Chapter 2: I've a feeling I'm not in Gravesfield anymore
Luz gasped as she bolted awake. Apparently, going through mysterious and potentially magic portals was not a good idea. Well, at least she was fine, even if her head was still throbbing like crazy. Luz decided she was going to lie where she was on the ground for the rest of her life.
Or, at least until her vision cleared.
She tried to lift her hand over her eyes to block out the sunlight shining above. A tiny brown bird, suspiciously similar to an owl, flew over her.
When Luz finally decided that her head wasn't hurting enough, she sat up and found herself in a tiny sheltered meadow, ringed with orange trees and illuminated by a shaft of warm sunlight. The forest surrounding it has a very dark, and very gloomy, with the only light being in the clearing.
Slowly, Luz's memories came back to her and between the slowly disappearing pain in her head, and the feeling of the grass underneath her, she remembered what had happend.
A monster dog.
A strange teen with pointed ears and a staff.
A weird glowing vortex... portal... thing.
It was only now that Luz began to notice the weird plants that looked like they had eyeballs-like flowers growing on them. On closer inspection the 'flowers' proved to not be some weird-looking flowers, but real, actual eyeballs. One even blinked at her.
Luz reached out a finger to poke one of the eyeballs.
"If I were you, I wouldn't do it." An unfamiliar voice suggested. Luz shrieked, and lost her still precarious balance. She toppled backwards, her head slamming into ground with a burst of pain and a bright flash followed by stars.
Luz groaned, blinking away tears. A dark shape loomed over her, casting a shadow around where she was.
"Well that's going to leave a bump." The voice remarked.
"Stay back!" Luz demanded as she swung a piece of wood she had snatched from the ground next to her.
"Whoa! What did I ever do to deserve being threatened by a treant's arm?" the voice asked, sounding a little offended, but in a light-hearted sort of way.
"I… what?" Luz blinked, still a little out of it. She studied the teenage girl in front of her, who seemed entirely too amused with something. Then she looked back down at her wepon. Rather than the heft of large stick, an arm-shaped one was wriggling in her grip "Gaaah!" Luz exclaimed in shock, flinging the arm to the ground. The arm stopped wriggling when it hit the earth, returning to the appearance of a regular old stick.
Luz was taking deep breaths to try and calm herself down from all the rapid fire weirdness that was happening to her. Still huffing a little, she took more time to inspect the new stranger that had appeared before her.
The girl resembled the boy she had met before in a number of ways, same pointed ears, same facial structure, same nose, same red hair if not a little bit darker, as well as longer and in a braid. But, unlike the boy, she was wearing a red lipstick and eyes of an almost violet-like blue.
She wore a turquoise cheongsam dress that split at her right hip to reveal pale blue pants, a violet gemstone sitting on the chest of the dress like the ruby one did on the boy's shirt. The girl also hade black gloves with cyan rims that reached up to her forearms, as well as white, knee-high boots that had blue accents and a single golden earing on her right ear.
"Is everything alright?" the redhead asked, "You looked like you were one step away from a panic attack."
"A panic attack? There is nothing to panic about." Luz donned a cheery attitude as she lied to the girl just as much as she to was herself. "Um, hey, can we start again? I'm Luz." Luz introduced as she offered a hand, the other gripping her bag strap anxiously.
After a brief small pause, the older girl returned the smile and shook her hand. "Katrina. Nice to meet you."
"This be an odd questiong to hear... but, um, where am I right now?"
"The Everdark Forest. A dangerous place for humans such as yourself." She added, glancing at Luz's more rounded ears.
"You speak as if you aren't human." Luz said with a chuckled, half hoping there wouldn't be an answer to that question.
"Do I look like the human to you?" Katrina asked, brushing a hand pass her pointy ears.
Luz only kept staring at her.
Katrina pinched the bridge of her nose. "It really shouldn't be this tough... Look, let me give you a tip," The older girl sighed, making an orb of fire in one hand and an orb of water in the other, both just floating above her palms. "Can human do this?"
"Eh-heh, okay you, got me. Is this one of those hidden-camera shows?" Luz looked around the trees, still in denial and believing this was some elaborate joke.
"Hidden-camera?" Katrina asked as she dispelled both elemental orbs.
Luz opened her mouth to reply, but stopped short when the boy who had saved her from the monster-lizard-dog from earlier popped up next to Katrina. He looked a little more beat up than the last time Luz had seen him.
"Heya, Red! I've got good news and even better news!" He said chipperly. "Why are you looking at me like that?" he then asked when he saw how Katrina was looking at him.
"You're bleeding, Jett." Katrina told the boy.
"I am?" The boy, 'Jett', asked as he put a finger to his forehead and felt blood trickle down on it. "Sweet. A cool scar on head."
"That's no reason to be happy of it." Katrina noted.
"Chicks like guys with scars." Jett disagreed.
