Amity and Boscha stepped out of the portal door to step onto the Boiling Isles once again. While the teen form of Boscha appeared as bored and judgemental of her surroundings as Amity remembered her, Amity herself hadn't seen her own world in many years. Her bare toes sunk into the warm soil of the Titan, and the breeze carried with it the familiar smell of fragrant rot and odorous perfumes of the various flowers that attempted to attract witches and demons as food. "Where are we?"

"You don't recognize your own back yard?" Boscha asked, gesturing back toward the portal. Amity turned and looked at her quizzically as Boscha glared at the doorway and snapped her fingers again. The portal closed and folded in on itself before reducing itself to a decorative briefcase, it's large yellow eye still darting around in search of something before disappearing. Behind where it had been was Blight Manor. It was as immaculate as Amity remembered from her childhood, with well trimmed vines reaching up the walls, the darkened windows, and all the purple abomination-styled trim.

"But I thought…"

"The Emperor's Coven turned it into a crater?" Boscha asked. "Maybe. One day." she smiled; that cruel, arrogant grin that Amity didn't miss. Boscha began walking toward the manor, passing through the bars of the gate. Amity began to follow and stopped at the gate at the sight of purple streamers and pointed hats on a few children that were being escorted by adults up the front steps of the building.

"Okay, I get it." Amity said, rolling her eyes. "I've heard this human story. We're in the past and I'm supposed to learn what made me such a horrible person, right?"

Boscha stopped and turned. "Do you think you're a horrible person?" she asked, raising her brows. She turned around again, grinning at one of the pink haired small children that were entering the Blight home. "I was an adorable little demon, wasn't I?"

Amity had learned several human idioms during her time in the Human Realm, and she nodded, having met several human parents that referred to children as 'little demons'. "Sure." she admitted. Amity reached out and touched the gate, expecting to pass through it just as her guide had, but found it to be quite solid. She watched both preteen and teen Boscha enter the Manor, and she called out. "Hey! Aren't you supposed to be showing me my past or something?!"

"Nah! Your birthday had good cupcakes!" she called back, unnoticed by the guests that were crowded around her.

Amity rattled the gate again and growled. "Worst Christmas story ever." she whispered to herself. As a teen, she could have slid through the bars of the gate, and had several times until the quests against Belos had gotten more intense. Now as an adult, in little more than a drafty robe and night gown, she wasn't liking her chances of getting through the gate unscathed. She looked about for any other way over the fence when the sound of crying caught her attention. She paused, her ears twitching slightly as she tried to locate where the sound was coming from.

Just outside the fence, curled up behind a large shrub and hidden from view of the driveway was an eight year old witch with curled black hair and large round glasses, wearing a brown dress over an orange blouse. She had colorful bandages scattered over her arms, and muddy black boots that she was hugging close as she cried.

"Willow?" Amity asked, kneeling down. The young girl kept her face buried in her arms. Amity hesitantly wrapped her arms around Willow's shoulders and pulled herself close. She could almost feel the little girl's tears seep through her robe. "Oh, Willow…"

"My… my… my best friend…" Willow sniffed, burying her face in Amity's chest. "She doesn't want to be my friend anymore!" she shouted.

"Shshshshshsh. I know, Willow. I'm sorry." she whispered, tears starting to form in her own eyes. "But y'know what? You're going to be okay."

Willow continued to sob. "I can't do magic. I have no friends. I'm going to have to wait until the end of the party for my dads to come get me."

Amity's heart sank as she tried squeezing Willow tighter, but her arms only passed through her body. The Willow she knew had never told her about having to wait until the end of the party. That Odalia hadn't even called Willow's parents to come pick her up before ejecting her from the property. "Willow, you are going to become one of the most powerful witches the Boiling Isles ever knows. You will have the best friends anyone could ever have, and I am going to stay with you until your parents come to get you, alright?"

Willow began to sob again, her little body convulsing with each coughing fit as she struggled to breathe.

Amity wiped her cheeks with the back of a hand. "You are going to discover someone very special and change the lives of… everyone here because of it. Trust me."

