Amity tried to direct her broom as best she could, risking crashing into a tree at least six times; fortunately she was starting to get the hang of it and avoided hurting herself and Luz too much. The puppet, however, got a few good scares and in fear hugged herself even tighter around her waist and rested her head on her shoulder. Amity felt her face heat up and her heart began to beat wildly; and Luz, too, when she realized the position she was in, turned red and felt her heartbeat speed up. The two girls didn't say a word and pretended nothing happened, trying not to show the other the whirlwind of emotions that was happening inside them. Each of them could feel the other's furious heartbeat, and it almost felt like their hearts were trying to break through their ribcage and jump on top of each other.

However, there was no time for emotions: after a short time, a familiar horse finally appeared in their field of vision, with two individuals on its back. As soon as she saw them, Luz's soul was filled with anger. "There they are!" she exclaimed, and Amity immediately dived upon hearing her.

Adrian and Terra didn't see them coming; they only heard a rustle of wind before they stood in front of the horse. The animal, frightened by the sudden apparition, stood up on its hind legs and knocked the two marauders down, then it ran away faster than the wind. "Grrr... you again!?" Terra snapped angrily, then she ran towards the puppet and tried to grab her with her long claw-like fingers, but Amity moved the magic broom again and took both away from her grasp.

"We told you to leave us alone!" Adrian growled. "What do you think you're getting? Do you think two young girls like you can defeat two adults like us!?"

"If you want us two to let you go, then give us the lamp!" Amity replied. She was lying, of course; or at least, she was omitting the fact that even if the two of them let them go, their other friends, including Darius himself, could have captured them anyway. "We don't care about your loot, you can keep it! But we won't let you kidnap our friend!"

"Oh, look who likes to play heroes!" Terra exclaimed with an evil laugh. "Do you really think we'll give it back to you? Do you have any idea how much a magic lamp with a djinn that can grant a wish is worth? We won't give up such loot!"

"That lamp is not loot, it's the place where Darius is forced to stay! Yours is kidnapping!" Luz protested.

"Tsk! Who cares!" Terra retorted without showing the slightest remorse, and then she threw a knife towards them; it passed just a few centimeters from their cheeks. The two girls made an annoyed noise in unison, and then launched themselves at her with the magic broom; the woman was caught off guard and before she could react she found herself rolling in the mud with her sternum aching from the kick they had given her. Furious, she tried to get up and try to grab them, but again they managed to send her to the ground.

"Terra, stop playing with them! We have another problem!" Adrian said pointing to the sky: a small red light had in fact appeared not far away and was becoming bigger and closer. "It must be their friend, the one who fought like an entire army!"

"Hunter!" Both Luz and Amity were thrilled: the presence of their blond friend would mean a sure victory.

But neither Terra nor Adrian were willing to give up. "We didn't come this far to be beaten by a puppet, a little wannabe witch and their crazy soldier friend!" Terra roared, and she ran to Adrian and snatched the lamp from his hands, then she rubbed it violently. From the lamp emerged Darius, who from his expression had evidently hoped to be called back by a friendly face and not by those two criminals.

"NO!" Amity and Luz screamed and tried to stop her, but Adrian stood between them swinging a large machete and forcing them to retreat.

"Let's not waste time on useless chatter!" Terra said to Darius. "Djinn, here is my wish: I want you to kill-"

"I can't kill anyone!" Darius exclaimed. He was lying: he could kill, but he absolutely didn't want to. Terra hadn't ordered him to be truthful, so he could lie to her to avoid having to carry out an assassination and save the kids. "Because... I am a being composed of life magic, and therefore I have no power over death!"

"What? You're really useless" Terra grumbled, then a grin spread across her face. "Okay... then give me and Adrian the power needed to crush these insects! This is my wish!"

Darius bit his lip and tried to resist, but now Terra had made her wish and he had to fulfill it. Although with great regret, he raised his arms and said: "Your wish... is granted" and his magic emerged from the palms of his hands and wrapped around the two criminals; for a brief moment they vanished, and a vortex of purple liquid swirled around them; then the liquid seemed to penetrate their bodies, and they returned exactly as before.

Amity paled. "Luz... I don't know what happened, but we better get out of here!"

Despite all the anger the puppet felt towards the two criminals, Luz couldn't help but agree with her friend. "Yes. Let's get to Hunter before..."

