It's been almost a month since I've updated. Sorry about that. I've got three projects in my head and this one keeps taking a back burner unintentionally, even though I can't get myself to start the other two. And I want to try to add some things to each one, some of which are my headcanons, some of them are just certain ideas that I wrote on a whim. This episode, I couldn't think of anything. And since it's such an important episode, I didn't want to let it be a weak installment.
"A couple days after trying to break into Hexside, I hit quite a few big discoveries in a single night," Luz announced. "None of my friends here were at the Owl House for this one, though,"
"Please tell me at least one of them were pleasant," Camila pleaded, although she assumed that request was pointless. Every time she heard a new story, it so far involved her daughter being in some type of danger she couldn't quite comprehend yet.
"Yes, at least one of them were pleasant," Luz agreed. "It was the first night I'd spent on the Boiling Isles where it was raining,"
"And considering what the rain was like here, that might have been a bit of a shock," Willow commented, already making Camila worry ahead of time.
"I was enjoying a quiet night in, taping King doing something cute," Luz said, scrolling through her phone. "He got a sock stuck on his nose right before he wanted to take some time and teach me about demons," She showed the video of King fighting the ducky sock.
"Ay, que lindo!" Camila cooed, seeing the video of King. "That little guy is the King of Demons?"
"And he conquers the ducky sock," Luz confirmed as King ripped apart the sock.
"Where are you now, ducky sock?!" King yelled on the phone.
"So, why'd you call me here again?" Luz's voice said aloud.
"Oh, right. Human Luz, you have been so obsessed with witchcraft that you haven't learned anything about my kind. So prepare yourself for Demons 101!" He pulled a sheet covering a large cork board with several illustrations of different types of demons along with one photograph of a witch standing between two sad-looking demons. "Demons like me are grim tricksters of the twilight, creatures of sulfur and bone,"
"And cute little paws," Luz smiled at the memory, glad to hear King's voice again, even if it's just a five-month-old recording.
"And cute little paws, true." He pulled out a pen with a diamond-shaped top, using it as a pointer. "We live only to create chaos and misery. Our only weaknesses are purified water and passive aggressive comments, sometimes,"
"Aw, you guys are sensitive,"
"Even demons have inner demons," He pulled the photograph off the board, showing an illustration of a demon with a skeletal body and a spiky turtle shell, something seeming to ooze downward from inside the shell. "The most powerful demon of all is the snaggleback. He is a-"
"Bad boy," Luz interrupted his train of thought, banners and emojis suddenly appearing on screen. The video cut off there.
"I was getting ready to add more edits, but I forgot to come back to it," Luz explained. "At that point, it sounded like rain and I wanted to feel a few drops in my hair the way I've always done. And I was just ready for it when a single drop hit a flower and the whole thing shriveled up,"
"Shriveled up?" Camila echoed.
"This was the night I discovered the boiling rain," Luz announced, making her mother tense up. "I probably would have been a bit burned if Eda didn't scoop me up and throw me inside."
"Boiling rain," Camila said aloud, thinking about that little detail she'd heard. "That must have been horrifying,"
"It was for a few seconds, then I just decided that it's interesting and stayed inside," Luz said.
"Rain that burns a witch in a matter of seconds," Camila thought aloud. "The possibility of L. Frank Baum having been to the Demon Realm is growing,"
"For some reason, that name sounds familiar," Hunter said, rubbing his chin. "Can't remember why, though,"
"Eda put up a force field spell and told me that the Boiling Isles doesn't have weather, they have plagues. Painbows, shale hale, gore-nadoes, etc."
"What's a gore-nado?" Camila asked.
"It's like a tornado, but instead of strong winds picking things up, they slice through living things like knives," Luz said. "Ironically, it might be a little safer than a regular tornado. It can't cut through stone, so as long as everyone stays inside, they're safe,"
"It still sounds terrible, mija," Camila said.
"Later, I asked Eda to tell me proper procedures for each of them so I knew what to do."
"For painbows, just don't look directly at them and you won't turn inside-out," Amity said, making Camila's face contort in disgust.
