The Angel of the Owl House

by OwlHouseAngel

Luz Noceda is a young half-angel girl living with her angel mother in the Human Realm. Her attempts to be good always backfire, and after one too many mistakes, her mother sends her to Camp Reality Check. But a chance event leaves Luz in the Demon Realm, where she meets the Owl Lady, who teaches her that in a chaotic world like the Boiling Isles, Luz might be the perfect angel.

40. EP 19: Illusion of Control

Apologies for the delay. The website wouldn't let me access my account

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The Angel of the Owl House

Season 2: The Human Realm

Chapter 19: Illusion of Control

A full seven days passed following the disastrous trip into the Emperor's Mind and the revelations that had come with it. Luz had sobbed uncontrollably until the early hours of the following morning, whereupon she'd finally succumbed to sleep and Darius, Eberwolf, and Osran had returned from chasing Hunter and Lucy, completely empty-handed. Thankfully Eberwolf was able to tell everyone (including Luz's Hexside friends, who came around the next morning to walk her to school for the first day of the new semester) most of what they'd learned; namely Belos' true identity, his real plans for the Day of Unity, Hunter and Lucy's identities as Grimwalkers, and the final revelation about Cassiel and Em actually being Camila and Manny Noceda.

Eda had conjured an illusion of Camila and Manny as she'd seen them in a photo at the Noceda house just so Darius and Eber could see and confirm it, and upon seeing them, they'd both gotten tears in their eyes as they recognised their old friends. It appeared that Belos hadn't been lying… but did that mean Camila had been? She'd claimed to never have been to the Demon Realm, and told Luz horror stories about the place… had those been lies? Or the result of some memory manipulation on her? There were many questions, but most were put aside as Darius and Eber came to three realisations; Luz truly was the child of their dear friends, Cassiel was still alive, and Em… Em was no longer with them. That last one was sobering, and made them both feel a mix of sorrow and happiness that they'd taken part (even unknowingly) in his memorial service. Darius had also explained to the others that Em had been called "Star Friend" by Eber due to their minor obsession with space, astronomy, and the stars, which matched up with the stories Luz had told of Manny being a complete Sci-Fi and Fantasy Nerd!

The other revelations were equally shocking, though the fact Belos' secret plan was effectively setting of a planetary magic explosion to wipe out all life in the Demon Realm was the least surprising, and gave credence to Rasiel's earlier belief that turning Witches and Demons fully into Angels was impossible, though it also made it even more imperative that Belos not get his hands on Luz or complete the plan. Discovering he was actually Philip Wittebane had made Eda and Lilith feel like vomiting, especially when they realised that thanks to them being descended from Evelyn and Caleb, that made Belos a relative by blood, however distant. They also shared in Luz's guilt for unwittingly helping him and his rise to power, even if all they'd done was stop Philip being killed by Evelyn, those two mercenaries, and the Slitherbeast on the Knee.

The fact that Hunter was a Grimwalker of Caleb (and thus technically related to the Clawthornes) and Lucy was a Grimwalker of Luz had also shocked everyone, though it had explained why Hettie had suddenly wanted to kill the Dark Angel. No one thought less of them for it; they felt only sympathy, seeing them as just kids who'd been used and abused by Belos after being literally built to serve him and then die to be replaced. Willow and Gus had felt particularly sorry for them and dearly wished to go and find them, but there were no clues as to their location, and since they wouldn't be likely to separate, Osran couldn't scry for them due to Lucy disrupting his Oracle Magic. The topic of Lucy being stunted and her Dark Magic had also come up, but Rasiel had said she was likely stunted for the same reason Luz had been, since she was essentially a copy of her, but her Dark Magic was likely not a result of her being a Grimwalker despite such creatures having a natural affinity towards Death and Negative Energy, as the soul of a Grimwalker (and the source of their affinities) were no different than the souls of their template's species, meaning Lucy had an Angelic soul. He also insisted that while it was rare, Angels could have an affinity for Dark Magic instead of Light, so she wasn't any different from a regular Angel aside from the manner of her birth.

Then of course, there was the situation with Rasiel and his wings. The man had been rather quiet about the whole affair, and when Eda tried to gently probe how he was feeling, he had politely but firmly said that he needed time to think, but he wasn't angry with Luz.

Lastly, there were the twin issues of Eber being discovered as a traitor by Belos, and the fact Luz was now dealing with the Palismen Amalgamation, which was interfering with her ability to use magic. The former meant that now Mason was their sole spy within the ranks of the Coven Heads and thus had no back-up if things went south, while the latter meant Luz was out of commission until she was able to resolve things with the Palismen Souls, untangling them from each other and either helping them pass on or giving them new bodies. As an added consequence, Luz being out of commission also effectively benched Eda, Lilith, and Raine since they could no longer use their magic without Luz's blessings. They still had the glyphs for emergencies, and Eda still had her Harpy Mode, but those wouldn't be enough for a high-level fight with the Emperor and his forces, which meant the CATTs had lost four of their heavy hitters until Luz could recover, and there was exactly two weeks before the Day of Unity at that point.

Eventually, that first meeting had ended with Lilith convincing all the kids (minus Amity) to go to school, while the adults, King, and Amity saw to Luz. They'd been reluctant, but they'd agreed if only so Luz wasn't crowded as she recovered. When Luz did finally awaken on Monday Afternoon, she had promptly broken down again and was encouraged to cry and let it all out. When she couldn't do that any more, she had been given food and ate ravenously until she felt full and numb. In that state, she was able to tell everyone what she'd learned about the events at Volcarpalis and the few other things she'd learned from Belos while Eber, Hunter, and Lucy were trapped in the Monster's subconscious. She'd also been able to report the state of the Palismen Souls, who'd quietened their voices so as not to overwhelm her, and seemed united in not getting in her way like they had Belos, though sadly they couldn't fully stop the effect they had on her magic. Eda and the others were completely supportive and helped her deal with her guilt by pointing out that Belos' crimes were fully his own, and while Luz had unwittingly contributed to them, she was not responsible.

Luz had not chosen to give him blood or her finger; Belos had taken them. She'd given him a blessing believing he was a simple human man who she didn't want to die. The light glyph had been given in good faith, with Luz having no reason to doubt Philip's intentions since he'd been shown the other three by Orion (though King secretly suspected his Dad hadn't intended to show him). She hadn't told him about the contents of the Black Tombs; the Collector had (to Rasiel's annoyance) and all she'd done was try to scare him off with talk of the dragons. It wasn't her fault Belos had decided to steal Rasiel's wings, make a failed attempt at a Grimwalker using his pinky finger, or lead mercenaries to a massacre for his own ends. Even the Palismen hadn't been her fault; Belos had been evil and eating them since before he'd met Luz in the past, and while it had temporarily debilitated her, Luz saving the Amalgamation from utter destruction could only be called a good deed.

It had taken almost the full rest of the day, the assurances of all her friends and family (including those coming back from a day at Hexside), but Luz had eventually been made to accept that she was responsible only for the things she'd done, not what Belos had done in response. The guilt hadn't been erased or even lessened that much, but Luz knew in her heart that until she'd fixed her mistakes by defeating Belos, restoring Rasiel's wings, and ending this whole awful war, she wouldn't be able to forget that guilt. And that wasn't even bringing her parents into it, which was a whole other can of worms that she was unwilling to open until she'd been able to talk to her Mami.

For the next six days, the CATTs dealt with the information they'd learned and the events that had occurred. Officially, the CATTs were preparing a full final assault; gathering their forces, collecting materials to make new supplies and reinforce Digale Island if things went south, and training and arming themselves so they'd be ready for the battle. Luz had insisted on the full truth being told to all of the CATTs too, and while some of the members who'd already been wary of her had been further soured by the belief that Luz was partly responsible for their troubles, the vast majority saw things the way her friends did; Luz had been manipulated and was now actively fighting to save them all, so they wouldn't turn on her. Attempts had also been made to spread the truth of the Day of Unity beyond the CATTs, but it did little to convince anyone that wasn't already on their side, as the CATTs had no proof besides the words of Luz (a known rebel) and Eber (freshly revealed as a wanted traitor), and Belos had actively come out and dismissed the story as a lie and enemy propaganda. Overall though, preparations for the decisive battle with Belos was going well, but everyone was delaying the fight until the last possible moment so that Luz could actually take part and help, as well as Eda, Lilith, and Raine.

The Hexsquad went to school each day (excluding Luz) and trained themselves vigorously; Amity spent hours with her Dad, Grandma, and Darius, Gus trained just as hard with the Twins and their Grandpa Colas, Willow spent every free moment sparring with Hanu in the jungle of the Digale Island's Palm, Matt spent his time with Steve and Mason, Skara went through a Bardic Boot Camp with Raine, their apprentices, and her father Severin, and Boscha trained in potion brewing under Luna Miphari and the surprise combo of Eda and Lilith, having King as a fellow student. King also worked his butt off and trained everyone in glyphs, especially those members of the CATTs who'd suffered damage to their magic from removing their sigils.

In fact, everyone was working like crazy even outside of training! Salty and his crew were trading with nations beyond the Boiling Isles to get extra supplies. Treble was using his shapeshifting skills alongside Valtora and Meesha Leonis to show CATTs the weak spots of various Demon species, as well as how to heal their allies most effectively. Gwendolyn was aiding Eber and the Beast-Keepers in recruiting beasts to their side. Dell carved Palismen for any member of the CATTs who didn't have one (excluding a few like Steve, who politely refused). The Bat Queen had left the Palismen and her children in the care of some trusted Wild Witches on Titan Cradle Island, and had come back to the CATTs to aid them in battle. Luna and the formerly petrified victims were working overtime foraging materials and brewing potions (particularly Lightning Magic Bombs). Hanu was making sure to grow as many useful plants as possible, and providing vials of her different pollens so the CATTs had aromatics to take into combat. Callisto and Morel Alembic were aiding Luna in her potion making. Nelle was working hard with Alador and Darius to advance their abomination soldiers and other weaponry, as well as the mass production of the Parasitic Abomination Weapons to counter the Abomatons. Colas had helped the others primarily through using illusions and animated sculptures (courtesy of Matt) to create training simulations for people to practice in. And lastly, the trio of Zara, Godric, and Lars had promised to stay on standby on the Day of Unity, and would come to their aid if things looked dire, though they still refused to get involved and fight until they had no choice, preferring to leave peacefully until they had no other options.

Then there was Luz, who was excused from school for the week and threw herself fully at the Palismen Amalgamation problem so she could get her magic back under control. She'd discovered pretty quickly (thanks to Rasiel) that if she meditated with her Palisman Egg, she could draw out the Amalgamation and speak with the souls trapped inside. She could then briefly isolate specific souls and speak to them, learning their names and stories. Once she knew this information, Luz was able to form a sort of pseudo-bond with them using her Palisman Egg as a focus, and this temporary bond would allow the Palisman soul to separate from the Amalgamation and become it's own being again, before returning to Luz's body, where it would now be separate from the others and could wait for a new body of its own to be carved, while also helping Luz isolate and remove other individual souls from the Amalgamation. It was slow, tedious work, but it didn't seem to have any negative effects for Luz's Palisman Egg, and as she freed each soul, she regained a tiny bit more of her strength and ability, and her guilt lessened just a fraction. Strangely though, not a single soul had asked to be allowed to move on yet… Luz had expected at least a few to ask to be allowed to move on to the afterlife through the exorcising powers of Luz's Angel Magic, but not a single one had. Luz was puzzled by this, but since these Palismen Souls didn't interfere with her magic like the Amalgamation did, and still assisting in separating the souls still twisted together, Luz made no complaints.

Finally, on the eve of the last seven days before the Day of Unity, the CATTs Leaders once again gathered for an end of week meeting to discuss their progress. The meeting was attended by the entire Hexsquad, and all the former Coven Heads and residents of the Owl House, largely due to it being held in the Owl House Kitchen over dinner, rather than the usual CATTs HQ on the island, as Mason had not yet been able to attend.

"Why exactly is Mason absent?" Amity asked as the rest of the progress reports were completed. "He's usually the most punctual person in the CATTs!"

"Since Eber was unveiled as a traitor and Hunter and Lucy went missing, Belos has been on high alert. He's not taking any risks any more and is no longer hosting regular Coven Head Meetings." Darius explained. "He only summons them now when he needs something, and attendance is mandatory. Mason couldn't avoid it, but he should be back soon."

"Will he be okay? What if Belos tries to interrogate all his Coven Heads?" Matt fretted, having grown quite close to Mason.

"Our oaths will keep our secrets, and my Talis has a counter for Blabber Serum embedded into one of his molars. He should be fine… but he knew and accepted the risks anyway." Luna commented, "And if he hadn't gone, that would be tantamount to admitting treason regardless. At least this way gives us information."

Luz smiled; "Potions in a molar, huh? See, Gus? I knew your plan for Digale Island Movie Nights was a good one!"

Gus smiled back, though it was a little strained. He and Willow were visibly exhausted, since on top of training and CATTs work, they'd been spending their free time with Darius, Eber, and Osran in searching for Hunter and Lucy.

"Yeah. Human Spy Movies were a big hit!" he commented. He had quite the large collection of movies now!

"We'll be able to get more movies too soon! The portal is nearly done, right?" Willow asked, looking to Rasiel who'd taken over the construction from Luz, and was working on it with Matt and Lilith when they were free.

"We've installed the Titan Oculus and everything seems to be working so far. The business with the mind-scape delayed us a little, but it should only take a few more days to complete the last section." Rasiel replied. "Then we just need to find a way to complete the linking to our desired destination. We can't rely on the Collector until we find a way to steal his mirror back from Belos, but I might be able to do something about that."

"You can?" Luz asked nervously. She still had trouble facing Rasiel after learning the truth about his wings.

Rasiel smiled and nodded; "Once the door is complete, it should connect to the In-Between Realm, since it has no other linked destination. I can pass through it, and find the last Black Tomb. Since we know Belos has my wings now, that tomb has to have my memories! With those in hand, I'm sure I'll have the knowledge needed to complete the last step and link the portal to the Human Realm! My memory has too big of a conspicuous hole in it when it comes to portals, so I had to know something about them."

The others smiled at that, though Luz also winced at another reminder of Belos having Rasiel's wings. She was still expecting him to be mad at her, or yell or at least do something! Instead he'd been weirdly calm.

"Luz, you're not still hung up on my wings, are you? I told you I'm not mad at you." Rasiel sighed, noticing her expression.

"B-But why!? Because of me, you-" Luz tried to argue, but Rasiel cut her off.

"Because of you, I am free after 100,000 years entombed! While you freed my soul out of pure curiosity and ignorance, you faced a High Priest of the Titan for my body, and a fought a full Supreme Dragon as a result of freeing my glyph markings! And I've no doubt you'd go even further for my memories in this last tomb." Rasiel pointed out.

"But I had ulterior motives for all of that! I needed you blood for the Panacea Mirror, and I had to go to the Wailing Star anyway to free Cassiopeia from her torment!" Luz cried.

Rasiel scoffed; "So? Should I be less grateful for your help because you were also helping others at the same time? Should my freedom mean less to me because Eda and King also benefited from it?" he asked rhetorically.

Luz flushed, especially since everyone else at the meeting seemed to agree with Rasiel. The Ancient Seraphim then continued; "Belos stole my wings, not you. Your blessing may have made him covetous of Angelic power but that is it. You didn't tell him about me; it was the Collector who told him. And Eda already told me it was her idea to have you warn Philip away from the tombs by talking about the Dragons, so that part wasn't your fault either even if the blame could be put on anyone but Belos."

Rasiel reached over and pet her head with a pleasant smile; "Besides, I'm actually not that upset about Belos stealing my wings. Now I know where they are and as soon as you are back to full strength, you can get them back for me. All you'd need to do is destroying them, which your full power could easily do, and I'll be able to regrow them effortlessly. If the old ones stop existing, I can grow new ones."

"It's really that simple?" Raine asked.

Rasiel nodded; "Yes. Cut a piece of me off and destroy it, and I can regrow it in a flash even without magic. It's a natural ability of all True Immortals."

That made the others murmur a little, and Amity and King both nudged Luz. "See Luz? No need to feel upset over it." Amity said softly.

"Yeah! Rasiel's not mad! In fact, beating up Belos and getting his wings back will probably be easier than going through the In-Between Realm to get the last tomb! At least we know for sure where the wings are!" King pointed out.

Luz smiled weakly; "I guess. I do feel a little better now, but I still feel guilty too."

"That is because you are a very kind and very silly young lady." Rasiel grinned, gently flicking her forehead, which made Luz squeak and then smile bashfully. "And there's the smile I've been waiting for! Now we're just waiting on Mason."

As if Rasiel's words had summoned the Coven Head, Hooty suddenly poked his head into their meeting and cried; "Hoot hoot! Mason is home! Hoot!"

The front door then swung open and an unfamiliar man walked into the room. They appeared to be from the same species as Ukla, before reaching into their shirt and removing a Concealment Stone, causing them to transform back into Mason. Since Mason was being watched whenever he left his home in the Construction Coven HQ (Belos was having all his Coven Heads watched now), he had been given a Concealment Stone to disguise himself once he was out of sight, so he could sneak out whenever he needed to get back to the Owl House and Bonesborough.

"Sorry I'm late, but you folks are not gonna believe what news I've got to tell. I've got it in good, bad, and terrible varieties." Mason said, clearly looking haggard and worried, which was a very bad thing for the usually stoic man. He did however give a nod to Matt; "Thanks again for the Concealment Stone, Lad. Thing works like a dream; ain't nobody looked at me twice wearin' it." The fact his accent was slipping out more was also a sign of his urgency.

Matt preened; "No problem! I'm still new to multi-tracking Illusions, but I'm pretty awesome already!"

"Careful Matt, you'll give yourself a big head without even casting a spell this time." Boscha teased, making the boy pout.

"Can we get back to the good, bad, and terrible news?" Darius frowned.

"Yeah. Can we start with the good? We could really use some." Luz said.

Mason nodded as he took his place beside his Mom; "The good news is that Hunter and Lucy are still missin'. Ain't nobody seen hide nor hair of 'em since they left the last meetin' with Eber."

"And that's good news?" Skara frowned.

"If they're missing then it means Belos hasn't found them, so they're probably still safely hidden somewhere." Severin explained, making his daughter hum in understanding.

"Okay, so what's the bad news?" Amity asked cautiously.

Mason's eyes flicked between Severin and Eber for a moment before he answered; "I know who the new heads of the Bard and Beast-Keepin' Covens are. Belos has forced Scooter Crane out of retirement to take over the Bard Coven again, and the new Beast-Keepin' Head Witch is Lord Carnar Vanily."

Raine and Severin immediately gasped, while Eber hissed furiously and Darius muttered a curse word so foul that Luz was certain even Eda would be willing to wash her mouth out with soap if she repeated it. However Amity, Skara, and Boscha all grimaced at the name of Lord Vanily too.

"What is Belos thinking, forcing Scooter back into that job!? He was the oldest Coven Head beside Osran, and unlike Osran, his species of Demon doesn't live much longer than his current age!" Raine exclaimed.

"The poor man was supposed to be enjoying retirement in Cartilia under the care of his niece, Kyrie! The whole reason he moved there after retiring was so he'd be close to the hospital because of his health!" Osran objected.

"The poor man… his mind has been slipping a lot lately. He was Coven Head for so long that I wouldn't be surprised if he forgot he retired and Belos exploited that." Severin glowered.

Mason shrugged helplessly; he didn't know the details of Scooter coming out of retirement, but he had seen that the man appeared confused and needed an aide from his coven to actually give the reports to Belos at the meeting.

However Scooter wasn't the most shocking new recruit; as Darius soon revealed. "I knew Belos was irredeemably evil, but I never dreamed he'd recruit Vanily as a Coven Head! He's barely even in the Beast-Keeping Coven!"

"Not even." Eber hissed; "Eber banished him. Evil Poacher forced to join Hunting Coven instead."

"I take it this guy is bad news?" Eda commented.

Lilith nodded; "The worst. He's a noble from Manubrium, and he's supposedly been there under house arrest since he was suspected of using his country estate at the base of one of the Left Ribs as the headquarters of the Titan's Wrath Hunting Party."

Now everyone in the room except for Luz and Rasiel paled and looked disgusted. Luz looked confusedly at Amity, who quietly explained; "The Titan's Wrath Hunting Party was officially just a group of Hunters, sort of like the Demon Hunters you see around Bonesborough. But under the surface, they were all vicious Witch Supremacists. They hunted Biped Demons and other intelligent Demon species too. It was a huge scandal, and while there was enough doubt about his guilt to stop Lord Vanily being properly imprisoned, Belos did order him restricted to his home in the city. Eber also banished him from her Coven, like she said."

Luz and Rasiel both looked utterly disgusted; "So this mad man was believed to have been part of a pack of people hunters, and yet he evaded proper justice?" Rasiel scowled.

"He claimed he never knew that the other members of the party hunted people, and used his noble standing to avoid interrogation under Blabber Serum. He was privately interrogated by Belos, who judged he hadn't been one of the hunters or knew of their actions, but he was still confined to his manor "due to not doing his duty by ensuring no crimes were committed on his property." Or at least, that was the excuse." Lilith explained.

Luz sighed disappointedly; "So basically, he used his title and money to convince Belos to spare him, and Belos gave him a slap on the wrist as a token gesture to keep people from getting mad. Typical… Do all nobles besides the Blights and Cadences suck?"

"Hey, what about the Alembics!?" Boscha protested.

Willow gave her a deadpan stare; "Didn't your Mom try to sell Luz to the Emperor over a Grudgby game?"

Boscha blushed and averted her eyes; she couldn't really argue with that one. Meanwhile Gus thought about it for a moment, then said; "Do you think Belos chose this Vanily guy because he's a jerk and so Belos knows he wouldn't join the CATTs or even be allowed to? And because Belos spared him from worse consequences for his crimes?"

Eber barked, and Darius translated for those that still didn't speak her language; "It seems likely. Vanily is an above average witch and his magic is focused on countering beasts and defeating them, rather than controlling them or using aspects of them. He doesn't compare to Eber, but he can still be a threat."

"I expect he'll also be used as part of Belos' newest plot…" Mason commented.

"And now we get to the terrible news, I'm guessing." Luz frowned, already bracing herself for it.

Mason nodded and said; "After Luz and the Alembics removed their sigils, Belos is worried that more of the CATTs have done so too. I think he's afraid that he won't have enough branded witches to drain magic from for his big Angel Bomb plan. So he's created an aggressive forced recruitment plan."

Everyone frowned and began murmuring quietly to one another, wondering how much more aggressive Belos' recruitment could get! It was already illegal to not be in a Coven, and Wild Witches were hunted ruthlessly. However Mason's grim expression really began to freak everyone out.

"Belos has set his sights on all School Children too." Mason said, causing everyone in the room to pale; "He has set up a secret plan to force every child on the isles, from the Baby Class to the last year of the Advanced Class, to accept a Coven Sigil."

"Not a chance! People will never accept that!" Eda yelled, slamming her fist on the kitchen table.

"Mom's right, Belos would never get away with it!" King agreed.

Mason shook his head; "That's where the secret plan comes in. Starting later this evening, Belos is going to publicly announce a reward scheme, payin' people 1000 snails for every person they convince to join their coven. But this is just a ruse; he's also got Adrian Graye Vernworth spreadin' a false rumour that fanatics after this pay cheque are goin' to invade schools to brand the kids there and get the reward money. I reckon he'll have Vanily riling up his old buddies to help sell the idea that they're among these fanatics. But in reality, this is all an excuse for Adrian to go to these schools and offer to give the students "fake" sigils, to trick these supposed fanatics."

"But in reality, they'll be real sigils!" Amity gasped, figuring out the rest of the plot immediately. Mason nodded with a severe frown on his face, and suddenly everyone in the room knew why he'd showed up in such a panic.

"Is Belos utterly insane!? He'd be discovered in a heartbeat!" Lilith cried.

"Not necessarily. It's rare for kids in this day and age to use magic outside of their tracks, and since every kid's uniform displays their track no matter what school they're in, it's possible to give them a real sigil and have them not realise that their other magic is bound. Heck, they could just give everyone sigils for the Emperor's Coven and no one will know!" Raine pointed out.

"He might not even bother keeping it a secret. The Day of Unity is exactly one week from tomorrow, so Belos just needs to stay in control for a little while longer. That's why he's making such big moves now; he doesn't need to worry about subtly, since he isn't planning on maintaining the empire past the Day of Unity!" Osran added. "The initial ruse of this plan is just to get as many children branded as possible; even if he's discovered, nothing but a total rebellion of the majority of the Isles or a decisive CATTs battle and victory will stop him now."

"Which means he'll likely target one of the three big schools." Willow theorised.

Mason nodded; "Belos wanted Hexside to be the first, to try and snag some of the CATTs kids. But Adrian, Odalia, and Vitimir were smart enough to convince Belos that it was a bad choice. Hexside wouldn't trust it and it'd just expose the plot. Instead, Adrian is going to let the rumours spread through the night, especially in Cartilia and Pancrea City, then hit St. Epiderm and Glandus. But we've got a problem; I don't know which one Adrian is gonna go to first, and he also said he'd be sending teams of trustworthy subordinates to the other schools too. Adrian will try and brand as many of the Isles' students in one day as he can, even if he has to do it by proxy."

An uproar erupted within the Owl House kitchen as everyone shouted curses at Adrian and Belos, or giving hurried speculation as to which of the big schools will be hit first. Boscha suggested sending the CATTs to guard every school in the empire, but that could be perceived as an attempt to take the Isles' youth hostage, and thus turn the people against the rebels. Skara then suggested still sending teams, but then watching the schools covertly for signs of Adrian and his people, but Gus then pointed out that they were dealing with the Illusion Coven, and they would likely sneak in while disguised, then sneak out again; all while claiming they were being stealthy so as not to tip of these fake fanatics. Spreading the CATTs thin also left them open to being overtaken in certain areas, weakening their strength before the final battle… it was a complicated situation.