"Oh, that's probably not a good idea." Boscha said, now sitting atop the stone fence behind the pair. "It's time for us to go."

Amity looked up and narrowed her eyes at the teen. "No way. I am not leaving her here."

Boscha shrugged. "It's time to go. I don't make the rules." she said, snapping her fingers. The wood and gold briefcase appeared again, unfolding and opening into the portal door once again.

"Then let's take her home. Let me go inside and call her parents. To tell Odalia to let them know what happened. What really happened so that she doesn't have to grow up thinking I hated her!" Amity begged.

"Mmm. Nah. Not my job. Say good bye, now." Boscha said casually, mockingly waving her fingers at Willow with a grin. "Happy Yule!" Amity stood and angrily reached for Boscha before the portal moved forward again, catching her within the doorway.

Amity fell onto a stone floor as she lost her balance from her attempt to grapple Boscha. She could hear the portal close again, and she rolled over to see her irritating teen companion looking down at her. "Time to get up, Amity. How did you ever run your own company by lazing around like this?"

"Why are you doing this?" Amity asked, sitting up. "There was no reason Willow had to go through all of that… Where are we?" She looked about the room she found herself in with Boscha. A double bed took up most of the space in the room, and the stone walls were covered in Emperor's Coven seals. Scrolls on the Emperor's directives were contrasted against several books about wild magic, and were scattered about the room. Diagrams depicting the old Owl House were pinned to a corpseboard with bits of string leading to pictures of Eda, Luz, King, and Hooty, with another leading to an image of Gus and Willow.

"I'm going to say someone… important?" Boscha said, drawing out her words. She inspected the pictures on the corpseboard and smiled cruelly. "Looks like someone didn't make the cut."

"It's the Golden Guard's room. He was assigned to spy on the Owl House shortly before the Day of Unity." Amity explained, doing her own investigation of the room. "Why are we here? This isn't my memory."

Boscha shrugged. "Like I said; I didn't make the rules."

"Then who did?"

Boscha shrugged again. "So this Golden Guard… Did you ever see him without his mask? Is he cute?"

Amity curled her lip for a moment. "I fought him once while we were both trying to find some Titan's Blood. And no… he was an annoying little scrawny kid that excelled at manipulation. You would have liked him."

A single window in the room swung open, and Amity instinctively splayed her hands out, summoning a small spell circle around each as she prepared to defend herself in the hostile palace. "Yeah, that's not going to do anything. You can't affect the past."

Amity growled, closing her hands as a hooded figure dressed in a white and grey scout uniform swept in through the window on a palisman staff before collapsing just inside the room. His uniform was torn and encrusted with abomination ooze, and Amity vividly recalled watching him fly off on a… "Cardinal." The palm sized, red and black palisman twisted itself off of its staff and chittered a musical note, pulling at the boy's cloak in a vain attempt to pull him onto his feet. The tiny bird had one eye crossed out, and it hopped about on the back of its owner, searching the room with its good eye and twittering its song as it tilted its head away from Amity. "Wait… can you… can you see me?"

The little cardinal tweeted again and fluttered up onto one of the bed posts to get closer to her, twittering a furious string of notes. "Well isn't that interesting." Boscha noted out of boredom. She laid down on the bed, crossing her ankles and supporting her head with her arms, looking up at the ceiling. "Can you do what you need to do here so I can be done with this?"

"I can't help him." Amity said, kneeling down to meet the tiny bird at eye level.

The cardinal let out a frustrated twerp and flew back to its owner, pulling back his hood and picking at his hair. "I'm up, I'm up. Give me a break." he mumbled, forcing himself up on shaking arms. "We've been flying all night." He pulled off the bird-like scout mask and dropped it to the floor, revealing his face. His blonde hair was dishevelled, and a thick sheen of sweat covered him. Dark rings cradled his violet eyes, a scar ran from the right side of his jawline nearly up to his eye, and the bridge of his nose seemed to have been broken at some point in his past though Amity knew better now. He unclasped his cloak and started unbuttoning his shirt as he staggered toward his bed.

