Amity hadn't considered just how large Hexside was until she was forced to belly crawl through its convoluted ventilation system, nor how filthy it was. She had summoned a small ball of light to help her see in the complete darkness, and there was all sorts of powders from the potions track, rodents dead and alive that likely escaped from the beast keeping track, and layers upon layers of dust that was filling the air behind her abomination's movement. She had barely left Principal Bump's office before she had to fashion a mask from her cowl in order to breathe.
According to her map, the greenhouse and Plant Track homeroom was on the bottom floor, which is where the pixies would have most likely gotten their sleeping nettle from. Normally, pixies weren't overly intelligent, but were tough to kill, and could become ravenous when food supplies were scarce. Out in the wild, this wasn't usually an issue as most Boiling Isles predators kept their population to a manageable level. If they managed to find a place to hide, infestations could often become an issue as they damaged property and caused injury once their regular food sources were diminished. She had never heard of an infestation as organized as this though.
She grumbled to herself, "Stay after school… It'll be boring…" she whispered in a mock tone, pulling at her shirt to try fanning away the heat in the vent. She could feel her knees begin to have sharp pains from crawling on the hard stone, and the view of her abomination's backside was getting old. She would have to try experimenting with changing its form once it was already summoned, or perhaps storing it in an extra dimensional container somehow, much like her penstagram scroll.
Her abomination groaned quietly and stretched itself over a vertical shaft that led down to the next floor. She had seen no sign of the pixies yet, which was odd. She would have expected them to cover the school in a matter of hours, which would have thinned them out and made them easier to get rid of. Instead, they seemed to be expanding slowly, swarming in specific areas where threats emerged and then retreating when they could no longer overwhelm their opponent. They were acting intelligently, and it was terrifying.
The abomination lowered itself into the shaft, it's form expanding slightly to fill the square tube until it began to slowly slide down. Amity lowered herself onto its shoulders, riding it down until they reached the next floor and she crawled into the next duct and checked her map. The greenhouse was still another floor down, and she hadn't reached the central ventilation hub yet, despite how much warmer it was already getting. Her abomination filled itself out from it's cubical shape again, and began crawling in the direction it was instructed to.
"Why am I the one having to fix everyone else's problems all of a sudden? When did I start caring?" she asked herself in a whisper, resulting in a groan from her abomination in response. She grumbled, knowing full well when she started to care. "I know. When someone started to show they cared about me. Dang it, Luz. How could one human girl change everything so much? I know I said going to the same school wouldn't change anything, but it has." she continued, now beginning to ramble rather than simply distract herself from the circumstances she found herself in. "And how? It's not like we can hang out! Boscha and Skara would never associate with Luz, and I can't be around Luz's friends without them getting punished for it!"
The thought of Luz's friends reminded her that she hadn't been to the greenhouse since Willow transferred to the Plant track last semester; not even with Amelia, and couldn't help but wonder if she was doing better now than when she had been enrolled in the Abomination track. She smiled slightly under her mask at the memory of seeing Luz, Willow, and Augustus on penstagram, having animated the weird Owl House structure during the moonlight conjuring while her own group couldn't even make her Otabin doll move. Maybe there was something to them after all…
Amity ran her face into the rear end of her abomination and growled at the impression she left, suppressing the urge to chastise the creature before remembering exactly where she was and what she was doing. With her thoughts back on her mission, she held her breath and tried to listen past the fast thumping of her heart. There was a loud thrumming coming from ahead, like a nest of bees that had just been riled up, and Amity clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from gasping. She began backing up, unable to recall exactly where the last alternate route began, and having to use her toes to navigate the narrow tunnel behind her. "This is becoming the worst day ever by far." she whispered, reaching the last intersection she had passed and checking her map again. Wiping away the dust that had collected on it in her travels, she would be able to detour around the pixies ahead, but it meant crossing a hallway near the Construction Track homeroom.
She directed her abomination to take the lead again, and after several lengths of tunnel, move to the appropriate vent. Pausing to listen for a moment and hearing nothing out of the ordinary, Amity traced a small spell circle and ordered her abomination to slowly ooze through the vent in the hall of the school. Once it had reconstituted itself, it deftly loosened the vent cover and allowed Amity to crawl out into the hall where she snuffed out her light.
"Abomination, guard." she ordered, and the waist tall creature turned away. It's multitude of black, void-like eyes began moving over its body as it began keeping watch, and Amity made her way cautiously down the hall past the Construction Track Homeroom; pausing a moment when she caught sight of the Power Glyphs that were locked away in a cabinet. She hesitated, thinking of how much more she could do with the extra power, then shook her head, reminding herself just how much more powerful her spells could be with the right motivation without the patch. "Abomination…" she whispered, making certain that the rest of the hall was clear. "Follow!"