In the end, Darius was the one to come up with a plan, building on Boscha and Skara's idea, while taking Gus's words into account;

"Skara and Boscha are right that we should send people to every school to protect them. But we'll do so in disguise, just like the Illusion Coven likely will. We have CATTs all over the Isles and likely at least one parent who has a student in each school, so we'll have that student stay home for safety while we send a CATTs operative in disguised as them. Then if they detect the sigil branding scheme, they can raise the alarm and alert the local CATTs cell, who'll come and rescue the students." Darius said.

Everyone looked around at one another, but no one really had any objections. It would let them protect the students without being seen as the aggressors and without the Illusion Coven sneaking past them. The only issues would be the big schools of St. Epiderm and Glandus; it'd take more than a single infiltrator to deal with those, and the best members of the Illusion Coven would likely be sent there, so disguises would be tough to maintain.

"How about some of us handle those schools personally?" Gus suggested. "Matt used to go to Glandus, so he could infiltrate and pass as a regular student, and I can go with him as back up."

"I don't know…" Raine frowned, "I don't like the idea of putting you kids in any more danger."

"We're all wanted rebels at this point, Raine. We chose to enter this fight, and let's face it, St. Epiderm and Glandus aren't going to be more dangerous than Spriggan Manor." Willow pointed out.

"Or the Alchemist Atelier!" Boscha added.

"Or fighting three Coven Heads and an army outside of Amity's grandparents' house!" Skara agreed.

"Or the Ash Moth." Gus gave his two snails.

"Or Luna!" Matt said cheekily, grinning at Luna. The woman huffed good naturedly in return.

"Or pretty much all the stuff Luz has had to fight, including a full powered Supreme Dragon." Amity finished.

The adults (save for Eda who was already fully on board with letting the kids help) all looked sheepishly at one another. The kids had a point; they'd all faced things they shouldn't have had to and which were incredibly dangerous, but they had done so because they chose it and they'd come out stronger and better people every time. Underestimating them would only deprive the CATTs of skilled and determined young witches, so one by one, the adults all nodded their heads.

"You've all proven your point. The fact of the matter is, you Hexsquad members are basically Luz's elite allies and closest friends. If she is our best chance to take down Belos, then you six will be her wings." Rasiel declared.

The Hexsquad all beamed and moved to stand beside the touched (and somewhat bewildered) Luz, each of them putting a hand on one of Luz's wings. Gus and Matt touched the bottom two, both grinning impishly, though Matt was noticeably proud looking. Skara and Boscha touched the top two, the former happily feeling the fluffy feathers while the latter looked contemplative about how far she'd come to be in her current position. Lastly, Willow and Amity touched the central wings, which were a bit larger than the others and Luz's original pair; symbolising that as Luz's first real friend and girlfriend respectively, they held the positions closest to Luz's heart. It was a simple gesture of support for their friend still suffering from so much inner turmoil, and a subtle reminder to Luz that for all her perceived mistakes and their consequences, they had all been helped by her.

Luz began to feel a little misty eyed, and some more of her guilt flaked away from her heart.

"Hey, what about me!?" King pouted; "I'm her little brother and helped with fights too! Like the Ash Moth and even Hunter and Lucy! I should be a wing too!"

Everyone laughed at his mini-tantrum, the tension of the situation easing a little, before Luz picked him up and hugged him to her chest, so he could hear her heartbeat. "You and my family are my heart, King. I literally couldn't live without you."

King wasn't sure if he should be pleased or concerned by that idea… still, he cuddled Luz quite happily.

After the little scene of sibling love, Eda barged her way into to the group of kids and hugged Luz from behind; "Don't forget Owlet, both you and King are mine! I stole you and you know I don't give back what I steal!" Eda grinned.

"No, that's usually my job." Luz said with a deadpan expression, before giggling as her Mom pouted. "Thanks Mom. Now if I'm really going to be called the leader of the Hexsquad, then I'd like to be the one to decide the final plans for this big school infiltration idea."

Seeing as Luz was considered a leader in the CATTs too, the adults all nodded and happily listened to her proposal.

"I'm in no state to help directly, as much as I hate it, so I'll be staying home with King, Rasiel, Hooty, Luna, and Mason; basically everyone who can't risk being seen or can't easily fit in at the schools. Amity and Willow should stay in Hexside, backed up by Mom and Tia Lily. They all have the most experience with Hexside and we can't trust the Emperor to not pull a fast one and send Adrian here after all. Better to be safe than sorry." Luz began.

The others agreed with that easily (and Amity was extra glad to be staying behind in Bonesborough so she can keep an eye on her Batata).

"St. Epiderm should be scouted out by Skara and Boscha; they've got the most experience with the school since they've both been there and are both nobles, so they can blend in. Raine and Osran can back them up; Raine attended the school before, and Osran's Oracle Magic will help make up for the fact Skara and Boscha don't really have much in the way of illusion or oracle skills to flush out disguised enemies." Luz continued.

"That sounds like a logical plan to me." Raine agreed; "So that leaves Gus, Matt, Darius, Eber, and Severin for Glandus?"

Luz nodded; "That's right. Matt knows Glandus and he and Gus have enough illusion skill to see through most disguises. Darius, Eber, and Severin are also powerhouses who can deal with a force intended to occupy the toughest school on the isles."

The three former Coven Heads all nodded at that; they were all fairly powerful as Luz said, and unless Belos decided to make a big move on Bonesborough, Glandus will likely be where the majority of his forces assigned to this horrible task are sent. With no one making any objections, everyone decided to head out for the evening; the kids needed to rest up and tell their parents what they were doing, while the adults needed to prepare and gather their forces, as well as organise the CATTs cells and infiltrators in the other towns with smaller schools. The evening progressed well from there, and the next morning soon came with only one minor change of plans…

Osran had disappeared for a bit in the morning to use his Oracle Magic while away from Luz. He was using it to try and predict the future and scry for anything going on around the other schools so they might have some advanced warning as to what was happening. Once he'd finished, he'd found very little going on at any of the small schools, and only a small prediction of a disturbance at St. Epiderm. However something he saw had him hurrying off to speak to Luz before everyone departed, and when he returned he revealed that he was swapping places with Severin, who would now be going to St. Epiderm with Raine while Osran went to Glandus with Eber and Darius. With time being short before they had to be at the schools they were scoping out, few of the Hexsquad and former Coven Heads had time to question him, so they instead grouped up and got ready to fly.

Gus, Matt, Darius, Eber, and Osran gathered outside the Owl House, ready to depart for Glandus in Pancrea City. The Hexside team had left early so they could speak to the staff and coordinate things in the event of a full attack, while the St. Epiderm team had left even earlier so they could arrive at Cartilia before the school day started, leaving just the Glandus team behind.

"Since we want to avoid suspicion, we'll be flying to Pancrea City under Concealment Stones, which means we'll be using our staves instead of an airship too." Darius declared.

Matt and Gus nodded and immediately summoned Pebbles and Emmiline, who happily chirped and squeaked as they greeted each other, then turned into the boys' staves. Then Darius summoned his Palisman for the first time, causing it to emerge of out his abomination hair. His Palisman; Abette took the form of an Reverbat; a kind of purple bat with a large head and even larger ears, as well as a very fluffy body and undersized wings. Reverbats were known to "absorb" sound and then fire it back as a magnified screech! Darius' Reverbat Palisman looked just like the real thing, though her fluff appeared to be made of abomination slime and her colouring was a tad darker than the usual lighter purples. She squeaked happily as she nuzzled Darius, before turning into a staff too.

Next was Eber, who shocked everyone by summoning a Palisman larger than everyone present, excluding Darius. The Palisman; Tigriel (at least in the common tongue) was an unfamiliar Tiger-like species that was roughly the size of a Siberian Tiger, though she had golden fur with white stripes, as well as a very long, very fluffy tail and a pair of huge silver and white eagle wings on her back to allow her to fly.

"Whoa! What is that!?" Matt exclaimed.

"Eber's Palisman! Soul Friend!" Eber barked cheerfully; "Been long time since Eber rode her. Palisman around Emperor is bad idea."

"I think he means what species, Eber." Darius smirked, before his smile shrank a little; "Tigriel was carved based on an image that Cassiel conjured for us years ago. She is supposedly a Deva Tiger, a breed of Divine Realm Tigers used as both pets and defensive measures by angels. Eber wanted her Palisman to be a beast she had never tamed, so Cassiel showed her one from her homeland. Tigriel was named thus out of respect."

Gus hummed; "That's kinda cool! You should tell Luz that story too."

Eber and Darius nodded, though they both looked a little more sombre; "We want to talk to her about Cassiel and Em, and maybe tell her stories about our time together… but we think it's better to wait until Luz has had a chance to speak to her Mother again first."

"Eber and Purple Brother don't want to add to Little Light's trauma… Little Light already questioning self and origins; don't want to make it worse." Eber whined like a puppy.

The boys agreed with that and Eber turned Tigriel into staff form (significantly shrinking the size of the Deva Tiger, similar to the Twins and their Dog Palismen).

Lastly, Osran (who'd been silent and distracted thus far) summoned his own Palisman; Tanngnostic, a creature that resembled a woolly mammoth but shrunk down to the size of a goat. His trunk was about half the length of a normal elephant or mammoth, and instead of tusks coming from his mouth, they came from his forehead and curled backward like the horns of a goat. His fur was also grey and shaggy, and he wore a very ornate looking necklace of gold and amethyst around his neck, as well as having cloven hooves that burned with a cold purple flame.

Tanngnostic lay down so the elderly Osran could climb onto his back, but noticeably didn't turn into a staff. When Osran saw the looks from the others, he explained; "I'm too old to fly comfortably on a staff, and my book forces me to stay on my feet to control it properly. Old Tanny here can still fly though; he was carved to resemble the now extinct Thorest Goats, which could run through the air."

"Cool." Matt and Gus said together as Tanngnostic began to trot into the air as if he was just walking up a hill. "What made them go extinct?" Gus asked.

"Two things; the first is that their eyes used to be used in place of Oracle Stones to house Oracle Spirits. And second… well apparently they're just very tasty animals, whose meat is addictive." Osran answered.

Now all four of Osran's companions were looking at Tanngnostic curiously, making the Palismen edge away from them a little more. Osran glared at them; "Stop thinking about how my Palisman tastes."

"Disgusting! Do we look like Belos?" Darius huffed.

"Kinda a good point though… do Palismen taste like the animal they're modelled on?" Gus wondered aloud.

"I remember licking Pebbles once when I was really little and he was still Steve's Palisman. I don't remember what it tasted like, but I'm pretty sure I could smell colours and taste the sky for like an hour afterwards." Matt added helpfully.

Eber now looked at Pebbles curiously, while Darius pinched the bridge of his nose; "Oh for pity's sake… it's like herding cats!"

"We are CATTs!" Gus grinned.

Darius just took a deep breath and sighed, while Eber and the boys snickered, and Osran hid a chuckle behind a cough. With their moment of distraction over, Darius got everyone on their staves and had them put on Concealment Stones Matt and Gus had prepared, disguising the boys as two Glandus students whose parents were members of the CATTs, while Darius looked like their father (the students were brothers), and Eber looked like their baby sister riding a broomstick instead of a staff. Osran looked like an entirely different old man, though his Palisman looked like a broomstick now too.

Now disguised, the five of them began flying off towards Pancrea City and Glandus High. Pancrea City was out in the middle of the island, between the southern most ribs and right above the Intest Valley, so it was a decently long flight from the elbow that Bonesborough was built on. Still, it wasn't as long as the flight to the Knee, so they arrived in good time and landed in one of the open parts of the city. Pancrea City was a very old place and it's design reflected that; three thousand years ago, when some new settlers came to the Boiling Isles when their last Titan fully sank beneath the waves, they had found a large rocky hill where Pancrea City now stood, and had carved the hill out and turned it into a large stone fortress. That fortress eventually became the epicentre of an expanding settlement as the new residents began building more military installations and camps, as well as walls to protect them, causing the city to slowly expand and build new walls around it until it was its current size (being bigger than any city in the Isles, except for the capital of Manubrium). The city's lay out was now like the rings of a tree, with newer ones to the outside, and with the architecture getting older the further in one went. The outer most district was like modern Bonesborough, but it become noticeably more rustic and rugged as one moved closer to the central district, where Glandus was. The final few districts were literally nothing but stone buildings that looked to have been carved straight out of individual giant rocks.

"This city is so different from Bonesborough…" Gus commented as he looked around at everything.

"Yeah. It did used to be the centre of a big army. It's people are rough, tough, and simple, but they're also honest and hard-working. You won't find many nobles here." Matt explained; "They don't like people who can't pull their weight around here; it's all about strength, just like at Glandus."

Gus frowned, but as he looked around at the people on the way to the school, he found that Matt was right; everyone he saw was calm and pleasant, but were also hard at work, whether it be working on construction, running their shops, or hurrying about making deliveries and pick-ups. It was a strange sight compared to the more relaxed atmosphere in Bonesborough. Shockingly, as they walked past a cafe of some kind, Gus saw the end of a duel between two female witches. They were both a little ruffed up and one was helping the other stand, before a man from the cafe stepped forward and gave the bill for their meal to the loser of the duel.

"Pancrea City is also the Witches' Duel capital of the Isles." Darius added. "Crime is low here, because most problems are settled with duels or the people themselves. It's popular with the Construction and Beast-Keeping Covens, and it used to be popular with the Plant Coven too, before Terra took over."

Gus was intrigued, but he was certain he wouldn't have done well growing up in a city like this. He walked a little faster, and the group soon arrived at Glandus High School. Glandus had been established in the old abandoned fortress at the centre of the town, the same one that had resulted in the establishing of Pancrea City. As such it was large and rugged looking, appearing to be a simple fortress hewn from a small mountain. It had very little extra aesthetic flair, preferring a rough medieval brutalist style, though it did have some gargoyles up amongst the ramparts and buttresses, as well as statues of prominent historical figures who'd attended Glandus.

Darius, Eber, and Osran stopped at the gates into the school grounds; "We'll be leaving you here for now. It looks like the Illusion Coven hasn't shown up yet, but keep your eyes open." Darius ordered.

The boys nodded, then Eber barked; "Purple Brother and Old Oracle will stay nearby. They scout area from outside. Eber will go to safehouse and wait for call. When enemy discovered, send signal! We come help!"

"Got it. We can handle this." Matt declared. "If we discover the Illusion Coven, we'll call."

Darius and Eber nodded, then Osran stepped forward; "Alright, I need you both do something else for me while you're in there. I've already told Darius and Eberwolf, and had intended to tell you earlier, but I've been focusing on my magic for most of the flight here to confirm my suspicions."

"Okay… what is it?" Gus asked. He assumed this was the reason Osran had traded places with Severin.

Osran looked around to make sure no one was listening, then whispered; "When scouting Glandus and Pancrea City with my Oracle Magic, I found that it stopped working when I focused on the school."

Gus and Matt's eyes widened; the school didn't contain salt rock (since it taught Oracle Magic too), so the only thing that could be disrupting Osran's powers was an Angel. Seeing as Luz was back in Bonesborough and Belos was likely still at his castle, there was only one clear possibility.

"You think Lucy is here!?" Gus asked in an urgent whisper.

Osran nodded; "Yes. Hunter too, most likely. I doubt he'd go far from her."

"But why Glandus? Do they have some kind of connection to the school?" Matt asked.

Gus and Osran both shrugged, while Darius and Eber looked just as unsure. "Perhaps it's because Glandus has the least connection to either the Empire or the CATTs out of the three big schools? And it's a veritable fortress where they could blend in? Who knows besides them?" Darius said.

"Whatever the reason, I would like it if you two could find them and try to convince them to come with us. Assure them we only want to help them." Osran said, before giving Gus a meaningful look; "Lucy is particularly fond of you, lad. Please try to convince her. We don't want to use them or interrogate them; we just want them safe."

Gus nodded seriously; "If they really are here, I'll find them and do my best."

"Thank you. We'll move away and wait for your signal. If we see anyone entering the school that we find suspicious, we'll alert you." Osran told them. He, Darius, and Eber then wished the boys luck and retreated to either their lookout positions or the local CATTs safe house. Feeling even more motivated now, the disguised Gus and Matt put their staves away and walked into the school, ready to begin the plan.

As they entered, Gus paid attention to everything he could see around the place; the students wandering about the school grounds all seemed to fit into three groups too; the skittish kids in the undesirable tracks that got pushed around a lot and so either huddled together or tried not to be noticed, the bullies that were strong enough to command the lower skilled students and liked flexing their power over them, and the stoics. The stoics were quiet kids that preferred being alone or in small groups, and were described by Matt as being some of the toughest kids in the school; they were strong enough to be left alone by the bullies, but confident enough in their skills that they didn't feel the need to waste time lording it over the lower students.

Gus listened to Matt's explanation with a frown, then as they were about to enter the building itself, he asked; "Why don't any of the strong students stand up for the weak ones? You know, stop the bullying?"

"Some do." Matt said, keeping his voice low; "But no one around here respects a "bleeding heart", so they do it by picking on the bullies instead. A lot of the worst bullies here are kids who hate other bullies and hunt them relentlessly, or kids who used to be bullied themselves and turned into the worst of the stoics. They're the kind that'll see bullying, then crush and humiliate the bully as a lesson… but they're usually so bitter that they go too far."

Gus shuddered; "This place sounds toxic as heck!"

Matt nodded grimly; "Glandus breeds strong students, but not nice ones. From what I hear, Glandus makes the strongest students on the isles, while St. Epiderm makes the most skilled. Hexside is less extreme, and their average students are the best on the isles, but their best students aren't usually as good as the best ones from the other two. At least that's what the rumours say."

Gus remembered hearing similar rumours. Truth be told, with a few notable exceptions like Amity, Hexside's best students wouldn't normally measure up to the best of Glandus and St. Epiderm… but thanks to the current batch's "extracurricular" activities, Hexside's top students have become way stronger than most generations.

Shaking that thought off and focusing on the mission, Gus looked around at Glandus' interior. The fortress that had become the school had been built in a pentagon shape, with five towers (one at each point) a larger central tower in the middle of the building, and four floors. The central tower was meant for non-track specific facilities like Gen-Ed classrooms, the cafeteria, the staff room, and the principal's office, while the four floors of the main building were focused on the four biggest tracks at Glandus; Construction on the ground floor, Beast-Keeping above them, then Abominations one floor up, and finally Plants on the top floor. Meanwhile the towers were dedicated to the five lesser valued tracks; Bard, Illusion, Healing (which included the Nurse's office), Oracle, and Potions. According to Matt, the interior of the floors and towers were very similar to the track hallways and home rooms at Hexside, though the less popular tracks were more empty due to the stigma. Oddly though, those tracks weren't understaffed or underfunded like Gus thought they might be; he took a brief peek in the Illusion Tower and found it just as well-equipped as his home room at Hexside, just with everything looking a lot less well used.

"Huh… guess the teachers and PCA value this magic even if it isn't popular." Gus commented.

Matt nodded; "Oh yeah, Glandus is big on competition, so there's no way they'd let even their unpopular tracks be obviously so much worse than Hexside. Plus the Principal is a real stickler for equality of magic."

Gus was mildly impressed by that, before saying; "So, what should we do? The students we're impersonating are Potions and Beast-Keeping students so we can't exactly go to class. Do we just wander around and keep an eye out?"

"Nah, the Hall Monitors will bust us and drag us to Detention, no questions asked. I think we should go warn the principal about what's going on." Matt said; "He's a good guy and even tries to stop bullying when he can. He helped me transfer to Hexside; I'm sure if we explained a threat to his students, he'd listen."

"Then let's go!" Gus grinned, "Lead the way."

Matt puffed his chest out proudly; "You got it. I'll take the lead on this mission!"

He began to lead Gus towards the Cafeteria, which was on the ground floor of the central tower and had a hidden staff staircase that would let them sneak up to the top floor where the Principal's office is without running into the Hall Monitors. Matt had hidden in there plenty of times when he was the bottom of the pecking order, so he knew the place well. However as they were cutting through the empty cafeteria, they heard some clanking from the nearby kitchen. Gus immediately cast an illusion over them to silence their foot steps, but Matt looked puzzled.

"The Lunch Demons shouldn't be working yet; first period hasn't even started." Matt whispered.

At that moment, the kitchen door suddenly opened and a pair of birds flew out, each carrying some bread or slices of bludgeon meat. Matt blinked in surprise, but Gus gasped, recognising them.

"Wait! That's Flapjack and Waffles!" he declared, pointing to the Red Cardinal and Blue Jay, "They're Hunter and Lucy's Palismen!"

The birds noticed them, and reacted very differently; Flapjack promptly abandoned his prize and flew away as fast as he could, while Waffles flew over to Gus and began tweeting happily, landing on his shoulder and gently pecking his cheek.

"Wow, do you recognise me even through the illusion?" Gus asked with a grin. Waffles tweeted and nodded her head. The little Palisman had sharp eyes and was quite good at recognising his mannerisms, especially since he was someone her bonded partner was so friendly with.

"So those two really must be here." Matt said, before smiling at Waffles' behaviour; "I think she wants you to follow her."

"She's probably gonna lead me to Lucy! Matt, I've gotta go but you should go ahead to the Principal and let him know what's happening. I'll come meet up with you again when I've talked to Lucy and Hunter." Gus said urgently, as Waffles began trying to lead him away.

Matt nodded; "Got it. I'll call if something comes up that I can't handle myself. Now go take care of your girlfriend and her brother."

Gus promptly blushed; "She's not my girlfriend!"

"Yeah yeah, whatever you say you Dork. Now go!" Matt grinned. Gus huffed but nonetheless ran off in pursuit of Waffles, who flew in the same direction Flapjack had gone. Matt watched them run out of the cafeteria, then turned and continued towards the staff staircase.

The entrance wasn't exactly hidden, but it was tucked away behind the corner of an alcove where the cafeteria trash cans were, so few students ever noticed it was there. Matt had only found it because a bully had thrown him in the trash once, and he's noticed the door when climbing back out. That memory still made Matt shudder, but he refused to let himself be scared; he wasn't a victim any more, nor was he the bully he'd almost turned himself into when he transferred to Hexside. He was a man on a mission, and the presence of Pebbles curled up inside his shirt helped him focus on happier things.

Passing through the door, Matt began climbing the staircase, which was a hidden passage inside the walls of the central tower, which wound all the way around the outside of it with exits on every floor. He managed to get three floors up before he heard something up ahead… it was the heart-wrenching sound of a child sniffling. Matt frowned; it looked like some other poor kid had found his old hiding place and was using it in the same way he had. That brought back awful memories, and despite being on a mission, Matt couldn't quite make himself turn his back on the poor kid… he knew the feeling all too well.

Following the sound of soft crying, Matt headed up two more floors to a small landing, where he found the crying person. He gasped when he saw that it was a familiar girl in a construction track uniform; Bria, the girl whose lackey he'd once been. The girl looked mostly the same as when Matt had last seen her at the Looking Glass Graveyard, though she wasn't carrying the sword and she looked a little more rundown. She wasn't bruised or obviously hurt, but there were bags under her eyes (which were also red from crying), and her hair was a little messy. She also had some dirt and bits of gunk on her uniform that smelled pretty bad, so Matt assumed she'd been dumped in the trash… a popular activity for bullies to do with weaker kids.

The sight of Bria brought some very complex feelings to Matt's chest. On the one hand, this was the girl who'd picked on him and turned him into her lackey, all because he was the lowest of the low… but on the other hand, she'd always been a victim of bullying too, and after Angmar transferred out and Gavin had stopped hanging out with her, she'd lost her only friends and had taken Matt's place at the bottom of the Glandus hierarchy. Part of Matt wanted to say she deserved it, but he also knew exactly why she'd been the way she was… a bullied kid often became a bully themselves, so they could feel in control again and inflict on others what was inflicted on them. Matt himself had tried to do it at Hexside, so he couldn't be too judgemental about it.

He stared at her for a moment, arguing internally with himself, before deciding he wouldn't be much of a man or a good person if he just left the sobbing girl alone, so he slowly approached her.

"Bria?" he said softly, keeping his voice low.

Bria gave a terrified gasp and looked up quickly, seeing Matt watching her. Her cheeks immediately went red with mortification as she tried to wipe her eyes and leap to her feet to hide her humiliation, only for her to stumble on her own feet and fall forward. Matt was pretty strong from his construction work though, so he caught her easily and helped her stand.

"Whoa there. Careful." he said softly.

"M-Marice! I-I'm so sorry! I didn't meant to fall or touch you or anything! I just tripped! Y-You know me! Just Bumbling Bria!" she gave a fake laugh that made Matt sigh.

"Bria, I know you've been crying. Someone threw you in the trash, right?" Matt asked.

Bria flinched and backed up a step; "P-Please don't tell anyone! It's humiliating enough already! I-I'll carry your books or give you my lunch money, just don't-"

"I don't want your stuff." Matt interrupted, speaking a little louder so he could cut off her fearful ramblings.

Unfortunately, this caused Bria to freeze and stare up at the "Marice" in front of her, her expression slowly morphing from terror to confusion, and then to vague recognition. "Wait a second… that voice… are you…?"

Matt gulped; he'd completely forgotten that the Concealment Stone didn't change the sound of his voice! He still sounded like Matt Tholomule, a voice Bria would definitely recognise!

"Uh, what are you getting at?" he tried to recover, intentionally deepening his voice. Unfortunately, he didn't actually know Marice very well, so he didn't know how the boy was supposed to sound! Plus he very obviously just sounded like himself putting on a silly deep voice.

Bria's eyes widened a little further; "Matty?"

