A/N: Hey, remember when I said I hate making these characters suffer, but sometimes have to do it for the plot?
… This chapter hurt me deeply to write.
Enjoy!
Lucia lazily flipped through the pages of Beast Keeping 101, keeping her phone beside her and anxiously awaiting Amelia's call, either that she needed help, or that she was finished with another uneventful patrol.
The Noceda girl felt especially bad considering that not ten minutes after Amelia had left, her mother had stepped out to pick up groceries, leaving her and Luz alone together. Had she just taken the chance tonight to sneak out, she'd have been able to join her girlfriend and provide backup, but instead she was on stand-by with the book, in case Amelia needed to identify a foe and a weakness.
As she drifted through the pages, eyeing monstrosity after monstrosity, she zoned out a little, not really seeing what was one the pages anymore. Something had been bothering her lately, and she couldn't put her finger on it, but she knew it had to do with Luz. Was there something she wasn't telling her hermana?
Blinking to force her eyes to refocus, Lucia turned her head to see her sister working at the coffee table beside the couch where Lucia sat, working on Macaroni art of all things. A new medium, for sure, but not unexpected for someone like Luz. She sighed, and turned her attention back to the open volume on her lap, and blinked at the entry.
It was the Changeling again. The same blurb about how it was a shapeshifter, and how it took the place of children who had died. She'd originally scoffed at the idea, but after fighting those other blobs that turned into some of the stuff that really wigged her out, she'd been a little more open to the idea of a monster capable of taking someone's place.
That, and none of the creatures they fought seemed all that intelligent. More like animals or beasts. If these Changeling's existed, they had to be incredibly smart to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. She doubted that there were any around, but reading through the passage again tingled her paranoia.
She shut the book suddenly, trying not to let those thoughts overtake her. Her family was fine. There was no way her Mom or her sister were secretly monsters from whatever hell these things came from. There was no reason to believe it.
Lucia made a face and clenched her toes. There wasn't a reason to believe that, right? She was just being paranoid? It's not like her family was acting at all strange? She ran a mental checklist of all their behavior, and all their recent conversations, and came up blank for her mother. As for Luz…
She furrowed her brow as she came to a sudden realization. Sis. That's what Luz had been calling her lately. Not hermana, like she used to. Like a veil had been lifted, she realized she couldn't remember the last time Luz had said something, anything in Spanish. Not a peep to her, or their mother.
She called Camila "Mom" instead of Mamá or Mami.
A cold feeling settled in her stomach, but she was quick to deny it. Luz had to have said something. She'd have noticed if her darling little sister had been replaced by a monster, surely? Trying her best to stifle her growing panic, she reminded herself there was a very easy way to solve this problem.
"Oye, hermanita, ¿cómo es que no has dicho nada en español últimamente?" Lucia asked, forcing a smile on her face as she looked to her sister.
Luz looked up from her project, and sent her a dazzling smile. Lucia inwardly begged for her to respond, speak Spanish or answer in a way that showed she'd understood. Instead, Luz opened her mouth and asked, "What was that, sis?"
Her false grin twitching and threatening to fall altogether, Lucia tried again, "Le dije, ¿por qué no ha estado hablando español? Vamos, dile a tu hermana mayor que entiendes lo que estoy diciendo."
Luz just looked confused, and a little worried, like she'd just walked into a trap. Which she might as well have, as Lucia let the act drop and snarled. Not giving the thing that was wearing her sister's skin a chance to run, she sprang from her seat and clamped a hand over her wrist in a vice grip, refusing to let go even as the thing began to fight against her.
"Lucia, what's going on?" It said in Luz's voice, and Lucia bit her tongue to keep her emotions in check. She pulled what must be a Changeling to their feet, even as it began to cry out, "Lucia, you're hurting me!"
The older girl forced back tears as she pulled and yanked the creature to her room, slamming the door behind her. How could she not have noticed? What kind of sister was she for not seeing this? Was Luz even safe?