But suddenly the ground split and a huge bramble emerged from it, and it grew at breakneck speed until it was taller than a tree; the bramble moved like a tentacle and descended on Luz and Amity, who screamed and moved away for an instant before being hit. More brambles emerged around them, as if beneath the earth there was a giant octopus made of plants and was trying to grab them. Amity aimed her magical broom towards the sky, getting as far away from the ground as possible, but as they climbed they noticed that a tower was growing next to them; a tower that was made up of logs, grass, plants and flowers. The largest flower, a giant rose at the top of the plant tower, opened to reveal Terra sitting comfortably on top of it. "Are you leaving already, girls? Weren't you the ones chasing us?" the woman asked with a grin, and as soon as she moved her fingers the leaves of the flower she was sitting on turned into blades that moved in the air trying to slice the two girls. "Come on, you hurt me like this! Come and get a hug from Aunt Terra!"

"Damn! I thought Terra couldn't be any more creepy than she already was!" Luz murmured as she watched the vines and brambles wrap around her and Amity. "Damn it, Darius! Why did you give her such power!?"

"What can I say, it suits me! You know I've always loved gardening; I've never lied about that!" Terra teased her, then attacked her with even more force. The two girls dodged the monstrous plants as best they could, but still the brambles and nettles managed to at least sting them in several places and cause them some pain, although this was still better than being torn to pieces. But the more they tried to escape, the more the plants wrapped themselves around them, creating a cage.

But fortunately, these plants were torn away by a red aura that cut them into thousands of small pieces; Terra found herself falling as soon as her plant tower was destroyed, but she only had to move her hand a little to make a soft bush appear beneath her. The woman looked up just in time before seeing Hunter's hand try to grab the magic lamp in her hands, but when the boy managed to take it it vanished instantly. "What!?" Hunter exclaimed.

In response, Terra moved a vine like a whip and threw him away. "Tsk! Fool, I asked the djinn to give us powers that could defeat all of you!" she said. "And of course... I asked to give them to both of them"

"You could say that we have become complementary" Adrian said, literally appearing out of nowhere, as if the air around him until then had covered him, hiding him from view; in his hand he held the magic lamp proudly. Hunter lunged at him, but again as soon as he tried to touch him he vanished; soon after, at least five more Adrians appeared around him. "Not even that djinn can beat you in hand-to-hand combat, it seems... but what if you can't trust your senses anymore?" and as he said this his copies disappeared and from behind them appeared some brambles commanded by Terra, which hit Hunter with such violence that he spat blood.

The boy let out a groan of pain, but didn't let himself be distracted and immediately jumped onto his staff, and he tried to fly away... too bad that what he had thought was the sky turned out to be the crown of a tree, and he crashed into it. "Gnnn… one controls the plants, and the other creates illusions?" he muttered. "Really a great duo..."

"Hey! Making illusions is my job, asshole!" Gus exclaimed angrily, supported quite a bit by Willow.

"Well, not anymore it seems, little spider! You wanted a lesson, didn't you? Then let me give you another! Behold a true illusionist!" Adrian said, and the world around them almost seemed to turn upside down; even though Hunter knew it was all an illusion, it disoriented him quite a bit, and that was enough for Terra to wrap one of her vines around his staff and try to pull it away; fortunately the boy noticed it in time and didn't allow himself to be thrown off his weapon, but in any case he was unable to detach the plant from his staff, and other plants hidden by Adrian's powers began to grab him from other sides too.

That sight made Luz lose the last bit of rationality she had left. "Leave my friend alone!" she screamed, and without even warning Amity launched herself from the magic broom and threw herself onto Terra; the woman, who was focused on Hunter, didn't see her coming and couldn't stop her until she fell directly on her head, knocking her to the ground and starting punching her. "That's for hurting Hunter!" the puppet growled. "This is for hurting Amity! This is for kidnapping Darius! This is for deceiving me! This is..."

But even though Terra's face was now swollen and blood was dripping from one of her lips, she managed to concentrate enough to move a bush behind her and trap her with its branches. The puppet kicked in an attempt not to let go of that evil woman, but he couldn't resist for long. "LUZ!" Amity screamed trying to reach her, but Adrian's illusions made impossible for her to even understand which direction she needed to go.

Terra stood up. Her gaze was so murderous that it seemed that of a rabid beast. "You…" she hissed. "You stupid puppet! All you had to do was die in that damned woods, but look how much trouble you keep causing us! If it wasn't for that damned owl and those two bugs, everything would have gone exactly as it was supposed to! Instead, you hadn't even been able to die for good!"

Luz's eyes widened. "What? What are you...?"

"Oh, baby... you still don't understand? Who do you think gave you this scar?" Terra told her, stroking her head and planting a nail in the place where an assassin had planted their knife some time ago. "It was me, stupid! Those two murderers were us! When I met you on that road I immediately identified you. I knew that it would have been enough to give you bait and you would have immediately taken the bait, and in fact you immediately ran into the woods! If you If you had died there like you were supposed to, we would have saved ourselves a lot of trouble!"

