"That's your plan?! That's not a plan!".
I could barely hear Boscha's angry cries over the thousands of whispers in my ears. All of them kept repeating the same thing but at different times. Left. Left. Left. Left.
It was starting to physically hurt my head. A part of my brain was urging me to do what the voices said. If I did, then maybe the barrage of noise would stop. But the rational side of me knew that that wasn't true. As long as I could hear it, the murmuring would go on forever.
I needed to block out the sound with something. I needed to stuff something into my ears. But the only thing around me I was able to see were massive clumps of cobwebs.
"Willow? Willow! Why are you just standing there?!".
It wasn't ideal. The cobwebs were covered with dust and grime. The thought of touching it alone made me sick. Yet desperate times meant desperate measures. It may have resulted in weeks of scrubbing the inside of my ears afterwards, but I would've done almost everything to keep the spiders out of my ears.
"Okay, Half-a-witch!" Boscha snarled as she began to march away. "Clearly you couldn't handle–".
I broke off the triclop's sentence by grabbing her arm. I made sure to squeeze it extra tight just to let her know how much I appreciated the "half-a-witch" comment. It took no effort at all to drag her over to the nearest wall and shove a large bunch of webbing into Boscha's ears, despite her struggle.
Boscha went to scoop the filth from her ears, but she suddenly froze. Her eyes went wide in surprise as her shoulders relaxed in relief.
"Hey!" she cheered, being louder than usual due to her poor hearing. "I can't hear them anymore!".
As she spoke, I began to clog my ears. The further and further I pushed the mesh in the more spiders began to rush out to avoid being crushed. Soon I wasn't able to hear anything aside from a soft ringing in my ears.
Silence. Sweet, sweet, silence.
With a wave of my arm, I caught Boscha's attention. I flicked my wrist, silently telling her to stay close. The both of us began to run back to the right as quickly as we could. Boscha may have been the current grudby captain, but I had no problems keeping up with her.
We had no way of telling if or when we made it back to where we were before the spiders attacked. There were no landmarks in the basement, though, if there were, I doubt we could see them. All we could do was keep running until we ran into something. Hopefully that something would be the others.
Boscha suddenly slid to a stop. I had nearly crashed into the triclops but instead was able to veer to her right and stop beside her. I stared at Boscha for a moment, expecting her to turn her gaze towards me. But her eyes wouldn't leave the horrid sight in front of her.
That's when I finally saw what had shaken Boscha up so badly. Amelia and Skara both were on the cold concrete ground, drowning in their own gore. Skara's face was mangled. One of her silver eyes was gouged out, the other was unaffected yet cold and lifeless. Her neck was so torn her head was only hanging on by a string of skin. The inside of her throat was strewn out across the floor.
Amelia was farther away from Skara, as if she had unsuccessfully tried to run. Her spine was exposed and cracked in two. One of her arms had been cut off while the other was bent unnaturally in several different places. Her left ear was shredded into a bloody pulp. Just above it, was a giant hole that went straight through the witch's head.
And hovering above them, with a rusted and bloodied garden tool made from two long blades, was the killer. Despite him being hunched over, he still towered over the rest of us. The shadows covered most of his appearance, but the light from a nearby ceiling lamp made his angry blue eyes glow.
Without saying a word, he began to walk towards us. I took a few steps back, ready to run for my life, but Boscha kept me frozen in place. She was now on her knees, nails scratching in the ground as she tried to keep her grief locked within her. Her teary eyes wouldn't leave her two friends' remains even though grave danger was trudging her way.
The killer paid no mind to the bodies. He had no problem stomping right through Skara. His boot made contact with what was left of the witch's neck causing her head to snap off completely.
That got Boscha's attention.
She jumped back in surprise when she first spotted the killer. But that surprise quickly turned to a raw, blinding anger. Neither of us had any time to think before she leapt at the killer, her hands curled tightly into fists. The angry yowl she let out was so loud I was able to hear it clear as day.
The witches rage soon turned to pure terror. In response to Boscha charging towards him, the killer raised his weapon above his head. His swing missed the triclops yet it managed to knock her to the ground. She tried her best to skitter away without turning her back on her attacker, but she couldn't scramble backwards fast enough.
Boscha let out a regretful shutter. Her lack of a weapon had left the witch completely defenseless. All she could do was brace herself and wait for the killer's next attack.
I had no time to have any second thoughts. I only had a split second to decide which direction to run and I was not about to leave Boscha to die.