The abomination's eyes moved back to their proper places and focused on her, trying to wetly sprint to where Amity was using a quick spell to pull the vent fasteners away from the cover before removing it. The abomination groaned unhappily in protest before reluctantly entering the tunnel in the wall, squeezing its husky form through the hole.
The sound of heavy boots coming down the stairs made Amity's ears twitch. "Come on!" she hissed, using her shoulder to push the abomination in further and climb in after it. With a twirl of her finger, she magically replaced the vent and sat quietly for a moment, listening for the bootfalls as they passed by.
"That Blight kid is going to cause trouble." she heard Tom say.
"Why are we even still here, man? This job ain't worth it!" Mudson complained, and Amity held her breath as their shadows passed by.
"It will be. This whole pixie infestation was an unforeseen opportunity. The tunnel to the old school is taking too long. We need the other three though if we want to capture… wait…Prints." Goreman said before beginning to whisper.
Amity looked at her dust and soot covered hands in what little light came in from the vent behind her, and imagined her boots likely looked the same. "Go, go, go!" she whispered to her abomination, crawling forward as fast as she could.
She could hear Goreman tear the vent cover off of the wall and shout at her, but she kept pushing her abomination forward and out of reach of the Demon Hunter. "Get back here, girl!"
His fingers managed to only touch her boot before she pulled it away, and gave her abomination a solid shove to get it moving. The creature groaned and resisted at first before sliding forward and then downward, making an odd slurping sound as it shook head first down a vertical shaft. Amity let out a yelp as she fell in after it, settling into an awkward ball on it until it came to a stop on the next floors ducting. The abomination crawled out of the way, allowing Amity to get turned around and back on her hands and knees. "Those Demon Hunters are after something more than saving this school from pixies. We need to get going." she said to the abomination, checking her map. "After two intersections, we've got a left and right and we should be at the greenhouse."
The abomination groaned and nodded in acknowledgement, rolling over and crawling to lead the way.
Amity and her abomination looked down into the greenhouse from the vent in the ceiling. Pixies were everywhere inside, with a steady stream entering and exiting from a hole they had burrowed in the floor. They seemed to be harvesting small bags of berries from some of the plants in the room, while defending themselves from a carnivorous fern nearby, and transporting them down their tunnel. "What are they doing? Are they… farming?" she asked aloud, watching the normally uncooperative bug demons work with efficiency and teamwork.
She couldn't see all of the room from her position, but she could see the red glow of Principal Bump's lockdown runes on the door that lead outside. There were planter boxes of multiple impressive looking vegetables with Willow's name written on placards on each one, as well as the fern that was snapping at the pixies. She could see rows of sin flowers, whose seed filled, red petalled blooms always pointed to those that had guilt on their conscience, and she watched them face the vent that she was hiding in. Amity frowned for a moment, then steeled herself for what she needed to do.
Drawing a small, purple spell circle in the air, she directed her abomination to start seeping through the vent cover in small drops the size of her thumb. As expected, they went unnoticed, and Amity focused her attention on the droplets that had splattered onto the floor below her, clenching her jaw in concentration as each one started to stand and shamble. "Abominations… attack." she whispered, and her toy sized army of abominations began to mindlessly move toward the pixies that were harvesting food. It wasn't until the first abomination attacked that the pixies took notice of them, and began to panic.
"We're under attack!" one of them shouted, the warning echoing through the line and down into the hole. "Reinforcements are on the way! Drive them back!" shouted another pixie.
Now that her small army had a specific order in mind, Amity turned her attention to another spell; drawing a small circle over the vent, and another larger one just beneath it. A large swarm of pixies piled out of the excavated hole in the floor of the Plant Track homeroom, filling the room and tearing through the mini abominations that had threatened their production. When it appeared as though there were no more pixies streaming out of the tunnel, Amity touched the smaller spell circle she had created. "Sorry, Willow…"
Purple flames started at the small circle and expanded out to the larger circle, creating a fan of fire that encompassed the room, consuming pixies, plants, and abominations alike. The backblast came back through the vent, knocking Amity backward as she felt the heat from her own spell on her face and hands. She could hear the alarm bell in the room scream out and the sound of water gushing from its mouth in an attempt to extinguish the fire.