Matt cringed, then sighed and admitted defeat. He deactivated the Concealment Stone with an illusion spell, making Bria gasp and take a step back. "Hey Bria." he greeted awkwardly.

"It was you! W-What are you doing here!?" Bria cried, her shock slowly fading into anger. Her face then went scarlet as she realised she'd just been sobbing and pleading with her former lackey. "You… you little runt!" she suddenly screamed, lunging for him. He yelped and dodged back a step, almost falling down the stairs in the process. "How dare you show your face here after you ran away!"

"Bria, wait! I can explain!" Matt said urgently, trying not to be too loud so no one else would hear them.

"Explain what!? How you snuck back into school!? What, did you run away from Hexside and come crawling back here too!? Or did you come for revenge!?" Bria demanded, lunging for him again. Matt leapt back another couple of steps, this time landing on the staircase itself.

"No! I'm here for something important! If you'd just calm down and let me talk, we can work this out!" Matt pleaded.

"Something important!? Yeah right! I bet you loved seeing me crying! Did it make you feel better, huh? Seeing Big Bad Bria reduced to the bottom of the pack!? Did you come to mock me!?" Bria cried, nearly in tears from anger and humiliation.

"No!" Matt cried. Bria lunged for him again but this time he side-stepped her and she almost tumbled down the stairs. Matt caught her by the back of her shirt to save her, then tossed her gently back onto the landing, using a Construction Spell to boost his strength; "Bria, I don't want to see you hurt! Seeing you be bullied doesn't make me feel better about what you did to me!"

"So even me suffering isn't good enough for you!?" Bria cried, looking both enraged and heartbroken; "You, Angmar, and Gavin are the closest things I had to friends and you all abandoned me at the first opportunity! I may be less than trash now… but I won't let you laugh at me!"

She coated her fists in rock and screamed in rage as she ran at Matt, trying to knock his block off. Matt ducked and reinforced his body with Construction Magic before allowing himself to intentionally roll backwards down the stairs to avoid another blow from Bria. He rolled all the way to the bottom again and hit the wall with an "Oof!" but thanks to his reinforcement spell, he wasn't hurt. But seeing him roll away hadn't calmed Bria, who was now chasing after him as fast as she could, furious tears in her eyes.

"Oh give me a break! I don't want to fight!" Matt cried, running back into the cafeteria. He was on a time crunch here! He couldn't be wasting time on fighting Bria! He needed to escape her as fast as he could and get to the Principal's office!

"Get back here and face me like a man!" Bria screamed, absolutely furious. She conjured a boulder and threw it at Matt, who dove under a cafeteria table to block it. While he was out of sight, Matt reactivated his Concealment Stone and tried to sneak out under an invisibility illusion, but Bria was impatient and conjured a rock pillar beneath the table he'd initially hid under, causing it to fly up into the air. Matt had thankfully already crawled away so he wasn't hurt, but it did reveal to Bria that he'd slipped away from where she'd thought he was.

Gritting her teeth, Bria conjured some more rock pillars to block the way to the staff staircase as well as the cafeteria exit, ensuring Matt couldn't escape without revealing himself. Bria then began stalking around the room, using rock pillars to flip all the tables to try and find him. She was furious and humiliated, and after what was probably months of bullying at the hands of her classmates, she had finally snapped and was now trying to take it all out on someone she believed she could beat.

"Going for illusions now, Matty!? You didn't just run from me and this school, you also ran from Construction Magic too, is that it!? You're a coward, Matty!" Bria yelled.

Matt scowled as he slipped behind the serving station beside the kitchen entrance. If he had been the same as he'd was when he'd last encountered Bria, he might have agreed with her… but Matt wasn't afraid of Bria now. He was afraid of fighting and potentially hurting her! For all the trouble she'd caused him, Matt didn't hate her… in fact, thanks to his new friends, he actually wanted to help her. But he didn't have time for this! His options were fight and defeat her, or escape somehow, and Matt had no desire to fight right now. That left him with only the option of escaping.

Looking around at his options, Matt came up with a plan and conjured a small stone in his hand, then threw it at some lunch trays stacked up on the serving station. The trays toppled over with a loud clattering sound, and Matt immediately darted through the serving window of the kitchen. Bria turned and saw the trays, then noticed the kitchen door hadn't opened yet, so she sealed it with more rock pillars just as Matt hoped.

"Now she thinks I'm still trapped in there with her." Matt thought, before looking up above the large stone oven and seeing the connected chimney that led all the way to the roof. It was large enough for a person his size to fit through; something he knew from experience. The incident that had forced his parents to transfer him had been caused by a Bully stranding him on the school roof, and since no one would help and the Bully's friends were running interference on the teachers, Matt had been forced to climb down the chimney, using the old stone ladder built inside it for the old chimney sweeps. He'd ended up emerging from the stone oven just as the Lunch Demons were lighting it, giving everyone quite a fright! Matt had cried over it at the time, but now that incident might just prove useful!

Opening the stone oven, Matt crawled inside and then stood beneath the chimney, which he began to climb up. It took him a good few minutes since he had grown and the brick passage felt tighter, but he finally emerged up in the open air, on the roof of Glandus' main building.

Taking a deep breath and sighing with relief, Matt called out Pebbles and switched him to staff mode as he looked around. "Oh thank Titan, I got away! Now should I fly back down and try going in through a normal entrance, or fly up and find a window… I've already lost a lot of time from being chased by Bria, so I should probably-"

He was interrupted by the sound of the Glandus PA system activating, and the deep voice of the principal began echoing across the school. "Attention all students. You are to report immediately to the Paranoratorium for an important assembly. Attendance is mandatory for all students."

Matt listened to the announcement and went pale, realising he'd missed his window to talk to the Principal alone.

"I really hope this is a normal assembly and the timing is just a coincidence…" Matt grumbled as he prepared to fly down and attend the assembly.

[Meanwhile]

After leaving Matt in the cafeteria, Gus ran after Waffles as fast as he could as she led him through the halls of Glandus towards the potion track tower (which Gus noted was the tower on the exact opposite side of the school from the main entrance). Entering the tower, Waffles flew over to the spiral staircase that went up through the centre of the structure and landed on a small statue in the centre of the spiral. The statue depicted a creepy looking crone stirring a cauldron, and Waffles flew into the cauldron, passing through the stone potion inside it as if it was actual liquid. Gus's eyes widened as he drew a spell circle to try and see through an illusion, but found none present.

"What the heck is this?" Gus muttered, putting his pinky finger in the cauldron. The contents felt like liquid, but when he pulled his finger out again, it was dry and had no residue on it. Waffles then poked her head out again and tweeted at him, urging Gus to follow.

"Well, here goes nothing…" he said, clambering up onto the statue and stepping into the cauldron. He immediately sank and found himself slowly descending through the unusual potion and down into the ground beneath the potion track tower. The liquid was clear beneath the surface layer, and Gus found he could breathe just fine despite being submerged, so he just allowed his weight to slowly pull him down, until his feet touched the ground and he was able to step out of the liquid. He found himself in what appeared to be an old, largely abandoned potions lab, with a pillar of gelatinous liquid rising up into the ceiling, which served as the entrance he'd just come through. Gus was sure he could swim back up if he needed to, but that could wait until he'd done what he came for.

Looking around, the fairly large lab looked like someone had turned a small corner of it into a hideaway, with a couple of bedrolls nestled away in a corner, a cauldron full of trash in the opposite corner, and a few different sets of clothes hung up on a line above an old sink that had obviously been used for laundry. It was kind of cosy; like a little clubhouse. Gus was admiring all of it, until he sensed something behind him and tried to turn around, only to find Flapjack's staff pointed in his face. Gus blinked, then looked past Flapjack to see Hunter glaring at him.

The boy looked a little worse for wear; he was obviously a little dirty and haggard, and was dressed in a mismatched shirt, pants, and gloves, with a girl's satchel at his side and a ragged blue cloak worn over the top, all of which had been rather poorly repaired with patches of cloth and some bad stitching, likely by Hunter himself.

"Don't move!" Hunter demanded, his staff crackling with electricity. "Who are you, what are you doing here, and how did you find this place!?"

"Easy there, Hunter. I'm a friend; I actually followed Waffles down here hoping to find you and Lucy." Gus answered.

Hunter's eyes widened a little as he looked Gus up and down. Thanks to the Concealment Stone, Hunter didn't recognise him, but he did recognise the voice and noticed how Waffles was now casually flying around the boy, totally unafraid.

"Gus?" Hunter questioned.

The boy nodded; "It's me Hunter. I'm wearing a Concealment Stone. I'll take it off slowly, just don't zap me."

The older boy agreed, but kept his staff trained on Gus as the younger boy slowly lifted his hands to his neck and pulled the string around his necklace to make the Concealment Stone rise out of his shirt. Gus then touched it and deactivated it, returning to his true form. Upon seeing him, Hunter sighed with relief.

"Oh thank the Titan, it really is you!" he said, lowering the staff, "Sorry about that, I had to make sure you weren't a threat. I should have known Waffles wouldn't bring you here if you were."

His staff turned back into Flapjack, and both he and Waffles roosted on Hunter's shoulders as the dishevelled boy gave a tired smile; "But why are you here at Glandus?"

"I actually wanted to ask you the same thing. Osran figured you guys were hiding here since scrying with his spirits wouldn't work here. Why did you choose Glandus to hide, and how did you find this place?" Gus asked.

Hunter eyed him for a moment, before Flapjack pulled on the long lock of hair that hung in front of his face, making Hunter wince and yell; "Okay, fine! Look, our living arrangements were… compromised. We needed a place to crash… we had originally thought Hexside since it was in the neutral zone, but we didn't want the CATTs to find us, so we tried camping out in some old mineshafts beneath Pancrea City. We were discovered by Ukla, the girl I teamed up with back at HECK. She was down there training her magic and after realising we needed a place to crash, she brought us here and showed us this place. No one here knows about it except for Ukla, who only found it by accident when falling down the stairs once."

"I see… well I suppose this place is better than the mines. But why didn't you want the CATTs to find you? We won't hurt you, I swear. Luz, Darius, Eber, and Osran would never allow it, and the rest of the Hexsquad and leaders would protect you and Lucy too. We don't blame you for what Belos made you do." Gus told him.

Hunter averted his eyes; "You might not be so trusting if you knew the truth about us…"

"We do know the truth, Hunter." Gus said softly, making Hunter's eyes go wide. "We know you're a Grimwalker of Caleb, Belos' brother. And we know Lucy is a Grimwalker of Luz."

"Luz told you!?" Hunter paled.

The young illusionist shook his head; "No, Eberwolf did. Luz just filled in the extra details. None of us think less of you for it, I swear. We're all just worried; Willow and I have been helping Darius, Eber, and Osran search for you this whole past week, whenever we've had a free moment."

"Y-You're really all concerned for us? But we were enemies!" the Grimwalker protested.

"You're a kid, same as us. Plus we became friends, didn't we? Lucy is one of my best friends, and you tried to help us at HECK once you understood how we really felt. We can help you too!" Gus offered his hand; "I can help you."

Hunter eyed the hand for a moment, then gently took it with a nervous smile; "Alright… you and your friends haven't lied to me so far. Even the things you said about Belos turned out to be true!" he spat Belos' name like it tasted foul in his mouth. He then gave Gus a hopeful look; "In fact, you're just the help I need! Please help Lucy!"

"Of course! Where is she? What do I need to do for her?" Gus asked, a little too eagerly.

Hunter pointed over to a door behind him; "Lucy hid in the bathroom when Flap came back in, well, a flap. But the thing is, she's been hit really hard by all this. She's still only a little kid; not even a teenager yet! She won't talk, she barely eats… it's like she's given up on living and I basically have to force her to keep hanging on. I've tried everything, but it's like she's only staying alive because she knows dying would leave me alone. But you're her best friend, Gus! If anyone can make her feel better, it's you!"

Gus nodded determinedly; "I can certainly try."

Hunter smiled gratefully and headed over to the bathroom door, then gave a specific sequence of knocks. "A security measure." he explained to a watching Gus; "If I use the wrong sequence, she'll escape through the shadows."

Gus nodded, then watched as the bathroom door opened and Lucy stepped out. She looked cleaner and more well-groomed than Hunter (likely due to him fussing over her more than himself) and she was dressed in an old white blouse and a slightly overly large dark brown dress that came down to just above her toes. Her clothes had some patchwork repairs too, and the girl's face was weary and worn, with bags under her eyes like Hunter's, and stains from tear tracks seemingly etched into her cheeks. Seeing her in such an obviously depressed state made Gus's heart fill with sorrow and fury, and now that he knew the truth of Lucy's origins, the sight of her scars angered him a lot more than they had before, as did the obvious skinniness of the girl.

When Lucy emerged from the bathroom and realised she wasn't alone with her brother, her eyes widened as she examined the newcomer. Upon seeing who it was, her face briefly lit up and some life returned to her eyes, before it fully registered and horror overcame her expression.

"G-Gus!" she yelped, her voice croaky from disuse. It was the first word she'd uttered since Hunter fled the Owl House with her, and the sound of it almost made her brother weep with joy.

"Hey Lucy. I'm glad you're safe." Gus smiled.

"W-What are you doing here?" Lucy croaked, shocked out of her prior silence.

"I'm sort of on a mission for the CATTs. It's a long story, but I'm also here to try and help you and your brother." he explained. He then paused for a moment as he debated with himself, before deciding honesty was the best policy; "Listen… Eber and Luz told us everything. I know what you're going through right now…"

Immediately, Lucy's sickly pallor managed to get even worse, and the poor girl began to shake and hug herself, with even her wings (which were dull and lacked their shine again) wrapped around her like a cloak. Without saying a word, Lucy hurried past Gus and rushed to the corner of the room with the bedrolls, and sat in the corner with her head buried in her arms. Gus's heart broke to see the girl's distress, and Hunter gave him a pleading look, silently begging for Gus to help. The boy just nodded and went to go and sit beside her, leaving just a little distance between them as he sat on Hunter's bedroll, while Hunter and the two bird Palismen watched from a respectful distance.

"Is it okay if I sit here? I can move if you prefer?" Gus asked softly.

Lucy nodded weakly, not raising her head from her arms. Gus then edged a tiny bit closer and said; "I'm sorry for springing that on you like that. I wanted to be honest with you from the start… I didn't want you to think I didn't know, so you wouldn't be honest about your feelings."

"M-My feelings?" Lucy whispered, raising her head just enough so her eyes could be seen. They were glistening with tears, and that sight tore at Gus's heart.

"Yeah, your feelings. They're important, you know." he told her, "Will you tell me about them? I'd like to know how you feel right now, so I can help."

"Why would you want to do that?" Lucy asked.

"Because you're one of my best friends, obviously." Gus smiled.

Lucy rose her head fully, her eyes wide with shock. She truly hadn't expected that answer. "Y-You still want to be my friend?"

"Of course! Why wouldn't I?" Gus frowned.

"B-Because I'm a fake!" Lucy suddenly cried, making Hunter and Gus both flinch in surprise. The girl wasn't done however, and she averted her eyes from the boys as she began to sob; "My whole life has been a lie from the start! I never had a mother or a father, but Belos made me believe I did and that I was cursed! That my father killed my mother because of me! He stole my voice from me and forced me to wear a mask for years! All so people wouldn't learn the truth… that I was nothing but a cheap imitation!"

Lucy's hands grabbed the sides of her head as she shook uncontrollably; "A-A fraud! That's all I am! A Doll! And a broken one! I was literally born so that the real Luz, a real Angel, wouldn't have to die for Belos' plot! I was born just to die! No, I was created just to be destroyed! And I couldn't even do that right! No wonder Belos hated me and was willing to hurt me… I was just a bad investment! A waste of the only piece of the real Luz that he had! And now… now I'm just sitting around and waiting to die! Belos will find me eventually! He'll find me and kill me, or use me to kill others! And Hunter will try to protect me, but I'm useless and I'll weigh him down, then Belos will kill him too and it'll all be my fault! I can't… I can't…!"

Gus gasped while Hunter began to freak out as Lucy worked herself up into a panic attack and began to hyperventilate. The poor girl was crying her eyes out, her heart pounding like crazy as she took short, shallow breaths that clearly did little to actually help her breathe. Hunter wasn't making it better either, as he began to panic and run around frantically trying to find something to help.

"Water! Will a drink help! Oh, food! Dang it, Flap and Waffles dropped our lunch! Ooh, soothing aromas! There's gotta be stuff to make something like that here, right? This is a potions lab! Or maybe some kind of shoulder message to relax her!? Or maybe-"

"Hunter, chill. We don't need two of you having a panic attack." Gus interrupted, before gently putting a hand on Lucy's shoulder to get her attention on him. She looked at him with terrified eyes, and Gus looked back with a kind, reassuring smile.

"It's okay, Lucy. Just try to breathe. Do it like this." Gus said, holding up his fist and then inhaling slowly, raising one finger at a time as he did so. Once four fingers were out, he began to exhale slowly, lowering each finger at the same pace until his fist was closed again. Lucy watched him carefully, then when Gus began to inhale again, she forced herself to match him and then exhaled as he did too. This continued for a few moments, until Lucy's heart began to slow and her panic began to fade a little as her breathing calmed and she was able to control herself again. Seeing this made Hunter nearly collapse against the wall from relief, while Gus smiled at Lucy and patted her back.

"There you go. Nice and slow. I know you must be feeling a lot of awful stuff right now, and it's good to talk about it instead of leaving it locked up inside your head. We just need to take it slow, and at a pace you can handle, okay? I'll be right here with you when you're ready, and even if I have to go away, I'm never more than a scroll call away. Okay?"

Lucy, still breathing deeply and slowly, gave a little nod. Then once she was feeling up to talking, she quietly asked; "Why are you doing this for me?"

"Well duh! It's because we're buddies, right? Friends do stuff like this for each other! I know you'd do the same for me too, if I needed it." Gus told her, edging a tiny bit closer.

Lucy noticed him gradually getting closer to her, but she didn't mind. "You're really wise… you help me a lot. Did someone help you like this before?"

Gus nodded; "My first friend, Willow. You see, I'm the same age as you, but I'm in the same year at school as Willow and Luz. I was considered good enough in illusions to skip two whole grades… but that meant I was a little kid amongst much bigger kids. I didn't have any friends, and on the day I met Willow, I discovered someone I thought was my friend was actually just using me to do their homework. I was pretty upset and ran away to hide, but I ended up losing control of my magic and my thoughts created horrible illusions that brought my worries to life."

Lucy gasped; "That's awful…"

"It wasn't fun. But that's when Willow found me. She told me it was okay, and that she got wrapped up in her own thoughts too. She showed me that breathing trick, which her Dads taught her, to quiet my thoughts and the voices of doubt in my head. We became each other's only friends, until Luz came along. Then the three of us made lots more friends together. Friends do that; we help each other." Gus finished.

Lucy looked away and stared down at her knees again, worrying her lip with her teeth. She was clearly deep in thought for a few moments, but Gus let her think things over for a bit, then when he saw her beginning to fidget a little more, he quietly said; "If you really don't want to talk, then that's okay. But I'd like to hear your feelings and help you to feel better."

"I… I just don't know what to do! I feel so… empty. When we last talked, you told me that I shouldn't try to be like you, or Hunter, or Luz… but I was literally made to be like Luz! I was meant to die so she could live! I've been a failure all my life, precisely because I'm not like her when I should be! I'm small and weak, with little wings that can't fly and barely let me do magic! I can do Oracle Magic with a spirit despite Angels not being meant to, and I use shadows instead of the light like a proper Angel! I can't even use any other Angelic Magic!" Lucy vented, before lowering her voice to a whisper so Hunter wouldn't here; "And I'm nothing but a burden on Hunter… He's going through everything I am, but he's more worried about me, even though Belos will kill him while he'd spare me at least until after the Day of Unity. He would be better off without me…"

She buried her face in her knees; "Everyone would… Waffles deserves a better partner, Hunter deserves a better sister, and you deserve a better friend! I did so many things for Belos… things I hated, all because I wanted to be a good Angel and a good niece… but in reality, I was just the villainous lackey of another villain. I'm evil… I shouldn't exist…"

Her voice began to crack and she whispered in a voice so quiet that Gus barely heard it; "Hettie was right… I'm a monster. I should have just let her kill me…"

Hearing those words made something inside Gus snap. Lucy was a little girl, only twelve years old, and she was saying she deserved to die! He would never accept that!

"No!" he cried, startling Lucy. He suddenly grabbed her and pulled her to his side, hugging her against him with all his might. "Don't you say that! Don't you dare ever say that! You are not just some knock-off of Luz! You are your own unique, wonderful person! You're good and kind, even with Belos trying to groom you into being a monster like him! You wanted to spare the Palismen in the desert, you helped save Luz's life on Titan Trapper Island, you fought alongside Luz in Cartilia, and tried to save my friends and I at HECK! Not to mention helping me carve Emmie's crest! You are amazing, and you did all of it by being you and not Luz!"

Lucy gasped as tears streamed down her shocked face, as Gus gently held her and looked her in the eye; "Your Grandpa Osran's life is better because you're in it! Hunter's life is better because you're in it! My life is so much better, all because you are in it! You deserve to live, happy and free no matter your origins or the things Belos forced you to do! So please…"

Gus began to tear up too, and that shocked Lucy even further as her lavender eyes stared into Gus' steel blue ones; "… don't ever say something like that again. Your life means so much to so many people."

Lucy felt her heart begin to beat a little faster and she regained a slightly healthier skin colour, which also seemed to result in her cheeks darkening with an even more obvious blush. She hadn't heard someone speak so passionately to her since she was a little girl, being declared a precious family member by Hunter. Gus was openly crying at her sorrow… at the idea that she preferred death to living as she was. To him, she wasn't a monster, a fake, or a villain. To Gus, Lucy was a dear friend and someone who deserved a second chance at life.

It struck her heart like a lightning bolt; Hunter loved and cared for her just as deeply, but he was her big brother and in the same position. With them both being Grimwalker copies, created to serve a purpose and then be disposed of, they suffered the same pains (even if Lucy felt like a brat for taking things so much worse and making things harder on Hunter). But Gus? He was a normal boy… a normal boy who considered Lucy, someone he knew to be a Grimwalker and a former enemy, someone he had every right to hate, to be a friend.

His words didn't erase her sorrows, or even all of her guilt and self-loathing, but it did cause a certain other feeling to burn brighter in her chest, and a new feeling to be born within her.

Hope.

"Gus… do you really care about me that much? Even though I'm just a copy of Luz? Even my name is just a rip-off." she mumbled, her new hope warring with her doubts.

"You're not her copy! Sure, you've got pretty similar faces and even some shared personality traits, but you're still you! Unique and amazing in your own way, distinct from Luz. I don't look at you and see her! I see you. You are the Good Angel Lucy." Gus said fiercely; "And if you don't like your name, then pick a new one all for yourself!

Lucy was struck dumb by that possibility; "I can just pick a new name…? I can be my own person? Being different from Luz… is a good thing?"

"If you don't want to keep the name Belos gave you, then sure? And you already are your own person, and that's a really good thing! Remember, you bonded with Waffles over it! Plus don't worry about not being like Luz! There are a billion ways to be a good person; you don't need to pick the same way as Luz." Gus answered.

Lucy blinked in surprise at how fast Gus had answered. Those questions had haunted her since finding out what she really was (and even before that in the case of not being enough like Luz), yet Gus answered them like it was the simplest thing in the world. The feeling of hope grew a little stronger and her heart beat a little faster as she leaned closer, her eyes staring imploringly at the boy in front of her.

"What about my purpose?" she asked.

"Your purpose?" Gus repeated, puzzled.

Lucy nodded; "All my life, I thought my purpose was to serve the man I thought was my Uncle… to repay him for saving my life. But that was all a lie, and the purpose he made me for was to be a replacement for Luz. If it's okay for me to not do that… then what's my purpose? Why do I exist?"

Gus wasn't sure how to answer that question, but he gave it his best shot; "Well no one can decide that but you. People don't need to have any reason for existing, besides they want to keep living."

"I know, I just…" Lucy flushed, trying to find the words; "I-I've always had a purpose. I always thought I knew what it was too, but now… maybe you could decide it for me?"

"I really shouldn't. It's your life…" Gus paused as he saw Lucy's imploring look. She was hanging on his every word, relying on him completely. Gus looked at Hunter out of the corner of his eye, and the boy shrugged desperately and gestured for Gus to come up with anything. So Gus did so.

"Then your new purpose is to live a good life, experience a lot of things, and find a new purpose for yourself." Gus declared.

Lucy's eyes widened; "Part of my purpose… is to find my own purpose?"

"Yep! Sorry if that's a bit of a cop out…" Gus grinned as he rubbed the back of his head awkwardly; "If you want something a little more concrete while working on that… how about being my friend? That can be a good purpose too, right?"

For the first time since coming out of Belos' mind, Lucy gave a sweet little smile, and Hunter almost wept with joy at the sight of it. Gus felt strangely struck by that smile too, especially as some real life began to fill Lucy's eyes again. There was a sparkle of some intense emotions there, and Gus couldn't stop thinking about how beautiful those eyes were… or how their last meeting at the Clawthornes' home in the forest had ended.

Before any of them could say another word though, the school PA system turned on and a message from the Principal played across the entire school; "Attention all students. You are to report immediately to the Paranoratorium for an important assembly. Attendance is mandatory for all students."

Gus frowned and muttered; "Could that be a coincidence, or something Matt did? Is the Principal gathering everyone to warn them about the plot?"

"Plot?" Lucy repeated with a frown.

"Is something going on?" Hunter asked.

"Y-Yeah. It's a long story, but the Emperor has the Illusion Coven Head going to schools to try and trick students into taking a "fake sigil" to protect them from some extremists, but they're actually giving out real sigils. It's all part of Belos' Day of Unity plot." Gus explained as he reluctantly let go of Lucy and got to his feet.