My determination was all I had. I had no way to attack the killer back. All I could do was be the one the killer injured instead of Boscha. But my goal was to keep Boscha from getting hurt, and, if that was the only way I could help, so be it.
Feeling as strong as a liger, I bound in front of the quivering witchling and blocked the killer's swing with my arm. Both of the tool's blades sliced deeply through my skin. The pain that followed was sharper than the weapon was, yet I managed to stay completely still. I couldn't let the first strike move me. I had a lot more strikes to take.
My attacker swung again, this time into the back of my shoulder. My watering green eyes met Boscha, despite screaming out in pain, they told her to run.
To my surprise, Boscha hesitated. She took a moment to stare back at me, her mind racing to find anything she could do to help. But her and I both knew that, if she stayed, she'd be killed too. She needed to survive. She may have been snobbish, and testy, and an all-around hellhound, but she was also one of the stronger witches we had.
With a frustrated snarl, she turned around and sprinted away. The killer tore my attention away from her with another hit, this time in between my shoulders. Agony shot all the way across my body. I could no longer hide my cries of pain. My newfound gallantry morphed into an animalistic fear to survive. Things looked bleak but I clung onto the tiny bit of hope I had left.
The witch reared up to attack again, but that time I wasn't going to stand there and take it. Before he could swing, I leapt towards my enemy's exposed stomach. With all the strength I could possibly muster, I dug my fist deep into his side. I couldn't hear his howl in pain, but from the looks of it, that hit must've hurt.
The killer stopped his assault for a moment. His mouth hung wide open. It was like he had completely forgotten I could still fight back.
Before I could land another attack on his abdomen, my enemy broke out of his shock. His next swing nearly hit my chest but was stopped by my hand. I tugged at the blade in an attempt to yank the weapon out of the killer's hands, but I ended up pulling the other blade into my shoulder.
I reared back with another holler. My enemy lowered his weapon to the side, instead using his elbow to knock me to the ground. He then slammed his foot into my chest, knocking the wind out of me. I saw stars. The world around me grew fuzzy as the ringing in my ears grew louder.
The killer just stood on top of me for a moment. He looked me over. In the meanwhile, his words from last night replayed in my head.
He wasn't just interested in slaughtering all of us. No. He wanted to trap our souls in the hotel! He wanted to force us to wear skin suits and pretend to be killed by him week after week!
The thought made my heart stop. If it wasn't hard enough to breathe with a large foot on my chest, the large clump of dread in my throat made breathing next to impossible. They say life flashes before your eyes before the end, but all of my memories took more than a second to pass by.
I've had a lot of hardship in my life. It took a lot longer for my magic to develop than everyone else's. No matter how hard I practiced and tried, it was always so fickle. Eventually, I found my footing. I began practicing plant magic and my magic skill got infinitely better. But, despite all that, everyone still saw me as a helpless talentless witch. Because of my rocky beginning, I would be Half-a-Witch Willow no matter how strong I became.
Yet it was hard to feel bad about that at the moment. Despite the bullying and the constant feeling of failure, I could confidently say I had a good life. I had a loving family and amazing friends who believed in me no matter what. And I got to do a lot of cool things, granted most of those things I did in the last couple months. If you would have told me a year ago that I would reanimate the entire owl house or would evenly match the school's star grudgby team with a human and a witch who vowed to never play grudby again or would start a riot to help stop a petrification I would call you insane.
Honestly, none of that would have probably happened if I hadn't struggled with magic for a while. I had met Gus while trying to fix my crappy abomination project in secret. And, when Luz and I first met, she was helping me get a better grade on an assignment. All of the mocking I received from Boscha and Amity hurt, but Gus and Luz were definitely worth it.
That was probably the worst thing about being so close to death. All of the good things my life had led to was about to be swept away by one single witch. I would no longer be able to go on any cool adventures. Luz, Gus, and Amity would no longer have their friend. My daddy and pappa would no longer have a daughter.
My future was looking very uncertain. Who knew how long the killer would toy with us before he finally let our souls move on? And who knew what came after that?
I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the moment to be over. I silently anticipated the killer's final blow… only for it to never come.
Anxiously, I peeked my eyes open, hoping to find what was taking my enemy so long to finish me off. His attention was no longer on me but on something to his right. I couldn't move my head to see what it was; the pain made moving of any kind awful. But whatever interesting thing was over there soon rushed towards the killer and rammed him in the side.
It was another witch. One I recognized! She was just as hard to see as the killer was, but her glasses and curly hair were a dead giveaway!