"Oh my…" Boscha gasped, rolling over onto her side. "Amity, why didn't you ever introduce us?" The Golden Guard dropped his shirt on the floor, revealing that he wasn't so much scrawny as he was well trimmed, and had he survived the Day of Unity, he probably could have grown into his physique. He flopped down onto his bed beside Boscha, much to her amusement, and he heaved a sigh. Now in the light, the bruises on his face, arms, and chest were clearly visible, including the three indents in his cheek bone from the spiked gauntlet that Amity had fashioned from her abomination goo in the heat of the battle. It had been her first real fight, and she remembered every moment of it. For her, it had marked the beginning of her part in the rebellion against Belos.

Despite looking utterly exhausted, the Golden Guard couldn't seem to sleep, and he pulled a familiar trinket from his pants pocket and hung it by its chain by a finger. A skeleton key with a small, cracked copy of the same yellow eye that adorned the portal door. Congealed blue Titan's Blood stained the length of the key, still barely trickling out of the eye. "She's a clever one, isn't she?" he asked, looking down at the cardinal that hopped up the length of the bed, looking back and forth from Amity and to its owner. "I need to figure out a way to get this to Uncle without him knowing I went against his wishes, and without letting Kiki take the credit."

The cardinal tweeted in frustration again, hopping up to his shoulder.

"Hmm? Slow down. I'm still new at this." the Golden Guard said, leaning down and picking up the scout cloak he had been wearing and tearing off a corner. He wrapped the portal key in the torn material and set it on his bedside table. "There's no one else here. Don't worry." The cardinal gave a whistle while staring at Amity with its good eye, then shook its head in disagreement before resigning its efforts.

"Okay, so what are we doing here then? Am I supposed to be sympathetic to him somehow?" Amity asked. "Wait… if palisman can see me… I could contact Ghost! I could get a message to my younger self, and even Luz!" she realized, moving toward the open window.

Boscha sat up in the bed with a look of indignation. "No, you can't go running around the island. You're supposed to be here."

"For what reason?"

"I don't know. Those are just the rules."

Amity placed a hand on the window, but it wouldn't budge, much like the gate at Blight Manor. "There's something keeping me here, isn't there?" she asked, disappointed. There was so much she could tell her younger self, even at this stage. She would have just began her relationship with Luz, and her heart ached to feel that again. To see herself at that point again. "Okay, Golden Guard. Let's see what you've got."

The boy had been muttering to himself and moving around the room. The cardinal was perched on his shoulder now, bouncing about to keep its eye on Amity and continuing to tweet its warning. "Thanks for sticking with me." he said to the bird, a sad smile creeping onto his face. "No one's ever done that before. No one that wasn't under orders, anyway. I'm sorry I almost gave up back there, but this key could change everything! If this Titan's Blood is powerful enough to open the portal, maybe it could cure Uncle as well."

"Wait, who's his Uncle?" Boscha asked, looking the boy up and down.

"The Emperor. Kinda." Amity replied.

"What do you mean, kinda?"

"Information is a commodity, Boscha. You give me something, I'll give you something."

Boscha growled, but said nothing for a moment. Instead, she playfully poked at the Golden Guard's bicep uselessly. "Whatever. Sometimes less is more."

"He was just trying to save someone that he thought loved him." Amity said with a new understanding that she just couldn't have had at Eclipse Lake. She had risked her life to find the Titan's Blood that was supposed to have been there, nearly falling to her death and fighting the Emperor's most trusted agent to a stand still, all to help Luz get home. She'd had no idea what Luz going home would mean for herself, or their relationship. She'd just thought she'd needed to prove herself. Just like the Golden Guard. The difference was that she never had to with Luz, whereas he did with Belos.

The Golden Guard was busy moving vials around his desk, warming the key enough to thin the blood so that he could drain the rest of it into a beaker. "There. I've got all I can out of it. I hope it's enough."

Amity sat down on the edge of the bed between Boscha and him as he did his work, and she addressed the cardinal. "I don't know what I'm supposed to be getting out of this, but maybe I can give something instead. You need to convince him that Belos is going to betray him. I couldn't get through to him at Eclipse Lake, but maybe you can. The only way he's going to make it past the Day of Unity is if he helps Luz. Can you do that for me?"