"Then I'm doing 'chicks' a huge favor."
With a motion of Katrina's fingers, a lavender blue circle appeared around teen's head, making the wound glow for a moment before disappearing and revealing Jett's forehead to be as good as new.
"I would've looked good with scar, Kat." Jett pouted.
"You're welcome~!" Katrina sung smugly in return.
Jett mocked Katrina by silently mimicking her, then turned his attention to Luz, who had watched this exchange between the two with reserved amusement. "And how exactly did you get here?"
"I followed you through your portal thingy." Luz said honestly.
"You opened a breach in a place where the humans could just see you..." Katrina whipped her head around to glare at Jett so intensely it threatened to burrow a hole in his chest. "And you didn't even check it before you come back!?"
"Guilty." Jett admitted, not looking the least bit remorseful.
"At least tell me that you got the ectonuritol back here?" Katrina sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"Not to worry, I took care of it." He assured with a smirk.
"I still can't believe you get that cursed rock." Katrina said, still annoyed.
"First of all, it's not a rock. It's night crystal." Jett corrected. "And second, how was I supposed to know there was a shadow monster hiding in it?!"
"You bought a magic shining rock off a gremlin named Cozbi 'The Twilight Sorcerer of Monsters'." Katrina made air quotes with her fingers. "What did you expect to be the outcome of that, Birdbrain?"
Before Jett could even formulate a reply, a loud howl echoed from deeper inside the woods. And a few seconds later, large glowing eyes showed up between the trees.
Both Jett and Katrina exchanged surprised looks, before they both scowled at glowing eyes.
"Jett." Katrina asked firmly.
"Yes?" Jett answered casually, but still firmed his grip on the staff.
"You said the ectonuritol came out of the crystal." The redhead asked as she put her fists together and summon her own staff, a phoenix ornament at the top.
"I didn't know this would happen, Red!" Jett snarked.
"Well, that isn't an ectonuritol." Katrina glared at the creature, which had now prowled out of the shadows. Luz gulped upon recognising the distinctive hound.
"Hey, it's not my fault that all demonic shadow dogs look extremely similar!" Jett defended.
"And how many shadow-lizard-zombie-dogs come out of crystals?!" Luz asked panicking and hiding behind the older teens.
"If you must know, eleven of them. Twelve, if you consider some subspecies of ghousts." Katrina answered seriously. "But this one," she pointed her staff at the creature, "is a gytrash."
Jett's brow furrowed, "So when I used a ice spell on it earlier... Whoops."
The shadows of the trees cast by the almost obscured sun slowly began to creep across the ground, and climb onto the gytrash's body like black snakes.
Katrina's eye twitched. "Whoops?" She echoed Jett. "WHOOPS?! That's all you got?! WHOOPS?!" Katrina yelled at Jett once she understood what he had done. "There are many other things I want to yell at you right now, Jett Clawthorne! But! Fortunately for you, we do not currently have the time!"
Then, to all the teens' horror, canine jabbed a claws into a ground as its body had morphed into another form.
It was far larger than it used to be. Multiple spikes of ice lined its body like frigid quills, black shadows now were swirling around its neck like a mane, and had also replaced its tail too. The claws and teeth, already long and sharp, grew even more so, making it even more imposing. Its now glowing eyes were just the fear icing on the terrifying cake.
"I have to say," Jett commented, "I like the new look."
The gytrash just growled at him.
"You guys have a plan, Right?" Luz asked, looking at the creature. "Please tell me you have a plan!"
"Well, its become even more dangerous thanks to Birdbrain's incomitance." Katrina answered, still angary with Jett. "And we have no crystal to seal the gytrash... So I'm going to suggest a tactical retreat."
"So run away?" Jett smirked at Katrina.
"You got a better idea?"
Jett shrugged indifferently. "Okay, then how do you suggest we do that?"
"Vertically!" Katrina responded as the gytrash reared to pounce at them.
"Up!" Katrina shouted when Gytrash jumped at them.
"Wait! What are you planning t-" Luz began to ask, but was not allowed to finish as Katrina locked her arm around Luz's waist as she and Jett jumped onto their staffs, ornaments' wings flapping, and took off into the sky as the gytrash sailed under them.
Recovering, the gytrash could only look up and growl after them.
Safely away from the dog monster, the triol sailed through the air on staffs. Luz sat on Katrina's with her eyes closed tightly as she quietly kept wishing that this was all a spicey nacho induced dream and she was really safe back in bed.
To test that theory, Luz pinched her skin sharply. Wincing at the following pain, it unfortunately confirmed that this wasn't any kind of dream and that it really was real.
A few minutes later, Luz felt her feet touch a, relatively, solid ground. Honestly, it felt more like standing on a pillow than it did solid earth.
"Don't worry, we've landed now, so you can open your eyes." Katrina told Luz.
