Chapter Four

"So, d'you do anything fun while you were out of school?"

Willow flinched, the water from her watering can swerving and drenching Bram, who yelped in surprise. "Sorry," Willow said sheepishly, and the demon rolled his eyes and waved off her apology. "What do you mean?" Willow asked the speaker, Amelia.

"Oh, come on, Willow," Amelia said with a sly grin. "It's not hard to piece together what you've been doing after school lately. I mean, considering your boyfriend and all. Plus the new recruitment posters."

Willow bit her lip and continued watering the plants in the greenhouse. "I'd rather not talk about it," she said neutrally.

"That bad?" Amelia asked.

"Not Hunter," she replied. "But we had a mission together that's … kind of classified, or whatever." Amelia nodded and returned her attention to the task at hand. Willow pursed her lips and smiled as a thought came to her. "What about you? Aren't you in the next group to adopt a palisman?"

"Yeah, I am," Amelia said with a smile of her own.

At the mention of palismen, Clover peeked her head out from under Willow's cowl with a delighted trill. Amelia giggled at the adorable bee and waved with her fingers. A squeak at the girls' feet drew their attention downward to find Steve, Jerbo's hedgehog palisman, looking up at them with those cute, beady eyes and twitching, pointed snout. Clover trilled again and waved a leg at him, and he waved back.

"Hey, Steve, c'mon man!" Jerbo himself appeared from across the room, his face red as he scooped up Steve and placed the hedgehog on his shoulder. "Sorry about that, girls," he said, cheeks burning.

"It's fine, Jerbo," Willow said.

"Steve's so cute, he's always welcome," Amelia added with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

"Ah, yeah … right," Jerbo said, suddenly downcast. "I'll just, um," he pointed a thumb to gesture behind him, "yeah." He started moving back before Amelia grabbed the hood of his cowl to hold him still and turn him back toward them. "And the fact that you come to pick him up is a bonus," she added, fluttering her eyelashes.

Jerbo's cheeks somehow turned even more red and he tried to speak, but only croaking sounds came out. He coughed into his fist and smiled before turning again to leave for his work station.

"You're so mean," Willow giggled into her hand.

"And you're telling me you don't do that to Hunter?" Amelia asked, eyebrows lifted and mouth curled upward. "C'mon, Willow, I saw you guys when he was here. You two gave Luz and Amity runs for their money in the blush department." She waved a pointer finger. "And don't tell me none of it was teasing, girl."

Willow rolled her eyes and got back to work. "Maybe a little," she allowed.

"Right, 'a little,'" Amelia drolled.

In spelling class, Skara was casting glances at Boscha from her notes. The class was a bridge between the academic tracks that focused on the fundamentals of spellcasting and the basic, low-level magic that was still accessible even after joining a coven, such as today's lesson on levitation.

But Boscha, usually a surprisingly diligent student, was scribbling far too intently for this particular class that she found "boring to the stupidest level." Which meant she was actually feeding her latest fixation: the identity of the Golden Guard.

When the Golden Guard had visited three weeks ago to personally inspect the school after the basilisk incident, he'd been accompanied by two of those Abomi-ton things and charmed most of the girls and many of the guys in the school with his cocky, aloof attitude. Boscha, who Skara knew was attracted to power above all else, had been nearly frothing at the mouth in the presence of the "genius teen prodigy" that stood at the right hand of Emperor Belos and led his most prestigious coven. And reportedly was within dating age.

After that day, Boscha had cooled down in the crazed fangirl sense, but something had stuck in her head: the identity of the most powerful teen witch on the Boiling Isles. Between schoolwork and grudgby, she'd been puzzling over that little mystery for weeks. No one else seemed to have noticed, but Skara had known Boscha since they were toddlers, for even longer than they'd known Amity. She had been sworn to secrecy years ago, so Skara was the only one who knew about Boscha's penchant for mysteries — literary or otherwise.

She knew that this was a mystery that Boscha would not let go until it was solved.

Boscha glanced up and hissed as she jotted down some actual class notes before returning to a separate notebook to keep puzzling over the Golden Guard. Skara glanced over and saw several crude sketches of him, mostly outlines to show his height and details of his mask. Boscha was many things, but a talented artist was not one of them.