The little bird tweeted a series of notes back at her, hopping about on the boy's shoulder. "Who are you talking to?" the Golden Guard asked, raising his head. "There's no one here. Emperor Belos said I have privacy in my room, and there's no way Kikimora made it back yet."

Without warning, Boscha sat up with an intense fear in her eyes. "We need to go. Now."

"Wait, what? Again?" Amity asked, and she felt an intense dread fill the room.

"I see you…" echoed a soft and calm, if infinitely intimidating voice. Amity watched for any reaction out of the Golden Guard, but saw nothing. She knew whose voice it was, and the fact that it was specifically for Amity and Boscha had terrifying implications.

Amity couldn't help but wonder if she could confront the Emperor here and now with all she had learned in the last fifteen years, but she was in an environment and dealing with rules that she had no clue about. The cardinal had apparently heard the voice as well, and was letting out a series of panicked chirps. "Okay, get us out of here."

Boscha slid off of the bed and snapped her fingers, summoning the briefcase. It appeared in the center of the room again and unfolded before opening. The Golden Guard was trying to listen to his palisman until the cardinal froze, transforming into its original wooden form. "Amity! Come on!" Boscha shouted.

"Hunter! Don't trust Belos!" Amity shouted. She watched the Golden Guard hide the wooden cardinal under his pillow with a pink frog toy as the door to his bedroom door began to twist and Amity was pulled into the portal, the doorway closing as the bedroom door opened.

Amity opened her eyes to red, green, and blue lights in her field of view. There was laughter, singing, and the sounds of burning wood crackling despite the lack of the accompanying smell. She heard voices. Familiar ones. Voices that she could tell just by their tone; loved each other. She smiled and closed her eyes again, feeling a weight that she had been carrying for years begin to slough off. Then Boscha spoke.

"That was too close. Next time if I say we need to go, we need to go. Got it?" she asked, wringing her hands nervously while she paced. "Where are we, anyway?"

"You're the guide. Shouldn't you know?" Amity growled, opening her eyes again and surveying the room. "We're at Luz's house." she said, crossing her arms as she took in the sight of the Noceda's kitchen. There were dishes piled in the sink and the dishwasher was already running. There were trays of candies and baked goods on the counters, and bottles of alcohol in various states of fill. The island in the middle had the picked clean bones of an Earth bird, and abominations were moving back and forth to the living room in an attempt to keep cups and plates full. "It's the last Christmas I was at, before…" she trailed off, walking into the living room.

It was odd seeing Luz, Willow, Gus, and even herself back in their twenties and dressed in hand knitted, decorative sweaters. Eda was in her harpy form, replacing the star on the top of the tree with a Hooty puppet that someone had fashioned out of a toilet paper roll and a bottle cap to a round of applause. Her wings swept through the entirety of the room to a bout of laughter, and Camila moved to catch a vase full of Boiling Isles flowers that Willow had summoned for her.

"Eda, usted pendeja! You're getting feathers everywhere!" Luz shouted, cutting through the laughter and earning herself a stern look from her mother. "Lo siento mama."

"I think you lot have had enough." Camila smiled, sitting back down and reaching out to both Luz and Amity's ring adorned hands.

"Ah, give them a break, Cammi." Eda said, withdrawing her form back to that of her normal witch body and squeezing in between Willow, who was nursing the drink in her cup, and a snoring Gus. "These kids earned it. Also, if there's anything the Human Realm has to offer, it's good spirits." she grinned. "Seriously, you humans know how to brew. Apple Blood has nothing on… what is this again?"

"Rum." Camila said. "Just go easy. I'm not sure if your Boiling Isles Apple sauce…"

"Blood." Eda corrected, licking her upper lip.

"Right… I'm not sure if your Apple Blood has the same effect the next morning as human alcohol does…" She turned back toward her daughter and daughter in law, looking down at their hands and holding her chest with her free hand. "I want you both to know how proud I am of both of you, and how happy I am to have you both as my daughters."