She pulled the Changeling's arm, making it trip over its feet and topple to the floor. Lucia grabbed her baseball bat from beside her bed and stood over the creature with a foot pressed against its stomach, giving it one last chance, "Luz, te lo ruego, si eres tú, ¡solo di algo para demostrar que entiendes lo que estoy diciendo!"
The Changeling squirmed, choking back it's own tears, hands gripping the foot on its abdomen and looking up at Lucia. "I-I don't understand!" It sobbed, panic lacing every inch of its face.
Lucia lifted the bat above her head, and ignored the beads of tears running down her own cheeks, "Fine, I'll speak in a language you can understand. Where's my sister?!"
Understanding flashed in the beast's eyes, and it seemed to be having some kind of meltdown, "I don't know!" It choked out, thrashing against Lucia's attempts to keep it down.
Lucia swung the bat, purposefully missing it's head and hitting the floor beside it, "Not good enough! I want answers! If you don't start saying what I want to hear, the next one is going through your brains, got it?!"
Understanding the position it was in, the Changeling stopped fighting against her, and tried to compose itself, quietly sobbing. Lucia began her line of questioning again, "How long have you been wearing my sister's form like a disguise?"
"Si-since June 1st." The creature gasped out.
Lucia didn't like that answer, but saw no reason it might be lying. That was the day Luz left for camp. Putting a bit more pressure on the creature's chest, she asked another question, "Why did you come here?"
Lucia tried to ignore that the Changeling still looked like Luz, and had tears and snot running down it's face. She tried to tell herself this wasn't breaking her heart. This wasn't the girl she knew.
"I-it's in my nature. I find an empty place in a family, and I fill it. I can't survive on my own for long." Was its response, but that just led Lucia to worry even more. An empty space. That's what Luz was to this thing.
"Okay, final question, and it better be a good answer. Is my sister safe?" Lucia tightened her grip on the bat, hoping to whatever god was listening that this thing could give her some answers she wanted to hear.
The Changeling squirmed under her foot again, fighting back panic as it was rising inside of them. "I never met her! I took her form from her pictures, but-"
Lucia shook her head rapidly, "Don't say it," she said in a shaky voice.
"-I'm sorry, but if I'm here it can only mean that-"
"Don't you fucking say it!" Lucia screeched, lifting the bat to bring down the death blow.
The creature looked up at her, what appeared to be genuine sorrow in their eyes, "I'm sorry, but your sister… Luz… is dead."
Lucia grit her teeth and closed her eyes, but that didn't stop the dam from breaking. She tossed the bat aside as she cried angry, bitter tears, throwing herself at the one who dared play messenger, grabbing the Changeling by the shirt and punching it hard in the face. It was out cold in one solid hit, leaving Lucia to scream incoherently at the body, too wracked with grief to act on any other impulse.
She collapsed beside the Changeling, curling in on herself as she let everything she was feeling out onto the floor, weeping for what she had lost until she couldn't scream and cry anymore.
At some point, she regained some form of her senses, and picked herself up on her knees. She still had a monster to take care of, but she didn't have the strength to do it alone. Dragging herself up to her feet, she stumbled, half blind from swollen, irritated eyes down the hall to where she left her phone, using speed dial to ring for Amelia.
When the Changeling awoke, it was tied tightly to a chair with rope, and watched over by two sets of eyes.
Amelia looked it over, pressing her hands to its face and stretching it's cheeks, probably checking for any seams in an illusion.
"Did you have to bring the witch into this?" It groaned, eyeing Amelia suspiciously, but seeing it awake made the girl back off.
"Elf." Amelia corrected, crossing her arms.
"Witch. You'll have to trust me on that one." The creature coughed, spitting a bit of blood from its mouth from where Luz's punch had made her bite her own cheek. Looking around, it recognized that they were in the garage, stacks of various things the Noceda family had been holding onto surrounding it from every side.
Amelia processed this information, then let out a disappointing sigh, "Dammit. I was a lot cooler as an Elf."