"Boscha?" the teacher called, drawing her head up from her "work" with a scowl. "Care to demonstrate a spell for levitation?"

Boscha scoffed and traced a circle that had everyone's pens and pencils floating up to the ceiling before falling back down. "How's that?" she snarked.

"Effective," the teacher agreed warily. "Now then-"

Boscha rolled all three eyes and returned to writing questions about the Emperor's right hand that she would try to answer later. "Uh, Boscha?" Skara whispered, "maybe you should ease up on the mystery for a while? Y'know, until after grudgby season ends?"

"No way, Skara," Boscha said. "I'll get this down if it kills me."

Skara frowned at that. Though it had worked a few times before over the years, she hadn't really expected success this time. Which meant she'd need to think of something else, and fast. Because there was no way Boscha would stick to small or legal methods when she got frustrated with this mystery.

And aggravating the second most powerful figure on the Isles was a bad idea.

Hunter pressed shut the door to his chambers, sighing with relief at the sharp click of the lock before he removed his mask and cloak to toss both onto his bed. He sunk into his desk chair with a groan of relief and placed a clipboard covered in notes on the desk itself to look over and summarize later.

Today, as part of his duties, he had taken up the task of reviewing a number of high-profile scout squads for their combat effectiveness. As per Belos's orders, they were tested by pitting them against one another in brutal, no-holds-barred spars that often left moderate injuries to be healed by the coven's medical branch. Hunter disliked and disapproved of the practice, but he dared not defy his uncle so openly, especially in front of the scouts themselves.

And so he had cycled through five elite squads — a grand total of fifty scouts, meaning twenty-five spars — and had taken copious notes on all of them. His next task would be to compile them into reports to be delivered to the captains that commanded the squads for refinement or discipline; whichever was needed.

Hunter rubbed his fingertips over his temples, a persistent headache from the beginning of the day throbbing between them. It was times like this that he hated his appointment. No, scratch that — he always hated it. He'd been far happier as a special agent, when he just did his missions and got home without anything more than reports as paperwork.

Not to mention the fact that he'd had a lot more free time that he'd spent reading, researching, or training in recreational magics. Free time that he would now practically kill for because it would mean he could see Willow and his other friends. Not as the Golden Guard working with the Silver Belle or inspecting Hexside, but as Hunter, average teen. How he yearned for just a few days as a normal guy.

Hunter's thoughts turned back to Willow and he felt his heart ache. Even after their two-day mission together, he missed her. He wished more than anything to hold her close, free from the strain of Belos's presence and the fear of discovery of Willow's spying or his silence on the matter. He wished it could be like the early days of their relationship, when he'd been as close to a normal teen witchling as he'd ever been. Or would ever be.

He drummed his gloved fingers on the wood of his desk in thought before he brushed his clipboard to the side and opened a drawer to remove a normal pencil, a calligraphy set, and several sheets of parchment. He put the calligraphy pens to the side and took up the pencil to do something he'd thought of days before and finally felt ready to try. He wrote out the first line on the page: "Dear Willow." Then he scratched that out and amended, "Dearest Willow." He hummed as he thought it over, actually whispering it to himself before nodding and moving on.

Hunter began to simply write, his penmanship surprisingly graceful and flowing. When he wrote reports, his handwriting was choppy and angular to the point he'd overheard scouts joking that doctors had better style. But when he wrote for himself, which was much rarer these days, his style flowed and whorled like a professional's.

Hunter let his thoughts flow through his wrist as he wrote out his feelings. Every now and then he would reread what he'd written and scratch out everything too flowery or nonsensical. He wanted to impress Willow, not make her think he was a Luz-level sap. When he finally felt like he had written something of reasonable length — and wracked his brain for fifteen minutes to find a way to close it out, settling on "With all the love in the world" — he had over two pages, including scratched out lines.

With that, Hunter took a break to stretch out the cramps in his hand before he would write the real letter on fresh parchment with his calligraphy set. He stiffened at the sudden feeling of Lil Rascal perching in his hair, twittering a question. 'Why the letter?' Rascal asked. 'I mean, I'm an old fashioned-type, don't get me wrong, but what made you want to do this?'