Complying, Luz slowly opened her eyes to see where they had landed. However, this only served to surprise Luz, allowing her jaw to go slack.
They were actually standing on top of a cloud! A cloud that was really, really high.
"How?" Luz finally whispered, body practically frozen.
"Magic." the ginger teens answered in sync.
"Like, actual magic?" Luz asked. "Like, real life, true, actual magic?!"
"Yep. Magic." Katrina nodded. "Right here, where we come from, magic is just about everywhere. Especially down there." She pointed off the ledge of the cloud.
Luz turned to look over the edge and gasped at what she saw.
There was the skeletal ruins of some kind of titanic, horned creature. It partially lay in the seas, but most of it lay atop the lands, even making some of it up!
Luz needed to pinch herself again.
Yep. Still hurt. Not a dream.
Luz tried to take deep breaths tocalm down, but not doing a very good job at it.
"I'm dead." Luz chuckled morbidly. "That's the only explanation. I died and this is the afterlife."
"I assure you, you are alive and well and in no way in the afterlife." Jett reassured, stepping up beside her. "This, my dear human, is the Boiling Isles." He gestured to the lands beneath them.
Luz blinked. "The Boiling Isles?"
"A slimy, stinky, weird and gross island inside the Demon Realm." Jett continued to explain. "Every myth and legend you humans have is because a little bit of our world leaked into yours."
As if on cue, a dragon popped out of a nearby cloudbank with a thunderous roar, before flying towards the rib bones of the decayed titan below.
"Was that a dragon?" Luz asked in amazement.
"Eeyup." Jett nodded proudly. "We've got dragons, griffins, flying monkeys, werewolves, mermaids, every kind of magical monster you can think of and a lot more that you can't."
Luz didn't know what to say.
She didn't know how to respond to that kind of revelation.
Of course she had, deep down, hoped that somewhere there was a magic world like in her favorite fantasy novels was real.
She had always believed that magic was real, but having it confirmed that it was, especially from somone who belong to said magical realm, and seeing it so intimately made it somehow more tangible.
More real.
And then, something just, snapped, in her brain.
"OHMYGOSHOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH!" Luz screamed, bouncing around like a little kid. "THIS IS AWESOME! I mean, I was totally freaking out for my life back there, but this is the coolest thing, EVAAAAH!"
Jett and Katrina were startled by the sudden excitement, they had expected some confusion, maybe a little fear, or at the very least for Luz to freeze up as her brain tried to comprehend the sudden realization that there was a completely new, magical world existing.
"Not the reaction I was expecting." Jett remarked, a small smile adorning his face.
The Latina teen slowed her excitement and looked back at Jett and Katrina with an inquisitive look on her face.
"So... What are you guys? Elves? Genies?"
Jett cleared his throat. "The name's Jett Clawthorne, and I'm a witch." He bowed theatrically. "This is my cousin Trina Clawthorne, she's also a witch. And we-"
"Need Jett to stop acting like an idiot and help to catch the gytrash." Katrina interjected, slapping him on the back of the head.
"But that's a lot of work!" Jett whined.
"We can't let it run free." Katrina huffed.
"Why not?" Jett shrugged. "This is the Boiling Isles, more than 80 percent of the creatures here are super dangerous. It'll probably get eaten in the next day or so, so what's the harm of letting it run around till then?"
"Gytrash have an excellent sent of smell, it can track us." Katrina reminded
Jett scoffed. "Pah-lease! If the Demon Hunters, Shadow Clan, and that vampire lady from the pet café can't track me down, how can an overgrown shadow puppy supposed to find me?"
"It found a crack." Katrina said, her voice clipped.
The teen boy's ears tucked a bit down, "Oo-kay than. We have to sealed it."
"Uhhhh, guys?" Luz raised her hand like a student at lessons. "What about me?"
The adrenaline having died down from the exciting revelation of that magic is real and that there's another world that she was in, Luz realised that she was hundreds of feet in the air, and the only two people she knew here were discussing hunting down a demonic shadow dog.
The two cousins blinked in realization that Luz was still there.
"The gytrash knows your scent." Katrina answered. "If it found a new crack before we were able sealed it, it would hunt you all the way to the Human Realm. But on the other hand..." Katrina winced as she cupped her cheek in a hand. "The Boiling Isles isn't exactly always 'friendly'. Especially to non-locals."
"Are you able to send me back then?" Luz asked.
"The breach only run one way." Katrina repiled. "And this is more of spur-of-the-moment portal."
"We need a real portal. Lucky for us, we have someone who has one." Jett added, pointing out a random point in space, "Next stop, the Owl House!"
Author's notes:
Jett's voice is Jack Frost from "Rise of the Guardians"/Chris Pine
Katrina's voice is Princess Elena from "Elena of Avalor"/Aimee Carrero
Follow, Favorite and Review. Mainly review, because I want to know if I'm doing good or bad work.