"Focus," Lucia grunted, eyes still puffy from having a good cry. Her trusty bat was back in her hands, and she was sorely tempted to use it on the thing, but seeing as it had kept Luz's form even after being knocked out, she wasn't sure she wanted to be wanted for the murder of her own sister.
"We've been talking while you napped," Amelia said bluntly, ignoring that the nap had been violently induced. "And we want to make a deal."
"A deal? What, do I do something for you and you promise you'll kill me quickly, or something?" The Changeling gasped out, not buying their words for a moment after Lucia made it clear she would have opened it's head a short while ago.
"The Deal," Lucia said stiffly, "Is that you'll take us to wherever my sister's body is, in return for the chance for my family to properly bury her, and if I decide I believe you had nothing to do with her… death, you get to go free."
The garage went silent, as Lucia lost her strength after this moment, and tried to hide her sniffles. Amelia put a hand on her shoulder, trying to offer any comfort that she could.
"I never said anything about knowing where a body was. I told you, I never saw her." The Changeling insisted. "You wouldn't want to see it anyway."
"You can apparently sense whenever someone… dies, so you can take their place, right? So can't you work it in reverse? Like some kind of sonar? Pinpoint where that person died?" Amelia asked, having been filled in by Lucia on what this being could do.
The uncomfortable shifting the Changeling started to do prompted the two girls to believe they'd hit the nail on the head. "Yeah. I can do that. It sometimes comes in handy whenever I need to make sure a body isn't found when I take the form."
Lucia looked like she wanted to snap at that, but she didn't have the energy. "Are you going to take the deal or not?"
The creature nodded, knowing it didn't exactly have much of a choice. "Alright. I'll take you there. But don't tell me I didn't say it was a bad idea later."
Amelia looked to Lucia, who nodded. Together they untied the Changeling, but looped the rope around it's neck like a leash, which Lucia took in her tight grip. "You try to escape at any point, and I have Amelia over here fry you" She warned.
It nodded, sniffling and wiping at it's still tear stained face, and Amelia opened the garage door. The sun had set by now, and the front yard was dark under the veil of twilight, making anything past the opposite street hard to see. "Come on, let's get going before my Mom shows back up." Lucia muttered.
Lucia threatened to choke up again at that thought. She was going to have to explain this to her mother. That Luz was dead, and had been for months. She wasn't sure where to even begin to explain the technical side of things, much less prepared to face the emotional side. Instead she tried to focus on her current goal, and let the Changeling lead the way.
They crossed the streets, and started entering the forested area near the Noceda household, a place the two children had played together countless times. It was all too much for her to take, and she passed the rope over to Amelia so she could rub at her eyes.
Amelia's gaze was turned downcast in sorrow for her girlfriend, and for the girl she never actually got the chance to meet. She'd only ever seen her doppelgänger. "So, do you have a name?" She asked, trying to find anything to fill the silence.
"Changeling's don't have names of their own," Was the creature's response, "We usually just take the name and identity of the people we replace."
"Well, we're not calling it Luz," Lucia insisted through clenched teeth, "Any ideas on what to name it, Amelia?"
"Being called 'it' is really demeaning," The Changeling talked over them, "I'd prefer to be called by the gender of this form, thanks."
"How about CL?" Amelia responded, ignoring the Changeling for the moment.
"What's that supposed to stand for?" She demanded, stopping in her tracks to look back at the two she was guiding.
"Creepy Luz," Amelia explained.
"Pass," the quickly dubbed and just as quickly undubbed CL vetoed.
Lucia rolled her eyes, "Why don't we just use whatever name you used last, then?"
Once again, the Changeling froze in her steps. "No." She insisted shortly.
"Do you have any better ideas, then?" Amelia asked, wondering if this even really mattered, but keeping it up so none of them had to dwell in silence over what they were on their way to see.
"Look, Changelings… we don't use old names. The past is dead, and we move on." She tried to explain stubbornly, clearly uncomfortable.
"Fine, then tell us the last name you used and we'll come up with an offshoot of that instead." Lucia growled, just wanting this to be over with. If they didn't decide on a name soon, she was going to have Amelia start throwing spells to get them moving again.