Cat had found me and, by the looks of it, she wasn't alone! Not far behind her, Bo came racing in. She was carrying something in both hands. It looked like the freshly sharpened claws of a manticore. The shine of the nearby security light showed that they were made of rusty dirt-stained metal.
The gardening tools! Cat and Bo had found the gardening tools! We could all fight back now! We had a chance to survive!
Bo was on offense, she twisted around the killer as she landed blow after blow to his face. Our foe tried to strike, but his weapon was caught by Cat's. It was mostly made of sturdy wood, though it had a flat piece of metal at the bottom. When it wasn't locked with her opponent's two blades, she twisted it to the side and jab him in the stomach with it.
The killer was fast but so were the two grudby players. They were both a lot more flexible too, both of them twisting like agile sea serpents. Soon my attacker began to grow sloppier and sloppier, while he tried to keep track of both witchlings assaulting him.
Lurking in the shadows was a third witchling. They were barely visible. The only reason I had spotted them was because they were slowly pacing from side to side. They stared intently at the battle, ready to jump in but only when the time was right.
Suddenly the witch stopped. Their shoulders tensed before they sprang out of the darkness. Both Bo and Cat seemed to have known she was there, since they both fled out of her way. Yet the killer had no idea.
The surprise struck him as hard as the hammer slamming straight into the bottom of his chin. The killer fell to the floor, curling in as he cradled his jaw. Without moving his head, his eyes met the three eyed stare of the witch hovering over him. Her long thick hair made her seem larger than she actually was.
Everything was still. The three Hexside students just stood there waiting to see what the killer did next, while said killer internally fought with himself. He slowly rose to his feet before stomping off. He moved as fast as he could, though he refused to run. He wanted to get away from the situation quickly, yet still wanted to show us that he had some bit of decorum left.
As soon as the killer fled, Boscha, Bo, and Cat turned towards the damage he left behind. Bo shifted closer to Boscha, quivering like she was stuck in a snowstorm. That made the bully begin to pace. She was trying her hardest not to show how devastated she was but, at the same time she wanted to stay near her friends.
Bo desperately followed behind her. She tried her hardest to grab one of Boscha's shoulders, but her pacing was way too violent. Cat's dark brown eyes went from Skara to Amelia then back to Skara. She stared at the both of them until she just couldn't take it anymore.
In one swift leap, Cat caught Boscha and held onto her for dear life. She buried her head into the witch's shoulder in an attempt to stop the tears from flowing out of her. Bo didn't hesitate to cling onto the triclops too. As soon as she made contact with her distressed friend, she began to uncontrollably sob.
Boscha couldn't hold in her anguish any longer. It came crashing out of her all at once. Tears burst from her eyes and her breaths were all violent spurts of air. All of the strength she had that morning was gone. Her legs trembled like flags in the wind, the only thing keeping her on her feet being what little support she got from the others.
It was very easy to forget that Boscha had a heart. She spent a majority of her time hiding it from nearly everyone she knew. But seeing her mourning for two of her closest friends made it next to impossible to say she didn't care about anything or anyone.
Before I knew it, tears were rolling down my face too. Amelia and Skara, both treated me like a living joke for years beforehand, and I still felt angry about that. But my grief greatly overpowered my anger.
I couldn't help but think back to the last couple months, back to last night. They were more than just Boscha's back up bullies. Amelia was one of my fellow plant trackers. She was pretty good, though she did have a tendency to turn her back to the plant's way too often. Luckily, she was super-fast.
And Skara was pretty fun to play grudby against. The game wasn't a competition to her, it was a way of living. I supposed that's why anything and everything could psyche her up. You needed that oomph when playing any sport.
It was going to be hard to recover from what had happened. We all knew that the basement would be dangerous, but that didn't make what happened hurt any less. The isle had just lost two exceptional witches.
I paused on my hands and knees for a second, bracing for the pain that was going to follow afterwards. After the count of three, I was able to stand up. My legs were a little wobbly and great titan that one wound between my shoulders stung, but I was still standing, nonetheless.
My stirring caught the other's attention. They each broke away from their embrace before making their way over to me.
I silently told Bo and Cat it was time to go back upstairs. Neither one of them hesitated to hurry their way back to where they found the gardening tools and start carrying them all upstairs. The smell of blood was practically unbearable and I'm sure they were anxious to get as far away from the grisly sight as possible.