Luz remained petrified. She knew that Adrian and Terra were two crooks, and she knew that they were evil; but until then she still hadn't made that connection. When she succeeded, she became so furious that she nearly foamed at the mouth. "You... you are truly demons! You are the most... most vile beings I have ever met!"

"Wow! It took you a long time to understand that, idiot!" Terra said sarcastically, then she closed her fist; Luz felt the plant's grip on her tighten, taking her breath away. "Now I will do what I wanted to do that night, and no one can stop me! We are invincible now!"

"Not really" Darius suddenly said.

Terra turned to him. "What?"

"I gave you incredible powers, but you never specified that they were without weaknesses" Darius replied, speaking as if he were sorry. "It can happen... you have to be very clear when expressing wishes. Since you were vague with yours, I interpreted it as best I could... and I fear I gave you powers that, although based on magic... they follow natural rules"

Terra raised an eyebrow. "Stop talking in riddles!" she said impatiently. "I can't understand what you're saying!"

But unlike her, Luz smiled with satisfaction. "Instead I can. The advantage of going to school is that you discovered a lot of interesting things... and then you can understand what a djinn says between the lines"

"What are you talking about, you stupid puppet? Speak before I crush you!" Terra roared.

But Luz laughed in her face instead. "Don't worry, I'll show you right away. Oh, and by the way... while you were distracted, I took your knife" and she moved her hand revealing that she had a dagger in her fingers; Terra let out a soft sob and instinctively took a step back, perhaps fearing that the puppet wanted to use it on her, but instead Luz simply dropped it onto a root of the bush that held her captive. As soon as it touched it, the dagger caused a cut in the root; a very small cut, but as soon as this happened, the leaves of the bush dried up instantly and the trunk twisted until it became dry and decaying, freeing Luz who tore off the now brittle branches effortlessly. "Yes! I understood correctly!" the puppet cheered.

"Huh!? But... what...?" Terra exclaimed confused as ever; Adrian too looked at the scene shocked, and that moment of distraction was enough for the illusions to falter and Amity was able to see where Luz really was, and with a quick movement of her broom she was immediately next to her and took her away from the woman's clutches.

"Gus, Willow! Come here now!" the puppet shouted; the two arthropods flew into her hands and she whispered something to them, and although they were initially confused then their expressions became jovial and satisfied; at that point Willow took Gus back to Hunter, and then she almost disappeared into thin air. "We take care of Terra, you take care of Adrian!" Luz said to Hunter and Gus, and then she and Amity pointed back at the woman.

Terra was clearly nervous, but she laughed anyway: "Tsk! I don't know what you have in mind, but I won't let you come near me! DIE!". Her brambles and vines all moved together towards the two girls, like an immense swarm of tentacles, clawed legs and hands trying to grab them; Adrian tried to use his illusions to make his friend's job easier, but Hunter came between them and quickly got her attention. Without realizing it, Adrian and Terra found themselves fighting each against a different enemy: and this meant that they were already weakened, given that Darius had created their powers to be complementary, and now instead strength and strategy were separated without they even realizing it...

Amity was now becoming almost completely confident with her magic broom, even if it still skidded every now and then, and thanks to this she managed to dodge all the plants that Terra threw at her. "Snarl! Can you stay still!?" the woman growled, then she raised her hands as if she were lifting something enormous, and in fact brambles the size of oak trees emerged from the ground, splitting it and enveloping the two girls in a huge cage, which then began to shrink. Terra cheered when this happened. "Heh heh, finally! I hope you enjoy the afterlife... WHAT!?"

Suddenly the brambles dried up and became weak and brittle, and collapsed under their own weight, freeing the two girls, who looked at her with satisfaction. "But... what does that mean!?" Terra exclaimed with a slightly shaky voice.

"It's the most basic knowledge of any course in biology, botany, anatomy or anything else" Luz replied. "The faster something grows, the more quickly it needs new nutrients, and the bigger it is, the faster it consumes energy. A plant forced to grow at this rate will decay if even a single root is cut". A smile appeared on the puppet's face. "And we have a cricket on our side who spent years tending to a plant in my mother's shop, and is more experienced at gardening than you... and is also strong enough to break any root!"

Terra became livid. "Mh! You went to school, I see!" she said angrily. "Well, then I'll find this cricket and..."

She didn't have time to say anything else: the flower where she stood began to dry up, but when it did its insides seemed to explode and the woman was catapulted into the air. "Oh, here's another interesting thing about plants… if a flower dries out too quickly, it immediately releases all the pollen in one go" Luz told her as she giggled.