The Changeling took a deep breath, then after a moment responded, "Victor. My old name was Victor. But I'm not using that, so come up with something better.
"How about… Vee?"
The Changeling's lip downturned, "V? Like a letter? That's the best you can come up with?"
"It's work for now, come on, 'Vee,' We have places to be." Lucia took the rope back from Amelia and gave it a tug, almost making the now dubbed Vee fall over.
"We're almost there," Vee insisted, glaring at Lucia for her actions.
And sure enough they made it only a few minutes later to a run down old house in the middle of the woods. Despite having played in this area a thousand times as a kid, Lucia couldn't remember ever seeing this place before. This was where Luz died? It certainly looked creepy enough. And likely haunted. Hopefully not by the spirit of her sister, she didn't think she could handle that.
Lucia pulled Vee in close, keeping her on a literal short leash, not wanting the Changeling to lure them into some sort of trap that might lay inside. Together they walked through the threshold of the tiny building, and Lucia closed her eyes, not wanting to see what was likely a gruesome scene before her.
When she opened them, all she saw was the confused faces of her companions, and a barren, empty building. "Um, what?"
They both turned to Vee, who began to sweat nervously, "I swear, nothing like this has ever happened before. This is where she died. Unless someone moved her body, or-"
Vee stopped, nose twitching. She took a sniff of the air, then yanked on her leash, pulling Lucia deeper into the house. "This place smells…"
"I'm going to assume it would, since we all thought it housed a dead body," Amelia spoke, arms crossed as she guarded the door.
Vee shook her head, "No, no, it's different, it's like…"
She turned to look at Lucia, and realization hit her, reflecting in her eyes. "Wait, give me your phone!" Vee insisted, holding her hands out to Lucia.
"My phone? What does that have to do with anything?" Lucia demanded to know, backing away from the creature.
"Look, just give me it for a bit, I'm on to something here." Vee insisted. Reluctantly, Lucia did as she was asked, taking her phone out of her pocket and unlocking it for Vee to use as they pleased. The Changeling went over Lucia's text messages, specifically from Luz's old number, going back a few weeks. "Here!"
The phone was shoved into Lucia's face. It was the message Luz had sent a little over three months ago, of her and her friend Willow. "Yeah, what about it?"
"That's a Witch! And the time stamp! That was after I was preparing to take her place! I didn't have her phone, and when you kept talking about friends from camp, I was clueless since I didn't actually go, and neither could your sister because she was supposed to be dead by this point!"
Lucia double checked, and yeah, that was correct. Luz had sent messages for weeks after she supposedly been replaced. Vee continued to rant, a grin working onto her face, "This house, or cabin, or whatever, it smells like my old home! The Boiling Isles! It smells like magic! Your sister isn't dead, she just wasn't in your world anymore, which in my defense, basically means the same thing to a Changeling."
Lucia shook her head, trying to take this all in, "Wait, she's alive? And what do you mean 'your world?'"
"Did you really think all those monsters you've been fighting came from Earth?" Vee asked, then smirked a little at the looks on Lucia and Amelia's faces, "Yeah, I know about your little secret. I've seen your book, too. That thing, and all those monsters came from my home, the Demon Realm, AKA, The Boiling Isles. Where magic, witches, and demons, are all real. That's where she is!"
Lucia let go of the rope to clutch at her head feeling her knees get weak. Luz was alive. Luz was alive, and safe! "Wait, this place, this Demon realm, what's it like there?" She quickly demanded.
Vee, in the middle of prying the rope off from around her neck now that her captures had released their grip on it, paused. "I won't sugarcoat it, it can be dangerous. The wildlife, you've met a few, but it's mostly safe as long as you stick to civilization."
"I haven't been there in nearly eight years," Vee admitted. "I fell through some kind of gap between our worlds, and got stuck here. But this place, the way it smells and feels… I think there was a stable portal here for a good long while… I bet it was the Owl Lady, Eda Clawthorne. She's been a human junk vendor over in my world for a while, last I was there. Only one around, too. Guess having her own portal made that an easy business to have."
