Amity brought Luz through a long hallway lined with doors and torches. The decor was a minimal amount, but still showed off the greatness of the guards that lived here. This building was a guardhouse. There were many of these stationed across the Boiling Isles to allow the Emperor's Coven guards to stay somewhere whenever they are off on duty. This specific building was one of three. They were reserved for only the highest-ranking officials that didn't have a place to stay in the Emperor's castle. They resided very close by to ensure the Emperor could always get ahold of anyone within the buildings. Each building housed around 200 soldiers if each soldier took up a room. It was like a giant apartment complex, but fancier.

Luz had never seen something so extravagant and beautiful. The golden carpet and the golden walls and the golden floors. It was too much for her to bear.

" You live here? Dang, and I thought people in the city had it good." Luz looked on in awe, taking it all in.

" Yeah, sort of have to. I used to live with my parents, but now this is my home." Amity finally came to a door. They all looked so alike, how could she tell them apart? She put in a key and presto, they were let in. The inside was much more impressive than the outside, which Luz thought was already incredible. The room was fairly large, a bit bigger than a studio apartment. The walls and carpet resembled the corridors. Everything was paved in some sort of gold or yellow color. The walls had some different posters as well as some dressers and bookshelves lined against them, filled to the brim with spell books and others.

One dresser, in particular, was put together in such a way, it was almost like an altar. There sat the other books of the Azura series. One of the slots was missing, however. There was a bed right next to this dresser, the left side pressed against the wall. Luz was taken aback by everything and decided to get a closer look.

" Oh my gosh, this is all your stuff? You got some heck of a collection." She looked through a few of the books, flipping through the pages.

" Yeah, perks of being a prodigy coven guard." Amity took off her mask, setting it on the nightstand beside the bed. She took off her hood, shaking her head a bit and settling her hair from the built-up static. When she turned back around, Luz's eyes were fixed on her. " Uh..You good?"

" You got pointy ears..What are you?" Luz squinted in suspicion.

" I'm a witch? What are you, a nosy human?" Amity fired back.

" No no! I'm sorry I just thought you were different like that Lilith lady. You seem way cooler and nicer than literally anything else I've met here." Luz put down the book she was looking through and went over to the nightstand, looking at the mask. " So, you're just a guard huh?"

" No, uh, it's kinda more than that. I'm one of those "prodigies". I had great magic potential and so the Emperor's Coven just sort of took me out of school and started training me to be a guard. I'm more like Lilith than the lowly guards. She's my teacher." Amity sat on the bed, fiddling her thumbs.

" She's your teacher? She just tried to kill me and you're learning under her?"

" Hey, I'm the one who saved your life! I'm not like Lilith, she just happens to be the witch I'm studying under."

Luz picked up the mask, examining it. The silence was deafening. You could hear the tension building. " Okay! So, where do we begin my witch's training? I do not want to die here, haha!" Luz laughed nervously. She was erratic, possibly due to the stress of knowing that if she doesn't cast a perfect spell, she will in fact die here. Amity sighed, sort of out of relief.

" Okay, yeah. I'm sure we can do this. All I have to do is teach you a spell, not even a hard one…But humans can't perform magic without a wand..And they aren't allowing wand spells…Oh, we're so screwed." Amity buried her head in her hands, muffling her words of defeat.

" No, we haven't even started! C'mon, we still have a chance."

" How are you supposed to learn a spell that you can't even do? You don't have a bile sac!" Amity pointed at Luz's chest, to which Luz covered it in frustration.

" I'll, uh, figure it out! I'm good at that, yeah." Luz ran over to the spell books and began flipping through them once more.

" We're dead, or, well, you're dead."

–

The day turned into night as the darkness pooled in from the window, trying to kill off the light of the torch on the floor. Luz was using this little bit of light to continue reading the pages of the spell books. Hoping, praying to find something she could use to make it through this seemingly impossible task. Amity was under the covers, attempting to sleep, but the light was keeping her up. Along with something else. The guilt was eating away at her, bit by bit. Was she really going to be responsible for the life of this human? She wasn't even a full teenager. 14 is too young. Too young to leave this world, especially like this. She made a promise based on a lie, based on the love of a book series. Was she really going to risk it all on something like that?

" Nothing!" Luz yelled out, the sound of a book smacking the floor following. Amity perked up, looking over at the human. She gripped the covers. " I can't find anything about magic other than your stupid bile sacs. That doesn't make any sense. Magic doesn't come from a sac next to your heart, it's supposed to be everywhere! It's supposed to be like the books…Like the stories…" Tears began to form. " This is nothing like the fantasy worlds I wanted to be in.." She sniffled, choking on her words. " Now I'm going to be thrown out to survive-well, whatever this place is!" She held her legs with her arms, pushing herself together. " I didn't even get to say goodbye to my mom…"

The tears flowed silently as she cried into her legs. Her body was shaking from fear and frustration. Confusion was also a factor. Amity could feel this pain. She was the cause of it. If she didn't get involved, this wouldn't be happening. Luz would have just been thrown out and this false sense of hope would have never been embedded in her. This was her fault.

No.

No this wasn't her fault. It was none of their faults.

" Hey, hey," Amity got out of bed, running over to Luz, " No, don't say that, you're gonna be fine."
" How? How is this fine? How am I gonna do a spell that requires an organ to even start?"

" Here, how's this. I'll show you a spell and we can figure it out as we go. How does that sound?" Amity was trying to play peacemaker, trying to calm the human down. Luz looked up from her fetal position.

" Okay..It's not like I have any other choices anyways."

Amity backed up, Luz getting back into a normal sitting position, wiping her tears away. Amity took a breath, then pointing her index finger, drew a circle in the air, causing a purple circle of magic to appear in its path. Luz's eyes began to glow as the spell emerged. The circle turned into a large ball of light, radiant and beautiful. Even though it hurt her eyes, Luz couldn't look away. As quickly as it came, it faded away.

" That was the most simple spell, a light spell," Amity explained. " Uh, Luz?"

Luz was still fixated on the faded light, then pulled herself back to reality by shaking her head. " Wait, wait can you do that again?" She got up, scrambling over to her bookbag.

" Uh, yeah, why what are you doing?"

Luz came back with a rectangular device. Her phone.

" I wanna record this. If I can see exactly what you're doing in slow motion I should be able to figure it out. At least mostly. I'm a slow mo' learner." She pressed record on the camera and pointed it at Amity. " Okay, action."

Amity was taken aback, she'd never seen such a device before, but there was no time for lollygagging. She performed the spell again, this time, getting it on video. When it was done, they looked at the footage.

" So, uh, what is this thing?" Amity asked while they watched.

" It's called a phone. What, do you guys not have those here-WAIT WHAT IS THAT!?" Luz shoved her hand in Amity's face.

" What? What is it?"

" LOOK!" She shoved the phone over to Amity, the video playing in slow motion. The spell circle flickered slowly, then something appeared in the middle of it. A sort of sigil. " It's a sigil! A magic freakin' sigil!" She got up, running over to her bag, and grabbing out some paper and a pencil.

" Sorry if I'm a bit slow, but, uh, what does that mean exactly?"
"It means," Luz traced over the sigil onto the paper, " I can do magic," She tapped the finished drawing, and soon the paper folded in on itself, forming a smaller ball of light, " just like you."