Now cross-posted with AO3 and Wattpad.


"Ahem."

The sound of a throat cleared roughly in agitation cut through the hustle and bustle of the midmorning market, making the prospective customer cringe beneath the weight of the merchant's unimpressed stare as she rooted through numerous pockets.

Come on, where did I stash my zinos!? Are these – no, that's the bag of royals I picked up at that bizarre fairytale country…

Not for the first time did she curse her own shoddy packing procedures.

Not that pocket, or that bag, it must be – there they are!

The girl bounced back up from her sagging pack, a fistful of pressed golden coins held before her stiffly with a forced smile.

"Ha, sorry about that, I was in a rush this morning and I had to make sure I had everything ready to go, and you – you know how it is, right? Heh heh…"

The baker's stare remained bemused, even as he wordlessly scraped the money from her palm and shoved the proffered bundle of gently steaming pastries forwards across the aged counter.

The fresh provisions were eagerly scooped off the table, embarrassment forgotten at the promise of sustenance as the sheepish customer made to leave, throwing out a cheery "Thank you!" while she moved away.

The meat bun warmed her fingertips against the frosty air of early spring, wisps of vapor flowing skyward as she took a generous bite of her snack. A little moan escaped at the explosion of flavor, the perfectly heated meal tearing apart with delectable ease as the traveler wove through the crowded marketplace.

She loved little hubs like this – slices of the local cultures, condensed into an energetic and easygoing sprawl of stands displaying all manner of goods. The center of commerce stood free of the dominant shadows from the countless skyscraping towers, an uneven breakaway where structures stayed closer to ground level amongst the titans of the world's greatest metropolis. The flow of fresh air that sprung free from the monolithic buildings brought with it the scents and sounds of earnest, hardworking people hawking numerous enticing foodstuffs, and if she weren't so busy it would be the perfect place to while away the day.

The traveler mentally combed over her equipment satchel as she chewed through her midday meal at an efficient pace, ducking past all sorts of milling folk in the square. Her impromptu scavenger hunt for her supply of the local currency had let her check that everything was in its proper place for her departure, in spite of her own shortcomings with storage and item management.

The flow of urban citizens tapered out into a more balanced trickle as her feet took her away from the bustling bazaar, and back into the sprawl of the city. Enormous towers of worn sandstone rose up around her like a swelling wave, growing taller and taller as she moved further from the district market and towards more… convenient spaces.

She had finished her meal on the go by the time a proper opportunity presented itself. The wanderer tossed the greasy cheesecloth from her meal into a public bin, even as she surreptitiously scanned the environment to see if she was actually entering a more secluded block. The ever-present tide of traveling citizenry had thinned once again, leaving breaks and holes in the city's thoroughfares – just what was needed.

As any prying eyes wandered in separate directions, she ducked into a nearby alleyway, splitting off into winding corridors that pointed towards the dense ground-level interior of an inhabited skyscraper cluster. The back roads were darker and less well-kept, with a poor tendency towards retaining the seedier elements of the population dependent upon which district one found themselves in. Luckily, the stretch of walkways she hiked were simply cold and shaded, without an overwhelming criminal presence for this city segment.

She came to a stop in a recessed alcove, swinging her formidable pack off one shoulder and down to ground level for a final inspection. Tugging on straps, flipping buckles, counting out supplies – there was no way to tell when she would be able to return to the expansive mega-city in the future, just like every other alien place she visited, so packing light and mobile was always a necessity. Her bo staff clacked heartily against the dirty concrete as that, too, received a quick critical eye alongside the remainder of her gear.

Well, everything seemed in order… 'no time like the present,' as they liked to say.

It was a shame – she was really starting to like Ravnica. But the city wasn't where she was meant to be.

Securing her pack once more, staff strapped firmly to its side, the traveler took a deep breath, senses reaching out as the primordial currents of aether stirred around her. The invisible reflex, so much like a mental muscle, flexed under her concentration as she took slow, deliberate steps forward.

One, two, three – and then she was fading up and away, pressing against unknowable depths of the space between worlds that peeled apart before her focused will. The veil between worlds tore apart smoothly beneath and above and through the traveler as she departed the plane of reality she had once occupied.

The nameless, mindless pressure of the Blind Eternities ebbed and flowed around her, tugging mercilessly against her corporeal form even as she pushed on and through the metaphysical currents. There was no set path she took between the folds of space and time, only a singular goal in mind that led her cutting through cresting waves of nonexistence.

Home. Home. My home, and family, and world – I need to go home.