"And the bigger the flower, the more the release of the pollen presses on the surrounding air, generating a shock wave" Amity added as she and Luz bumped each other's fists in a complicit manner. "A flower that size… I'm pretty sure it generates a pretty strong shock wave"

Terra spun through the air for nearly six meters, then she plummeted back toward the ground; she tried to make another plant appear beneath her, but to her surprise not one appeared and she crashed into the mud with a crash. From the pain she felt, the impact must have broken her arm and at least a couple of ribs. As she struggled to get up, she saw a cricket appear in her field of vision and land on her face. "Yes, there's no point in trying. I removed all the seeds and spores from this area. No seeds and spores, no plants" Willow told her with a satisfied smile.

"You stupid cricket, you've been in my way too much! I hope you like being crushed... OUCH!" Terra screamed as Willow punched her eyes.

"This is for everything you did to Luz, by the way" the cricket told her with disgust in his voice. "I shouldn't say this... but damn it was good!"

Terra reached out in an attempt to grab Willow even blindly, but Luz and Amity let out a scream and threw themselves on top of her, landing on her stomach. As soon as their shoes landed on her belly, Terra seemed to even spit out her lungs.

Meanwhile, Adrian hadn't noticed anything, too busy focusing his attention on Hunter and Gus. "You two annoyed me!" he said, and the world around him seemed to distort as his illusions took hold. "I will unleash the greatest horrors against you! I will drive you mad with terror!"

"Tsk! If you expect to scare me, you're way off the mark, man" Hunter told him sarcastically. "You have no idea what I have seen in my life. Compared to it your illusions they are children's stories"

"And I've technically met Belos up close, so... I'd say my terror threshold is pretty high by now" Gus added.

Despite their rivalry, Adrian still raised an eyebrow: "Wow... if that's true, you two should see a therapist"

"Yeah, maybe that wouldn't be a bad idea" Hunter admitted, then turned serious again. "So, can we fight? And before you start, please, let's skip the ten-minute villain monologue where you explain how powerful you are and how you want to kill us. Trust me, after a while of hearing them they start to seem just a waste of time"

"Mph! You really have to take all the fun out of it, huh? I'm an actor, so to speak, certain things are important to me!" Adrian protested, then his face became mocking: "But if you really want to die quickly... I'll satisfy you!"

The world around Gus and Hunter seemed to lose all meaning: trees, ground and sky distorted, breaking as if they were dominoes. If anyone had tried to move there, they would surely have crashed into something; it was clear that Adrian aimed to disorientate them by causing them to crash. But Hunter and Gus exchanged a knowing look and then, to the criminal's surprise, Hunter gave his staff a swing and traveled in a perfect circle around him. "What? How did you do that!?"

"Ask the little spider you teased so much" Hunter told him.

Gus gave a satisfied smile. "Darius said that your powers respect the laws of nature, which means they are based on the principles of illusionism... and I am a better illusionist than you!" he said proudly. "You can fool our sight, but not our other senses. And I can perceive even the slightest vibrations in the air thanks to my hairs, after all I am still a spider. Our movement creates friction in the air, which is pushed forward, and if there is an obstacle it bounces back even if we don't see it, and I can feel it! Once you've completed the first complete lap, you just need to memorize the route to be able to do it endlessly without crashing". He looked at Adrian defiantly: "But now I want to show you something else too! Hunter?"

"Roger" Hunter replied, and gave the stirrup a mighty blow; magic emerged from it and suddenly they accelerated exponentially. It wasn't as fast as when he used Flapjack, but it was still enough to surpass the speeds of sound; fortunately the magic protected them from the friction of the air, or all of them would have been blown to smithereens, and if they hadn't then they would have burned alive as the air around them had turned to boiling white plasma, as if they were a shooting star. Because of that speed and heat, the air around them compressed and began to accelerate as well, until a full-blown cyclone formed around Adrian, trapping him in the center.

"What are you doing!?" the criminal exclaimed in terror, and then he raised Darius' lamp. "Be careful, I still have the djinn under my control! Even if my illusions have no effect on you, I can still..."

He froze when he saw reality distorting around him; her illusions seemed to break and begin to travel in circles themselves, and transformed into a whirlwind of brilliant colors bouncing in every direction. Just looking made Adrian's head spin. He felt like he was at the center of a kaleidoscope, or rather, of a real psychedelic trip. Furthermore, part of the air around him, pushed by the cyclone, continually hit him, making his internal organs tremble, and the sound emitted by the hurricane began to resonate in his ears so much that it made his brain go crazy. He soon lost his balance and began vomiting. He tried to turn off his illusions in an attempt to at least give comfort his eyes, but he couldn't. "What... why can't I...?"