When the room had finally gone silent, Amity kicked the vent open and dropped down into the room carefully, her boots splashing in the thin layer of water that covered the floor and was slowly draining down into the tunnel. Her abominations that were littered around the room looked like crispy Not Dogs, and there were flittering remains of pixie wings hovering about in the air. A few of the plants had managed to survive; having had enough water in them to repel the heat, but most were now smoldering in their boxes.
Amity gestured with a hand for her abomination to rise, and the tiny burnt pellets of goo began to soften and collect back into the half height creature she had originally summoned. "We'll have to move quick if we want to find everyone before the pixies regroup." she said, gesturing toward the tunnel and commanding her abomination to enter it. The creature stuffed itself into the hole that was barely large enough for Amity to fit down. She hesitated at the edge of it as the abomination waited, keenly aware of what danger she could be putting herself in by entering a hostile burrow. Amity took a deep breath, reminding herself that there was a good chance that Ed and Em were trapped down there; or worse, and took a step forward to perch herself on the shoulder of her abomination again. Then she curled her arms around her legs and hid her face in her knees. "Okay. Let's go."
Fortunately, with the tunnel being constructed by the flight capable pixies, it was essentially a straight drop from the Plant Track Homeroom. Creating cilia on the outside of her abomination was a simple matter, allowing it to crawl through the tunnel like a worm. The difficult part came when the tunnel suddenly opened up to a large room, and Amity found herself in freefall as her ride fell away and splattered on the floor far below. She shouted out of reflex and reached out to catch herself, latching on to some of the multi colored webbing that she had seen in the Abomination homeroom.
After a short struggle to pull herself up onto the nest-like streams; and a moment to catch her breath and brush away the dirt and soot from her face; she sat up to survey her surroundings. She was suspended a fair distance off of the floor in a large, hot room with very old looking piping and equipment running throughout. "This must be the old school that Hexside was built on." she said to herself, following the piping on the walls to a large stone covered dragon statue whose eyes and mouth glowed with heat.
Lining the walls and floor of the large room was more of the colorful threads that bunched up into irregular cocoons where Amity could recognize of few of her fellow students and missing instructors lying unconscious. She could only hope that the rest of the cocoons held the remainder of the missing faculty and student body.
Amity carefully crawled along the webbing to reach one of the thick strands that connected the web to the wall, reluctantly wrapping her arms and legs around it and taking in a breath out of fear to begin traversing her way to the side of the room and slowly down to the floor. She silently began moving to the nearest cluster of cocoons where Jerbo, Toddric, and Celine were lying dormant. "Celine…" she whispered, lightly shaking the pale girl in an effort to wake her. "Come on, wake up!" she whispered again, raising her voice slightly.
Her abomination managed to reconstitute itself and find her now that she was on the floor, and the short creature appeared beside her, transforming one of its puffy fingers into a pocket knife sized blade. It groaned, and Amity moved aside to allow it to free Celine as she moved to Jerbo. She began pulling at the webbing that surrounded the lanky boy, and she began to notice a light powder that sparkled in the firelight. "So this is what they've been doing with the sleeping nettle." she said, beginning to frantically dig through the cocoon. Particles were beginning to dance in the air around her and she held her cowl closer over her mouth and nose as her mind started to become foggy. If she fell unconscious as well, there wouldn't be anyone left to rescue the captive students, or find out what the Demon Hunters were after down here.
She dragged Jerbo out of the cocoon and covered his face with his cowl in an effort to keep him from breathing the powder. Within a few moments, he began to cough, sputter, and gasp and Amity pressed the cowl tighter against his face when he struggled to remove it in an attempt to breath more clearly. She shook her head when his eyes opened. "Keep it on. There's Sleeping Nettle in the air. Help Celine." she ordered. She glanced around the room, searching for any sign that the pixies had returned, then moved over to Toddric's cocoon and proceeded to tear it open and drag him out as she had done with Jerbo.
"Amity?" he asked in his timid voice as he began blinking the sedative induced grogginess from his eyes. "What's going on?"
"Help me with Toddric." Amity ordered. She grabbed the blonde haired, dark furred boy by the arms and beginning to drag him behind an assortment of pipes and valves that were spewing small clouds of steam.
"You know, you could just ask for a change." Jerbo retorted, grabbing Toddric by the ankles. Amity's abomination had crawled under Celine to carry her to the same hiding place with its superior strength.
Amity growled. "Y'know what? Nevermind then." she hissed. "I'm trying to save your life, alright? Forgive me if I don't have time for niceties."
Jerbo frowned, and let out a grunt of his own. "I'm sorry. I'm just still getting used to not being treated like a failure after being in the Detention Track."