Hunter smiled and scooped Lil Rascal off his head to perch him on his shoulder, mentally grumbling at Clover who had taught the cardinal to use his hair as a nest. "Because it's more heartfelt than a scroll message," Hunter explained. "I can send it from the public postal office when I swing by Bonesborough on my next task." His smile turned a little wistful. "And … I think she'll like it."

Lil Rascal twittered and nuzzled Hunter's jaw. 'I think so, too.'

And then Hunter's eyes flashed as a perfect closing line came to mind, and he wrote it down before he began the final draft.

"Please tell me you're kidding," Luz said from her spot on the couch in the Owl House.

"Luz, come on," Amity said, arms crossed and lips curled in a wry smile from her spot next to Luz, "this is me we're talking about." Her smile faded. "No, I'm not kidding."

"Amity, this is a bad idea!" Luz said, clutching her head as she began pacing and ranting in that strange other language she sometimes spoke, flicking back between it and the one Amity could understand with seemingly no cause. She got fragments of sentences like dangerous and Eda said he's a jerk.

"Luz!" Amity barked, and the sharpness of her tone stopped the hyperactive human in her tracks. "I understand that it's dangerous, and I absolutely do not trust Darius. As a person or by his motivations."

"Amity, please," Luz said, taking her hands in a hold tight with caring anxiety. "Don't do this. Willow's already in danger from it."

"And that's why I have to do it," Amity said firmly, shifting her hands to return Luz's grip. "Luz, I know Willow has told you some things about how I treated her in the past, and you've probably worked out more on your own, but …" Amity bit her lip and looked away in shame, even her pointed ears drooping just a little. "Luz, there's nothing I can do to make it up to her. But this? It's a start."

"Amity," Luz said, "Willow-"

"Is a far better person than me," she cut in, "just for accepting my apology, much less trying to rebuild our friendship." She stopped biting her lip and looked Luz in the eye, her gaze hard and less yielding than mountains. "Which is why I have to do this. You said it yourself that Willow is in danger. And if I can hedge some of that against myself, I have to try."

"But will you be taking any danger away from her?" Luz argued, almost frantically. "Because it sounds more like you're just throwing yourself to another pack of wolves."

Amity blinked. "You mean a pack of direwolves?" she asked blankly.

"Whatever kind of vicious predator!" Luz snapped in a very un-Luz way. "Amity, I get that you want to help, but how is this helping Willow?!" She let go of Amity's hands and grabbed her shoulders. "How can putting yourself in danger help her?!"

"Because two heads are better than one," Amity explained, somehow keeping her cool. "With us working from two directions, we might not have to stick our heads in as far."

Luz's eye twitched as she swallowed her fear and her irrational anger, releasing them in a huff of a bitter laugh. "I'm not gonna convince you, am I?" she asked.

"No, Luz," Amity said, brushing her bangs from her face. "I only told you because communication is important in a relationship, and I don't want any secrets between us."

Luz felt like smiling, her heart swelling at those words. But her lips couldn't seem to rise past a neutral line. Amity pursed her lips and thought for a moment before offering a small smile of her own and arching an eyebrow. "Luz, be honest with me … If it was you who had the chance to go undercover to help Willow, would you do it? Or wait, scratch that — would you even think before jumping on the chance?"

Luz stared blankly before groaning, clapping her hands to the sides of her head. "Cheap shot, Blight," she groused, though her smile had returned.

"Only because you know I'm right," Amity noted.

Luz stepped close and placed a peck on Amity's lips, taking her hands in her own again. "Please be safe," she whispered.

"Who's the safe one again?" Amity asked dryly, though her whisper was fond, too. "It's you we have to worry about, and you're not even going in."

Luz snorted and hugged Amity tight. "If either of you get in trouble, I'm storming the actual castle."

"Let's hope it won't come to that," Amity giggled.

"And you have to tell Willow, Gus, Eda and King," Luz added with her cat-smile. Amity groaned, but there was laughter behind it.

Neither of them realized that Eda and King had listened in on the entire conversation and were silently resigned to it all. And none of them heard the faint echo of thunder on the horizon, toward the Skull.