Lucy and Hunter both looked shocked and horrified by the idea, though they also looked terrified of the idea that a coven was coming to Glandus! Gus saw their fears and smiled; "Don't worry; the CATTs are on standby. Darius, Eber, and Osran are all in the city, ready to help. My friend and I snuck in ahead of time to warn people. I think this announcement is his doing."

"I-I don't know. I'm getting a bad feeling, Gus." Lucy whimpered.

Gus knew better than to question the bad feeling of an Oracle; "You two stay here; I'm going to go and check things out." he said, reactivating his Concealment Stone, "I'll be back once I've confirmed its safe. I'll use the code word "Pancakes" to prove it's really me. We're dealing with Illusionists after all!"

"W-Wait! Gus, you should stay with us where it's safe!" Lucy protested; "There's a lot of room and only Ukla knows about it! We can protect you!"

"Maybe, but I need to help protect the others too. Don't worry, I'll be fine." Gus promised, diving into the gelatinous pillar and swimming up before Lucy or Hunter could stop him, allowing him to exit via the cauldron of the crone statue. He used an illusion to make sure he wasn't noticed by the other students heading to the Paranoratorium, then subtly fell in with the group and followed them.

Glandus' Paranoratorium was on the ground floor, between the bard and illusion track towers and as Gus arrived, he found it to be very similar to the Hexside one, though it was larger and had an outdoor amphitheatre style stage made of stone, rather than the more traditional wooden theatre stage. The students were all taking their seats based on their year and track, and thankfully both Gus and Matt were disguised as brothers in the same year and in neighbouring tracks, so he was able to find Matt's disguised self and approach him before the two silently sat together on the end of a row.

"What's this meeting about, Matt? Did you talk to the principal?" Gus asked.

Matt shook his head; "I never got the chance. I ran into Bria and long story short, I lost time running away from her. By the time I escaped, that announcement was made."

Gus scowled; "That sucks. On the bright side, I found our two missing friends."

Matt's eyes widened a little, but he kept his expression neutral so as not to draw attention. "Are they okay?"

"Physically? Passable. Emotionally? Definitely not. Lucy is in a bad place, but I was able to talk to her a little. I think she's turning things around now, but she really needs therapy. As for Hunter… he's hiding how bad he's hurting for the sake of his little sister, but he's clearly suffering too. I'm gonna try and talk to him too… or at least give him Willow's runes so she can do it."

Matt listened with a grim expression, then awkwardly joked; "Wow, setting up your girlfriend's brother with one of your best friends? If the Human Realm Ambassador thing doesn't work out, you could be a professional wingman."

Gus snorted and playfully swatted his friend, then asked about the encounter with Bria. Matt explained what had happened as the Paranoratorium filled up bit by bit, though he omitted the part about finding her crying… it just didn't feel right to be spreading that around, even to Gus. He'd just finished the story when there was movement on the stage, and four figures walked into the middle of it.

One of the figures was Glandus' principal; a dignified male witch with neat white hair, a well groomed beard and moustache of the same colour, and rectangular lensed glasses. He was dressed in the same outfit as Principal Bump, though his stole was purple and his golden mantle had some additional purple fabric that went down to just below his waist. The man also had a squirrel Palisman sat on his shoulder. The other two were a short old female witch in green robes, whose rusty red hair looked like an onion, and a male Toad Demon dressed in a black shorts and a blue over-robe that was clearly ready to burst off due to his girth. The final figure was a man with a long lion-like tail, dressed in dull brown clothing with a hood that hid his face.

Matt whispered to Gus; "That's Principal Keyes. The lady is Potions Professor and Vice Principal Chulips, and the big guy is Bard Professor and Head of Security, Professor Round."

Gus raised an eyebrow; Glandus had an extremely rotund professor whose name was Round? He could only imagine the teasing the poor guy experienced. However Matt didn't introduce the fourth guy, and actually seemed puzzled by who he was; "Never seen the middle dude before. He's got a tail, but he doesn't look like any tailed Demon… maybe he's a Witch with Demon traits?" he shrugged.

That didn't sit right with Gus, who narrowed his eyes on the man. He had a fine eye for detail, and quickly pieced together who the man was based on his build and tail; it was Adrian Graye Vernworth! Gus remembered him from the HECK incident, though something about him seemed odd. His posture was awkward and unnatural, and the way his tail swished seemed… robotic? It was as if Adrian didn't know how his own tail was supposed to move.

"That's Head Witch Vernworth… or at least someone pretending to be him." Gus muttered to Matt.

"What should we do?" Matt asked in a whisper as the teachers began trying to silence the still chattering students.

"Let's sneak on stage under illusions of our own. We just need cover." Gus said.

Matt grinned as he drew two spell circles; one blue and one bronze; "Leave that to me. Be ready to use the invisibility spell on us as soon as you see my signal."

Gus nodded, not bothering to ask what the signal would be. Instead he watched as Matt used the bronze spell circle to summon some sand and shape it into a ball around the illusion spell circle, sealing it inside. He then dropped the sand ball on the floor in front of his seat and let it roll down the slight incline of the Paranoratorium until it hit the stage at the bottom. The sand promptly crumbled and released Matt's illusion spell, which caused a huge and very loud illusory firework to shoot up into the air and explode with a blinding flash. Everyone began shrieking, yelling, and laughing as they closed their eyes to escape the flash, thinking it was all a prank. Gus used the window to make Matt and himself invisible, then created illusory replicas of their disguised selves in their seats as they got up and began creeping towards the stage.

Carefully evading Professors Chulips and Round to get onto the stage, the boys then moved to a spot near the fake Adrian, then remained perfectly silent as they waited for the teachers to get things under control again. Eventually Principal Keyes sighed and nodded to Professor Round, who promptly let out an extremely loud croak, applying Bardic Magic to literally silence the entire student body.

Now that everyone was silenced and were forced to calm down, Principal Keyes had Professor Round cancel the spell, then addressed the students; "Thank you all for coming… and managing to get seated with only a single minor prank. I'm glad to see you're finally starting to learn the importance of time and place. Now, I'm afraid I've gathered you all here for a matter of grave importance. Please allow me to introduce the acclaimed-"

Keyes began gesturing towards the Fake Adrian, but the man interrupted him with a solemn shake of the head; "Please, Principal Keyes. I deserve no accolades…" He stepped forward and lowered his hood to reveal his face. People gasped as they recognised him, but he introduced himself regardless.

"Hello everyone. My name is Adrian Graye, Head Witch of the Illusion Coven." the man said.

Gus withheld a snort; the disguised guy was laying it on a little thick, and his illusory face was dishevelled, sporting messy hair and some five o'clock shadow.

"Unfortunately, I'm not here with good news." he continued, "I'm sure many of you heard the Emperor's announcement last night; anyone who successfully recruits a witch into their coven before the Day of Unity will receive 1000 snails. The Emperor felt this would be a way of gently recruiting the remaining Wild Witches, by incentivising their families' to convince them to join their covens. However, some unscrupulous individuals have taken to abusing this offer." his expression became deadly serious; "These individuals have stolen Sigil Gloves from their covens and have decided to make themselves rich by targeting school children and forcibly branding them with Coven Sigils."

That reveal almost sent the entire Glandus Student Body into pandemonium. People began to panic and scream, others looked ready for a fight, and some of the youngest kids even began to cry in fear. It was chaos, but Principal Keyes soon quelled them.

"Alright you lot, settle down! Head Witch Adrian came all the way here to help solve this problem, and even brought a message of apology from the Emperor himself! Listen up and you'll all be fine!" he bellowed, his voice carrying a surprising amount of power.

His students clearly respected him too, as they began to calm down a little, though they were now all staring intensely at the fake Adrian, who smiled a bit and nodded; "Your principal is right. Emperor Belos regrets that his attempt to bring the last stragglers into the Light of Unity has backfired and resulted in innocent children being targetted, so he has sent me to try and protect you all! We have a plan!"

Fake Adrian raised a finger, causing a cyan glow to appear on the tip; "I am going to apply fake, illusory sigils to all of you. They'll be temporary and completely harmless, but if you're confronted by one of these extremists they'll see your sigil and promptly leave you alone. After all, only a Coven Head's Sigil Glove can change one Coven Sigil into a different one, and only basic ones were stolen. You'll be perfectly safe." he then noted the unsure looks on the Glandus students' faces, before turning to Principal Keyes; "Perhaps we could have a volunteer to demonstrate?"

Keyes nodded sharply, then looked around for a moment before pointing to Ukla, sat near the back of the Construction students. "Ukla, you're our top student. You'll serve as a fine example for your classmates to follow."

There was some worried mutterings as a fearful look crossed Ukla's face, before she forced herself to nod stoically and move down to the stage. She walked up to the fake Adrian and offered her wrist, shakily pulling up the sleeve so he could give her the "fake" sigil.

The man smiled and said; "As you're a top student, I'll give you an Emperor's Coven Sigil. Now, it'll feel tingly and strange, and you may feel a little weak afterwards, but that's just because the illusory sigil needs to borrow some of your magic to maintain itself for a week. Don't worry though, you'll feel right as rain by lunch time."

Ukla gulped as the fake Adrian used his glowing finger to draw a spell circle, then moving the circle to his palm as he moved it towards Ukla's wrist. Gus already knew the truth of what was going on, but his sharp eyes also noticed a tiny visual "glitch" in the illusion around the man's hand, which Gus knew was due to the Sigil Glove hidden there! It was time to stop this!

"STOP!" Gus bellowed, still invisible. He conjured a tendril of water and grabbed fake Adrian's wrist, then pulled it and the man himself away from Ukla.

"What is the meaning of this!?" Principal Keyes demanded as fake Adrian tumbled over.

Gus and Matt (still disguised) dropped their invisibility spells, with the former moving between Ukla and fake Adrian, while the latter used Construction Magic to turn part of the stone stage into a giant stone hand, which grabbed and held the fake Adrian.

"Marice!? Adan!? What do you think you are doing!? And since when could you use Illusions and Construction Magic like that!?" Professor Round bellowed, pointing to the disguised boys, who sported the yellow and orange sleeves of the potions and beast-keeping tracks.

"This man isn't Adrian Graye Vernworth! And he's not giving out fake sigils either!" Gus revealed, ignoring the question of his magic. He then cast a spell to dispel the illusion covering fake Adrian, revealing him to actually be a Scout Captain from the Emperor's Coven, wearing a very real Sigil Glove.

The sight of him caused an uproar as Ukla recoiled in terror, and the teachers on stage all joined Gus in standing between her and the formerly disguised man. Most of the students were on their feet now too, either eager for a fight or to run. Professor Chulips than took a good look at the trapped man and asked; "Is he one of the extremists?"

Gus, disguised as Adan, shook his head; "Nope! There never were any extremists! This whole scheme is a plan by Belos! The fake reward for recruiting people and the rumours of greedy extremists was made up by him to trick students across the isles into accepting real Sigils, thinking they were fake ones!"

The student body of Glandus gasped and muttered in shock, then began to really rage. They screamed abuse at the captured Scout Captain and many began railing against the Empire. A few instead screamed at Gus and Matt, demanding they prove their claims that the Captain wasn't just an extremist or worse, a member of the CATTs trying to trick them into rebelling against the Empire. Others still demanded to know who they really were, and Matt could see Bria in the middle of the Construction students, glaring at him with fire in her eyes. She obviously realised who he was thanks to their earlier encounter, but she didn't dare come out and say it, being the bottom rung of the social ladder.

Principal Keyes tried to calm the students down again, but he was cut off by the voice of Adrian Graye Vernworth, sounding out over the uproar of the students.

"CUT! Just… just cut." he said irritably.

Suddenly, a series of Coven Scouts and Illusionists appeared from puffs of cyan smoke all around the room. They'd been hidden by invisibility spells, and they were absolutely everywhere! It was unusual to see Illusionists in their official uniforms; which consisted of very dark blue robes with silver trim, and a cyan inner layer. They tended to keep their hoods up too, and their masks appeared to be mirrors shaped into face masks with no visible eyes or mouth. They and the scouts lined the walls along the sides of the room, the back wall that had the entrances (which they blocked) and even the back of the stage. Shockingly, the ones on the stage also had filming equipment, including a small scaffold with a spotlight on top, a recording mic, and a mirror meant for helping with lighting… which was useless when it and the person holding it were invisible! The last person to appear did so up on a balcony at the back of the room, where a projector platform was set up. This person, sat in a director's chair and sipping an expensive take out coffee, was the real Head Witch Adrian, looking exactly as he had when trying to take the Emerald Entrails at HECK.

He stood up with a fake smile and began to critique his scouts. "Alright, a couple of notes! Tom!" he pointed to a scout on the stage near the captured captain; "That Adrian illusion was lacking a certain… hmm? You get me?" Tom shrugged helplessly, not understanding at all. Adrian ignored him and pointed to a female scout with pointy ear-like protrusions beneath her hood and who was holding the mirror; "Severine! That was really… poor work. You're on thin ice." Poor Severine wilted at that as Adrian next pointed to the captured Scout Captain; "Captain, the read on your last line was just a little… mm." he gave a so-so gesture with his hand.

"I don't know what that means!" the Captain yelled, "Also, someone help me!"

"You'll figure it out. And we'll get to that in a minute. But first…" Adrian turned his eyes on the two disguised boys, then promptly vanished, revealing he was an illusion too (and a much better quality one than the others). Gus gasped, especially as the real Adrian was then revealed to be on stage the whole time, likely to help deal with the teachers if things got out of hand. He immediately grabbed Gus's wrist.

"And you! You and your little friend just ruined any chance we had of making this… something." he growled.

"You mean, making this easy! Stop trying to make yourself sound more auteur by being deliberately vague!" Gus spat; "How about I do your job for you! Tom, your Adrian Illusion didn't sync up right with the Captain's movements, and the tail wasn't moving naturally. It triggered the uncanny valley effect in anyone who noticed. Captain; your inflection on that last line sounded a little too eager, which came off as sinister! And Severine!" he pointed to the woman holding the mirror, whose body language perked up; "You didn't do a bad job, you had a bad job! You were tasked with holding a mirror for lighting while invisible! Your job was pointless and Vernworth was just being a jerk!"

Gus then glared at Adrian himself; "And why did you need all this stuff!? Are just trying to be pretentious? Because you can only get away with that if you're actually good at it!"

Matt smirked, but then Gus caught his eye and gave him a meaningful look. With the Coven Head present along with a force this big (and likely more hidden elsewhere), this was too much for them to deal with alone. They needed to signal for help! Matt tried to subtly summon his scroll, but the instant he drew a spell circle of any kind, half the scouts on the stage (who weren't manning equipment) ran and grabbed the boy, eventually forcing him to the ground and snatching his scroll before he could use it. He was then held down by several scouts, while an illusionist watched him carefully to ensure he wasn't trying to cast spells.

Principal Keyes and Professors Chulips and Round prepared to fight, with the Principal urging Ukla to jump off the stage, but the instant Ukla actually did leap down, several scouts along the outer walls began pointing spears at the throats of nearby children.

"Now now, we don't want any heroics. That can be dreadfully unhealthy." Adrian smirked.

"Unhand my students!" Principal Keyes demanded, his voice thundering and wrathful.

"And why would I do that? You're not really in a position to bargain. Do keep up." Adrian mocked, before smirking at Gus; "Besides, these two aren't even your students!" he declared, casting an illusion spell with his free hand.

The spell sent a wave throughout the room, causing both Gus and Matt's Concealment Stones to flicker and then deactivate, revealing their true forms. The students all looked on with shock as they recognised the two boys.

"I-Is that Matty!? Matty Tholomule!?"

"Didn't he run away to Hexside!?"

"Oh yeah! The guy that used to be Bumbling Bria's lackey!"

"What's he doing here!?"

"I know that other kid! He was one of the Hexside kids who won the HECK event!"

"Didn't he end up joining the Emperor's Coven as part of the big prize?"

Adrian's eyes widened as he recognised Gus too, before a sinister smirk crossed his face; "Well well, if it isn't one of the little rebels that escaped with Darius and Osran! I suffered quite a bit of embarrassment because of you, brat! This makes the second time you've made things difficult for me!"

Gus sneered; "What can I say? It's a gift!"

He then tried to draw a spell circle with his free hand, but one of the Coven Scouts grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back as Adrian summoned his own Sigil Branding Glove, which had the sigil of the Illusion Coven on the palm.

"You certainly do have a gift. But I can't allow a baby Illusionist to show me up twice and get away with it, so let's make sure you can never use your little illusions ever again, shall we?" Adrian smirked as he changed the sigil on his glove to the sigil of the Abomination Coven, before moving to brand Gus with it. "This is really you're own fault you know… you could have joined the Emperor's Coven and been one of the chosen ones. It's really too bad…"

Gus began to panic as the sigil glove became dangerously close to his wrist. He struggled as hard as he could, but Adrian and the Coven Scout had firm grips on him. His heart began to beat wildly; "No! No, stay back!"

Adrian's smile grew wider with Gus's fear, and the boy felt his magic surging from his wild emotions. "I said…" he clenched his eyes shut, "...STAY BACK!"

Gus's eyes flew open, glowing cyan from a Bile Overload. His emotion enhanced magic surged out of him like an icy wave, chilling everyone around him to the bone and causing the world to begin distorting. A giant illusion filled the entire Paranoratorium, creating a constant nauseating shift of scenery, as if the world was becoming a confusing blend of all of Gus's memories. Students and Scouts alike disappeared inside the illusion, and the sounds of battle faded in and out as some of the kids took the opportunity to fight back against the Coven Invaders. It was chaos, and the stunned Adrian looked at Gus with a mix of shock, envy, and amazement.

"How are you doing this!?" he exclaimed.

Before he could get an answer, Adrian found himself suddenly shoved out of the way by a hooded figure wielding a staff, who grabbed Gus from him and ran off into the illusion, causing Adrian and the scouts on the stage to lose sight of them. Matt saw this and knew it was his chance, so while the illusionist watching him was distracted, he cast a Construction spell to increase his strength and easily throw the Coven Scouts off of him. He then jumped on the one that took his scroll and knocked him out with a punch from his strengthened fist, before stealing his scroll and rushing away into the ever-shifting illusion.

Matt found his way out of the Paranoratorium, only to find the entire school was being effected by Gus's unrestrained illusion magic. With no idea where Gus was or what else to do, Matt called Darius to alert him.

"Darius! We've got a problem! The Illusion Coven and Coven Scouts are here and they've occupied the school! We messed up their plan, but Gus almost got branded and went into a Bile Overload, and now everything is a hidden beneath a messed up illusion!"

Darius cursed on the other end of the line; "Yes, we can see that. The illusion has spread to the entire school building and the surrounding grounds! It looks like a twisted combination of the Emperor's Castle, Digale Island, the Owl House, Glandus, and Hexside! We've already called for Eber to arrive with the CATTs, but all we can do is surround the place! We can't find our way in to help because of the illusions, and Osran can't help with his Oracle Magic because Lucy is in there!"

"S-So we're on our own!?" Matt cried.

"Not exactly. We'll try to send small squads in to back you up, but we can't send the full force so long as the illusions are hiding everything! You need to find Gus and get him to stop the illusion!" Darius ordered.

"R-Right! I'll do my best!" Matt answered.

"Good. Your brother is currently with Eber, but he'll be one of the people going in when they arrive. Find Gus, stop the illusion, and hold out as long as possible!"

"I got it." Matt hung up, then slapped his cheeks lightly; "Okay Matt, time to be a hero!" he muttered to himself, as he ran off into the still shifting illusions, using his own limited illusion magic to try and see through it a little (which wasn't easy with Gus's Illusion Magic being so much stronger than his). Unbeknownst to him however, he had been followed out of the Paranoratorium by a certain old friend.

Back in the Paranoratorium, Adrian pulled off his mirror earring and used it to draw a cyan spell circle, which caused the magic of Gus's illusion to settle down. Instead of a constant shift of scenery from Gus's memories, the illusions became fixed and every single part of the school became a specific scene from one of Gus's memories. Some parts were of Bonesborough such as Hexside, some were of Gus's home, others were of the Owl House or Digale Island, a few were of the Ash Moth Desert and the Volcarpalis Fire Temple, and one in particular, the illusion within the Paranoratorium itself, was of the Looking Glass Graveyard.

Adrian looked around at it in amazement; "This is…"

"Head Witch!" the newly freed Scout Captain cried; "Reports are coming in from our forces hidden around the school! The entire place is trapped in an illusion, and nothing we do can dispel it! We've also got reports from our people outside; the rebels are surrounding the school!"

"Forget the rebels. This illusion is powerful… it won't fade until the one casting it stops the spell." Adrian murmured as he looked at an illusory statue, using his little mirror earring like a magnifying glass. "Find him. I would very much like to pick his brain."

The Captain exchanged glances with his subordinates and said; "But how are we supposed to find him in all this? If you could give us some direction…"

Adrian groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose; "Am I the only one here who can do their job? Just… find him." he went back to looking at the details of a statue; "The texture work is flawless… the detailing is just so… pow!"

The Captain groaned and muttered; "I hate working for this guy…"

[Meanwhile]

Gus kept running as fast as he could as he was dragged along by his hooded rescuer, trying to calm himself down after the scare with the attempted sigil branding. Eventually they came to a stop when the shifting illusions began to settle, and Gus's rescuer ended up running into a wall. He yelped and fell to the ground, accidentally dragging Gus down with him.

"Ugh… that sucks." the rescuer complained, pulling his hood down to reveal that it was Hunter. Gus wasn't too surprised by that, and looked around at the illusion coating Glandus. They currently appeared to be in Bonesborough, but one of Gus's eyes was still glowing from the overload and the spell he'd inadvertently cast while under its influence. The glowing eye saw things as they really were beneath the illusion (albeit with a cyan filter), so Gus could see they were actually in a Glandus hallway.

"Gus, are you okay? Your eye is glowing." Hunter commented, getting to his feet and helping the younger boy up too.

"I-I'm fine. My spell is still active…" Gus replied, looking around.

"Well you're a witch so can't you just… un-spell it?" Hunter asked.

"Sorry but I don't think I can. I used to make illusions like this whenever I had panic attacks as a kid, but they were never this strong! I don't know how to undo it." Gus frowned. Maybe it was just because he was older and more powerful now, but he never imagined he'd have this level of strength! At least he could still partially see through it. "I think I'd need to go into an overload again to be strong enough to dispel it, or have something equally powerful do it."

He briefly considered using the emergency Power Glyph that Mason provided to all CATTs, but he wanted to save it for if he ran into Adrian again; he wouldn't stand a chance in a fight with a Coven Head without it! Besides, the illusion was going to mess with the Coven Invaders as much as anyone else, and since Gus could still see through it, maintaining the illusion was probably for the best.

Turning to Hunter, Gus said; "Thank you for saving me back there. You know, this is the second time you've saved me from getting forced into a Coven AND from Vernworth."

Hunter smiled in return; "You're welcome. I owed you big time for helping Lucy." he said as the two boys began walking; "She didn't talk and barely ate this whole last week, and you not only snapped her out of it, but you made her smile again. You gave her hope; I can never repay you for that. Now I think we should get back to her; the hideout will be safe, and I bet that if people can't find their way out of the school, Ukla will try to lead people there instead. It's a good place to stop and regroup."

Gus agreed; "Good idea. You call Lucy and let her know what's happening, while I call Matt and our allies outside."

The older boy nodded and both summoned their scrolls, only to frown when both of scrolls said there was no signal. Gus hadn't seen something like that since he'd left the Isles with Luz to evacuate the Bat Queen and her brood, but Hunter had.

"Dang it, Adrian must have brought along some Signal Termites." he growled, putting his scroll away.

"What the heck is that? I've never heard of it." Gus said.

"You wouldn't have, Belos didn't like people learning about them. They're basically unintelligent Bug Demons bred by the coven. They eat the magic signals that scrolls use to communicate. So long as a few of them are present and conscious, all scrolls in a one mile radius are useless." Hunter complained. "Adrian must have brought some along and had them woken up once you set off this illusion."

"Looks like we're going about this the hard way. I just hope Matt got the alert out before these Signal Termites woke up." Gus frowned. He then noticed Hunter hurrying off towards some stairs, being far too quick to race off into potential danger, especially since it wasn't clear what was real and what wasn't.

Case in point, when Hunter reached the stairs, he muttered; "Are these real steps or illusion steps?" as he prepared to take a step forward, assuming the descending staircase was fake. Gus ran after him and managed to catch him with a tendril of water before he tumbled down.

"Hunter, be careful! If you rush off, you'll get hurt!" Gus scolded, pulling the boy back onto his feet.

"Uh, sorry. I'm just in a hurry. I need to make sure Lucy is okay." Hunter said bashfully. "She and Flapjack are all I have left. They're the only parts of my life that are real."

Gus frowned at that; "Hunter, do you need to talk? Seriously, you've gone through as much trauma recently as Lucy; I'd be happy to talk some of it out with you. I'm not a therapist, but the illusion track does teach a lot about psychology and how the mind works." the young Illusionist offered.

Hunter smiled awkwardly and waved him off; "It's fine. I'm tougher than Lucy; I don't need it like she did. I just need to make sure she's safe."

Neither Gus nor Flapjack looked convinced, but it wasn't like this was the best time or place regardless, so they decided to drop it for now. Gus sighed; "I get that. I'm worried to, but we need to be careful. Stick close to me; I can still see through half of this illusion." he said, gesturing to his eye. Hunter nodded, feeling suitably chastised, and followed Gus as they made their way back towards the potions track tower.

They got about halfway there before they ran into anyone else; but unfortunately the people they ran into were a pair of Coven Scouts. They recognised Gus right away and cried; "It's the kid! Grab him!"