"Yeah, it's worse than you think," Luz agreed. "Anyway, I actually asked for the first time since I'd gotten there why Eda was called the Owl Lady. She told me it was because she's so wise, Hooty said it's because she coughs up rat bones-yes, I've seen her do this- and King claimed it's because she gets distracted by shiny objects,"
"Does she actually cough up rat bones?" Camila asked, slightly disturbed.
"Sometimes," Luz confirmed. "I've had to sweep them out myself more than once,"
"This woman keeps getting stranger," Camila commented.
"We were all stuck inside for the entire night," Luz continued, "so I figured that Eda wouldn't have any excuse not to teach me something about magic. I'd been there a week and went on three wacky adventures, but she hadn't taught me anything about magic, just some life lessons. Not that they weren't useful life lessons, just not what we'd agreed upon. So I started buttering her up to convince her to teach me a spell but she's a master con artist. She saw right through that and turned me down and covered her face with a blanket. That would have been the end of it, but… I knew how to convince her. I had a light-up pen,"
"You bribed Eda to teach you magic?" Amity asked.
"I tried flattery and begging already. The only option I had left was bribery. She's easily distracted by shiny objects and I just happened to have it on me," Luz smiled, remembering the mundane part of the night. "Her exact words were, 'I respect your cunning but I also hate you for it,'" She sighed, thinking of her trick against Philip the previous night. How she'd used a glyph to brand Belos with a sigil. Eda would have been proud of her con. She continued on, deciding to give mom a basic rundown of her first lesson in magic. "The spell she agreed to teach me was simple, since a lot of her magic was used to put up the barrier to protect the house from the rain. The light spell,"
"So you spent the night in doing magic?" Camila said, hoping this is a story where Luz isn't in any danger.
"Eventually, yes, but I had to figure it out for myself," Luz said. "Eda started with reminding me that before a witch's staff is earned, the witch must be able to cast spells on their own. She demonstrated, using the light spell. Humans tend to believe that magic is made out of thin air, but that was wrong. All spells come from somewhere, and that magic cast by a witch comes from the heart," Camila blinked.
"I was not expecting that," she remarked. "I figured it would be something much more disgusting,"
"There's more," Luz warned, giving Camila a small smile. "A witch's heart has a sac of magic bile attached. That's where the energy to use magic comes from. Gus, can you make a picture?"
"I can do better than that," he agreed, casting another illusion, this time with a life-like three dimensional model of a witch's heart, bile sac and all. It even had its own heartbeat, as though it was still attached to a living witch.
"There it is," Camila said, waving her hand through the illusion to make it go away. It was starting to make her uncomfortable to look at it for too long. She might see things like that normally as a vet, but it never becomes any more pleasant than the first time. Once the illusion was gone, she pondered what this meant. "How did you get to do magic if you don't have a bile sac?"
"That was my question," Luz continued. "Eda said that witches used to do magic differently in the past but she'd never bothered to figure out how. Then she tried to lay down, but I asked her to do the spell one more time and that I'd record it on my phone so that she wouldn't have to do it again. Luz showed her mom the video.
"Smile, you're on camera," Luz's voice said, coming from the phone. It showed Eda's slippers before panning upwards to her face. "One more spell won't kill you," Eda groaned loudly.
"Fine," she relented, demonstrating the spell once more. "Now, you see, the spell circle is… the key to…" She cut herself off with a yawn and fell down, passing out. The video showed her passed out on the floor, King behind her with a bunch of drawings.
"Well, looks like one more spell killed Eda," he quipped as the video shut off.