Boscha, on the other hand, just stayed there and glared at me for a while. She seemed angry at me, or more angry at the situation as a whole. Half-a-Witch had just witnessed her bawling her eyes out. How could she ever allow that to happen?
With a sigh, her scowl sunk into a basic frown. She stared straight into my eyes, slightly nodded, then walked away. She made sure she bumped my shoulder as she brushed past me.
Don't ask me what any of that meant. Hell, I wasn't even sure it meant anything at all. Though, I had a strange feeling that things between me and Boscha just got a lot more complicated either way.
…
"Willow!". Although the tons of cobwebs were out of my ears, my hearing was still slightly muffled.
As soon as they saw us walking down the hallway, Gus and Luz rushed into my already full arms. The gardening tools dropped to the floor as Luz happily spun the three of us around in a circle.
"You're okay! Thank God! We were all so scared you wouldn't come back!".
"Ah! Luz! Careful! Injured!" I hissed through my pained smile. Both Luz and Gus let me go and jumped backwards.
"You're hurt? What happened?" Gus asked, his gray eyes glimmering with worry.
He subtly grabbed one of my arms and led me over to our hotel room. Luz quickly squeezed inside, probably going to tell her girlfriend that I was back.
"We were attacked, dipshit," Boscha snarled from the middle of the hallway. Bo and Cat grabbed the tools she was carrying and brought them into their shared hotel room. "And it was before we all found the weapons".
Gus took a moment to leer at Boscha. Then he turned back towards me, inaudibly asking me to go on.
"I'll explain the details later" I sighed, completely exasperated. "But we ended up losing Skara and Amelia".
My friend's anger instantly vanished. He turned back towards Boscha and gazed at her sadly. He opened his mouth a couple times to speak but he couldn't decide on what he wanted to say.
"Willow was able to fend off the killer long enough for Bo, Cat, and I to find the weapons. The fact that she's still alive is pretty impressive".
I tilted my head while my brain tried to make sense of what I just heard. Was that another compliment? First of all, Boscha called me by my actual name instead of by Half-a-Witch. Of course, she'd done it before, but a Half-a-Witch wasn't usually far behind afterwards.
And she actually gave me credit for helping her escape the killer. I wasn't even expecting a thank you from her, but she just openly admitted to Gus that I single-handedly fought the killer, and that she was impressed.
"Really?" Gus asked. "You took him on all on your own, without a weapon?".
"More like she got beat up by him. But yeah. Yeah, she did".
The sound of the door clicking open cut our conversation short. Boscha walked off, joining her two friends, while Gus and I turned to face… an older woman?
"Hello there. Are you Willow?". Her voice was soft, her accent sounding a lot like Luz's. She looked like Luz too, though she wasn't quite as lanky.
"That's me," I answered. "And you are?".
"My name is Camila. I'm Luz's mother". What? How? When?
"Yeah, we kind of found her chilling up on the third floor," Gus explained as Camila moved out of the doorway.
I didn't make it two feet into the room before I froze in place. Laying at the end of the bed closest to the wall was a snake-like creature with sharp blue eyes. When she spotted me, she curled her long tale around herself and ducked down. She seemed scared of me, despite being basilisk.
"It's alright Willow" Luz called from the bed across the room. "She's with us".
"We also found her on the third floor," Gus added. "And them too".
Gus pointed towards the three Blight children in the room. Amity was stuck in Emira's arms while Edric waved from behind them. Emira looked…very unwell. She had a sickly far-off look while her head was thickly wrapped in bandages.
"Willow! I'm so glad you're safe!" Amity cheered. She unsuccessfully tried to squirm out of her sister's grasp. "Luz said you were injured. How are you feeling?".
"Shush! How's she supposed to feel with all your noise" Emira slurred back. Her own shouting hurt her ears even more. Without letting go of the younger witch, the Blight brought her hands to her head.
"So, we obviously had an eventful morning. How did the basement go? It looks like you found a lot of stuff." Luz jumped in, ignoring the injured witch's protests.
"Mija, give her a moment. She's hurt" her mother warned.
"It's ok, Mrs. Noceda. I can talk and clean my wounds at the same time" I laughed while I hobbled over to my bag. I started carrying wipes and bandages around everywhere I went a few months ago. I'll let you guess why.
"At least let me look at them, cariño. Those cuts look very nasty from here".
I simply nodded. I carried my healing supplies over to the end of the bed and sat down. I very slowly lifted my arm for Camila to inspect.
"We were able to bring back a ton of hardware and garden tools" I began. "But all of that came with a cost".