To the public at large, the Emperor's Coven was seen as it wanted to be seen: a force of order and protection against chaos and the ever-present threat of wild magic and the witches who practiced it. An elite force of the best of the best whose skills and vigilance kept an eternal watch over the Boling Isles. And the arms of Emperor Belos, the Speaker for the Titan who guided the Isles toward peace.

Naturally, there were dissenters. Wild witches, but also those who saw cracks and flaws in the coven system and the scouts and guards that enforced it. Not to mention those who had been pressed under the boot of injustice as the Emperor's Coven prioritized enforcing its power with little regard for true justice.

What the public at large didn't know was that the rot stretched far deeper than unchecked power or police brutality.

Emperor Belos hated wild magic on a level that few of even his highest-ranking vassals understood. With a passion so pure it was almost holy. To meet the ends of eliminating wild magic, he would use and justify any and every means. Except, of course, for wild magic itself.

In his crusade, the Emperor was constantly investigating new means of combating wild magic and those who harnessed it, as well as means and methods to divert reliance upon it. He had designed his nephew's mechanized staff, for example, to keep the boy from needing to rely on a palisman, an artifact of wild magic that he consumed to maintain his mere sanity.

But as powerful and intelligent as he was, Belos was just one witch. And as confident as he was in his own intellect, he was pragmatic enough to acknowledge that others had more specialized knowledge, as well as more time on their hands to research alternatives to wild magic. And so he often chose projects to fund throughout the Isles that would bolster his forces, such as his "acquisition" of Blight Industries' entire stock of Abomi-tons and his funds to research their further development. But Belos did not limit himself to private affairs. He had his own coven for more … sensitive research.

One such research facility on the outskirts of Bonesborough was headed and manned by Captain Glee, who specialized in Potions and Healing magic, with a strong knowledge base in Plants and Beastkeeping. She was a physician through and through, believing that one must understand life in all its forms to truly work with it.

Captain Glee's helmet — a piece of the uniform that was customizable for captains as a privilege of rank — was longer and narrower than usual, more in common with Warden Wrath of the Conformitorium. Beneath the mask and the inverness-style cloak that covered her body, she bore the four pitch-black eyes and pincers flanking the sides of her mouth of an Arachne demon. Her fur was charcoal gray, aside from a russet marking on her cheek in the shape of an hourglass that remained visible even with a medical mask.

At the moment, the captain entered her main laboratory, kicking the reinforced door shut as she thumbed through some papers on a clipboard. The lab space was full of complex glassware, an array of beakers, flasks, and flame heaters … and a long stretch of variously-sized needles and syringes.

Not to mention the wild witch strapped to an operating table, breathing heavily with dread through two masks that gagged and blindfolded.

Glee scribbled down a few more notes before slapping down the clipboard, the sound drawing the restrained victim's attention and making him grunt with panic. Glee fished a crystal pendant out of her cloak and hung it over her chest, tracing a small circle over it that made it glow with faint white light.

"Captain Lydia Glee," she said, the pendant acting to record her voice for later review, "preparing to operate on subject fourteen." She picked up a large needle with a very large barrel and smiled behind her mask. With a few deft movements of her free hand, she removed the blindfolding mask to allow him to see, then traced a spell circle to form a flash of fire over the needle to sterilize it. The witch — a large, strapping, clean-shaven man with orange eyes dressed in a patient's smock — began screaming behind his gag and thrashing against his restraints.

"Oh, please don't struggle," Glee said with smug faux-sympathy. She released the buttons over the victim's chest and leveled the syringe over his heart. "It makes it harder to aim."

With that, she struck to the right of his sternum to the muffled, pained scream of the victim. "Perfect," she hissed as she drew back the plunger to extract green-black fluid. The victim's face was turning red with the force of his screams, the veins bulging in his forehead and neck.

When Glee finally removed the needle from the victim's chest, the barrel was full of the fluid and the victim settled back on the examination table, grunting and whimpering as his frame trembled from head to toe. "Behavioral note," Glee said, "the subject responded to extraction just as the others did. It would appear that direct harvesting of magical bile from the bile sac is an unpleasant sensation."