"There's no point in trying!" Gus's voice warned him, although it was impossible to understand from what direction. "Your illusions are nothing more than light that reflects in the air and is modified by your powers... but now, the air is no longer static! The light that you emitted when you created your illusions is now bouncing in here and it will be trapped for a long time! You can no longer control it, and you can no longer turn it off!". Judging by the sound that was heard, the spider must have burst out laughing. "It's time for the grand finale of my show. Hunter?"

"As you wish!" the boy replied, and he stopped suddenly; the sudden stoppage of the tornado's source created a shock wave that seemed to explode in the vortex, but he paid it no mind. Instead, he pointed his staff downward and fired three red beams; as soon as they touched the ground around Adrian, the earth rose up and turned white as if it had become boiling hot, then it solidified instantly and became transparent as a mirror. What Hunter had just done was heat the earth to its melting point and then immediately cool it to turn it into a mirror; it wasn't a very good mirror, in fact no one could have looked at it, after all the earth wasn't sand, but it was enough to be considered a reflecting surface. The light from Adrian's illusions, the sound of the roar that had emitted from them when they had suddenly stopped, and the displacement of the air due to the cyclone hit the mirrors and bounced off them harder than ever, and Adrian who was in the center he was hit even more violently than before; his brain seemed to explode and he was no longer able to think properly. He fell to the ground first on his hands, then on his arms, and finally he was no longer even able to crawl; he continued to vomit and cry while chaos in its purest form seemed to be unleashed around him. "I have to… I have to… djinn, where are you…?"

"I'm right here, master" Darius' voice came from nowhere. "So... what do you want?"

"I wish... I wish..." Adrian was no longer even able to think; he couldn't put the words together. In the end he said only what he wanted to happen at that moment: "I wish all of this disappear!"

"Your wish is granted" Darius replied in a strangely satisfied voice, and suddenly the glass walls disappeared and with them all the illusions and sounds; even Adrian's discomfort disappeared, and he was finally able to think clearly.

The criminal looked up to see Hunter and Gus landing in front of him and staring at him smugly. "Tsk... you really made me angry this time!" he said, getting up. "I will unleash your worst nightmares on you and… what!?" he exclaimed when not even an illusion appeared around him.

In the meantime, Terra, despite the blow she received, had in turn pushed Amity, Luz and Willow away and got back on her feet, but as soon as she tried to create a new giant bramble, nothing happened. "What happened to our powers!?"

"Your friend asked for them to disappear" Darius replied simply.

"I didn't ask for our powers to vanish, I asked for that horrible... I don't even know what to call it... to disappear!" Adrian protested.

"Oh, forgive me... you didn't specify, and the phrase 'I wish all of this disappear' has a lot of room for interpretation, so... I was forced to decide how to apply it" Darius replied, pretending to be mortified, even though it was obvious that he was very entertained and satisfied. "What did you mean by 'all of this'? The vortex? Your illusions? The reflective walls? Too many things and not enough clarity, so I just made everything disappear... including the root of your problems, which is your powers. If it wasn't that that you wanted, I humbly ask for forgiveness, but as I told you before, you have to be clear when expressing a wish"

Adrian tried to say something else, but before he could Hunter smacked him and took the lamp from his hands. "I think this belongs to you" he said, handing it to Darius.

"Yes, indeed it is! Thank you!" the djinn exclaimed taking it in his hand, and then he added: "Well, now that I'm no longer forced to follow anyone's orders... I really want to do this!" and with that said one of his hands turned into a tentacle that wrapped itself around Adrian and Terra forcing them to sit back to back; the tentacle then severed itself from the djinn and the purple liquid it was made of turned into a very thick rope. "I really think you two will only see the walls of your cell for a while at least"

Terra and Adrian let out a pained groan, but then their eyes widened when they saw Luz approaching threateningly. "Well..." the puppet said cracking her knuckles. "Now I can take a little satisfaction from myself"

"What... what do you want to do?" the two of them asked in a cold sweat.

"Oh, I just have a lot of things to tell you, but it would take a lot of time... so I'll use a quicker and certainly foolproof method" Luz responded by raising her hand and closing it. "The fist on the snout!"

BONK!

Luz finally got her revenge on Adrian and Terra. It cannot be said that it was not a satisfaction for her. And yes, she still didn't know that Adrian and Terra were the ones that tried to kill her; before someone start arguing, keep in mind that she had no way to know who the two assassins were, and from her point of view they actually seemed just two criminals that casually found her. She wasn't naive, she simply have no clue