Disclaimer: I don't own Owl House
Title: Fuck the PCA
Summary: Bump, desperate for extra staff, brings a reluctant Eda into Hexside as a wild magic tutor. None of them expected just how much she'd end up loving it.
Chapter Title: History Lesson
...
"Now, the finding and the colonization of our Titan is largely lost to time. Most of our history was destroyed in the mandated book burnings Belos ordered after becoming Emperor- so this is basically all we've got."
Eda drew a long line. It was far from perfectly straight, but fuck it. She scribbled out a solid three-fourths to showcase the missing info, then scratched the end of said scribble with a line.
"The age of wild magic lasted for a long time, but the practices of it have shifted over the centuries. There's a lot of traditions and other boring things." She recalled the day of her and Lily's duel as children. Lifting their firsts in the air. It was something they'd picked up from Gwendolyn- something they hadn't even realized was wild. "But the more important thing is that usage of wild magic also changed over time."
"So some generations sucked at it more than others?" Boscha called out. Eda had to hand it to her- she'd not been friendly, but it was clear the cyclops was listening along.
"It's more like every generation did stuff differently, and other generations thought they were lame for it. Spoken magic was really popular for about forty years, then dueling magics, and so on. Kind of like how boomers blame millennials for the housing market they created." Eda put a line through the timeline, this one a smidge further down. "This is the start of Belos' rise to power. There's not a lot of written record of this, but wild witches called it the War of Sigils. Lots of the usual death and destruction followed. Eventually, Belos conquered the entire Titan- and when he finished his most loyal generals became the first Heads of his coven system. Belos became known as the most powerful witch on the Boiling Isles."
Gus raised his hand.
"Goops."
He wiggled it.
Sighing, Eda pinched her nose. "Augustus."
"Thank you," he hummed cheekily, the little snot. "How was Belos labelled the most powerful in the first place? Wouldn't his Heads have gotten that title?"
"Good question, Goops-" Gus groaned as if wounded- "Belos didn't do a lot of his own fighting. He wanted to be labelled as a peaceful ruler, and any actions committed by his gaggle was implied to be of their own will. But Belos, for all his faults, was a crafty ass bitch. As soon as enough people joined he made the wild witches into the evildoers, betraying the Titan's wishes by using the natural magic. That made it okay, apparently, and he soon began to dominate the battlefield with his tactics and powerful magic. You kids know what kind of magic he used?"
"Glyphs!" Luz yelled, as if she wasn't in the front row and also supposed to raise her hand.
"'Xactly." Eda quickly sketched out a now-defunct light glyph on the board. "Glyphs are an inherently powerful magic. It doesn't matter how strong the person themselves are- they control the magic around them, making whatever the user needs. Belos had decades of practice creating various combos, and he could quickly take out armies with devasting attacks. So even though he only fought in a handful of battles, it was clear he was well above his generals."
"We never learn any of this during actual school," Viney whispered to Jerbo, the boy nodding with delight.
"History's written by the winners, kids. The best lie Belos ever told was that we were the winners, we wrote the history, when really he forced himself into power and destroyed our past to make himself the good guy." Eda circled the giant pit of unknowns. "Thanks to him we lost thousands of years of our history during a reign of fifty-two years."
Amity, local library assistant, raised her hand off the desk. Eda barely even glanced at her before she spoke. "Are we sure there's no way to get any of it back? What about restoration spells or the echo mice?"
"We'd need all the pieces for either. Belos burned our libraries to ash and scattered the pieces into the soil. Even if we could get most of a book, the restoration spell would be damaged and the echo mouse would be incomplete. All we have left is the spoken history of our Titan, and we lost almost all of it from the Emperor's Coven raids against outspoken individuals."
"So there's just... nothing left?"
Eda made a so-so noise. "We have a lot of assumptions we can make." She tapped the start of the line with her chalk. "Our Titan was the last grown one to die, so our civilization is the newest in the entire world. Neighboring Titans have a few brief anecdotes from traveling pirates of old. There's some graveyards scattered throughout the Isles that tell us of titles ancient witches had in life. Belos made himself into a polarizing figure- and now, no matter how far into the future, he's going to be the starting point for our history."
"This is all super interesting," Edric said, and he wasn't sarcasm, "but what does this have to do with wild magic?"
These kids need to learn how to raise their damn hands, Eda thinks, but quickly dismisses it. She's not a teacher-teacher. She's just here to infodump. It's more fun to have them yell from across the room. "The point of this is that wild magic has been mostly forgotten to time, so there's a lot of exploring you kids can do with it. Hell, I've been doing it for forty years and I still manage to pull new stuff outta thin air. You kids have a really good chance to find something entirely new with this class."
"Great," Boscha grumbled, "more chances for us all to kill each other."
"Only if you're creative enough!" Eda chirps.
Author's Note: A short one, but I wanted to show Eda actually teaching some stuff! We'll get more character in-depth things soon.
-Mandaree1