"Wait, wait," Lucia stopped the conversation, "Did you just say 'Eda?' Luz mentioned her a few times in her calls and texts. She told me she was a Camp Counselor!"
Vee shook her head, "Nope, She's a witch. A good one too, very powerful, very wild."
The two seemed to realize that Amelia hadn't spoken in a while, and turned to check on her. She was staring at the center of the room, eyes glazed over and lost in a memory. Lucia frowned, and glanced over to Vee, who shrugged. "You okay, Cariño?"
Amelia blinked, and looked up at her girlfriend. "I remember this place."
She moved from the doorframe, gesturing to the spot in the middle of the floor, "When I was little… there was a door here. One with a big yellow eye on it. I remember, there was this… market, of some kind. It was busy, and loud. I was laughing, running away from something and trying to hide, and I saw it there, the door.
She smiled, going though the memories her subconscious had hidden from her for all these years, "I think I was playing a game. Hide and seek, or something."
Her smile quickly faded, and she looked lost, "And then, I went through the door and ended up here. And before I could turn around, it folded up, and just… stopped existing."
Lucia took a step towards her, and wrapped her arms around her girlfriend's waist. "My parents found me a little after that, wandering in the woods. That's where I'm from. I came from the Demon Realm." Amelia put together. The memories, though cloudy, were clear enough for her to see in her mind's eye for the first time in a decade.
"It's like I said," Vee said softly, "You're a witch. I knew the second I saw those pointy ears."
"I- I just need a minute." Amelia breathed, heading for the door.
The three teens sat in the broken down house, each sitting and leaning against one of the three doorless walls. The moon shone high in the sky, bright and clear and full, providing the only light through the windows.
Each had a lot to think about. Lucia was still reeling from the emotional rollercoaster she'd gone through that night, but was relieved to know her sister was alive, if out of her reach. For whatever reason, the portal that had taken her wasn't around, and for all she knew Luz was being held captive by this Owl Lady, who wasn't letting her come back home.
Amelia, meanwhile, was trying to grasp the terms of her past, and that she very likely had a family who had lost and grieved her on the other side. One that she'd lost over a childish game, of all things. She'd always known she was different, had it proved to her the first night she cast a spell, but this was too much for her to take in all at once. She needed more time to process everything, like if she could ever return to these "Boiling Isles" or if she even wanted to.
Vee, on the other hand, was also coming to terms with her night. She'd been outed as an imposter, and nearly beaten to death for it. She'd never tasted fear like she had tonight, especially coming from someone she had trusted. And now she was expected to leave, cast out from her newfound home just as she was settling in. She didn't know where to go.
Lucia was the first to speak since silence had befallen them. "Hey, uh, Vee?"
The Changeling looked over at her once-sister, "Yeah?"
"Did you ever intend to harm us?" Lucia asked carefully, her fingers still lingering by the bat she had by her side.
Vee shook her head, "I'm as harmless as an actual fourteen year old, Lucia. And Changeling's don't hurt anyone. We take a spot in a family who's lost but doesn't realize it yet, and are raised in the place of those lost. We provide comfort, and in exchange, we get love."
"Pfft," Lucia snorted out in disbelief, "And what exactly does that give you?"
Vee smiled, "That's everything for someone like me. Did you know a human infant will die without physical affection? It's the same with a Changeling, we will shrivel and die without love. But it has to be genuine, given like a parent to a child."
She curled her legs up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them, "I was half starved when I took Luz's place. But I picked a good home, you and your Mom… you guys really love her."
Lucia nodded absent mindedly, "Yeah, we do. Look, I'm sorry I threatened to bash your head in with a baseball bat."
Vee frowned, still not nearly over that trauma, "I… I don't forgive you. But I understand where you were coming from. I was desperate, and chose a position as a kid who should have been bilingual, when I'm clearly not. It was amateurish of me."