One conjured some abomination slime to grab Gus while the other tried to use vines, but Hunter grabbed the boy and used Flapjack to flash behind the two scouts. He then then slammed down into the back of one and knocked them down, while Gus summoned Emmiline in staff mode and used her to fire a jet of freezing cold water at the other, knocking her into the wall. She tried to counter with a jet of abomination goo while her colleague knocked Hunter off of her and tried to steal his staff with some vines. She almost succeeded, before suddenly pausing as she saw his face.

"Wait a second! Hold! Hold!" she cried, leaping off of Hunter; "It's the Golden Guard!"

The other scout stopped her attack (though Gus didn't, so she got a face full of frigid water before Gus realised the fight had paused). The now soaked scout looked at Hunter and cried; "What the heck, man!? We're on the same side!"

"We're so sorry for the confusion. The Emperor has been looking everywhere for you and your sister! He's sent out search parties and everything! He'll be so happy when we bring you back home!" the other scout declared, reaching for Hunter's hand to drag him off.

The poor boy seemed to freeze, his face turning pale at the mention of his uncle. He wasn't able to gather his wits enough to pull free and Gus could see he was seconds from a panic attack, so he acted first.

Gus blasted some icy water at the scout holding Hunter, causing her to let go and recoil. He then used some of that water to make a tendril to pull Hunter towards him and handed him Emmiline to escape with, while Gus took Flapjack and leapt into the air, using the Red Cardinal Staff to shoot lightning at a puddle on the ground from all his water spells. The electricity travelled to the soaked scouts and electrocuted them into unconsciousness, while Gus surfed on Flapjack's staff to catch up with Hunter and Emmiline. Just as he reached them, the group heard the sounds of other Coven Scouts nearby, who'd been drawn by the sound of fighting. Thinking fast, Gus instead pulled Hunter into what appeared to be a stretch of Bonesborough wall, but which was actually a door into a Construction supply closet.

The inside of the closet was hidden by an illusion of Gus's bedroom; an odd choice, but at least they appeared to be safe, and Gus froze the door shut to make certain they wouldn't be disturbed. The two boys and their Palismen (who switched back to animal mode) stood in complete silence for a few seconds as they listened for any signs of the scouts finding them. After hearing nothing for a bit, Gus sighed with relief and began to relax, but without an imminent threat to deal with, poor Hunter began to spiral, totally shaken by being recognised.

"Oh Titan! Belos is looking for me! He'll know I'm here now! He'll come for me! He'll find Lucy! H-He'll kill me and take her away! It's not safe here any more! I-I gotta run! I gotta hide! I gotta-!"

Hunter began to hyperventilate, having a panic attack just like he had when fleeing the Owl House, and just like Lucy had earlier. He sank to the floor and gripped his head as he tried to get his breathing under control, and Gus hastily knelt beside him and put a gentle hand on his back to anchor him.

"Okay big guy, it's okay. You and Lucy are both safe for now. Just try and take some big deep breathes. You remember this?" Gus said softly, walking Hunter through the breathing trick again. The older boy followed along with it and sure enough, he began to regain control of his breathing and calm down, allowing the panic to settle even if the actual fear that caused it didn't.

Gus gave Hunter a full minute of silence to relax himself, after which Hunter looked ashamedly at the ground; "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have fallen apart like that."

"Don't apologise; you didn't do anything wrong. You're running for your life from a man you thought of as family, who now wants to kill you; it's normal to feel overwhelmed." Gus told him, "Lucy had a panic attack too when she was scared she'd get you killed, and I went into an overload when Vernworth tried to brand me."

"That's different." Hunter said, still looking ashamed.

"Why? Because we're younger? Or because you judge yourself way more harshly? 'Cause either way, you're wrong. Hunter, all three of us are kids and we're dealing with stuff we shouldn't have ever had to! We're fighting a war to survive against a guy who wants to commit global genocide, and I'm 12! There's no part of this that's okay! It's normal for us to panic and have freak outs!" Gus said, venting a little of his own frustration too. Despite his eagerness to help, he was terrified! He could die or suffer some other worse fate at any moment, and if he went down, someone he could have protected would get hurt too! He had joined the fight to take some of the burden off of Luz and his friends… and he now included Hunter in that number.

The older boy frowned and shook his head; "It's not that I'm older, it's just that… well I was literally made for this." he said, rubbing his arms as if he was suddenly cold; "Belos made me to be the perfect scout and soldier. He may be an evil monster and not the man I thought he was, but that doesn't change what I was made to do. It just feels like…"

"… like if you panic or freak out, then you're failing in your purpose." Gus finished, beginning to understand Hunter a little better. Like Lucy, he wasn't just struggling with the trauma of what his Uncle really is, or what he really was, but the idea that he'd been made for a purpose and he felt he was failing it. Lucy was created to be a replacement vessel so Luz would live, while Hunter was created to be Belos' right hand and the perfect warrior and servant. Now that they knew that, it somehow hurt even worse to know they were "failures" in their sole purpose in life.

"Yeah. You're pretty much right. Finding out I'm a Grimwalker was… a shock. But it was easier for me to accept. I didn't have a fake story about my so-called parents; they were just faceless people that Belos made up and who died from their own actions. I'm not like Lucy, who thought my parents died because of me, or who hurt me. And I don't have my "Original" wandering around and acting like the person I should have been. I guess it's easier to think of myself as my own person, and so I didn't want to complain, especially in the face of what my baby sister is going through." Hunter said miserably. "She's so small and fragile… like a baby bird. I need to protect her! It's the only purpose and meaning in life that I still have!"

Gus frowned and slowly pulled the older boy into a hug, making Hunter blink in surprise. As they hugged, Gus whispered to him; "You matter too, Hunter. Just because you feel like Lucy is worse off, that doesn't mean your suffering isn't important too. You deserve to feel happy and whole… Your feelings matter just as much as Lucy's. Taking care of your sister is an awesome thing and makes you an incredible big bro, but sometimes you need someone to take care of you too."

Hunter seemed stricken by that idea; "But I don't have anyone… I can't burden my sister, and I already rely on Flap as much as I can!

"You do have people who love and care about you, Hunter." Gus told him, hugging him a little tighter; "You obviously have Lucy and Flap, but you also have Darius, who's been worried sick about you. And Eber, who has been desperately trying to find you. You've also got Luz who cares more than you can imagine, and Willow who has been working just as hard as Darius and Eber to find you. The rest of the Emerald Entrails have been desperate to find you and help out too. And of course, you've also got me. We're friends Hunter, and I care about you."

Gus felt Hunter began to shake a little as he tried to hold in his sobs. The younger boy smiled gently and rubbed his back; "Let it out, tough guy. You can be strong again later, but for now, just let it out."

And so Hunter did. He held onto Gus like he was a lifeline, sobbing into his shoulder and gripping his shirt as if afraid Gus would disappear. He was finally letting out all the stress and sorrow he'd built up since the revelations in the Emperor's Mind. Gus smiled sadly as he continued to pat Hunter's back; they still had to find Lucy and Matt, and repel the Illusion Coven, but that could wait for a few more moments… for now, Hunter was allowed to just be a hurt child, sobbing his heart out for only the second time in his life.

[Meanwhile]

Matt glared down at his scroll as he navigated the illusion covered halls of Glandus. He'd tried to contact Steve to try and arrange a meet-up point for him and the CATTs team that would be braving the illusion, but he hadn't been able to get a signal. He'd tried again with Gus to try and find out where his partner was, but couldn't get through to him either!

"Stupid hunk of junk! Why aren't you working!?" he growled, shaking his scroll in frustration, before letting out a scream of anger and dismissing the item. He felt a tremor against his chest and peeked down into his shirt to see Pebbles pressed against him, looking scared and upset.

"I'm sorry I scared you, buddy. Now is just a really bad time for my scroll to stop working." Matt explained to the little Axolotl. Pebbles gave an adorable squeak in return, making Matt chuckle; "Yeah, I know. At least the illusions have settled down." he agreed.

The area he was currently roaming looked like some kind of temple of red stone, which Matt assumed was Volcarpalis. He hadn't seen the place in person, but Gus had shown him an illusory version once, so he recognised it. "Really gotta give Gus credit for this. I've never seen such a big illusion look so real."

He drew a cyan spell circle to try and see through the illusion, but he found it took a herculean amount of effort to create even a small illusory lens that he could look through with one eye to see the real world beneath the illusion, and even that was hazy and glitchy, like those old damaged video tapes Eda had from the Human Realm. Still, as difficult as it was, Matt was able to use it and his own knowledge of Glandus to navigate fairly effectively, especially since he was on the ground floor of the main building, which housed his old Glandus track.

He began heading to the school's front doors in hopes of getting out so he could meet up with the CATTs and help them get inside. However as he was getting close, he heard the sounds of combat from those who'd had the same idea, and began running to help. When he arrived, he found a duo of Coven Scouts facing a group of five Glandus Students, most of whom Matt recognised as powerful upperclassmen; the kind who were near the top of the food chain. Matt arrived at the tail end of the fight, just in time to see the leader of the group (an Orc plant track boy) finish off the two battered scouts by grabbing them with roots and smashing them together to knock them out. Despite winning the fight however, all five students looked a little worse for wear; either they'd fought other scouts already, or the two they'd taken down had been tougher than they looked.

As the five paused to rest, Matt approached them. "Hey, are you guys alright?"

They snapped their eyes towards him, then sneered when they realised who it was. "Oh, it's just you…" the Orc boy grumbled, his grey pig-like face twisted into a sneer; "Just great…"

Matt ignored the comment and walked right up to them; "I'm glad you're safe. Listen, I'm with the CATTs and they're currently gathering outside. Come with me and I can get us through the illusions and out to safety. I bet they'll have some healing potions too."

One of the younger students, who was particularly weary looking, seemed to consider the idea, but the other four scoffed and the Orc boy outright growled. "Get lost, you loser drop-out! Unlike you, we're real Glandus kids! We don't run!"

"Yeah! Why should we follow some brat who couldn't hack it and so ran off to Hexside with his tail between his legs!?" a Cyclops girl asked haughtily.

Matt flushed, but grit his teeth to hide his embarrassment; "Are you kidding me right now!? This isn't your stupid school hierarchy junk! This is the real world and it's a matter of life and death, or worse! You're all beaten to heck too! If you keep fighting, you'll just end up branded like animals!"

The younger student flinched and looked to the older students; "M-Maybe we should listen… we are kinda-"

They went pale and silent as the other four glared fiercely at them, dropping their eyes to the floor. The Orc boy then glared at Matt again; "Run away like the coward you are, loser! Glandus will save itself! Come on, guys!"

He got to his feet and marched off, pushing past Matt with a hard shoulder bump that caused the smaller boy to almost stagger back. The others followed after their leader, only sparing Matt a brief glance to sneer at him (or frown apologetically in the younger student's case). As they marched off, Matt stood there stunned as his insides slowly filled with burning anger.

"Idiots! Can't they see I'm trying to save them!? They'd rather march off and get creamed by Coven Scouts than listen to someone trying to help!? And they have the nerve to call me a coward!? I've fought things that would make them run crying home to their Mommies!" he seethed, beginning to pace as he tried to calm himself down. Pebbles chirped and squeaked up at him from inside his shirt to try and soothe him, and eventually Matt began to cool off.

"I'm not a coward…" he muttered bitterly.

"Of course you are!"

Matt's eyes widened and he spun around to see Bria standing there, fists clenched as she glared at him. "Bria!? What are you- wait, did you follow me?"

She was standing in the direction he'd come from, and the last he'd seen her, she'd been sat in the Paranoratorium… what were the odds that she'd take the exact same route he did?

"You say you're not a coward, but you've run away from me twice now! You ditched me when you moved to Hexside, and you ditched me in the cafeteria earlier!" Bria snapped. "Well I'm not letting you ditch me again!"

Matt shook his head, absolutely aghast that even in this current situation, Bria was willing to go this far to get back at him. "Are you freaking kidding me!?" he thundered, causing the girl to actually step back in surprise at his outburst; "Is everyone at this school a moron!? The Emperor literally sent his lackeys to enslave everyone to his system, and you'd all rather show off how tough you are or try to settle old grudges!?"

Bria shook her head and screamed; "Don't act like you're so much better than everyone else! When things got tough for you, you ran away! You never stood up for yourself or anyone else! You wanted to be the big hero right? That's why you came here to "save" us! But as soon as you realised you were too late and would actually have to fight, you tried to run away again!"

"I was trying to evacuate people and find my friend and reinforcements, so we can actually win!" Matt defended himself.

"So you were using other people to do what you can't do yourself again! Just like at the Looking Glass Ruins! You needed that Illusionist and that Angel girl to save your butt! If it had been just you, the same pathetic Matty as always, none of this would have ever happened" Bria yelled, looking on the verge of tears; "Because of what happened there, Angmar's parents transferred him out and now he pretends I don't exist! Gavin's dad suddenly started helping him out and now he's "too good for Bumbling Bria!" And my father, he…" she bit her lip and refused to say more, though it's clear whatever happened with her father was distressing. Finally she continued with a cry of "I have nothing left and it's all because of you!"

As if to punctuate her tirade, Bria reached behind her and drew her old sword, which she'd retrieved and strapped to her back.

"I'm not letting you run away this time! Fight me like a real witch!" Bria demanded, before rushing at Matt. She used Construction Magic to raise up a pillar of rock behind Matt, who instinctively backed up only to find his back hitting the pillar. His eyes widened and he had to duck to evade Bria's sword strike (which he noticed was actually from the flat of the blade, so it wouldn't have killed him). From his now crouched position, Matt rolled to the side and transformed Pebbles into staff mode, then used him to conjure a small sandstorm that briefly blinded the girl. She flinched and yelped, covering her face and wildly swinging around with her sword to try and disperse the mini-sandstorm while Matt used the opportunity to prepare an invisibility spell to run away. However just as he was about to complete the spell circle, he paused.

If he just ran away again, Bria would never stop chasing him! She could end up attacking him again at an awful time, or worse, get herself caught by the Illusion or Emperor's Covens while trying to follow him. For all the trouble Bria had caused him, both at school, the graveyard, and now, Matt didn't hate her and didn't want to see her meet such a horrible fate, even if it was her own doing. Sighing heavily, he stopped and instead turned to face Bria, using a spell to gather the sand she'd used to distract Bria and form it into light and thin stone armour beneath his clothes. When the sand stopped obscuring her vision, Bria came face to face with Matt once again and sneered.

"What are you? Another fake illusion left behind while the coward runs!?" Bria demanded, conjuring a small rock and tossing it at Matt's head. The boy responded by capturing it out of the air and then crushing it to dust with a strength-enhancing spell.

"I'm real, Bria. And I'm no coward. I'm done running, and if fighting you is the only way to make you see reason, then I guess it's time to throw down!" Matt growled, before stomping on the ground with an Earth Spell to cause numerous bricks from the stone floor to jump up into the air. Matt then reinforced his staff and added rock and sand to the Palisman on top of it to turn it into a sledgehammer, which he used smack the bricks at Bria. Her eyes widened and she dove to the ground to avoid the first couple, then hastily drew a spell circle to raise a short wall of stone to block the rest. She then drew multiple spell circles against the wall, causing chunks of it to change into spikes of rock and go shooting at Matt.

Matt spun his staff to block several of them, and the few that got through his defence just embedded themselves in his body, or more accurately, his armour. Bria gaped as she saw Matt casually pulling some of the spikes out of himself and crushing them to powder. Once they were all gone, Matt rushed at Bria, who instinctively rose her stone wall up to the ceiling to cut Matt off entirely. However instead of trying to go around or stopping his charge, Matt just drew a spell circle and thrust his hand through it, delivering a palm slam to the wall. His magically enhanced blow caused the entire wall to rumble as if hit by an earthquake, before cracking and crumbling apart. Bria yelped and had to leap backward to avoid the falling rubble, but ended up moving too fast and slammed back first into her own stone pillar from before, causing her to whimper in pain and fall on her backside, rubbing the back of her head. She then watched with shock and awe as Matt marched right through the falling rubble of the wall, using Earth Magic to keep it from hitting him by levitating it around him, then casually slamming it all down in a semi-circle around Bria, so her only options for moving were clambering over it or moving towards Matt.

"Have I made my point yet, or do we have to keep fighting?" Matt asked coldly, pointing his still-stone covered staff at her.

Bria felt a shudder go through her body; she'd never seen Matty like this! Even when he'd fought back against them in the Looking Glass Graveyard, he'd been relying on his new friends to help him! Still, she wasn't about to lose to him alone!

"How's this for a point!" Bria snarled, stabbing her sword into the ground beside her and causing a stalagmite to shoot out of the ground and strike Matt in the gut, exactly where one of Bria's previous spikes had hit. She knew he was armoured there so he wouldn't be grievously wounded, but the force of the stalagmite's emerging was still enough to force Matt back and unbalance him, allowing Bria to get to her feet. She pulled the sword from the ground, and thanks to another of her spells, it was totally covered in rock, making it look more like a club or cudgel. She swung it at Matt with a battle cry, but he suddenly flew back several feet with the help of his staff. Once he was out of her weapon's range, Matt tapped the bottom of Pebbles' staff against the ground where he stood, causing a bronze light to briefly shine out from between the bricks.

Bria braced herself, but found that the spell didn't seem to do anything at all, and Matt's expression morphed into an irritated frown. She grinned and lunged for him, forcing Matt to step back again, but then just as she stepped onto the patch of stone floor that Matt's spell had "failed" to effect, the boy smirked and Bria's eyes widened. The floor beneath her suddenly crumbled and Bria found herself sinking down to her shoulders in quicksand.

"W-What!?" she exclaimed. "But how did you do this!?"

"Misdirection. It's not just for Illusionists." Matt grinned. "I turned the ground to sand but left about a sixth of an inch of stone on top; enough that it'd break under your weight as soon as you stepped on it. Now are you going to stop attacking me so we can do something about the real enemy, or do I just have to leave you here and hide you with an illusion?"

Bria went red in the face from both anger and humiliation, then roared as her eyes began to glow an orange-bronze colour. Matt stepped back in surprise; was Bria really so upset that she'd go into a Bile Overload!?

"I won't be humiliated by you any more!" she cried, as a rock pillar shot out of the ground beneath the sand, carrying her out of Matt's trap. She then leapt off as the pillar shot up through the ceiling, and tried to slam down on top of Matt with her sword-turned-stone club. Matt strengthened his leg muscles and used them to leap back several feet, but he still only barely managed to evade the impact shockwave of the heavy blow, which left a huge crater in the ground.

"Why!? Why is it that you became stronger by running away!?" Bria ranted, swinging her club wildly. She wasn't even bothering with magic any more, besides the tremors caused by her weapon smashing into the ground or walls as Matt dodged and blocked them with rock walls. "You ran away and then suddenly you have power, a Palisman, and friends!? While I stuck it out and lost everything!"

She slammed the ground so hard that a huge chunk of rock shot out near Matt, nearly hitting him. He side stepped it, but Bria then struck the rock with her club and sent its shattered remains flying at her opponent, peppering him with gravel. He winced in pain, but the impacts were only enough to bruise.

"What do you want from me, Bria!? You're mad because I didn't stick around and let myself be bullied!?" Matt growled, gathering up the gravel that had hit him and converting into a ball of mud, which he launched at Bria's face. It splattered against the side of her head as she turned her face away at the last second, though one of her eyes still got mud in it, forcing her to shut it with a growl. She tried to retaliate with another swing of her club (which seemed to get bigger with every swing, as the rubble she kicked up was added to it), but Matt side-stepped into her new blind spot and conjured some stone chains to try and bind her arms. He successfully bound one, but Bria flailed out of the way of the second and was able to smash her club down on the chain that grabbed her, shattering it.

Matt narrowed his eyes; "You're suffering, right? You're the bottom of the food chain and everyone looks down on you and bullies you. They throw you in the trash, they push you around, they take your stuff… all because you're weak…"

"You weren't even there, so just SHUT UP!" Bria screamed, trying to smash her club down on Matt's head. A blow like that, with that much force, and with the club so large and heavy now could very easily kill Matt… but he didn't try to dodge.

Instead, he looked Bria in the eye and saw the moment realisation of what she was doing filled her. Her eyes stopped glowing as she brought the heavy club down, knowing it was too late to stop the swing and lacking the strength to even try. Horror filled her expression, but Matt remained steely eyed. With his magically enhanced strength, Matt caught the blow with one hand (though it stung like crazy to have the rough rock slam into his palm like that, and he felt his wrist strain).

"You want me to shut up? Too bad! You want to know why I said all those things, Bria? How I know what you went through even though I wasn't there to see it… well, it's because…!" Matt grit his teeth and clenched his fist, crushing the club, shattering its rocky surface and snapping the blade of the sword inside it. "THAT WAS MY EVERYDAY LIFE HERE!"

Bria gasped and recoiled, staring down at the broken fragments of her blade as Matt shook his wrist; "Everything you're feeling and everything you experienced is exactly what I did! The bullying, the abuse, the constant torment… all while the closest things I had to friends were you, Angmar, and Gavin, who treated me like a lackey! Want to know how I knew about that staircase I found you in earlier!? Because just like you, I went there to cry where no one could see and mock me! And let me tell you, I went there because of you more than once! Your bullying hurt the worst, because I thought you were my friend!" Matt ranged, finally venting all his old grudges and sorrows, and feeling lighter with every word.

"So yeah, I "ran away". My brother saw how miserable I was and talked me into asking to transfer. My parents moved me to Hexside to get me out of this toxic hell hole! I made new friends in Gus and Luz, and the others! And I became stronger because they supported me and showed me what I could really do, when I wasn't constantly being ground down by bullying! Call me a coward all you want, but at least I changed for the better! I came here, risking my life and freedom, to help people!" Matt screamed, taking a step towards the shell-shocked Bria; "And guess what? After everything you did to me at school and at the graveyard… seeing you cry in the staircase should have made me feel vindicated. It should have felt like justice… but all it did was hurt! I hated seeing you like that! Because even after the hell you put me through, part of me still cares about you!"

Bria gasped and nearly fell to her knees in surprise at just how fierce Matt was being. Magic was practically rolling off of him, and he seemed to radiate power, confidence, and determination. But the worst came when Matt took a deep breath and his anger began to fade, to be replaced with sympathy and understanding.

"Bria… I changed. So did Gavin and Angmar… but you didn't. You're still stuck in this mire of bullying and being bullied." Matt offered her his hand; "Let me help you. I know what it's like to feel the way you do. I understand what you're going through."

Bria's eyes widened and slowly, her face warped from awe, to shock, to rage. She slapped Matt's hand away and then screamed as she swung her now-broken blade at Matt, who blocked with his stone covered Palisman.

"You know what it's like!? You understand!? DON'T LIE TO ME!" Bria cried, tears streaming down her face. She took another swing, but Matt ducked it and opened his mouth to speak, but Bria wouldn't let him.

"You've got no idea how I feel! I don't have a big brother or sister to comfort me!" she swung again, aiming downward this time, forcing Matt to deflect with his staff. "I don't have loving parents who'll transfer me to a nicer school!" another swing, this time aimed at Matt's hands. He leapt back to avoid it. "I don't have awesome friends who stick by me through thick and thin!" she changed up her attack with a stab towards Matt's face, which he avoided by tilting his neck to the side and letting the stab sail over his shoulder. "And I don't have anyone to support me and make me stronger! I'm alone and weak! There's nothing left I can do! So don't you dare say you understand me!"

With that final heart-wrenching cry, Bria jumped into the air whilst gripping both hands around the hilt of her broken sword, before swinging down with all her might. Matt knew he could dodge this attack too, but instead chose to catch the girl's hands, stopping her swing right before the blade could touch his head. He then jerked them to the side and applied just enough pressure to make Bria drop the broken and relatively harmless sword. For a long moment, the two stared into each other's eyes; Matt's full of sympathy and determination, while Bria's were full of anger and tears. Finally, Bria broke down completely and collapsed onto her knees, sobbing as Matt still held her hands.

"I lost everything… I'm weak, my friends all abandoned me as soon as they could, and there's nothing I can do about it." she sobbed, looking away from Matt.

The boy knelt down so he was on her eye level, frowning in confusion as a strange thought occurred to him; "Bria, did you really consider Gavin, Angmar and I to be your friends?"

"Of course I did!" she cried, insulted by the question; "You guys were all I had!"

"B-But you treated us like lackeys! You didn't do anything when others picked on us!" Matt argued.

"I tried to!" Bria insisted; "After you got left on the roof, right before dropping out, I tried to get Angmar and Gavin to help me take down the jerk that did it! But they wouldn't help and I was too weak on my own! I got stuffed into a locker!"

Matt's eyes widened; "You went that far for your weakest minion?"

"You were my friend, not my minion!" Bria argued.

"Then why didn't you treat me like one!?" Matt asked, exasperated.

"I thought I was!" the girl cried, making Matt rear back as if slapped. "You were my friend, but you were weak so I told you want to do! That's how it works! The strong friends give the orders and the weak friends obey! That's how it's always been here!"

Suddenly, Matt felt like he was starting to really understand Bria. He knew next to nothing about her family, but given what she'd said earlier, he imagined they were either absent, uncaring, or outright non-existent. Combine that with being in Glandus since the baby class and Bria had almost certainly developed a warped sense of how the world and relationships worked. She genuinely believed friends treated their weaker friends like lackeys, ordering them about "for their own good". Without family and loved ones outside of that system to teach her otherwise, was it any wonder she was as messed up as she was? It didn't make her behaviour okay or even tolerable, but it did make it at least understandable. From Bria's point of view, she really had lost true friends over behaviour she had no idea was wrong. Matt could relate, considering some of the stuff he pulled when he first transferred to Hexside.

"Look Bria, I know you probably won't believe me, but the way you treated us wasn't like a friend. It was like a bully that exploited us. That's why it was so easy for us to leave you; we didn't like to be treated that way." Matt said softly, "Believe me, I know."