"I was about to run off and get help, but King stopped me at the door, reminding me that it was raining," The witches in the room nodded, familiar with the dangers that rain presented. "I was still worried, but King told me she could survive anything, even bringing up when her head was cut off for an example. We carried her up the stairs and put her in her nest for the rest of the night,"
"Her nest?" Vee echoed, getting a nod from Luz. "She really takes this owl theme seriously,"
"Ironic, considering owls don't even sleep in nests," Luz remarked. "Once she was upstairs, I went back into the living room to try and do the light spell. I kept practicing the same movement Eda did but I was just twirling my finger in the air without a bile sac," To demonstrate, Luz showed the exact motion she'd practiced that night. Nothing happened. Amity, however, demonstrated the same movement, but a circle formed in the air, producing a simple ball of light. "King wanted me to keep listening to his lesson on demons but I was too focused on trying to make a light ball to listen to him. He agreed to help me cast a spell if I listened to his lesson about demons. He noticed that Eda always drinks an elixir and that she was super energetic afterwards so she probably got her power from it. He figured if I drank it, I might be able to cast magic naturally too,"
"Wait, King stole Eda's elixir?" Willow cut in, deducing where this was going. Luz nodded. "You and King trapped inside a house by boiling rain while Eda didn't have an elixir. That doesn't sound too good,"
"It wasn't. Just as I was about to drink it, I was startled into dropping it and it broke,"
"And there goes any chance of that being resolved the easy way," Gus commented.
"What's so important about this elixir?" Camila asked.
"It's medicine for Eda to ward off her… condition," Luz answered. "We didn't know this until later that night, though. For the moment, we were a little panicked by the lights going out, Hooty's door being knocked off its hinges, and something big running off outside. King guessed it was a snaggleback, one of the only demons capable of surviving the rain. And then it jumped in through the upstairs window. I was getting worried, but King was ecstatic. He really wanted me to learn about demons and saw this as a chance for me to see a demon up close and personal,"
"He wanted you to go toward a monster?!" Camila exclaimed.
"In hindsight, we didn't have much choice," Luz shrugged. "Our options were to go back into the house and fend off the intruder, or run headfirst into the weather. So we duct taped pillows to ourselves for armor and I grabbed a hockey stick. We inched up the stairs, first planning to wake up Eda so she could deal with the problem instead, but when we got to her room, the window was broken open and she was nowhere to be found. There were claw marks on her pillow and King and I were freaking out. I asked him what we should do since he was the demon expert and he ran off to get his demon book,"
"Horror movie 101!" Vee groaned loudly. "Never split up. Someone ends up getting killed," Luz blinked, surprised at the response. "My friends watch a lot of horror movies for our sleepovers. Usually old slashers,"
"What's a slasher?" Gus asked.
"It's a movie about a serial killer, to put it simply." Vee answered. "It's called as such because their common weapon of choice is mostly a blade of some sort," She turned back to Luz. "That's like one of the biggest rules to surviving a horror movie. Never split up. Someone gets stabbed when that happens,"
"I know the rules, Vee," Luz replied, "so when he ran off, I was about to follow him, but I lost him in the hall and ran in a different direction, I guess. I hid back inside Eda's room and grabbed King when he passed by while the demon was chasing him. Luckily, it didn't hear us and we found a clue to what happened to Eda,"
"So this is when you found out about the Owl Lady's…" Hunter trailed off, listening to the story intently. He hadn't had a lot of time to talk to Luz at all, so far only having a grand total of five adventures, so most of these stories are new to him as well.
"Yep, this is when we both found out," Luz confirmed, keeping Camila and Vee in confusion. "The creature attacking the Owl House wasn't a snaggleback, it was Eda herself," Camila gasped, not expecting the twist of Eda being a monster. "Eda had turned into some kind of owl beast. And we had no way of getting her under control without her elixir," Luz pulled up another picture on her phone, this time showing the picture of Eda when she transformed into the owl beast, and showed it to Vee and Camila. Vee rubbed her chin, then stood up and transformed herself into a miniature version of Eda's transformed state.
"Tell me when," she instructed vaguely, slowly growing in size. Luz caught on, standing up next to Vee to get a better idea of how big she'd need to be.
"A little more," Luz said, gesturing to keep it up. No one could believe the size of the owl beast, at this point standing as tall as Luz. Vee grew an extra few few inches before Luz stopped her, Vee only barely under the overhead light above them.
"And you spent the night running from this?" Camila asked nervously, straining her neck to get an idea of exactly how big the owl beast was.