After what seemed an eternity condensed into a stretch of minutes, she felt the anticipated resistance as her soul reached out for the world that birthed her. The age-old ember of weary anger swelled in her breast as the invisible weight of some eldritch influence pressed her down and away from her ultimate goal, just as it had last time, and the time before that. It was like fighting a hurricane with your eyes closed, and your senses dulled, struggling against gale force winds that sought to tear you away from the embrace of the earth and hurl you into the uncaring sky.

But the traveler had felt this thing's grasp time and time again, and she had come prepared this time.

"When you're trying to call something up like this, it's easiest if you get angry. Think about how you've been wronged by this thing, how it represents everything used to keep you down."

The older teen spoke with the ease of garnered experience, stretching his lanky limbs as he prepared a demonstration for his enraptured younger charge.

"You can power it up even better if you twist some green and red mana together for it. Spells that use up more energy like that are harder to control and gather up, but they hit twice as hard."

His wrist flicked out in a harsh gesture at the cracked pillar before them, condensed mana spilling from his fingers like a whip as it shattered the column's core.

"Ha ha! See how easy it is break down a bastard's temples when you put your mind to it? You can even do this kind of thing with magical stuff, like enchanted armor."

The flaring anger that burned in the wanderer's chest was the fuel for her success. She stoked it, her mind furiously grinding through the long nights of isolation and prickling fear as she stumbled across unfamiliar lands, one after the other. How she yearned to feel her mother's fingers card through her curling hair once more, hear the love in her voice as she bustles around the house, a wafting scent of roasting meals creeping across the kitchen.

Tendrils of crimson and emerald swelled up from the abyss, wrapping around her limbs like living armor as her frustration and determination tugged at her connections to soaring mountains and verdant forests once visited. She kept pulling on her bonds to those lands, forcing more and more magic into the spell eclipsing her form. She was unharmed by the crackling corona, but the volatile energy was tearing away at the crushing pressure trying to shunt her away from her beloved homeland, ripping through its influence like a blade.

Had she not felt the ripping force that kept her from returning from whence she came so many times, it might have swept her away once more, spitting her out on another strange world with exotic lands and peoples. But the weeks turned into months and years of experience had molded her against its reach – and now, with her furious spellcraft splitting its blind malice, she was growing ever closer than before.

Hope soared through her, a grin sprouting against her will on her lips – she was doing it. She was really, finally going to go -!

The fleeting moment of elation was dashed by the doubling of the current's strength, pushing panic into her mind as the alien force fought to snuff out her burning enchantment. No, no no no, she was so close

In a moment of stricken weakness, she poured herself into the failing enchantment. It buckled and flared under the force of her desperation, blasting out into the darkness and pushing it back for one glorious moment, and she could feel it – the layers of resistance peeling away, her traveling body pushing past this first shell into another spread of the tidal wave, the soul-lights of a living world spreading across her view –

And then, without warning, the traveler was given a final titanic push out and away by her nemesis, crying into the abyss as she was pressed back into the reaches of normal space and time once more.

There was a moment of nauseous vertigo as she was shunted back into realspace in midair, terror filling her as she plummeted to the earth - blessedly a few meters below. She slammed into the soil with a graceless thump, air driven from her lungs as once-secure items were sent rolling and bouncing away by the collision.

It took a moment for her to recover, wheezing weakly as she clutched her sore ribs in one hand. That wasn't the first time she'd landed on a new world like that – literally – but it wasn't anymore pleasant. And worst of all, the taste in the air, the soaring evening of summertime skies above – this place wasn't home.

She tried to fight back the tears springing to her eyes as she gathered up her scattered pack, a growing sob of despair held back by force of will as she despondently crammed her survival equipment back into its proper place.

It just – it wasn't fair. She was so close she could taste it, but… it didn't matter.

Still adrift. Still trapped beyond the reach of her only loved ones.

The sob slipped out before she could catch it, and that really set her off.

"Dios maldita sea todo! I w-was so close that time!"

The traveler dropped to the ground with a harsh thump, crushing her backpack against her chest as she muffled her cries amongst the foreboding, otherworldly forest that surrounded the clearing.

Some time passed before she could stifle her tears, sniffling aggressively as the despair was pressed back down into the darkest corners of her mind with a flare of raging determination. It was just one setback on a whole heap of others, that was nothing new. It was time to get ahold of herself and move forward.

Just like every time before – and every time that was sure to follow.

Her self-pity party had lasted long enough to see the local sun cross the sky from its zenith, and begin dipping towards the horizon beyond the silhouette of a sprawling forest. Soft evening light streamed down through swirling, gnarled woods as she tromped out and away from her landing site, blindly following the faint echoes of lapping tides and squalling birds in the purpling dusk.

When the stretching limbs of the ancient trees broke before her, it was to reveal a short stretch of lush soil that ended abruptly at a rocky outcropping, the slapping of waves well beneath her vantage point. Sea birds whirled overhead, cawing loudly in their flocks as they swooped over the ledge in search of sustenance.