"How could you know? With your nice family and new friends!?" Bria said sullenly; "You even became friends with the Arch-Angel of the Boiling Isles!"

Matt nodded; "You're right, I did… but did you know that the first day I met her, I exploited her trust to lure her into the Hexside Detention Pit and threw her in."

Bria looked back at him with complete surprise, as Matt nodded ruefully; "It's true. I, Matt Tholomule, loser drop-out of Glandus, bullied the Arch-Angel of the Boiling Isles. Of course, Luz wasn't even a High Angel at the time… in fact, I didn't know she was anything other than a normal witch girl. And do you want to know why I did it?"

Despite herself, Bria nodded. "It's because I was a stupid, weak, cowardly bully. I took all the wrong lessons from Glandus. Instead of realising that bullying and bossing around the weak and trying to rise to the top through force was wrong, I thought I needed to get lackeys of my own. So I tried to take over a club for human lovers, whose president was even younger than me, and I tricked Luz into the Detention Pit when she got in the way. Things went crazy and the pit almost destroyed the school… but instead of leaving me to my fate, Gus and his friends saved me."

"Why? Why would they help you?" Bria asked.

"Because they're good people. Better people than me at least. I realised that what I was doing was wrong, and worked really hard to change myself. In the end, Luz forgave me and we became friends. Thanks to her and Gus, I was able to make other friends too, and since I wanted to help them and the CATTs that they'd gotten wrapped up with, I worked really hard. I decided for myself that I wanted to help the victims of bullying rather than being a bully myself. And I also learned something else too…" Matt said, smiling a little as he saw the girl hanging on his every word; "I learned that when you hit rock bottom, the only way forward is up. And if pathetic little loser drop-out Matty can rise and become a better, stronger person, then so can you Bria. You were always better than me at everything, so I bet you can handle this too."

Bria's eyes widened, and to Matt's surprise, she actually gained a pink tinge to her cheeks. "I-I…!" she tried to say something in response, but the words got stuck in her throat. Eventually she clenched her eyes shut, tears still streaming down her face, and yanked her hands free from Matt's grasp. Matt hadn't expected that so he wasn't prepared, especially when Bria leapt to her feet and ran passed him, fleeing in the direction Matt had originally come from. Matt was stunned for a second, then leapt to his feet too and began to chase her. Bria was emotionally compromised, without her weapon, and after having just used a good amount of magic fighting him; she was in no fit state to be left alone! And even if she had been, Matt didn't want to leave her. Now that he knew Bria really had considered him to be a friend (albeit one she didn't know how to treat properly), Matt wanted to help her even more!

He followed as fast as he could, but his legs were shorter than Bria's and he didn't want to risk wasting more magic on strengthening his leg muscles to bound along at high speeds. However he regretted that a few seconds later when he heard Bria scream further down the hall. Panicking, Matt not only strengthened his leg muscles, but also cast an invisibility spell to hide himself in case he was running right into hostile forces.

This turned out to be a wise move, as he found himself stumbling upon the end of a small battle between Glandus Students and Coven Scouts. Unlike the last one he ran into though, this time there were eight students (the five from earlier, plus Ukla, Gobzo, and Throak from the HECK team) and seven scouts, as well as the Scout Captain that had been disguised as Adrian earlier. Matt gulped upon seeing that the five kids from earlier had all been utterly defeated, and were now bound and bruised in a huddle, guarded by a trio of spear-wielding scouts while the remaining four began to manhandle Ukla and her teammates; all three of which were exhausted and clearly on the losing side. Matt was surprised to see the scouts so unscathed… sure the five from before had already been tired out, but he'd expected they'd be able to beat at least a handful of scouts! Maybe Ukla's group had already been exhausted from prior fighting too… Still, it seemed off that none of the scouts had so much as a scratch.

While Matt was suspicious about this, his attention was drawn to the Scout Captain, who was currently hoisting Bria into the air by the front of her uniform as the girl whimpered in fear.

"So, thought you could be the big hero and save the day, did you? Thought you could tackle me, a Captain of the Emperor's Coven, and get away with it!?" the Captain growled.

"N-No! I didn't mean to run into you! I was running and not looking where I was going! I'm sorry!" Bria cried, weakly trying to wriggle out of the man's iron grip.

"Oh, you're sorry are you? Well then, I'm sure you'll have no problem telling me where all you brats have been disappearing too! I know you've got a hideout somewhere! That one-" he pointed to Ukla, "-was trying to lead this lot to it when we caught her! Since she doesn't want to sing, why don't you be a good little canary and tell me where your friends are."

Bria went pale with terror; "I-I don't know! I swear, I don't know!"

"She's telling the truth! No one but me knows!" Ukla yelled.

"Really? Well then…" the Captain looked at Bria and held up the Sigil Branding Glove he was still wearing; "You're a Construction Student, right? Here's a fun idea; how about I put you in the Bard Coven! They'll teach you how to sing!"

He laughed as he changed the sigil on the glove to the red harp of the Bard Coven and dropped Bria to the floor, before grabbing her wrist and pulling her sleeve up; "Last chance to tell us…" the Captain said in a sing-song voice as he moved the glove towards Bria's skin.

"I don't know! Please, I don't know! I'm not lying!" Bria sobbed.

The Captain looked back at Ukla, who looked away guiltily. If she told the truth, everyone in hiding would be caught and branded, and Bria would get a sigil anyway… Ukla couldn't sacrifice the rest of the school for one student.

"Too bad. Good thing we have eight more of you to use. Enjoy learning to sing!" the Captain laughed as he moved to brand Bria.

Then he suddenly stopped, inches from Bria's skin. Everyone looked at him in surprise as he began to make grunting noises as he seemed to struggle to move.

"Captain?" one of the scouts asked.

"M-My hand! I can't move my- ARRGH!" The Captain suddenly screamed as his wrist snapped like a twig.

As the man whimpered, the air beside him shimmered and in a puff of cyan smoke, Matt appeared. His fists were coated in stone and enhanced with strength spells, with one gripping the Captain's wrist. The boy's face was thunderous as he reared back his other fist.

"You want a song? How about some good hard ROCK!" Matt roared, slamming his other fist straight into the side of the Captain's face. The blow was devastating and the sound of teeth and jaw cracking under the force of it made everyone in the hallway cringe. The Captain hit the floor, completely out cold, and Matt turned to glare at the remaining eight scouts.

"Let them go, or I'm going to knock out every single one of you." he demanded coldly.

"Y-You brat! Don't think you can-!" one of the scouts began, only to suddenly go silent as he felt something around his neck beginning to tighten and cut off his air flow. Another puff of cyan smoke later and another Matt appeared, holding the man up by his throat.

"I warned you." he said, before tossing the man so hard into the air that his head went through the ceiling, knocking him unconscious before he fell back to the floor.

"W-What? Illusions!? I'll take care of-!" a second scout said, only to feel something punch him so hard in the stomach that he passed out. However, when he lost consciousness, his body released a puff of cyan smoke, revealing he wasn't a normal Coven Scout at all, but rather one of Adrian's illusionists.

Matt, still invisible and moving to his next position, realised that the disguised Illusionist was probably part of the reason this group of scouts had been unharmed by Ukla's group; while the Coven Scouts could likely use decent illusions of their own, the Master Illusionists were on a different level! Still, since they hadn't been expecting a kid like Matt to be able to use such a brawn over brain magic like Construction as well as the brain over brawn Illusion Magic at the same time, they'd been completely unprepared!

The two Matt illusions from before popped like balloons and filled the hall with fake smoke, blinding everyone. Amidst the smoke, Bria and the captured Glandus kids heard grunts, thwacks, and cries of pain along with the occasional crack of stone against flesh or bones breaking. Then everything went silent and the smoke turned blue and disappeared, revealing a panting Mattholomule doubled over with his hands on his knees, surrounded by unconscious Coven Scouts. Every single one had been knocked out with a single blow to the face or gut, with four of them even partially sunken into the wall or ground.

The Glandus students gaped at the display of brutality and magic, and Matt smirked once he caught his breath. "Hey. Not bad for a "loser", right?"

"H-How did you do that!?" Bria asked, flabbergasted; "You just took out a Scout Captain and eight Coven Scouts! By yourself! In less than a minute!"

"How strong is this kid…?" Ukla muttered. She'd never been acquainted with Matt during his time at Glandus, being three years older and one of the Stoics that rarely got involved with younger students.

Matt saw the looks of awe (and fear from the students who'd mocked him earlier) and was quick to correct their misconceptions; "Hey, I'm a lot tougher than I used to be, but I'm not tough enough to take these guys on in a straight fight! I caught them by surprise and went for knock-out blows while their guards were down! I was also lucky enough to take out their concealed Illusionist before my cover was blown."

"That's still impressive. But were those solid illusions you made? It looked like the first two clones you made were able to touch things." Ukla said.

Matt shook his head; "That was misdirection. I never made myself visible and instead created illusions of myself where I was standing, which mirrored my movements. The first one overlapped me as I punched out the captain, and the second one overlapped me when I sent that first scout into the ceiling. That's when I noticed the illusionist and took him out. After he was done, I decided to use a smokescreen to take out the rest nice and fast. It was a tiring combination of hardening spells, strength-enhancing spells, rock gauntlets, and softening spells on the walls and floor to trap some of them, but it worked out. Also, I had a little help from these guys." he pulled up his sleeve to reveal a Power Glyph, while snapping his fingers to make Pebbles appear on his other shoulder (the shy Palisman liked being invisible when not in staff mode around strangers).

The students gaped as Matt moved over to Bria and smiled kindly as he offered her his hand; "Considering I ran way from you earlier, I'd say you running from me makes us even. But don't do it again, okay? You don't need to be scared, the great "Man" Tholomule will protect you!"

He gave a suave grin and wiggle of the eyebrow, intended to amuse Bria. It worked too, and she actually giggled even as her cheeks went pink and she allowed him to help her up. Once Bria was on her feet, Matt freed the others and said to Ukla; "You have hideout that you've been guiding other people, right? Can you lead us there?"

Ukla nodded, but one of the older students Gus had met earlier protested; "Are we really gonna trust this drop-out?"

Ukla scowled, but Matt spoke first; "I'm leading you to safety one way or another. You can walk with me, or I can knock you out and drag you! I'm out of patience for Glandus' toxic "Top Dog" attitude! Get walking or get wrecked!" he growled, cracking his knuckles.

Despite Matt being the shortest person present, everyone gulped and the older boy immediately backed down. Matt smiled triumphantly, then nodded to Ukla; "Lead the way."

Ukla did so and the other kids followed behind her, while Matt brought up the rear so he could watch their backs. Bria walked beside him, and awkwardly asked; "D-Did you mean what you said before? That I could change too? And be strong like you?"

"Of course you can." Matt said honestly, and Pebbles squeaked his agreement and jumped onto Bria's head, where he nestled comfortably on top of her hair. The girl felt her heart melt at the adorable little amphibian, while Matt grinned teasingly; "See? Pebbles thinks so too."

Bria blushed a little and said; "I'm not sure how to do it though…"

Matt offered his hand as they walked; "I'll show you, just like my friends showed me."

"W-Would that make us friends? Proper friends?" Bria asked in a tiny voice.

"I'd like that, if you want it too." Matt replied.

Bria gave a little watery smile and accepted his hand. She didn't say another word, and the two walked to Ukla's hideout in comfortable silence, their hands still joined.

[Meanwhile]

After Hunter had finally calmed down from letting out his emotions (and after Gus had stopped the embarrassed boy from trying to apologise), the two had left their hideaway and begun heading back to the secret potions lab that Hunter and Lucy had made their hideout. Unfortunately, the pair were finding that navigating an unfamiliar school that was currently trapped within a massive illusion was trickier than they thought. Even with Gus being able to see beyond the illusion with one eye, it was still difficult to navigate the maze of hallways, and they'd travelled through several different locales from Gus's memories, including the deserts of the two palms, a section of Digale Island's HQ (which Hunter had asked Gus about, only to receive a vague half-answer due to the younger boy's oath), and even a part of the Conformatorium, which had creepy petrified statues as part of the illusion. Seeing Eda's Owl Beast form as one of the statues had both Gus and Hunter shuddering.

As such, it was a relief when the next corridor they wandered into was something far more normal; Hexside.

"I hope the other schools are okay." Gus commented as he looked at the familiar lockers and billboards of his school. "Adrian himself is here at Glandus, so they're probably safer than here at least."

"Yeah… uh, which school is the Captain at?" Hunter asked.

"Willow? She's at Hexside with Amity. Skara and Boscha went to St. Epiderm." Gus answered, before smirking; "But I'll be sure to tell Willow you were worried about her!"

Hunter blushed; "Shut up! I was just… concerned. S-Speaking off, how is Luz doing?"

Gus's smirk dropped; "Better, but not great. Kinda like you. She's blaming herself for everything, since she talked to Past Belos in the Time Pools."

"Considering that led to Lucy being born, she has my thanks for that. I can't imagine how lonely my life would have been without her. What about the Palismen souls she absorbed?" the older boy asked.

Gus gave a "so-so" gesture with his hand; "She's making progress. I don't really get it, but she's doing some stuff with meditation and her Palisman Egg as some kind of focus? It's helping her draw out the individual souls or something like that. They're all still inside her, but the ones untangled from the Amalgamate aren't bothering her."

Hunter sighed with relief; "That's a relief… I still feel horrible that I tried to help Belos get more Palismen… heck, I handed him some of those poor creatures on a literal silver platter! I mean, I just took them out of storage and they were dormant, but still…"

"Well if you feel bad, maybe you can talk to Luz and Dell about it? I know Luz wants to give some of them a second chance at life by carving new bodies for them. I'm sure Dell would love your help when the time comes." Gus suggested.

Hunter smiled; he liked that idea a lot! He could start redeeming himself and fulfilling his ambition at the same time! He was just about to comment on that when he heard a familiar voice crying out to them.

"Hunter! I finally found you!"

It was Lucy, rushing towards them with an artificial magic staff in her hand, and her previous outfit replaced by the Silver Sentinel garb she used to always wear. Gus smiled and was about to rush to meet the girl halfway, but Hunter held his shoulder firmly, a hard look in his eyes as he stared at his sister.

"Hunter?" Gus muttered curiously, only for the boy to shake his head.

Lucy stopped right in front of them and panted a little, then beamed; "I've been looking all over for you, Hunter! This place is crawling with scouts! We need find and rescue the students before they get branded with sigils!"

Gus's curiosity slowly became suspicion as he noted Hunter's cold expression. Deciding to test Lucy, he said; "It's good you found us. But why didn't you bring Waffles with you? Didn't he feel like coming along? Or was he still having trouble with his staff?"

Lucy nodded with a sigh; "Yeah, he just couldn't get his Palisman to listen to him! Silly thing has been scared the Coven Scouts will kidnap it to feed to Belos!"

She began to fake a giggle and Gus laughed along with her, especially as he said; "That's so weird! Especially since Waffles is a Palisman."

Lucy froze mid-laugh and Gus nodded solemnly; "Even weirder, Waffles is your Palisman. Oh, and she's a girl."

"I-I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about someone else?" the obviously fake Lucy said unconvincingly.

"Oh yeah?" Hunter growled; "Then why are you wearing your uniform? The one you burned so you'd never have to wear it again?"

Fake Lucy's eyes widened, but before she could react more than that, Gus and Hunter suddenly pointed their staves at her, making her put her hands up in surrender. The boys were about to interrogate her when a hateful voice filled the hallway.

"This again!? CUT!"

The Fake Lucy visibly drooped with a defeated expression, before her body glowed cyan and changed, revealing she was actually Severine the Coven Scout.

"Severine!" yelled Adrian, who had appeared from beneath an invisibility spell a few feet behind the woman. The poor scout squealed like a frightened kitten and turned to face the man as he reprimanded her. "You had your chance and you blew it! Not that I'm surprised…" Adrian scowled, rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration.

"B-But I followed all your notes!" Severine weakly defended herself.

Adrian scoffed; "Well they were still able to see through your shoddy performance, so maybe you should've figured out the note inside the note!"

Severine meekly bowed her head and whined as she walked off, completely dejected. Irritated by Vernworth's shoddy directing and feeling bad for the woman, Gus felt the need to shout; "Hey, we only caught on because of two details that Severine had no way of knowing about! You couldn't have done any better!"

Adrian once again scoffed, but Severine did perk up a little as she left to take care of other duties. "Oh do shut up. No one likes a back-seat Director! Now you two are making my job very difficult!"

"Too bad!" Hunter growled, grabbing Gus's wrist and pulling him along as they began to run down the hall away from Vernworth. It was never a good idea to fight an Illusionist in the same place they'd just attempted to spring a trap, as one never knew what else was hidden there. Case and point; as Gus and Hunter neared the next corner, the tall and imposing figure of Belos marched out and glared down at the two boys from behind his mask.

Despite both of them knowing this Belos was definitely just an illusion, the sight of the man who'd hurt him so much still made Hunter freeze up, going pale as he stared into those sinister glowing eyes. His moment of hesitation cost him, and Hunter found himself being kicked in the back by Adrian, making him fall onto his hands and knees and dropping Flapjack. Adrian then grabbed one of Gus's arms and twisted it behind his back, while stomping a foot down on Hunter's back to hold him against the floor.

"Hunter!" Gus cried, before glaring at Adrian; "I won't let you get away with this!"

The boy began twirling Emmiline, but Adrian stopped him with a smug smirk and a snap of his fingers; "I wouldn't do that if I were you!"

The illusory Belos disappeared to be replaced by two Coven Scouts, while two others appeared from invisibility spells behind Adrian. Those two scouts were each holding onto a Glandus Student; both of whom were tied up, gagged, and clearly terrified, being even younger than Gus at around 8 or 9 years old. They were crying in fear, especially as the scouts held Sigil Branding Gloves dangerously close to their bare wrists.

Gus went still at the sight, and Adrian smirked wider; "Good, you catch on fast. You are going to come with me for a little chat. If you're nice and obedient, then I won't have these brats branded with the wrong sigil." he threatened.

"H-How do I know they're not just illusions!?" Gus demanded, trying to buy time.

Adrian rolled his eyes and forced Gus over to them (taking his foot off of Hunter in the meantime, while two of his scouts went to grab the boy). Once they were stood in front of the children, Adrian removed his earring and put the mirror-like lens in front of Gus' non-glowing eye. Looking through it was a lot like looking through his glowing eye, in that it made the hall look like a Glandus hall rather than Hexside, showing it could see through illusions. Unfortunately, that meant it also confirmed that the two kids were real. Gus frowned; he'd been expecting it, but he'd still hoped he was wrong.

"Now, I think it's time we-" Adrian began, only to be cut off by the sounds of violence from behind him. He spun around (still holding Gus) and watched as Hunter beat up the two scouts that had grabbed him. Hunter knocked the smaller one to the floor but the larger one wasn't letting go. Realising he was in an unwinnable position, Gus coated his staff in a spiral of icy cold water, then launched it like a javelin at the bigger scout's face. It slammed into the scout and made him recoil, letting go of Hunter, who immediately summoned Flapjack back to his hand and grabbed Gus's staff, which turned back into Emmiline to crawl up Hunter's arm and sit on his shoulder.

"Hunter, run!" Gus ordered, using his free hand to cast an invisibility spell to hide the boy. Adrian responded by finally grabbing Gus's other arm and forcing it behind his back too, but Hunter took the opportunity to move towards Gus and Adrian. Gus could still see him with his glowing eye, but he could also see the other scouts getting dangerously close to branding the children, so he yelled; "Forget me and run! Get Lucy and the others out of here! Protect Emmie!"

Hunter's face twisted into one of reluctance, before he obediently turned and ran. The two scouts with hostages were stood just far enough apart that he couldn't hope to take out both fast enough with a single flash spell, and anything else he did risked one of the kids being branded. Still, Adrian wouldn't brand Gus until he'd gotten what he wanted from him as it would be the ultimate threat to make the boy compliant, so Hunter silently fled. The best way he could help Gus now was by getting reinforcements, so he began trying to make his way to the only place he knew could find those reinforcements; his hideout beneath the potions track tower.

It took Hunter a frustratingly long time and a ludicrous number of flash warps with Flapjack, but he eventually managed to find his way to the tower, which had been made to look like a portion of Dell's Palistrom Forest. A spiral tree marked the location of the spiral staircase, and a conspicuous well stood in the centre, which Hunter guessed to be the statue that hid the entrance to the hidden lab. After feeling around for a few moments, Hunter finally found the exact entrance spot and immediately dove in.

To the boy's surprise, when he arrived in the lab itself (which looked a lot like the ritual chamber of Volcarpalis thanks to the illusions), he found it totally packed full of students and a few teachers who'd been left behind to guard them while the rest of the staff was out trying to save the rest. Many of the students were injured, exhausted, and terrified, and the teachers were immediately on edge as they noticed his arrival, not recognising him as a student.

"Who are you!? I don't recognise you!?" growled the Glandus School Nurse, who was a Cockatiel Demon.

"I'm Hunter! I'm friends with Gus, the guy who came to save you! I-"

"He's the Golden Guard!" cried the gnomish girl from HECK; Mia. "He's with the other one!"

People scowled at him and a portion of the crowd moved aside to reveal Lucy stood in the corner, holding Waffles' staff nervously as she was guarded by a boy with an Axolotl staff and Ukla, who must have been the one to guide the others here.

"Hunter is on our side. The Emperor wants to kill him, the same as Lucy." Matt said firmly, making the Glandus students flinch and back down. He then approached Hunter and offered his hand; "Hey, I'm Matt Tholomule of the CATTs, and a friend of Luz, Gus, and Willow."

Hunter eyed his hand suspiciously, but Lucy quickly piped up; "Matt defended me when the other students came here. They're on our side."

"I see. Thank you for helping her. And I don't mean to be rude, but I'm kind of in a hurry." Hunter said as he finally accepted Matt's hand. He looked to Lucy; "Gus is in trouble. Adrian used hostages to capture him! I think he's going to force Gus to stop the illusion, but considering what he was willing to do at HECK, I wouldn't put it passed Adrian to take drastic measures, including brainwashing!"

Matt and Lucy both paled; "We need to go save him!" Lucy cried.

"I know, but with the hostages Adrian has, if we go rushing in without a plan then it'll just get us all captured! That's a death sentence for the two of us." Hunter said worriedly, "We need to play this smart!"

"If I can get some people to back me up, I'll be able to get outside the school and guide the CATTs waiting out there." Matt said, before leaning close to Hunter and whispering; "I kinda went overboard earlier and now I'm not running on a full tank. I can probably handle a couple of scouts, but if I run into another pack of them, I'm toast."

Hunter nodded in understanding, and Ukla stepped forward. "I can help you there. We've got some other illusion track kids here too, as well as bard track kids. They've been able to navigate the illusions a little, as well as use magic sonar to find their way. If we work together, we can evacuate the non-combatants, get your back up, and guide them inside to save your friend."

Matt grinned at the girl, who was looking a little better now that she'd had some treatment from a healing track student. "Okay, Ukla and I will handle the evacuation and getting reinforcements. But we should still send people after Gus! We'll also need extraction for the hostages."

"Leave that to me." Lucy declared; "It'll take just about all the magic I have, but I can probably get Gus and the hostages out of there with my shadows." she reached up to Hunter's shoulder and took Emmiline from him, placing her on her own shoulder instead; "Leave it all to me."

Hunter nodded, then looked to the few Glandus Teachers; "I know you probably don't trust me, but I also know you want to save your students. Not all of them are going to be in here or held hostage, so we need to find them and the other teachers. I can help get them out of sticky situations in a flash, but I need to know who is left to find."

"You want us to come with you as back-up and because we'll know which students are still unaccounted for?" the Nurse asked.

"Yes Ma'am. I'll take an oath if that's what it takes, but I really want to help save everyone! Ukla gave Lucy and I a place to hide when the Emperor would have hurt us, and we don't want to see any more innocent people hurt by him and his covens!" Hunter implored.

The few teachers present exchanged looks, then nodded. "Alright. We'll assist you, Golden Guard. Ukla, you and Matt will evacuate the students here, and we'll leave the Silver Sentinel to rescue the hostages." the Nurse agreed.

Hunter, Matt, and Lucy all beamed; "Thank you! We won't let you down!" Lucy declared, before beginning to sink into the shadows. "I'll get the hostages out if it's the last thing I do!"

With that, she fully disappeared into the world of shadows. Once she was safely hidden away within the silence and darkness, Lucy reached into her shirt and pulled out her Oracle Stone, releasing Shade from within it.

"What can I do for you, Miss Lucy…?" Shade asked politely, happy to finally be released again after Lucy spent the last week in a stupor.

"I need to find my friend Gus. Please help me reach him and the other hostages." Lucy requested.

Shade grinned; "Very well… conjure a crystal ball for me…"

Lucy did so, and Shade went straight inside it, then began harmonising with Lucy's magic. She had already discovered that by harmonising her Dark Magic with her Oracle Magic, she could use the shadows as a way of expanding the range through which she could scry, without also having to expend more magic like a normal Oracle would. It only took a few moments for Shade to begin displaying a map of Glandus on the crystal ball, though it took a bit longer for him to strip the illusions away and reveal what the school was supposed to look like. From there, he was able to narrow down Gus's location, using the boy's connection to Emmiline on Lucy's shoulder to find him even faster.

"I have found the boy…" Shade said from inside the crystal ball, automatically zooming the image of the school in whilst focusing on the Paranoratorium. Lucy narrowed her eyes as she saw Gus on his knees on the stage, one of his eyes glowing, as he sullenly listened as Adrian paced around him and monologued like the washed-up theatre actors he aspired to be like. Aside from Gus, about fifteen Glandus students (mostly younger ones) had been forced to sit in the front row of the Paranoratorium, being watched closely by Coven Scouts. From what Lucy could tell, none of them had been branded yet, likely so they could be used as hostages to ensure Adrian escaped the CATTs that currently surrounded the school (at least based on what Matt had told her in their brief conversation before Hunter arrived).