"Ugh, this is too sappy for me." Boscha said, snapping Amity out of her reverie as she watched the events unfold again.

She sniffed and wiped her cheek, turning to her teen companion. "Sorry you missed it?" she asked.

"Pfft. No." she replied, looking away for a quiet moment. "Do you miss it?"

"Yeah." Amity replied. "I miss this part. Not so much what comes later."

"Vee!" everyone shouted cheerfully as another Dominican girl stumbled down the hall from the bathroom. While her hair was brushed flat to either side instead of the unruly mop that Luz had, the shapeshifter still had an uncanny resemblance to her adoptive sister.

"Now there's someone that's had enough." Eda said, pointing a long nailed finger. "Are you even old enough to be drinking?" she chuckled.

"Vee haj zenturies of bein' ectinct to caj up on." she slurred in reply. She dropped into a beanbag chair that had been carried from upstairs, and picked up her half empty brown bottle of alcohol and tipped it back when it touched her lips.

"Can someone take that away from her, please?" Camila asked, and Willow drew a quick spell circle that summoned a vine from the vase on the shelf that reached down to steal the bottle out of Vee's grip.

"Mom!" Vee protested, though was clearly too inebriated to do anything about it.

"Sorry, kiddo." Eda chimed in. "I don't know what basilisk vomit would be, but I know no one wants to have to clean up after you." Standing, Eda scooped the girl up in her arms. "Let's put you to bed."

As Eda left with Vee up the stairs, Camila turned to Luz and Amity again. "As I was trying to say…"

"It's okay, Mama." Luz said, pulling her mother in close for a hug. "We get it."

"Luz and I are proud of you too." the younger, pink and auburn haired Amity admitted. "I'm just glad we were able to bring Luz back after everything that happened. I can't imagine not knowing where my kid…" she began, then trailed off and frowned. The human alcohol they had been drinking all night had definitely hit all of the non humans, other than Eda, harder than Luz and Camila, and Amity had nearly lost control of her thoughts for a moment. "Uhm, excuse me."

Amity stood and wobbled a bit, handing her drink to Luz. "Are you okay, Ams?" her wife asked, looking concerned.

She steadied herself, clutching the hem of her over sized knitted sweater and trying not to let her watery eyes show in front of Luz and Camila. "Yeah. Yeah, I just… this stuff is going right through me." she said, turning away and making her way to the bathroom.

"Oh, I want to follow!" Boscha said.

"Really classy, Boscha." Amity replied with a frown.

"Oh, come on! I know the difference between you actually going to the bathroom and having a panic attack. Something just set you off, and I want to know what it was!" Boscha said, following the younger Amity and passing through the door before being followed in turn by her ghostly companion. "Ha! Called it!"

Amity watched in fuzzy recollection as her younger self looked at herself in the mirror. A quick spell circle summoned an old text from the Boiling Isles that she'd had Willow smuggle out of the Demon Realm for her. It was titled Circumventing Biology, and it was a rare tome of alchemical practices from the Savage Ages. "Camila, I know family is important to you." she whispered, squinting at the pages as she opened the book.

"It had taken me a year to find all the ingredients for that spell." Amity explained to Boscha.

Boscha was trying to peek over the younger Amity's shoulder to try to see she was reading, but the concept seemed lost on her. "What is this?"

"It's a pregnancy spell. It would have transformed my bile sac into a new life. Same principle as the Titan spawning life from its body. It would have been the last spell I ever cast."

Boscha's three eyes widened in unison as she looked back at Amity. "You were going to sacrifice all your magic for having a kid… with a human?"

"I was."

"So what happened?"

"To make sure it was something born out of both of us, I needed something from Luz." she began to explain, watching her younger self pull out a small elixir bottle from a pocket and give it a shake. Colors began to swirl and mix, signalling that the potion would only have a few hours before becoming inert. "Also, don't try performing spells when you're tipsy. It's not a good idea."