Lucia nodded, grown up enough to accept that she had some work to do before she'd be given a pass. "How about you, Amelia, are you okay?"
Amelia nodded silently. After a brief lapse in conversation, she finally spoke, "I know I just nodded, but I'm really not. I ju- I just thought I'd figured myself out, and now I feel I'm back to square one."
"Welcome to my life," Vee said, raising an invisible glass to toast to that.
Amelia snorted, forcing herself to smile, "What about you, Sweet cheeks?" She directed at Lucia.
Lucia sighed, "I'm better. A lot better, now that I have some hope that Luz is out there, somewhere. I, uh, I'm still working on a plan on how to keep all this from my Mom, but that kinda-"
She suddenly turned to Vee, "Well, you kept your end of the deal. You're free to go. Or, I can offer you a new deal?"
The Changeling's eyebrow perked up, "Go on?"
"You need all that tasty… tasty love, and I need someone to fill in for Luz. And you already look the part. In exchange for staying, you get to not starve, and you get a ticket home when I find out how to reach Luz."
Vee seemed to ponder the idea for a moment. "You'll probably need my help finding her, anyway. I can smell out any magic, and I'm connected enough to Luz that I might be able to sense her if another portal opens up."
"I'm going to assume that's a yes on the deal, then?"
Vee nodded slowly, and Lucia stood up, beckoning the others to do the same. "Come on, let's seal this with a hug."
Upon the looks she was receiving from her compatriots, Lucia rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh, "It's what Luz would want, so bring it in, we don't have all night. My Mom's got to be back by now, and is probably wondering where me and… Luz are." She looked uncomfortable using that name for Vee, making a face at it. She'd just have to get used to it again until her actual sister returned home.
Together the three embraced, none of them really feeling it, but the physical contact made them feel a little better about facing the world outside the shack again. They stayed in the embrace for a good few seconds, until it just started to feel awkward, so Lucia gave the other two a pat on the back and they broke apart.
"Alright, let's head home."
The three emerged from the woods, tired, emotionally drained, and in Vee's case, bruised from where Lucia had hit her earlier in the evening. The car in the driveway was a clear indicator that Camila had returned home, and even with a plan in mind Lucia was dreading having to lie to her.
Lucia went first, setting her baseball bat beside the door before entering the house and was followed shortly by Vee and Amelia. The kitchen was strewn with bags of groceries that hadn't been put away, instead laying on the counters, and upon hearing the door a frantic Camila rushed towards them.
"Where have you two been? I get home and you weren't here, no calls, no texts, no notes, and you weren't answering your phones." She scolded, "I was about ready to call the police, I was so worried!"
Lucia cringed, completely having forgotten her phone in her pocket, left on silent. "Sorry, Mami, we just went for a stroll out in the woods before dinner. Amelia stopped by and I thought I'd show her where Luz and I used to play around."
Amelia forced a smile and gave an awkward wave, "Heya, Mrs. Noceda."
However, Camila wasn't paying attention to their guest, and instead was fretting over Vee, "Luz, what happened to your face?"
"We were walking, and I tripped on a tree root. Hit my face pretty hard against the ground." Lucia grimaced at how easy the lie slipped out of the Changeling's borrowed mouth. It was a necessity, but she was going to have to have a word with her about at least being honest when their mother wasn't around.
"I'll get some ice for you, Mija, okay?" Camila pressed a kiss to Vee's forehead and opened the freezer, looking around and eventually finding one to give.
"I'll get dinner started, you go rest until you feel better, okay Luz? Amelia, will you be staying for dinner?" Camila asked, finally turning her attention to the Bane girl.
"No, I'll be heading home in a few, but thanks for the offer."
Lucia wrapped an arm around Vee's shoulder as they walked through the house, imitating the same protectiveness she would for Luz, until they were out of her Mother's sight. All three of them crammed into Lucia's bedroom, closing the door behind them. "Alright, I know we've had a rough day, but before we part ways, I wanted to at least get a bit more information, then we can start Operation: Rescue Luz tomorrow."