She couldn't help the budding sense of wonder flowing through her as the cliffside dipped low at her approach. Some things never changed, and the gorgeous expanses of wildly varying worlds always left her aglow at the majesty of it all.

And as she clambered onto a spiking stretch of boulder, her gasp caught in her throat at the magnificent view below.

Luz Noceda had found her sight set upon the arcane expanse of the fabled Boiling Isles.

It wasn't a skywards mountaintop jutting up below and around her – she was perched upon a gigantic, calcified leg bone.

Miles ahead of her sat the arches of a fallen giant, so grand in scale it boggled her mind. Fleshless ribs clawed at the distant sky, reaching like broken teeth at heights rivalling the mammoth skyscrapers of the planetwide city dominating the far-flung world of Ravnica. The limbs of the felled titan sprouted from the tempestuous seas, verdant autumnal colors swelling in uneven clumps of growth as nature sought to reclaim the ancient remains of a once great beast. A monolithic skull – almost so large and distant that it fought the curve of the horizon from her perspective – leered out emptily at its own frozen form.

Not only was the natural world sprouting like weeds from its tremendous carcass – but cities, as well. Luz could spot the telltale mixture of wood and stonework comprising artificial construction in varied locales, their uneven structures a poor competition for the scale of their surroundings.

That feeling of burning curiosity completely overshadowed the remnants of her frustration. This world was – was like nothing she had ever seen before.

The exotic floating islands and gravity-defying mounds of handcrafted hedrons that stretched across the jungles of Zendikar had been her first experience with alien planes, so far from home. But even the unknowable, arcane landmarks of a fierce deathworld were incomparable to what she was seeing now.

She fell backwards onto her rump in shock, mouth hanging open as she reveled in the spectacle of this strange new land. The endless expanses of the sapphire seas stretched out and away from the titanic skeleton, lapping at the bones with insistent waves and whorls.

It took only a moment of deliberation before her shaking hands reached into her pack.

Once upon a time, a young girl had dreamt of awing the world with her lovingly made artistry. The sketches and likenesses of a thousand mundane objects brought to life by her will, a skill she always wielded proudly for her beloved mami.

Now her books were filled with fantastical drawings that even Luz could never have conjured up as a child. Foreign landscapes and alien peoples crowded her sketches as she sought to record every step of the way home, the roughly bound notebook preserved against the ravages of a planeswalker's lifestyle by thorough enchantment work.

It was hard to cram the true awe-inspiring scale of the vanquished titan into a single yellowed page, but Luz was never one to back down from an artistic challenge. She fought against the fading light of day to capture as much detail as possible, and when the cusp of her viable time for lighting began slipping away, she tossed a glowing orb of ethereal fire into the air with a moment's thought. Even then, the sun had crawled too far beyond the end of the world for her to meaningfully continue, though she remained satisfied with what she had managed to encapsulate thus far.

By the time the day had fully passed, Luz was setting up a temporary camp beneath a breathtaking spillage of stars. Distant galaxies and nebulae twinkled in the nighttime skyline, a canvas of starlight aiding her efforts to establish a solid little campfire to bed beside for the evening. She spent the time between flipping the sizzling portions of her provisions staring up at the atmosphere with wonder, the beauty of the summer night enrapturing her mind.

The worlds she had seen, the planes she'd had to flee from – they hadn't been like this. Nightmares still nipped at her heels of her panicked flight from Innistrad, the malicious swamps of that shadowed world hunting her unprepared form while abominations stalked the eternal gloom. But this place, it was… something else. Something really amazing, even for all the dangers she assumed would inhabit the framework of the fallen giant.

A quick jab of her boot sent green mana flowing into the soil, sundering the packed dirt into something softer for her sleeping bag to lay atop for her rest. A few quick gestures had some light wards erected around the camp perimeter to warn her of approaching individuals, while a bit of more mundane fire management saw that her roasting pit would keep her warm for some time.

Luz Noceda spent her first night on the Boiling Isles curled up within her sleeping bag, gazing with unbridled interest into unfamiliar constellations before sleep finally claimed her.

She would begin her descent towards civilization – and answers – the following day.


AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Chapter and notes originally posted on 2-15-2021.

This isn't really related to my previous story, "A Call Today, a World Away," but it was an idea rattling around for a bit that I figured I'd throw out and see what people thought. It's intended to be a bit slower and longer than a simple oneshot, but any update schedule will be sporadic at best on account of having a senior thesis to contend with. However, I hope to further explore some things with this story and the Owl House characters so we'll see where things end up.

Thanks for reading!

Edit (9-3-22): Modified currency reference for the first few paragraphs to reflect the proper denomination for Ravnica, as per canon.