With Gus's location now in mind, Lucy used Shade and her crystal ball to navigate the Shadow World until she found the exact shadows she needed to use in the Paranoratorium. She then carefully listened to what was going on as she awaited her moment to act. Lucy's plan was to cause a minor distraction using Shade, then cause one of the hostages to disappear into the shadows. She'd keep doing this until Adrian or the scouts noticed, at which point Lucy would quickly nab the last of them in one go! It would take a lot of magic to grab and move that many people through the shadows at once, but so long as it got them to safety, she'd consider it worth it.

However, watching the scene in the Paranoratorium proved more distressing than she'd expected. Not only was the room covered in an illusion of the Looking Glass Graveyard (which brought back bad memories for her), but Adrian was also still monologuing!

"...and yes, at first I thought that fooling children was a waste of my impressive talents." Adrian said as Gus ignored him. "But I realised that a true genius can find the art in everything he does and-" he looked at Gus and frowned, seeing him not paying attention; "Hey! Hey!" he growled, snapping his fingers in Gus's face. "Are you listening!? This is my monologue!"

"I noticed. That's why I wasn't listening." Gus snarked. Lucy held in a giggle from the shadows, while Adrian glared.

"Ugh, this is why I hate working with brats!" the man growled. "But if you can't appreciate a proper monologue, then I'll get right to the point. These illusions are all your doing, correct? Made from your memories?"

"Yeah, I guess." Gus frowned. He'd prefer to stay silent, but with hostages at stake, he didn't want to antagonise Vernworth too much.

"I thought as much. Now tell me; how do you know about the Looking Glass Graveyard? The only people I know who've been there are the Gold and Silver Brats, and they refused to tell me when I asked!" Adrian scowled angrily as he looked longingly at one of the statues; "I've been looking for the Galdorstones. They'd make great gifts for the Emperor!"

"I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to." Gus lied; "I took an Everlasting Oath, just like I did regarding the CATTs. If I tell you anything, I'll die before I get the words out. Sorry, but you'll need to find it the old fashioned way. I'm sure the "Great Adrian Graye Vernworth" can do it if a couple of kids could." Gus said mockingly.

Adrian growled in anger, then forced himself to take a deep breath to calm himself, before smirking condescendingly. "How droll. Well, I guess we'll do this the fun way!" he removed his earring again and showed it to Gus. "Do you know what this is? It's a handy little Magic Amplifier, tuned to Illusion Magic. Thanks to a little added Angelic Magic from the Emperor, it can do just about anything I want it to when it comes to Illusions! It can see through illusions, decode how they work and how they were cast, and massive increase the power of any illusion spells I cast with it. It can even dispel illusions no normal person could. Allow me to demonstrate."

The man put the earring close to Gus's face, revealing to the boy that the lens was actually like a two-way mirror, being see-through on one side but reflective on the other. Adrian turned the reflective side towards Gus and peered through the lens at Gus's glowing eye.

"Ah, I see… so that's how this illusion works. Your mind and magic reflects your memories onto the world around you. What a curious use of magic… with something like this, you could trap others in your memories too, or even inside their own. I'll have to try that later! But first…"

Adrian drew a spell circle using the mirror, and Gus felt a sharp pain in his head before his eye stopped glowing and the illusions around the entire school faded away, returning it to normal. "Marvellous; now my men can round up the rest of these urchins. As for you…" Adrian smiled sinisterly as he drew another spell circle and placed the mirror inside it; "If you can't tell me what I want to know, I'll have to sort through those little memories of yours… if you behave yourself and don't resist, you mind might even survive the experience!"

Gus cried out in pain as the sharp stabbing sensations in his brain began to intensify, as Adrian used Illusion Magic to forcibly read his mind. Magic like that was horribly unpleasant, especially when performed so roughly. It was tantamount to torturing him for information, only without Gus needing to actually give the answers himself.

The instant Lucy saw Gus in pain, she knew she no longer had time for subtlety. She ordered Shade to emerge from Adrian's shadow and attack him, causing the spirit to slash at Adrian's back with his claws. An Illusionist Guard saw the spirit before he could attack and shouted a warning to the Coven Head, allowing Adrian to dodge from the blow. However his mirror was smacked out of his hands and disappeared somewhere beneath the chairs of the Paranoratorium. Adrian's spell broke and Gus felt his pain recede, though he was still panicking, his eyes flashing cyan as he tried to fight off the trauma-induced overload and keep his massive illusion from being recreated. The shadows beneath everyone in the room began to expand and swallow them, with Lucy dragging the hostages all the way in and then expelling them from the closest shadows outside the school. In doing so, she also saw that since Gus's illusion had been dispelled, the CATTs were now storming the place in force and were beginning a pitched battle with the Coven Scouts.

The Scouts and Adrian were also partially sucked into the shadows to keep them busy, but after moving so many students so far in a single move, Lucy found her magic almost depleted (she still wasn't even a full Angel yet after all), so she channelled as much magic as she could from Waffles, as well as a little from Emmiline (who turned into staff mode and allowed Lucy to wield her) in order to pull Gus fully into the shadows and then to the closest safe shadow outside of the Paranoratorium.

Lucy, Gus, and the two Palismen emerged in what appeared to be an empty backstage prep room behind the Paranoratorium itself, likely used by whatever clubs used the stage for its activities. Lucy was exhausted by all the effort, but put that aside to focus on Gus, who was still on his knees with his hands now gripping his head.

"Gus! It's okay now, you're safe!" Lucy cried.

Gus barely reacted, managing to choke out a pained "Lu...cy…?" as he struggled to contain his magic.

"It's me! I'm here! I-I can help! D-Do I try that breathing thing?" Lucy tried to mimic what Gus had done earlier with the slow inhale, but Gus wasn't hyperventilating; his panicking was more a result of Adrian unearthing his memories in a horribly traumatic way, and now Gus was stuck trying to calm his racing mind and his wild magic all at once. Lucy needed another way to try and calm Gus's mind and help him focus…

"I hope this works." she mumbled, coming up with an idea. Gently, she nestled as close to him as she could, ensuring as much contact between them as was possible and decent, then snapped her fingers to summon an instrument. It was a simple and somewhat crudely carved wooden lyre, with the wood stained and varnished to a soft lilac colour. Lucy began to play it, weaving together a soft and gentle melody as her fingers danced amidst the strings, all while she hummed along. It was the kind of song one would expect to be a lullaby to sooth frightened young children, yet it carried the usual otherworldly beauty that came from an Angel's music. Grimwalker or not, Lucy was still an Angel, and her music skills reflected that.

Slowly, the song began to radiate through Gus's mind and the melody replaced the sound of whatever memories he was relieving, causing them to fade away into something far more pleasant. Gus remembered playing around Bonesborough with an eager Lucy, giggling along beside him like the little girl she truly was. He remembered a pleasant walk through a wood as they talked about their dreams and feelings. He remembered a fond farewell, then closing his eyes and being gifted a sweet kiss on the cheek from a blushing Angel.

The flashes of cyan began to grow more infrequent, until they finally faded altogether and Gus found his memories of the past fading away in favour of the experience of the present. He felt Lucy's warmth at his side, and her soft wing on his back, and in that moment, Gus allowed himself to forget everything beyond the four walls he shared with her.

"You're beautiful…" Gus whispered, his mind becoming clear.

There was a twang and squeak as Lucy suddenly went scarlet, missing a note in her surprise. Gus looked at her, then blushed as he realised what he'd said; "I-I mean your playing is beautiful! The song, you know? Not you. W-Well, not that you're not beautiful, but I- you… you know what I mean, right?"

"Y-Yeah. I think so." Lucy said bashfully. "Are you feeling better now?" she asked, awkwardly changing the subject.

Gus nodded; "Yeah. Vernworth just unearthed a lot of bad memories… I think he was doing it to punish me as he went through them for info on the CATTs and Galdorstones. I couldn't stop him, but at least I could force memories forward that weren't helpful and pushed the important ones to the back of my mind. It hurt a lot though…"

Lucy frowned and nuzzled closer, cuddling Gus to make him feel better; "I'm sorry… I was watching the whole time, waiting for a good moment to distract everyone, but when I saw you get hurt, I panicked… If I was going to be reckless like that, I should have just saved you from the start."

"It's fine, honest. In fact, I should thank you for saving me." Gus assured her. "You're playing really helped; it gave me something to anchor my mind too. I never knew you played the harp."

"Lyre, actually. You can tell the difference because a harp has more strings and a straight neck." Lucy explained, showing the instrument to Gus. Sure enough, it had fewer strings than Skara's instrument, and the edges were curved. "Hunter carved it for me not long after we first became siblings. It was one of the first gifts he gave me… he said an Angel like me should have a suitable instrument. He's been bugging me to let him carve a better one now that he's more skilled, but I'm attached to this one."

Gus smiled warmly; "It suits you. It reminds me of something Luz showed me once; a constellation of stars in the Human Realm called Lyra. It represents a lyre that supposedly made music so beautiful that it charmed gods!"

Lucy blushed, noting this was the second time Gus had called her beautiful, if indirectly. "Lyra, huh… something that made music that could charm the gods…"

She shook her head before she could get too caught up in that thought, and instead tried to focus on Gus himself, and his mental well-being following his brief ordeal. "Are you really okay? Reliving your worst memories must be hard."

"It wasn't a walk in the park, but most of my worst memories are things I've already faced and moved passed. Like feeling weak because I only used illusions, or being used by people pretending to be my friend, or feeling abandoned by my Mom and stuff like that." Gus replied.

Lucy's attention was caught by that last part; "Wait, your Mom abandoned you?"

Gus winced and Lucy immediately gasped and covered her mouth; "Oh Titan, I shouldn't have asked that! I'm so sorry! Just ignore me, I had no right to-"

"It's fine, really." Gus chuckled; "And it's not as bad as it sounds. I've never actually met my Mom, and I don't really care about it. The memory was from when I was a little kid, like six years old, and asked my Dad who my other parent was. Dad said that he and my Mom had only been dating a few months when Mom accidentally got pregnant because they weren't being careful. Dad wanted a kid but Mom didn't, so to convince her to keep me, Dad said he'd raise me without her needing to do anything. Mom agreed, gave birth to me, handed me off to Dad, then left. I don't know more than that, and I don't really care either. It just made me feel bad when I was little, and only for a while. I realised a long time ago that I didn't need a Mom when I've got a Dad as awesome as mine!"

Gus was being honest too; aside from that brief time when he was little and wondered why he didn't have two parents like other kids, he really didn't care much about not having his birth-giver in his life. He didn't hate or resent her, he just wasn't interested either way. He was grateful to her for giving birth to him, but otherwise spared her no thought at all. He didn't know her name, face, or what she was doing right now, and thanks to a Bloodline potion he'd been given at birth, he didn't even share the woman's blood or DNA.

Bloodline potions were special and difficult to make potions that altered the DNA of the drinker (usually a child in the womb, or freshly born) in order to add additional parents, remove parents, or change who their parents were in a biological sense. They were rarely used in the case of adoptions and disownments, but their primary use was in cases where a couple who couldn't (or didn't want to) have children together naturally and so used a surrogate, replacing the DNA of the surrogate with the parent who hadn't done the fathering. In Gus's case, most of his mother's DNA had been replaced with more from his Dad, with only a bit extra from an anonymous donor to ensure Gus wasn't an exact biological replica of his Dad, Perry. It was why he resembled Perry so closely.

Lucy was surprised by Gus's cavalier attitude towards his mother, especially considering her complicated feelings about her own parentage (did Belos count as her Dad since he made her? Did Luz count as her Mom since she was the source of her? Or did Lucy qualify as an identical twin and thus the child of Luz's parents too? And that wasn't even counting the messed up feelings she still had from the fake parents Belos had made up for her!). Still, as far as she was concerned, if Gus was happy then she was too.

"I'm glad you're okay, Gus. I'm happy I was able to help you like you helped me, even if it was only a little bit." Lucy said.

Gus wasn't sure he'd agree it was only a little bit, but he wasn't going to argue with her right now, especially as he began to hear noise from outside. There was some distant shouting and the sounds of battle, leaving both kids certain of one thing; the CATTs had finally been able to begin their liberation of the school! With Darius, Osran, and Eber among their number, things were sure to go badly for Adrian and the Illusion Coven!

Getting to his feet, Gus pulled Lucy up with him and the two gave their Palismen a few pets for being so patient with them, before shifting them back into staves.

"How much magic do you still have to work with?" Gus asked seriously, seeing the lack of sheen to the girl's wings.

Lucy grimaced; "Honestly, not much. I can still ask Shade to follow orders, but without magic to feed my connection to him, it'll all be verbal commands. He can't read my mind outside of his stone or some other contact with me. I can also maybe move myself through the shadows for a short distance, but any more than that and I'll be completely tapped. Forget taking a passenger with me too."

Gus frowned and reached a hand into his pocket where his emergency Power Glyph from Mason was. If he gave it to Lucy, she'd be able to help in the fighting and potentially be able to evacuate people if they were close to getting defeated by the Covens… but it would also put her in danger, and Gus doubted he'd be able to deal with Adrian without the glyph. Ultimately, he decided to keep the glyph just in case, and instead snagged some paint and a thin brush from the corner of the prep room.

"Here. I'll teach you some glyphs that Luz has learned. They don't require magic, but they need more set up as a trade-off." Gus said, before conjuring illusions of the seven glyphs Luz currently knew, including the lightning glyph she'd yet to bond with. Lucy looked at each one intently as Gus explained what they did and how they worked, committing the designs to memory. Once she was done, she accepted the paint from Gus and silently hoped the Glandus teachers wouldn't be mad at her for painting glyphs everywhere!

With both kids now as prepared as they were likely going to be, they took deep breathes and ran out of the prep room, finding themselves in a short corridor that ran along the back of the Paranoratorium stage. The sound of battle became louder as they got closer to the stage, and when they finally emerged onto it, they were greeted by the sight of Darius and Eberwolf battling a small army of Coven Scouts and Illusionists, all while Osran stood on the projector balcony at the back of the room, ordering spirits to attack and expose which of the enemy soldiers were real and which were illusions.

It was quite the one-sided fight; beneath the illusions, Adrian had summoned about 15 Coven Scouts and Illusionists to support him (they'd all escaped Lucy's shadow trap once she'd run out of magic to maintain it) and even though they were fighting only three people, they were losing badly. Eber was in her more feral Wild Heart form, leaping back and forth and clawing at the enemy at high speeds, all while Darius was in his Abomination form and used waves of slime to corral enemies together so they could be smashed around with big sweeping attacks. Combining that with Osran's spirits (of which there were about seven), and it was less of a fight and more of a massacre.

Adrian himself was nowhere to be found, and neither Gus nor Lucy had any idea if he was still present. Still, that was a worry for later; now was the time to help deal with the enemy!

Lucy wasted no time in painting a lightning glyph on one of the stage tiles, then painting a plant glyph behind it, causing vines to rise out and grab the first tile, which it then shoved into the back of a large scout that was trying to sneak up on Darius. The Abominations Master had known he was there of course, but he was still surprised to turn around and see the lightning glyph activate on contact with the scout, zapping him with a burst of lightning. The scout screamed and flopped to the floor, then another scout that was trying to climb up to Osran's perch found himself falling to the ground as his cape caught fire after a glyph-made fireball hit him in the back.

Darius, Eber, and Osran all turned to see Lucy and Gus, then smiled brightly.

"Lucy, my girl!"

"Little Shadow!"

"Thank goodness you're both safe!" Darius declared, easily swatting aside another scout as he approached the stage. An Illusionist tried to stab him with a spear from the safety of invisibility, but he was swiftly picked up and smashed into the floor with a water tendril, courtesy of Gus, who'd noticed the shoddy illusion work.

"Hey Darius! Sorry that my illusions caused such a big hold-up!" Gus apologised.

"It wasn't ideal, but Matt explained the situation. He got most of the students out, and the rest are being found by Hunter. The CATTs are sweeping the school too; we just need to capture Adrian and this whole affair is over." Darius declared.

"He is still in the room." Osran yelled from his perch; "Darius sealed the doors with slime the instant we entered, and Adrian hasn't been able to flee."

"Eber has his scent!" the little Demon barked as she slammed her feet into another scout, knocking him out. "So many scents here, troublesome to pick out. But still strong! Cruel Illusion Man still here somewhere!"

Gus nodded, and as Lucy, Darius, and Osran used a combination of vines, abominations, and spirits to tie all the defeated Coven Witches together, the boy drew a spell circle over his eye to allow him to see through illusions. Adrian's skill with illusions was admittedly far beyond anyone else Gus had met, except perhaps the Keeper of the Looking Glass Graveyard, and he couldn't fully see through it on his own, but with help from Emmiline, he was able to detect the hazy outline of the invisible man. It looked like Adrian was crawling around the Paranoratorium on all fours, looking for something.

Scowling, Gus shot a jet of icy cold water at him, and Adrian became visible with a girlish squeal as he was knocked back into the nearest set of seats. Immediately, everyone except Osran (who remained on his perch), began stalking towards the drenched Coven Head, who shrieked in fear and began to crawl away. Adrian was under no illusions as to how he'd fair in a fight with Darius and Eber!

"G-Gentlemen! Let's not be too hasty now, we can still talk this ou-EEK!" Adrian rolled to the side as Darius smashed a hammer of slime down where he'd just been.

"You've talked enough, you snake." Darius sneered.

"Purple Brother, no insult snakes! Creepy Illusionist not worthy of title." Eber scoffed, changing Adrian's nickname out of disgust for his cowardice.

"I-I understand emotions are high right now, but surely you can understand my position, right?" Adrian tried again, only to frantically scramble backwards as Eber tried to pounce on him, missing by a hair.

"You were going to brand kids with sigils! You were even going to give them ones for magic types they can't use out of spite!" Gus growled angrily.

"That was all on Belos' orders! The Emperor made me do it! He'd kill me if I didn't!" Adrian cried, lying through his teeth. He wasn't being very convincing, and he was still snivelling and crawling backwards. He was desperately looking around, as if trying to find a way out of this mess.

Lucy was having none of his excuses though; "I bet Belos didn't order you to torture Gus by violating his mind and making him relieve bad memories!"

"He what!?" Darius and Osran both growled dangerously, as Eber lunged to bite the man's throat. Adrian barely managed to roll out of the way, beginning to sob and cry in desperation. He bowed and scrapped, pleading for his life and claiming it was all Belos' orders and he didn't want to do it. Considering how damp he was from Gus's water blast, he looked like a slug, leaving a trail of ooze as he slowly edged away.

He was still searching for a way out of this mess, and as he bowed his head low and looked side to side, Adrian suddenly went still. Gus narrowed his eyes, wondering what the man had planned, right up until Darius tried to furiously smash him with the Abomination hammer again. This time however, Adrian rolled out of the way and used a quick illusion to produce a fake smokescreen to blind everyone, before lunging for something on the floor. Gus alone was able to see through the illusory smoke thanks to the spell circle he'd drawn over his eye, but he didn't see what Adrian had grabbed until the man leapt back to his feet, his posture entirely changed.

Gus dispelled the smokescreen, allowing everyone to see Adrian again and revealing what he'd grabbed. Adrian now stood tall and proud again, holding the Amplifying Mirror that Shade had knocked out of his hand earlier. Gus realised that must have been why Adrian was crawling around on the floor this whole time! He'd been looking for the mirror!

"Ah, and now with this, the tables can turn once more!" Adrian declared with a cocky smirk, as if he hadn't just been grovelling on the ground a few minutes ago.

Darius was not impressed and remodelled his slime hammer into scimitar to stab at Adrian; "You think a fancy earring will save you!?"

Adrian just smirked and drew a spell circle with the mirror, then placed the mirror inside, resulting in a massive pulse of cyan and silver magic. It formed a sphere of magic around Adrian, one that seemed to crackle and whirl like a storm, and then began to spread out at a remarkable speed. Gus and Lucy watched in horror as the sphere passed through Darius as it expanded, causing the man's eyes to begin glowing blue as he fell to his knees, shaking and gripping his head.

"N-no! Amity, don't go in there! It wasn't my fault Al! I'm sorry! Michael, you can't trust him! If you go, you'll never come back! Please listen to me!" he whimpered, seemingly trapped in a nightmare. Eber rushed to try and help him, but she was soon struck by the sphere of magic too, causing her eyes to glow and for her to begin whimpering in a ball on the floor, haunted by some past fears and memories. Osran was the next to be caught and the same thing happened, as Gus tried to pull Lucy away.

Adrian cackled madly; "This spell truly is a fine one, isn't it Boy!? You used it unconsciously project your memories onto the world, but with my extraordinary talents, I was able to refine it and use it to trap people in their own worst memories and nightmares! With this, I'll put an end to this whole charade myself!"

The Amplifying Mirror pulsed with magic and the sphere of magic rapidly expanded to coat the entire school, trapping everyone inside; Rebels, Scouts, Illusionists, Teachers, and Students alike inside their own horrible memories, paralysing them all with terrifying and heart-breaking memories. Immediately, wails from all those trapped inside the memories began to sound out across the school, and people outside the school saw only the blue sphere surrounding it and heard the horrible screams from inside.

Gus, having experienced this before while Adrian was digging through his mind, felt it to be a haunting, but not painful experience. The memories that overflowed through his mind were, as he'd told Lucy, mostly memories he'd gotten over. He remembered his talk with his Dad years ago, in which he learned his Mom hadn't wanted him. He remembered how older students had pretended to be his friend to use him. He remembered feeling weak and useless as his friends were zapped and Luz was kidnapped by Callisto and the Scout Captain. He remembered his nightmare that followed, and the feelings of inadequacy that filled him afterwards… He remembered hearing about what happened in Belos' mind, and learning that two of his best friends had been so badly hurt…

But as this horrible memories filled him, Gus refused to be broken. Unlike everyone else, he didn't buckle to his knees and grip his head; he remained standing as he focused; "Those memories didn't end there! They led to other memories!"

The memory of his talk with his Dad faded into a new one, in which his Dad told him how much he loved him; more than enough to make up for his missing mother. The memory of being used by older students faded into meeting Willow, and how she'd become his first friend. The memory of feeling weak in the face of the scouts faded into a memory of Luz returning safe and sound, in the company of a repentant Boscha. The memory of his nightmare gave way to a memory of him, Matt, and Luz celebrating their victory in the Looking Glass Graveyard. And the memory of learning about what happened in Belos' mind, gave way to memories of comforting Lucy in the secret potions lab, seeing her smile return, and then later hearing her beautiful music as she held him close.

Gus's eyes began to glow brighter and brighter, until eventually his own magic fully overpowered Adrian's and he snapped out of the illusion, much to the Coven Head's shock. The man was now stood right beside Gus, carrying a still Memory-trapped Lucy under his arm to deliver her to Belos. Seeing this, Gus shot an icicle directly at Adrian's shoulder, stabbing into him enough to make him yelp and drop Lucy. Gus then caught her with a large water bubble, before blasting icy water at Adrian's face to knock him backwards.

"W-What!? How did you escape my illusion!" Adrian demanded, yanking the bloody icicle out of his shoulder with a wince.

"I've been trapped in my own head a lot in the past. I know how to deal with it!" Gus declared, standing between Adrian and Lucy, who was whimpering as she was trapped in her own memories. He whispered to her; "Just hold on! I'll snag that mirror and end this!"

Adrian sneered and prepared to draw another spell circle to try and trap Gus again, but the boy suddenly created a mirror out of ice directly in front of the Coven Head, startling him for a second, especially as the reflection of him morphed until he was a short, fat version of himself like in a fun house mirror. Adrian recoiled in horror at the sight, giving Gus enough time to fly around with Emmie and flank him. Adrian saw what he was doing in the mirror and turned to stop Gus grabbing his Amplifier, instead putting it back in his ear before beginning to wrestle with the boy. Gus was still only a child, but Adrian was a very weak man physically, so they were a bit more evenly matched than expected.

As the two wrestled, Gus forced the two of them to turn in a circle, slowly drawing a spell circle with his foot as they went. Once the circle was complete, Gus grinned and caused a pillar of ice to grow from beneath them, sending them both towards the ceiling at high speed. Since Adrian was taller, Gus expected the Coven Head would be smashed head first into the ceiling while he ducked down and used the man as cover to protect himself. However Gus underestimated the man, who in a moment of panic, was able to hoist Gus off the ground and hold him above his head, so Gus would hit the ceiling first. Gus protected himself by creating a spiked palisade of ice above him, which hit the ceiling first and protected both him and Adrian as the pillar pushed them up into it, causing them to burst through and appear on the roof of Glandus High School.

The ice pillar suddenly stopped ascending, but it had been moving fast enough that both Adrian and Gus were launched into the air. Gus tried to snag Adrian's earring as they flew, but the man kicked him off and then landed in a heap on the school roof, while Gus fell some distance away from him, reshaping his icy palisade into a water bubble to catch his fall. He immediately got to his feet and summoned Emmie (who'd been left behind down in the Paranoratorium when he'd begun wrestling with Adrian) back to his hand, then dashed to try and catch Adrian before he'd recovered from the fall. Unfortunately he was too late and Adrian leapt to his feet and grabbed his Amplifying Mirror again. He tried to put Gus under another illusion with it, but Gus took a deep breath and focused on his connection with Emmiline, strengthening his own illusion magic enough that his pupils changed to cyan, allowing him to see through all but the most powerful illusions so long as he was able to keep his focus. Adrian growled, especially as Gus swung at him with his staff, shooting a jet of water from the side of Emmie so the jet would propel his swing. Adrian barely managed to duck, growling as he did so.