Vee took a seat on Lucia's bed, and Amelia leaned against the wall, but Lucia herself opted to stand, pacing back and forth on her carpet. "Let's run through what we do know again real fast. Luz is on these 'Boiling Isles.' You, Vee, have taken her place here. Amelia is from the Isles as well. We need some kind of portal to get there and back. Is that everything?"
Vee nodded, "that's about it, yeah."
Lucia looked at the shapeshifter who had taken her sister's form, then a thought occurred to her as she took in the swollen face beneath the ice pack held against it, "If you can shapeshift, can't you get rid of that injury?"
"I'd need magic for that," Vee supplied, "And the Human Realm is absolutely barren of it."
"Then why can I still do spells?" Amelia asked, spinning her finger and making a small ice block appear on Vee's lap.
"Because magic has seeped into this world from ours. While we've established there was a stable portal in the form of a door at the shack, there are other, smaller ones that pop up at random from time to time. That's how I got here. It's how all the other demons presumably got here. It's how magic is getting here." Vee summarized.
"Your body is picking it up, sponging it out of the air, and your bile sac is turning it into usable magic. Probably not a whole lot, though, I barely have leeched enough myself to change into this form, and I haven't collected enough to heal. It's likely the entire reason you keep running into monsters is because you're picking all the magic up and becoming a beacon on what they like to hunt."
Amelia stared blankly at the Changeling, "Wait, did you just say bile sac? That sounds disgusting."
Vee gave a look that said she didn't disagree with that statement, "It kinda is? Magic isn't all sunshine and painbows back home. It's organic, unpleasant and downright gross sometimes. It did come from the Titan, after all, a literal giant corpse that makes up the Boiling Isles."
"And all these demons are around because they're hunting me? What, did they only start arriving when I got into town, or something?"
Vee shook her head, "No, they've always been around. They just linger in the forests, not much more than urban myths that you guys have picked up. They're used to preying on witches and other magical creatures, not humans, so aren't going to go towards the cities unless they have too. I haven't met Nessie, but Mothman is pretty chill, though."
Lucia frowned, inwardly thinking about the time Luz had made an "accurate" model of a griffin, having insisted she'd seen one before in the forest a long time ago. It had the head of a pigeon and breathed spiders, which… She'd seen in the Beast Keeping book, now that she thought about it. She hadn't believed Luz back then, but she did now.
Amelia looked like she wanted to continue this line of discussion, but Lucia butted in, not wanting to dwell on the subject any longer, "Can we try to stay on topic?"
"You're the one who got us off topic!" Vee protested.
"Look, we need a portal, and it looks like we have to wait for one like how you got here. How do we track one down before it closes?" Lucia asked, ignoring the stubborn Changeling's outburst.
To their dismay, Vee shrugged, "Beats me."
"Don't they have other humans on these Isles? I mean, if monsters are getting in from over there, something has got to be going over there, too, right?" Amelia insisted, hoping they weren't about to lose the only lead they had.
Vee sighed, "I've only known of one. Some guy, I forget his name. Haven't seen him in a few hundred years, seemed like a decent fellow. We do get a lot of your garbage washing up on our beaches, though. It kills our trash slugs, you know. Bad enough you pollute your own world, but it's affecting ours too."
Vee pondered for a moment, "But now that I think about it, it's doubtful that there has only ever been one human who got through. The others must have just been dead moments after showing up."
Lucia gulped, not liking the sound of that. This was the world Luz was stranded in? "Why do you say that?" She asked carefully, not sure she wanted to know the answer.
"Well, it's not called the Boiling Isles for nothing, Si- Lucia." Vee stuttered over the old familiar term as she explained, "The bones of the Titan are laid out on the Boiling Sea, which gets hot enough it'll cook the flesh off your bones. And like I said, a lot of your garbage winds up in our oceans. Maybe that human got lucky and came to our world and managed to actually land on the isles themselves, rather than ending up boiling alive in our seas."
