete opposite of the demon priest that tried to murder her only moments ago.
"Child, we must go." Her saviors' voice is gentle and calm as he lifts her from the filth of the earth and guides her towards a large chapel of some kind.
"W-who are you?" She manages weakly. The man smiles gently and says his name but she cannot hear him. Some force doesn't want her to know. Not yet.
Strange... his eyes remind her of a ruby jewel.
"Uggghhhh," Luz groans as she awakens from another prophetic dream of some kind doom or the other. What's the purpose of this one? Hell if she knows. She doesn't even know the significance of the other few she's had. What were they? Something about a being made of crystals living in a land called Lyg and a dream of the stars and some divine dragon? That sounds about right. Now she can add 'immanent daedric disaster' to the list.
Great. Just great.
Luz pushes herself up and groans the whole way. All her muscles protest and all her bones pop in not very good way. God her head swirls like she just stepped off of a bad carnival coaster. She looks and sees Amity's sleeping bag is empty and then peeks out the window to see the sun high in the sky. Crap. It's probably noon by now not that time really matters anymore. She's got no school to go to, they're all burned down, and she's got no adventure to seek out. It's a... hollow feeling to have no immediate responsibilities.
It takes her some odd minutes to wake up enough to head to the bathroom and make herself somewhat appear to be human.
A voice sounds out as she nears the closed bathroom door. It's Amity asking her to come in. Luz feels a strange churning in her gut but slowly opens the door.
"Oh." Luz says simply. Amity is standing in front of the mirror with a pair of scissors that she hacks away at her hair with. Amity briefly side-eyes her before returning to her work in the mirror. "...Hair got messed up by the Abomination. I figured I'd cut and dye it not that my mom can stop me. Hah!"
It's a surprisingly hollow laugh. Luz knows that Amity had a... complicated relationship with her mother in particular and now the woman is as good as dead with the insanity that rotted her brain away just as much as her eyes. Luz still shudders at the image of those hollow, infected eyes as she was helping the twins bandage them up. At least the insane woman is docile and mostly just around as a presence. Eda's not much better either.
And so the children inherit the broken world.
"Would you help me dye my hair?" Amity gestures to a salvaged box of a shade of pink dye no doubt gifted by Ed and Em from one of their journey's into the Bonesborough ruins. "It's easier to do it with two people."
Luz agrees. She's always wanted to touch the Blight's hair.
Edric is awake by the time Luz finishes helping Amity dye her hair and by the way he holds his head in his hands its clear he's got a terrible hangover. He looks up at them as they come down the stairs and gives Amity a wolfish, shit-eating grin once he spots the new pink hairdo Amity sports proudly.
"Wow Mittens... really advertising the lesbianism now." He shoots a quick look at the human before boring into his sister's eyes, "Are you advertising to someone... specific?"
Amity growls and rolls up a sleeve as a threat but the older twin laughs off her attempt at intimidation. Witches have small arms in general and its been a long time since Amity was a Grudgby captain. Her arms are more like pool noodles now rather than the slightly larger pool noodles they used to be. Amity huffs and looks around with a quirked eyebrow.
"Where'd Em go?" Edric can't answer as he doesn't know either. Hooty decides to make his presence know by slamming his door open and rushing into the living room with all the usual ADHD he embodies.
"Hoot! Right here, hoot!"
The demon opens his mouth wide and upchucks a slimy, shivering ball that uncurls to reveal a heavily traumatized Emira. Hooty winks at that witch, "Thanks for the good time last night... HOOT!"
He curls back into his door and slams it shut. Who knows what 'a good time' with Hooty is but they all can agree it probably isn't. Everyone slowly turns to the spit-covered Witch who seems to shrink smaller and smaller as the seconds tick by. Amity, as wise as a goddess, excuses herself to the kitchen and Luz does too leaving the sole male Witch in the house to shame the every living shit out of his equally hungover, but far more of a lightweight, twin sister.
King is trying to make breakfast. Trying, however, smells like burnt eggs, which it is, so Luz bans the tiny king from the kitchen.
"You can't make me! I'm King! Your King! Obey me!"
"Yeah?" Luz mocks, "Well, yesterday I overthrew an empress which is bigger than a king so I say I'm top dog now."
"Ugh, fine. You win this time, evil human! But know I'm coming for you so, nyeh!"
Amity snorts as the toddler scampers out of the kitchen. A thought suddenly comes to her mind.