"I think it was for about twenty one minutes," Luz clarified. "That's about the time it usually takes for things to go crazy, then calm back down."
"I've never seen it up close before, honestly," Gus claimed, shrinking back in his seat. "Willow and I have only seen it from a few hundred feet away when she was being petrified."
"Actually, I caught a glimpse of her when she was fighting the other beast in town once, but I just stepped away from the window," Willow said.
"I went to see her before she was going to be petrified, but I was ordered away from the door by Lilith," Hunter recalled.
"At least you've all seen it in real life," Amity said, looking between the picture and Vee's appearance, studying the transformed Eda. "I was stuck in bed with a sprained ankle,"
"What do you all mean petrified?" Camila asked as Vee transformed back into her disguised state.
"It's a punishment for wild witches," Hunter explained. "Should a witch refuse to join a coven, she would be turned to stone, with no way to reverse the process,"
"That… sounds extreme," Camila commented nervously.
"It was," Luz agreed. "but that didn't happen for another couple months. At the moment, I was trying to figure out how to survive the night, especially when she busted through the door and started screeching at us, which was when my phone dropped out of my pocket and took the picture of Eda, the flash temporarily blinding her. I grabbed King and hid behind a wall. To make sure she didn't find us, I threw a can so she could follow a noise,"
"Throwing the distraction. Smart," Hunter commented, making Luz smile before her face fell, thinking of what happened next.
"King was feeling guilty that Eda was stuck the way she was. He felt like the whole thing was his fault for stealing her elixir because he wanted me to be interested in learning about demons. But I should've just been paying attention to him in the first place. I could have just let Eda sleep or learned about demons instead but I just kept trying to learn magic. It wasn't King's fault at all,"
"It wasn't your fault either, Luz," Amity interjected. "It was a bad situation all around and neither of you knew what would happen," Luz smiled, but couldn't help but feel guilty about neglecting King anyway. Honestly, she didn't know if she'd ever stop feeling guilty about everything that happened with King. Still, she had to continue with the story. She didn't tell any of her friends this story, considering Eda's curse wasn't something she advertised.
"So I told King to finish the lesson," Luz said. "He knew more about demons than me, so he had to come up with a plan. He knew that demons with black eyes are usually sensitive to light, so I should try to blind her with the light from my phone. I would have done that, but my phone's camera was blasted. We were stuck between a rock and a hard place. I couldn't do magic and Eda was still transformed. I looked at the video I took of Eda again, still trying to come up with a plan. That was when I found it," Luz paused for dramatic effect, making everyone pay attention. "The third and final big discovery of the night: my first spell, the light glyph," Luz took a piece of paper from the end table, drawing the light glyph and showing it to her mom.
"You were able to learn magic?" Camila asked.
"More than that, she rediscovered an ancient magic system that hadn't been used in thousands of years," Amity added. "It's crazy that she found it because of her phone," Luz smiled sheepishly at the praise, rubbing the back of her head. Camila couldn't help but feel proud of her daughter,
"I showed it to King and he said nothing that small would work on Eda, but it was enough to give us a plan. King used the sparkle pen to lure Eda into the hall, where I drew a much bigger glyph on the wall. Once she was in range, I activated it, scaring the owl beast into submission,"
"And that was the first time you'd seen the owl beast?" Vee asked.
"Yes, but it wasn't the last time," Luz answered. "Once she was somewhat unconscious, I put her back into her nest. She was still growing feathers but we managed to find another elixir in her closet and made sure she drank some before rigging a really long straw so she could drink it while laying down. Once that was taken care of, I immediately started practicing the light glyph, just drawing it on a lot of paper. Besides, Hooty was still unconscious and the lights were still off. I drew over thirty of them in Eda's room alone and stayed in there with her. Once she woke up, it might be the fastest I've seen her shift from angry to speechless. Plus, she upchucked a monkey demon that King told me was the snaggleback. No, he wasn't dead and he was terribly traumatized. His tail was actually digested after Eda ate him,"
"That sounds… unpleasant," Vee commented. "I don't think I'd ever be the same if my natural form didn't have a tail,"
"It's not even the worst of it," Luz agreed. "He later told us she even had teeth in her stomach. Although, if she was the owl beast at the time, I think it was actually the gizzard,"
"What's a gizzard?" Gus inquired.