Younger Amity took a deep breath, rubbed her eyes in an attempt to clear her head, and opened the bathroom door again with her spirit followers in tow. "Amity, are you all right? You look a little paler than usual." Camila said. Eda had passed out on the couch next to Gus, and both were snoring loudly as Willow helped Camila with cleaning up the assortment of dishes, half eaten food, and bottles that were scattered.

"Yeah. I'm, uhm… I'm fine. Where's Luz?" Amity asked.

"Luz managed to get herself to bed." Willow said, offering her an understanding smile. "Good luck."

Camila looked at the two in confusion, narrowing her eyes at Amity as she blushed. "Good luck for what?"

Amity felt her already warm skin flush in embarrassment. "I, uh… I gotta go. Not feeling well. Tired." she said, then turned too fast and steadying herself. "Bye!"

"No way!" Boscha groaned. "I am not watching this!"

Amity watched her younger self stumble up the stairs before looking down at the lithe white cat that was curled up around a tiny brown feathered owl behind one of the chairs. "Ghost! Wake up and stop me from doing something stupid!" she shouted, but the palisman only flicked its ear and let out an indignant 'Mrr?'. If she could somehow talk to her younger self. Somehow stop what came next from happening, it could change the last several years of her life…

She climbed the stairs, knowing full well what room her younger self had entered that night and stepped through the closed door. She tightened her robe around her waist and hugged her chest as she watched her darkened form kneel down beside the bed and take the hand of the sleeping, dark skinned individual.

"Luz?" the younger Amity whispered. "Luz, I need something from you. It shouldn't hurt, but it's important. Luz?"

The sleeping figure mumbled something unintelligible, and the younger Amity looked down at her own index finger; watching the black fingernail magically lengthen and sharpen. Taking the potion vial from her pocket again, Amity pressed her sharpened fingernail into Luz's palm, just hard enough to draw blood.

Luz gasped and Amity looked at her in shock. The sky blue of her eyes surrounding the black iris and yellow pupil vanished for a moment as her eyes blinked in a sideways motion, very much unlike the Luz Amity knew. Out of pure defensive reflex, the girl Amity was holding the hand of heaved a breath in, and a white glow appeared in the room, lighting up their faces for a moment before Amity lost consciousness, spilling the contents of the potion onto the floor.

Vee screamed at the sight of Amity falling unconscious, her magic still glowing in Vee's mouth before it disappeared. "Luz!" she shouted, backing up across the bed to get as far away from Amity as she could.

The older Amity instinctively moved away from the door as Luz burst in, dressed in adult Monster Hunter Academia pyjamas and a foamy tooth brush still sticking out of her mouth. "Amity!" she mumbled, spitting the tooth brush out as she raced to her wife's side. "What happened?!"

"I don't know! I felt a poke in my arm like when I was back in the Conformatorium, and I woke up! I didn't mean to!"

"Vee, stay calm. Tell me what happened. Amity!"

"I think… I think I ate her magic!"

"Eda!" Luz shouted. "Mom?! Help!"

Boscha appeared beside Amity, and frowned. "Wow. Dangers of having a wife with a twin, huh?"

"I see you've really grown in your sensitivity." Amity replied, watching as Camila and Willow entered the room. Luz had already picked up her wife's limp form, and Camila slid up to Vee to comfort her. Eda met Luz at the bedroom door, barely cognizant of what was happening. "All this noise should wake up Ghost. Maybe I can talk to her…"

Boscha reached out and grabbed her wrist. "Amity, for what it's worth… I'm sorry."

Amity looked back at her for a moment as everyone left the room, and she looked down at the forgotten potion bottle on the floor that had been knocked under the bed. "Yeah. Me too." she said, wrestling her hands free and stepping through the doorway back into her office building bedroom. "Boscha?" she called, but there was no answer. The room was as she had left it before first entering the portal door with her teen companion, and she moved to sit on her bed and cradled her face in her hands, feeling tears that had long been held back run through her fingers.

A comforting hand settled on her shoulder, rubbing her softly. "Necesitas perdonarte a ti misma, hija."

Camila's voice and gentle touch were enough to make Amity break down, and she leaned into the woman's shoulder.