Lucia and Amelia shivered at the thought of meeting the same fate. "Okay, first thing's first, we're buying a remote controlled drone with a camera on it to send in before we go portal jumping." Amelia noted, deciding she'd go shopping for one in the morning.
Lucia took a breath, "Alright. I think that's all we're getting tonight. Until we can come up with a reliable way to detect these things, we should keep on doing what we're doing. Vee will keep pretending to be Luz, and Amelia and I will keep hunting monst- demons. Maybe we can find a pattern in where they appear, or something, to triangulate a portal or something, I don't know."
She looked around to her companions to see if they had any objections. When no one raised a fuss, she stuffed her hands in her pockets and decided it was time to call it a night. "Alright then, meeting adjourned."
Amelia checked the time on her phone, "Shit. I need to get home." She opened her arms for a hug from her girlfriend, squeezing a bit tighter than usual when she got it. Breaking out of it, Amelia turned to Vee, "We'll have to talk about our… home some other time. I want to know more, but I need to wrap my head around all of this a bit more."
Vee nodded in understanding, "You know where to find me."
She held out her half melted ice pack, and flashed one of Luz's dazzling and pure smiles at the witch, "Do you think you could ice this back up for me before you go?"
Amelia had left, and dinner had been a short affair. Camila seemed to either be too upset over their brief disappearance, or caught on that there was some sort of tension between her children, so conversation had been brief.
When it wrapped up, Lucia and Vee returned to their respective rooms, having nothing else more to say to each other for the night. Lucia needed time alone, and Vee wasn't in the mood to deal with her so-called sister for any longer than she had to after everything that had happened that night.
Vee curled up on the bottom bunk of her bed, feeling the weight of all that had occurred. Her exposure, her fear as the same sister who had held her as she cried the other day had became violent and hurtful, and the fragile acceptance she'd been given in exchange for her assistance.
It was a lot to take in for a child, and at the moment that was what she was, as utterly human as the form she'd stolen. She let the hurt wash over her, and the tears flow, but it wasn't for the wound on her cheek.
Losing a sister's love was so much worse than any physical pain could be, when it was a tangible concept for a being such as her.
A/N: Okay, it's here, it's done, let's talk about Vee!
I love canon Vee, she's adorable. Also, I called it. I friggin called that she was a red herring, and she was a sweet, totally not evil entity that legitimately loved Camila. I didn't know she was a basilisk, but I did figure out the rest! I've been watching cartoons for long enough that I can tell when I'm being baited. One could even say I'm a master at it. A Master Baiter, if you will.
As such, I made the Changeling here be a sweet cinnamon roll who literally needs to be loved to survive. What's hilarious is not only is she sweet like Vee, but I always intended for her to be able to smell out magic. When Vee did that in canon I laughed, since it was one of the biggest reasons for why she'd be kept around in this fic. As for her being able to sense Luz, that's a bit iffy in it's reasoning, but I figure if a Changeling can sense when someone dies and needs replacing, they can also still sense if that person suddenly is alive, through whatever magical connection they have.
As for the name Vee and Victor, I literally only chose it so I could use the canon name. Before, she was going to go by CL, which is why there is a joke about her vetoing that name. I have a habit of coming up with lame placeholder names and then getting emotionally attached to them after using them for so long, sue me. I'm actually kind of glad that it got changed, though, as it helps with some original backstory for this version of Vee that I can't wait for everyone to read in the future.
I don't mention it in the fic, but the Boiling Isles shares the same physical space in the Demon Realm as Gravesfield, Connecticut. So, no monsters were showing up when Amelia was in Arizona because there is nothing but the boiling ocean that far away from the Titan's body, and they only started arriving to eat Amelia. It's also why Amelia didn't know she could do magic, since magic comes from the Titan, and that's a fair distance away. Also, it's basically canon that there are natural portals between worlds, that's how Philip got to the Isles in the first place, after all. Same with the myths and fantasy creatures on our end, Eda implies stuff from her world just bled over to Earth back in episode 1.