"Hey Luz... since Eda's all crazy now and Lilith is a disembodied spirit... does that make you in charge now?"
The human pauses in the middle of cleaning the burned pans and a look of abstract terror crosses her face as the awful, cruel reality comes to her. "Oh my god... am I the house mom now?! Ughhhhh, dammit! Now I need to be responsible! Amity, growing up sucks!"
Amity consoles her with a simple pat on the back before helping the human fix the damage of King's 'attempt' at breakfast.
They work in simple silence but it's obvious they both want to say... something but struggle to start any topic. Luz bites the bullet and decides to take the fall.
"So... was Belos right?" She knows that Amity knows what Luz is referring to. Luz also knows that Belos obviously isn't telling the whole truth of things with Amity's apparent daedric connections. Still... she quickly learned that the old emperor speaks in equal amounts of truths and lies. The Blight is silent and she pauses her cleaning to stare at nothing in particular. Even still Luz can see the conflict in her eyes.
"I..." She releases a deep and weary sigh, "Yeah, In a way I guess I am. But look! It was never my intention to-to invite a madgod into our lives!"
Amity's voice almost cracks. The Blight gives Luz her full attention now and the human knew that Amity would never purposefully bring terrible tragedy to so many people but the sincerity in her eyes paints the impression that there's more to her story than an apparent daedra summoning gone wrong.
"It was supposed to summon a servant for me. I stole this old and stupid book from my dad's private collection and thought that 'daedra' was just an old timey term for demon. Ugh, I don't know where I went wrong but, I thought I followed the instructions perfectly, but I got switched with what was summoned instead of binding it to me." A mix of anger and defeat crosses her face, "Apparently I botch the simple summoning so hard I invited an actual god rather than a daedra... But I got better!"
Luz figures she's referring to the nipple-ringed monster. She... feels somewhat angry. Amity, even by accident, summoned a terror too great to comprehend then tried again anyways?! It just feels so... selfish. Is Amity's pride and ambition so potent that she'd sacrifice so much to simply advance her own powers?!
...Now Luz feels bad; not because of the lives lost but because Amity also called those problems and terrors onto Luz too.
"I-I... Please don't be mad. When I was in that other world, The Shivering Isles... I guess I came undone? That place... It forces you to confront things and change. You can't stop going forward, or look behind you, because then you'd be dead. I know-I know I'm selfish. And I know I'm more than that because I simply don't care about what happened anymore while I was gone. I had to survive because, out of everything I lost getting there, I had only a few people I wanted to come back to... Luz, I know I can't be forgiven and that I've harmed you but I went through hell and let myself change because I wanted to come back to you again."
She laughs hollowly and tears her eyes away. "I did everything because I wanted independence and someone to show it to. All my life I was what was predetermined for me. Sure I had leeway, but It was always a falsity. Something shiny dangled at the end of the string. I wanted this power for me... but it came at a cost. Luz, do you know what a Bile-sac is to a Witch?"
The human struggles. How do you follow up on a question with the weight of all that leading up to it?
"I... guess it's an organ that supplies magic power to a Witch?"
Amity shakes her head. Clearly Luz doesn't understand the full picture.
"It's not just that. Sure, anatomically, it's just an organ that gives us magic. But culturally? It's something that defines us. Witches are judged by their power and skill, I'm sure just the same for humans. If you want to get anywhere, be anyone you need to demonstrate you have usefulness. The Boiling Isles are small and everything, even with magic, is limited. If you want to thrive then you have to be useful. Otherwise you're dead weight and should just die." The last word erupts with venom and weight Luz cannot comprehend. "Something happened to be in the realm of the madgod. A terrible, awful woman took my worth away and it broke me down into nothingness that I had to claw my way out of."
A shaking hand comes to rest above her heart. Amity still can't muster the courage to look Luz in the eye. The human, however, is as patient as a saint and as quiet as a mouse. Her time to speak is not here yet.
"An elf captured me. She tortured my and she-!" A heavy sigh, "She operated on me and removed my Bile-sac. Then I became dead weight. Useless, something my mother and family would throw out like trash. I couldn't accept that. I'm Amity Blight! I was supposed to be the greatest Witch of my generation! I wanted to be and the bitch took that from me! ...But I didn't give up. I learned a new way of magic. Something others would call heinous and foreign but to me it's all I could do. I'd rather be a pariah than worthless. So I pursued my new skill and no, I don't regret it. What I regret is that my ambitions... caused you pain, Luz. I know I can't be forgiven, but Luz, will you let me try? Can I be useful to you?"