"I don't know about the Demon Realm, but in the Human Realm, owls have two parts to their stomach," Camila answered, having studied aviary biology in college. "The first part releases enzymes and acids to start the process. The gizzard is more like a filter. Since owls swallow their meals whole, they eat the fur, bones, everything. The gizzard holds onto the stuff it can't digest while letting everything else continue down the digestive tract. Then it forms a pellet of the rejected material and the owl spits it back out,"
"That's pretty much how bird demons digest their food on the Boiling Isles as well," Amity said.
"Anyway," Luz said, trying to get back on track, "Eda didn't see a choice but to tell us the truth. She was cursed when she was younger. She didn't know who did it or how it happened, just that if she didn't take her elixir, she turned into the owl beast, and that was why people call her the Owl Lady. No one likes having a curse but if you take the right steps, it's manageable,"
"It sounds terrible," Vee said.
"The way she put it almost sounds like having a medical condition," Camila agreed.
"We probably would have asked her a bit more, but Hooty shouted up to us that he was still on the floor," Luz thought about it. "You know, he was never the same after that. He became… weirder,"
"How so?" Camila asked.
"Before, he'd tend to be a bit frustrated when people wouldn't play along with him. He got mad when Eda refused to give him a password, when she hit the wall to make him answer questions instead of waste time with riddles, things like that. I never saw him get mad about anything that small again after that night, and he started invading our personal space more often."
"He might have been traumatized, but so little that none of us noticed," Willow said.
"Honestly, he unnerved me since the only time I'd seen him before that, the way you can never truly tell what he was thinking or which way he was looking," Gus commented.
"I told Eda to go back to sleep and took King and the snaggleback with us," Luz continued. "King questioned the snaggleback about being swallowed alive and I put Hooty back on his hinges, putting band-aids over the claw marks and that's how that night went,"
"Can I see this magic light thing?" Vee asked, looking at the glyph.
"I would but it doesn't work in the Human Realm," Luz answered, tapping the glyph to show the non-reaction of the paper. "I think glyph magic relies on ambient magic from the titan in the Demon Realm. Without any magic in the air, the paper doesn't do anything. If I had paper from the Demon Realm, it would burn to ashes and still do nothing," Luz was slightly saddened, but came up with an idea. She grabbed an empty cup and handed it to Amity. "Hey, could you give me some abomination goo?" Confused about what Luz would do, Amity complied and filled up the cup. Once it was done, Luz stuck her finger in the goo and pulled it out, finger painting on the paper with the glyph, tracing the lines exactly. Once it was done, she tapped her hand on it again, this time the goo reacting and turning into a completed light spell, albeit taking a slightly purple shade. "Huh, it worked,"
"How did you do that?" Camila asked, completely surprised.
"I figured that if I just used something with residual magic, it might work to an extent," For a few seconds, everyone marveled at the floating ball of light, proof of the ingenuity that Luz has and will always display when it comes to learning magic. Then, just as quickly as it appeared, it vanished without a trace.
"How many more spells can you do?" Camila asked.
"Five other ones that are useful. Although I've tried experimenting to create more, but none that I use consistently,"
"I'm sure you'll find more eventually," Amity encouraged.
"I'll help you, even," Hunter offered. "I don't have any natural magic, so we could learn together,"
"We'll all help," Gus said. "One of the glyphs saved me and Hunter at Hexside, so it's not like only you can do them,"
"And if any of them go wrong, I'll be there to have your backs," Willow concluded.
"Right," Luz agreed half-heartedly, remembering the promise she'd made her mother. She could only hope that when the whole mess was over, she could still learn more magic.
And that was some ideas I came up with. Despite my best intentions to get new ideas, I still feel like this one was kind of bland compared to my last three entries. I hope it's not too disappointing. Please comment.