With a nod to herself, the doctor examined the fluid in the syringe. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of thin streaks of sickly green light growing through the fluid. Through pure, raw magical bile. The streaks, she had long discovered, were a bad sign. Magical bile, as it turned out, was remarkably unstable outside of a living body, and this light was a sign of the bile breaking down into pure magic that would escape and return to the environment.

Which is why she always had to act fast for these experiments. Glee quickly injected the bile into a raised beaker filled with a stabilizing agent that she had found after several mistrials. She cast a spell that lit a flame under the flask that heated the solution and began distilling it, the essence dripping into a beaker containing red and black fluids. She verbally described the process and the fluids in detail as the experiment went on, ensuring her records were as pervasive as possible.

When every drop of the distilled bile had fallen into the new mix, she took a stirring rod and made sure everything was properly mixed before loading it into another, smaller syringe. She crossed the lab to a large shape covered in a tarp and tore it off to reveal cages with eye-rats, the creatures shrinking away from her with fearful hisses.

Still narrating to her recording crystal, Glee traced a circle that coated her free hand in a film of elastic white magic, and then she opened one of the cages. The rat charged and tried to get away through the door, but the fingers of her spell stretched and latched onto the creature, yanking it backward and into her grasp to hold it tightly and protect her hand from its claws and teeth. Glee jammed the needle into the rat's belly and pressed the plunger to inject about a quarter of the solution, then placed the syringe into her cloak pocket and traced another circle. A mirrored circle traced around the rat, monitoring its vitals.

The rat curled in on itself with pain that seemed to burn through its veins … but then it hissed and lines of greenish magic dully shone from beneath its fur, tracing the veins beneath its skin, and its eyes — the two on its face and the large one on its back — glowed with the same green light. Glee's eyes shot wide open as her sensory spell picked up something she had been hoping for: a sharp increase in internal magic.

Glee brought the rat to another cage on her workbench and sealed it inside, the metal reinforced to resist outbursts of magic as well as force. She giggled as the implications of what she had seen and felt from her spell began to unfold in her mind.

"Side note: Contact Emperor Belos immediately for a report." She turned on her heel and left the unconscious wild witch for her assistants to move back to his cell. "He will want to hear of this."

Chapter four is here! Hope it was a good read!

*We really don't have much information on Hunter's position in the Emperor's Coven. Many, including myself, have assumed he's the new head witch based on the poster scene from "Separate Tides," but some discussions on Discord have gotten me wondering. But going on the previous logic, I'm making the assumption that he was originally something of a special agent for a few years, doing one-man missions for Belos. With his promotion, he has way less free time.

*Direwolves were actually a real thing. They were prehistoric canines resembling very large modern wolves, contemporaries of Smilodon (saber-toothed cats). The term has been appropriated in recent years for lupine monsters, like savage werewolves without the human aspect - among various other interpretations. We know they are on the Boiling Isles due to Eberwolf's Penstagram tag "Raised-By-Direwolves."

*The line, "...With a passion so pure it's almost holy," is one of my favorite lines from my favorite book series: the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. I think it fits Belos quite well.

*Captain Glee is the same kind of demon as the Hexside baby class teacher, the one who looks really spider-like. The title I gave their species of demon is named for Arachne of classical myth, the prideful weaver whom Athena turned into the first spider - and who inspired Arachnid, the scientific term for spiders. Her first name, Lydia, is the place Arachne was said to be from in the myths, and Glee is another word for joy ... which she derives from her terrifying experiments.

*Worldbuilding for magical bile was very, very fun. I'm scientifically-inclined, and researching real bile - a digestive fluid produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder that helps break down and digest fats. *It was originally a term, along with "gall," for body fluids in the medieval "humors" theory of medicine. ^And I assure you that Glee's experiments will very much come into play.

*A "mirrored" circle, for the sake of this work, is the term for tracing a small spell circle that produces a larger one for a separate effect. An example from canon would be the cage Amity creates to keep Luz safe and in one place in "Adventures in the Elements," the one Luz escapes from after she discovers the ice glyph.

Many thanks to my Discord chums who continue to offer support, encouragement, and advice on this work! If you, the reader, liked it - please leave a review! I enjoy hearing from each of you! May your inspirations flow ever onward!