The Witchling finally looks Luz in the eyes and is taken aback. There is some anger in the human, naturally, but Luz isn't a monster. She may be a cold killer now with slipping morals, but the human loves her friends as much as family.
"Amity... fuck I really, really don't know what I should say. Terrible things happened to you. I don't know the full... shebang about Witch culture and magic, but clearly all of those expectations got to you. But you survived! Dammit, It hurts saying this but I think I understand the whole thing with daedra now; you have to change. That's their whole thing and for better or worse, goddang, do you have to change. Amity, you're so strong and as mad as I am at you... I'm not throwing you away regardless of how useful you want to be."
Luz takes a step back and leans against the counter and blows out some air to relieve stress. This whole situation is so messed up and everyone is even worse.
"...I don't blame you for everything that happened, that would be really unfair of me. I blame Sheogorath for everything terrible that happened to me and the people I love... including you, Mittens." Luz smirks at the flash of annoyance that crosses the Blights face, "You did some really messed up stuff. I did too. We need to be open with each other otherwise we'll explode and probably die. Christ I really don't know what's right or wrong anymore. I feel like I'm a bad person but I just don't really... care, I guess?"
Her eyes glance down at the cursed sword dangling from her belt. She doesn't even remember putting it on. It's automatic now. Like a piece of her body the sword is just as important as an arm or a leg now and she knows that's because it is a parasite. It has latched onto her very soul and changed her at a level so deeply it can never be undone. Luz used to be a happy-go-lucky ball of excitement and good vibes. Then trauma and terror and a stupid cursed sword came into the picture and all those human morals she held onto vanished like a burning log in a campfire. Looking back on the Luz that used to be... the current Luz thinks she used to be weak.
"I know I should feel awful about being so callous but with the way things are now I guess that's really how I have to be. Amity... I think I'm a bad person now, but I'm not evil. I care so much about you and Eda, hell I'd burn a house down for Hooty or King or even Ed and Em! We're all kind of a family now. We're all survivors who know each other, all the good and bad, and we have to look out for one another. I tried really hard to hold onto the person I used to be... but we all change. We adapt or we die and leave the few we care about behind. I think you know what I mean very well, probably even better than I do, really."
The girls feel like a weight is lifted off their shoulders. How long had it been there and when had it been placed upon them? Maybe it is actually a gradual series of weights built up by days, weeks and months of real life. They both held all the nasty, terrible feelings of worthlessness and weakness and anxiety and trepidation inside their hearts and that is a poisonous burden. But to release that? To expose the 'darkness' with someone who can understand that pain and burden?
That is true liberation.
Not to release the demons but to embrace them as not all demons are bad. To some they are good and to others they are bad and that definition changes with each individual. It is simply maddening. Luz and Amity feels something like a gentle warmth spread from their toes and into their brains. This feeling is called revelation but some call it enlightenment or understanding. It all simply... clicks into place.
They understand what the madgod is if only just partially. The great Daedric Prince is an idea given form. A force of nature. Madness is liberty. True freedom of expression. Madness is like a flood of a broken dam and everything, equally, within its path is destroyed under a flood of genuine, uncaring and wholly great freedom of expression which isn't to say that the man who destroyed the dam isn't an asshole. Because he totally is.
Be weak and resistant to change and die. Be strong and embrace it and you live.
Who says madness has to be incoherent shouting of a mind gone wild? It's perfectly plausible to be a lunatic with a clear mind. Luz thinks, looking back on it, those with muddy minds are the real insane ones all along!
A laugh escapes Luz's lips. It is involuntary but so joyous and sweet and it simply oozes out. Were her mami here she'd probably freak out and call the doctors and have the younger girl locked up somewhere. The weak would fear the laugh and call her demented but she would only laugh more and call them the true insane ones. Amity, the angel, isn't afraid of the demented laugh. In fact she laughs with her! She gets it like no one else would. She understands Luz and the human understands her. So they embrace and laugh together as one. They are free and free together.
At some point they have to let go but the sensation of the warmth of their touch lingers. They return to their cleaning with minds so fuzzy and clear at the same time. Their work is not yet done. There is still more to come but as they are now... they both think they'll be okay.