"Well then maybe you shouldn't have been mixing magic." she replied under her breath before mentally kicking herself. She was resorting to her old habits out of anxiety for the situation she found herself in. She looked away from the tall boy, and bit her lip in frustration with herself when Toddric began to wake. "Toddric, are you okay?" As much as Amity hated asking for help, finally having someone else to talk to was becoming a relief.
Toddric raised a hand to his face and felt his cowl before shaking his head. "What happened? I remember going into the pixie pen to gather some dust, and then it gets fuzzy."
"Pixies have infested the school. We're under Hexside right now." Amity explained. "We need to get everyone out of here. There's some Demon Hunters trying to find their way down here, looking for something." she continued. "Can… can you take control of the pixies with your magic?"
"It doesn't usually work on anything that's actually sentient." he replied, continuing to try shaking the cobwebs from his mind.
"I'm not sure they are. At least most of them." Amity said, popping up to look about the room. The low sound of buzzing could be heard echoing through the chamber again despite the loud furnace and pipes, but she couldn't see any movement yet. "They're not acting like regular pixies. They're organized."
"Where are we?" Toddric asked, his vision clearing. "Is that a dragon?!"
"Shhh!" Amity scolded, clapping a hand over the boy's mouth. "We're under Hexside, in the old school. In what I'm guessing is the pixie's nest. We have to get everyone out of here."
Toddric pulled away from her with an annoyed look, then looked past her to Jerbo. "You're that kid that helped get rid of the basilisk, right? What should we do?"
Amity glanced back and forth between the boys, speechless and beginning to wonder why she had made the trek down here in the first place. With an exasperated groan, she turned her attention back to Celine, and her abomination that was standing ready for more orders. She tapped the Oracle student lightly across the face to shock her awake, again applying the girl's cowl over her mouth and nose.
She couldn't understand how Luz did it. Somehow she instilled Willow with the confidence to excel at a magic track she'd had no training in, lead a team of detention track rejects to fight off a creature that had defeated all of the students and faculty of Hexside, and even managed to gain Principal Bump's favor enough to enrol at the school despite extensive property damage and almost no magical skills.
"Amity?" Celine whispered, finally returning to consciousness. "What's going on?"
Amity took in a breath out of frustration. "The explanation will have to wait. We need to find a way to get everyone out of here. I've only managed to find you, and those two so far." she said, hooking a thumb toward Jerbo and Toddric, who were continuing to discuss their circumstances. "But there's at least a dozen more pods to check."
Celine nodded, struggling to her feet. "How did you get free?" she asked, her voice shaky.
"I didn't. I came in through the tunnel in the ceiling that the pixies burrowed."
"You… you came to rescue us?" she asked in disbelief.
Amity hesitated for a moment, deciding against correcting her about being motivated in primarily finding Edric and Emira. "Looks like it." she said, and then winced at her answer. Abominations were so much easier to deal with; unquestioningly following orders and not asking difficult questions that she'd rather not answer. "Come on, we have to…" she began, nearly stepping out from their hiding place as another tunnel on the ceiling started spewing out pixies. Despite the distance and their small size, Amity could recognize Boscha's pixie at the head of the swarm, and it was odd seeing such a terrifying display suddenly break out in dance as they communicated with each other. "Can anyone interpret pixie dance?" she whispered, ducking back to find the other three students and her abomination crowded in behind her.
"Not me." Jerbo answered, and Celine shook her head silently while her abomination groaned a negative.
"I know a few moves." Toddric replied, and he moved forward to peek up at the ceiling through his blonde bangs. "It looks like that one in the roughed up uniform is telling the others to make sure the termites… no, the exterminators; don't reach the monster."
"The monster?" Jerbo asked. "You mean the furnace?"
Toddric shrugged. "He jived 'monster'."
Amity felt a cold sweat cover her body. "There's only one monster I know of down here." she said, her voice shaking. "Grometheus."
"The Fearbringer." Jerbo finished, his protruding adam's apple bobbing up and down with a nervous swallow.
Celine gasped, attracting the attention of Amity and the other students, and she whispered, "Wait, doesn't that mean we could get out through the gymnasium where the Grom dance takes place?"
Amity's eyes widened at the realization. "Yes. Yes we could!" she nearly shouted, then clapped a hand over her own mouth. The buzzing of pixie wings went eerily silent and everyone held their breath. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned back to see how the pixies had reacted. The cloud of buzzing bug demons seemed to have already left, but she couldn't see Boscha's pixie. "I think they're all gone…" she whispered, finally letting out a breath.
"Hello!" a tiny voice called from above, attracting Amity's attention to where the familiar looking fast food waiter hovered. "Welcome to my crib."