"Alright then! Fine! If you want to make this difficult and resort to fighting like a thug… I'll show you what a real battle of the mind is like!" Adrian declared, drawing a silver and blue spell circle with his Amplifying Mirror. The mirror then began to spin wildly and float in the air without the need for Adrian's touch, before finally stopping and shooting a beam of cyan light form each side of its silver mirror lens. The beams hit both Adrian and Gus in the forehead, and both of them suddenly found the entire world around them shifting until it was replaced by a new one. The rapid shifting hurt Gus's eyes so he closed them for a moment, but when he opened them again, he found that the Glandus rooftop had been replaced by what appeared to be the Looking Glass Ruins… or at least, something that resembled it.

The "ruins" now appeared to be pristine, as if it had been recently built, and it now had silver filigree and crystal ornamentation all over it, replacing the ivy and overgrown foliage that had taken up the place before. The Galdorstones were also notably missing, but instead the statues held large mirrors that appeared to be giant versions of Adrian's Amplifying Mirror. The sky above was also like a kaleidoscope of blues and purples, constantly shattering and changing to new mind-bending patterns. It was a beautiful but shocking sight, and when Gus hopped on Emmiline and flew up high to try and get a better look of the place as a whole, he found that the entire "ruins" was floating in the sky above an endless sea of what appeared to be silver.

"W-What the heck!?" Gus cried as he landed again; "Did Vernworth use his mirror to mimic what I did earlier, and cover the entire city in an illusion!?" he wondered aloud, walking around slowly with his staff at the ready in case the man jumped out of nowhere. He tried to dispel the illusion or see through it, but the former didn't work at all, and the latter just caused everything to turn black, as if there was nothing but void beyond the illusion.

"I've never see anything like this…" Gus whispered to himself. He approached a statue and gingerly reached forward to touch it, then gasped as his hand actually made contact with stone, silver, and crystal. "I-It's real!?"

"Not quite!" bellowed Adrian, his voice seemingly coming from everywhere. Gus felt the ground beneath his feet rumble, before a massively oversized version of Adrian emerged from the sea of silver down below. He looked exactly as he always did, but scaled up and with a noticeably more muscular physique with a slightly more handsome face. The titanic Coven Head stared down at Gus with a mocking grin, then slammed his palm down where the boy was standing, forcing him to yelp and fly out of the way, just barely managing to slip into the gap between the man's fingers before they hit the ground. He then immediately flew up into the air to stop Adrian crushing him by squeezing his fingers together.

"W-What is this!? Is this really just an illusion!?" Gus cried in a panic.

"Ha! Do let me know if you figure it out! It'll be a fun fact to learn before you get turned into jelly!" Adrian mocked, as he pulled his hand back and swatted at Gus. The young man just barely escaped again, flying as fast as he could with his staff whilst also propelling himself along with a jet of water from each hand. As soon as he dodged Vernworth's left hand, the right came swinging at him and Gus retaliated by again flying away, but this time aiming the icy cold jets of water directly at the incoming hand. Adrian yelped in surprise at the freezing water, making Gus grin. If the giant Adrian could still feel things, then he was just a much bigger target now!

"Let's see how you like this!" Gus yelled, pulling out his Power Glyph and slapping it onto the back of his neck. He immediately felt a massive surge of power and an aura of cyan magic covered him Then, surfing on his staff, Gus flew around in a massive circle, creating a spell circle roughly the size of the gigantic Adrian's head. The spell circle shattered into a huge blizzard of snow and ice, which then combined together into a massive icicle. In the real world, something like that could easily destroy most modest sized buildings, so Gus carefully aimed it at Adrian's chest and then launched straight at him. The Coven Head's eyes widened and he recoiled a step, before suddenly snapping his fingers and causing a massive burst of cyan flames to ignite the icicle. Gus gasped seeing his ice somehow burning and evaporating into nothing, being completely destroyed before it got anywhere near Vernworth's chest.

"What!? How did you do that with illusion magic!?" Gus demanded, totally shocked.

"I control everything here! Welcome to the world as it could be; designed by the great Adrian Graye Vernworth!" Adrian grinned mockingly, before laughing maniacally as he snapped his fingers again. The Looking Glass Statues suddenly came to life and sprouted stone dragon wings, which they used to fly up at Gus and begin trying to bludgeon him with their mirrors. Gus was quick to begin dodging and flying around, using the remains of his Power Glyph boost to bind them with water tendrils or freeze them solid, but nothing he did kept them trapped for long. Adrian would just snap his fingers and the ice and water would disappear as if it were never there to begin with.

Gus began to panic; how could he beat a giant version of a Coven Head in a world he had complete control over!? How was this possible with just illusions!? Before he could even begin to think of a hypothesis, Adrian snapped his fingers and created a storm cloud, which shot a bolt of lightning at Gus. The boy narrowly dodged it, but then one of the mirror wielding statues batted it back at him again, forcing him to evade once again. This continued until they boxed Gus in, forcing him to try and make an ice mirror around himself to block the lightning, but the instant he did, Adrian snapped his fingers once more and the ice vanished, allowing the bolt to strike Gus.

The poor boy screamed in pain and fell to the ground as he convulsed from the electricity, though thankfully Emmiline was able to swoop down on her own and catch him before he hit the ground. With no other ideas, Gus weakly cast an invisibility spell around himself and Emmie, praying to the Titan that it would work. To his immense relief, Adrian's expression became one of annoyance, and he began to wave his large hands, whipping up a powerful gust of wind to blow Gus and Emmiline away. Emmie flew her partner to a secluded spot behind a statue plinth, where the wind couldn't reach them. Once they were hidden, Emmie turned back to her animal form and clung to Gus's shirt, looking up with concerned eyes.

"Gus!" she said, somehow speaking out loud instead of into his mind; "Are you alright!?"

"I really hate getting zapped!" Gus hissed, keeping his voice low lest Adrian hear him. "What's going on here? What is with this weird illusion!? I don't understand!"

Emmie shook her head; "I don't know. It's confusing! But all of this feels real, not like an illusion."

"Vernworth can't cast any kind of magic besides illusions; even the Coven Heads are branded with sigils. Could that Amplifying Mirror be powerful enough to let him warp reality with illusions?" Gus asked, face filling with doubt even as he voiced the thought. No, something that powerful couldn't be possible! Besides, if Adrian could do something like this, why hadn't he done it already? He should have been able to easily ensnare and brand every student in Glandus without even a need for trickery and his dumb fake Adrian plan.

"It has to be something he couldn't do before… wait a moment!" Gus thought, his eyes suddenly widening as the pieces began to come together. Before the world had changed, Adrian's mirror had shot spells at both his own forehead AND Gus's, then suddenly they appeared in this illusion world. Adrian was able to control the space completely, and for some reason, Emmiline was able to talk out loud… putting all that together, Gus figured it out.

"This isn't real!" Gus gasped; "This is all literally happening inside my mind! That's why you can talk out loud here, Emmie! Because Palismen talk inside their partners' heads! Adrian's spell must have linked his mind to mine and created this imaginary world! He controls everything and can break the rules of magic here because it's all a fake world he made!"

Emmiline nodded; "It makes sense! I'm here too because our minds are linked! And he isn't really hurting you; it's all inside your head!"

"Which means…" Gus continued, closing his eyes and focusing. If this was all a kind of illusory mind-scape Adrian created within his head, then he wasn't just Gus; he was the Inner Gus, and that meant his body was how he perceived himself to be. He got hurt because he believed he could, so if he believed he could heal…

Gus felt the pain of the prior shocks faded away into nothingness and his strength return. He grinned; "It worked! Adrian can control this space since he made it and shoved it into my brain, but he can't control me directly! That's why he couldn't see me when I became invisible, or cast magic to change me directly!"

And since Gus's current self was a personification of his mind and not his physical body, his condition was based on whatever he thought it was! By focusing his mind and his own skill in Illusion Magic, he could change himself as he wished! He had to give Adrian credit though; using this tactic against a non-Illusionist would ensure almost an instant win for him! Heck, even most Illusionists would struggle to take back some control over this false mind-scape! But as Gus had told Adrian before; he was an expert at dealing with getting stuck inside his own head!

"Time to take back control, Emmie!" Gus declared, switching his Palisman back into staff mode. Focusing all his mental fortitude, the remainder of his Power Glyph-enhanced magic, and Emmiline's own strength, Gus closed his eyes and began to send his magic down into the ground.

Adrian, who'd been grumbling to himself as he and his statue minions tried to find the boy, suddenly gasped as he felt his control over the false mind-scape quiver. He still had full control over it, but Gus's real mind-scape beneath it was beginning to tear itself away!

"Impossible! Did that brat really figure it out!? How is he doing this!? He shouldn't have the power to match my Amplifying Mirror!" Adrian cursed as he saw his illusory world begin to fray at the edges. His statue minions began to glitch and crumble, with several of them reverting to how they looked in Gus's memory of the graveyard, before falling to the ground inert. Adrian also found himself shrinking as his presence in the mind-scape became less all-encompassing and more limited. "I will not be outdone by some brat barely done with puberty!" the man growled, gripping his Amplifying Mirror and focusing on it to try and counter Gus's actions.

The two's magic warred with each other, pushing against one another like two opposing tides crashing into each other, with the form of the fake mind-scape changing to reflect that. The sky became a whirlpool of the kaleidoscope sky and a normal blue sky, complete with white clouds, and the floating ruins descended into the sea of silver, which now formed a whirlpool of silver and crystal clear blue water with the ruins at it's centre. The ruins itself became a twisted spiral of land, with half of it being Adrian's idolised version of the Looking Glass Ruins while the other half reflected the form of Gus's true mind-scape; a tropical island (akin to Digale) with a mix of Gravesfield and Bonesborough architecture that took the form of Gus's idealised version of what he considered home.

The last of Adrian's stone minions either disappeared or returned to their plinths, while Adrian himself now found himself as a normal sized person (without his enhanced appearance) stood in the middle of the mind-scape, with Gus wielding his staff a few paces away.

"Huh… I thought I was gonna kick your mind out of my head entirely, along with your phony mind-scape. I guess my Power Glyph and your Amplifier made us an even match and ended up twisting your fake mind-scape together with my real one…" Gus mused, before grinning; "But that just means neither of us are in full control of this space, which makes it the perfect battleground for us!"

Adrian sneered viciously; "Don't delude yourself into thinking you're my equal, brat!"

"You're equal? Nah…" Gus smirked; "I'm better!"

Adrian snarled and thrust his hand towards Gus, causing a blast of silver flames to go shooting towards the boy. Gus's eyes widened and he dove down to avoid it, though he still felt the heat of it on his back as it passed over him. It seemed that even with Adrian's control over the space greatly reduced, he could still do things that he couldn't in the real world! It made sense, given the fact he was technically doing all this with his mind and not his body. The man's limit was his imagination… but that meant Gus's was too!

However Gus had his pride as a real illusionist; he wanted to make the impossible, possible! So he'd beat Adrian just like he would in the real world!

As the Coven Head shot another blast of silver fire at him, Gus drew spell circles while laying on the floor in a press-up position. The resulting jets of icy water propelled him up and over the flames, and as the fire passed through the water jets, it produced a huge cloud of steam that blinded Adrian. Gus used this as cover to make himself invisible, and since the ground of his mind-scape was partly beach, he surfed through the air on Emmiline to avoid leaving footprints. He flew behind Adrian and immediately attacked by conjuring some icicles and launching them at the man's back. To Adrian's credit, he noticed the rush of wind that followed Gus's speedy flying and anticipated an attack from behind, so the ground between the two Illusionists suddenly shot up and formed a wall between them, blocking Gus's attack. Adrian then spun around and slammed his palm into his side of the wall, causing it to explode outward and pepper Gus with rocks.

Gus yelped in pain as the shrapnel cut and bruised him, but he wasn't about to be beaten that easily! The attack had knocked him off his staff, so he turned his fall into a backwards roll and summoned Emmiline back beneath his feet. As he did so, he focused his mind, causing his cuts and bruises to begin healing slowly. It required a great deal of focus so he couldn't do anything else at the same time, but at least it stopped the pain and made it easier for his Inner Self to move!

Unfortunately, this also gave Adrian an opening to act and he pulled the Amplifying Mirror from his ear and began drawing spell circles with it, creating four illusory copies of himself. Gus was certain these copies would end up firing some very real spells, so flew up as high and as fast as he could before they managed to begin casting. One of the Adrian clones tried to animate some of the tropical foliage, but it looked like he couldn't control any parts of Gus's real mind-scape, so he instead conjured vines from himself to try and tie Gus down while the other three clones shot silver fireballs, bolts of lightning, and spikes of rock at Gus. Gus used jets of water to counter the fireballs and propel him out of the way of the rock spikes, but the lightning bolts were tough to dodge alongside the vines trying to bind him, so Gus instead focused some of his water jets into a single large bubble around himself, which he froze into ice to form a barrier to block the lightning. The power of the lightning bolts shattered the barrier but thankfully dissipated at the same time, causing an explosion of snow that Gus once again used for cover to become invisible and try to sneak up on Adrian.

Mindful of the wind his flying would kick up, Gus surfed on his staff as slowly as he could until he was directly above Adrian and his four clones. They were in a diamond formation, with what Gus assumed to be the original directly in the middle of the four clones. However the ground they were standing on was also a mass of mud and damp sand thanks to the water jets Gus had been using, so the boy focused on these and caused tendrils of water to emerge from the wet ground to bind Adrian…

… only for him to poof into a cloud of cyan smoke as the central Adrian was revealed to be an illusion.

Gus's eyes widened as he tried to retreat, but since his spell had given away his location despite the invisibility, the real Adrian (who'd swapped places with a clone), reached up with a water tendril of his own and managed to snag the end of Emmiline's staff, yanking her out from under Gus and causing him to fall and land back first on the ground where the destroyed clone had just been.

"I've got you now!" Adrian smirked, trying to stomp on the boy as his clones all shot streams of fire down on him.

Gus was just barely quick enough to conjure a bubble of water around him to stop the flames, though Adrian's first kick still went through the bubble. It had slowed but not stopped the blow, and Gus found himself winded as it hit his stomach. Snapping his fingers to summon Emmiline back to his side, Gus froze the bubble into ice then intentionally shattered it to send razor sharp ice fragments in all directions, similar to what Adrian had done with the rock wall earlier. The three Adrian clones were immediately destroyed while the real Adrian shrieked as his clothes were sliced by the ice. He seemed more upset about his outfit than he did about the numerous tiny cuts and welts he'd received!

"Brat! I'll crush you!" Adrian snarled, conjuring a huge amount of rock around his fist to form a giant stone hammer. He attempted to literally crush Gus, but the boy rolled out of the way of the slow and cumbersome attack, then shifted Emmiline to her animal form and placed her on his shoulders. He then gave Adrian the finger guns with a cheeky grin.

"Let me show you a little something I learned from the Human Realm! Time to set Phasers to Stun!" Gus smirked.

He then began to shoot bullets of freezing cold water from his finger tips, firing them from each of his finger guns like he was a cowboy duel-wielding pistols in a shoot out. The water bullets were shot with enough force to bruise, and combined with how cold they were, Adrian quickly found his body getting cold and numb. The Coven Head fled from Gus as quickly as he could, dashing behind a statue from the Looking Glass Graveyard so he could get cover and try to cast a spell without having his focus ruined by the cold. However Gus was fast and followed him wherever he went, occasionally shooting at Adrian with one hand while shooting at the floor with the other, creating a trail of ice for him to slide around on.

"Get away from me, you persistent little-!" whatever Adrian was about to say was cut off by Gus managing to shoot a water bullet directly at Adrian's Amplifying Mirror, knocking it out of his hands. Gus wasn't sure if the mirror actually functioned inside the mind-scape, or if it only worked because Adrian believed it did, but regardless, Adrian was weaker without it. The man screamed in irritation and lunged for the mirror, but Gus supercharged some ice magic into his next two water bullets and actually froze Adrian's hands completely solid as he tried to grab the mirror, causing him to fumble it. There was a flash of blue magic as Gus then summoned his staff again and smashed it into Adrian's gut, knocking him back a few steps.

The winded Coven Head fell to one knee and wheezed, but was able to force fire out from his frozen hands with pure concentration, melting them free. It appeared he truly wasn't limited by any of the rules of spell-casting in this space! This became even more obvious when Adrian screamed in anger and unleashed an actual explosion of magic, similar to Luz's light explosions. Gus hadn't expected it and took the blast without any defences, causing him to be blasted straight into the statue Adrian had just been hiding behind. The poor boy was badly burned and had taken a mind-bending blow to the back of the head when he hit the statue, but at least he was still conscious and could try to scrape together enough focus to make his Inner Self's wounds heal a bit, albeit slowly.

Once he was able to think straight, Gus created some simple illusions; he made himself invisible then created illusory duplicates that ran off in different directions to draw Adrian's attention. Gus had even been careful to make sure they ran on the ice trails he'd left when sliding around, so Adrian couldn't tell they were fake by their lack of footprints in the mud and sand. Adrian took the bait and began chasing after them, certain that one of them was real (Gus had made sure they all looked pristine, but one acted as if they were injured and trying to hide it so the man would zero in on them).

With the man kept busy again, Gus tried to think through the next part of his plan; he'd taken back some control of his mind-scape and separated Adrian from his Amplifier, but while both had weakened the man greatly, he was still too powerful! He was a full Coven Head after all, and not a substitute or replacement like most of them were now… plus he was still inside a person's mind; the place where an Illusionist was at their strongest! There was simply no way for Gus to match his power!

"Okay, fight smarter, not harder. I'm not gonna win in a straight duel, so I need to find a way to take away Adrian's advantage… or turn those advantages against him!" Gus thought as a new idea came to him. The only way to win was to pull the wool over Adrian's eyes, but there was only one time he'd let his guard down around a fellow Illusionist… when he's certain he's already won!

The perfect plan began to formulate inside Gus's imagination, but true to his style of doing things, it was flashy, elaborate, and would require more magic than he could normally achieve on his own. Of course, as this was all happening in Gus's mind-scape, his spells weren't consuming real magic just as his wounds weren't real, but because they felt real, his mind made it all tire him out and hurt him just like reality; that was the power of the mind. Which meant just like when healing his wounds, he could make himself stronger by imagining he had more power!

That was a harder task than expected however; visualising himself healing was one thing, since that was a visible difference, but imagining himself with unlimited magic was something far more difficult. Thankfully, as Gus considered how to trick his own mind, he realised he'd already done it by accident earlier; the Power Glyph he'd used. The real Power Glyph existed in the real world, yet he'd somehow used it here in his mind. He'd pulled a Power Glyph from his pocket and used it, getting the benefits of it, because he'd believed the glyph would be there and he knew how it was supposed to work!

"Which means if I reach into my pocket again, knowing it should still be there…" Gus slipped his hand into his pocket, then pulled it out and grinned, seeing the familiar Power Glyph just as he'd hoped. With that in hand, he peeked over to where Adrian's Amplifying Mirror had fallen, and his plan was ready to begin!

Meanwhile, Adrian had finally managed to chase down the injured Gus illusion (who'd given him the slip thus far by sliding around on the ice trails and weakly shooting fake ice blasts, which Adrian dodged assuming they were real), and struck him with a bolt of lightning, causing him to poof into cyan smoke. Adrian gasped at that, then growled as he realised he'd been tricked and turned to immediately destroy the remainder of the Gus Clones. Once they were all gone, he created an Alarm Bat from thin air and sent it to go and search for Gus, using sonar to track him even if he was invisible. Before it could even try to find Gus however, Gus found it and shot it out of the sky with an icicle.

"Saw through my illusions eventually, huh? Guess it's hard to tell what's real and what's fake when we're inside my mind!" Gus taunted; "But thanks for taking so long; it gave me all the time I needed to fully heal myself. Sure is nice to be able to fix any injury by just knowing the real me isn't really hurt. Shame it doesn't work in the real world."

Adrian sneered; "Finally decided to face me, have you? Your second rate illusions were good for a sideshow, but you're nothing compared to me! I'm the headliner! The main event!"

"Oh yeah?" Gus narrowed his eyes, spinning his staff to create a huge spell circle; "Then why don't you show me what you've got!"

He charged up a huge amount of ice and water magic, then sent a high-speed deluge of water right at the Coven Head, filling it with ice shards for added damage. Adrian, no longer playing around, countered with a deluge of silver fire and lightning, which began to actually melt Gus's ice and evaporate his water. The flames were simply too hot and too intense, and after a moment, both Illusionists' elemental attacks cancelled each other out! Gus was totally floored by the overwhelming power Adrian could wield here, and he wasn't able to recover and react in time to defend himself against Adrian's next spell. The slimy man smirked viciously as he sent a massive bolt of lightning straight at the wide open boy, hitting him square in the chest and causing him to scream in agony as he convulsed. When the lightning finally stopped, Gus teetered back and forth for a few moments, his body steaming, before he finally collapsed face first into the mud. Cyan smoke poured off the boy's body, and Adrian was amused to see that Gus hadn't managed to erase the injuries on his Inner Self after all, and had just hidden them all with illusions.

Adrian smirked down at Gus's unconscious form, lying on the ground bloody and bruised. It had been more of a pain than he wanted to admit, but Adrian had still won in the end! As was to be expected; no Coven Head would lose to some brat! Not even one as annoyingly skilled as this boy… It was a bit of a shame too; if the boy hadn't been a traitor, he'd have made a good understudy and protege for Adrian to mold into his eventual successor.

"A waste, but it doesn't matter. Once the Day of Unity succeeds and the Coven Heads ascend to become Seraphim, we will be eternally youthful. I'll never need a successor." Adrian snorted, before reaching for the Amplifying Mirror that had been knocked to the floor previously. It was annoyingly cold and Adrian was quick to draw a spell circle with it, causing his ultimate spell to be undone; dismantling his false mind-scape and causing Adrian to be sent back to his body in the real world in the process.

The world flashed with a bright cyan light that left Adrian blinking, but when he got his vision back a moment ago, he found himself stood on the roof of Glandus once again, with Gus now unconscious on the floor near where he'd been stood before being hit by Adrian's ultimate spell. His Inner Self losing consciousness had knocked him out in the real world too, resulting his staff had become inert as well. Adrian turned his nose up at the boy (who admittedly looked healthier since his physical body lacked any of the wounds he'd gotten in the mind-scape), before stooping down to pick up Gus's Palisman. The Head Witch frowned when he found her to be as cold as ice, and then reached down to touch the boy himself, finding him to be ice cold too. Then Adrian touched his own face, finding everything he touched to be freezing.

"The boy did freeze my hands briefly in the mind-scape… did my body drop its temperature subconsciously as a result? I'll need to look into this later." Adrian muttered, before snapping his fingers and conjuring his Sigil Branding Glove; "Oh well, time to get this over with."

Grabbing Gus's cold wrist, Adrian branded him with a Construction Coven sigil, knowing that the brawny coven was the worst match for an intellectual Illusionist. He then carefully climbed back down to the Paranoratorium by sliding down the side of the ice pillar Gus had made earlier (which made his hands feel even colder). Once he arrived, he turned his attention to Lucy, Darius, and Eber, who were all still whimpering as they suffered through the bad memories Adrian had trapped them in. All three were already branded, but a Coven Head's glove could overwrite a sigil with a new one, so Adrian branded Eber with a Bard Coven Sigil (the little beast had no sense of rhythm as far as Adrian was concerned), branded Darius with a Construction Coven Sigil (the nobleman would definitely hate having to play with dirt to use magic), and branded Lucy with an Abomination Coven Sigil (an Angel couldn't use that type of magic, and Adrian didn't expect she'd be able to do the impossible a second time).

Satisfied, Adrian looked up to where Osran was and decided to deal with him later; the Illusionist had no way to reach the old man up on the projector platform, so he'd ignore him for now. With his job in the Paranoratorium done, Adrian threw open the doors so he could leave… only to find himself walking straight back into the Paranoratorium.

Blinking in confusion, Adrian looked back and forth from the door way, finding that the room he was walking into was identical to the one he'd left, with the only difference being that the newly branded rebels and the tied up scouts weren't whimpering and crying due to bad memories, and their eyes weren't glowing blue. Instead they were all standing around blankly and in seemingly random positions… until they noticed Adrian and turned to him. A shudder of fear went up the man's back as he saw that each and every one of them had nothing but black voids where their eyes should be. Then the Coven Scouts and Illusionists removed their masks to reveal no faces at all; just black voids within their hoods.

"W-What is this!? Another Illusionist dares to face me!?" Adrian snarled, raising the Amplifying Mirror to his eye so he could see through it. He expected to be greeted by an image of a Glandus hallway… but instead he was met by something far worse… a grove in an old, poorly maintained wood. There was nothing inside it but old withered trees, dead leaves, and creeping vines that had grown over a pile of rocks. Adrian shuddered as he could actually smell the rot and stagnation from this disturbing scene.

Then he noticed that one of the stones in the pile was familiar… it was his own stone head. Adrian shrieked and dropped his Amplifying Mirror, which hit the ground and shattered into a thousand pieces. However Adrian could still see the vision of the grove, which slowly grew to encompass his entire vision. Unable to tear his eyes away from the scene, Adrian saw that the rest of the pile of stones were also parts of his statue, stood atop a plinth with a plaque. Daring to read it, the man almost wet himself in terror as he saw the words:

"Here rests the petrified remains of a Traitor. May his name be forgotten for all time."

This wasn't a broken and poorly maintained monument to him… this was Adrian's grave!? His petrified corpse, left shattered and forgotten, without even his name preserved.

The man felt his heart beat faster as it became harder to breathe. Angrily, Adrian marched towards the stones with a snarl of; "I won't be fooled by this!" only to kick it and then cry out in pain as he found they were very much real.

"N-No! Illusions can't be physical! Not in the real world! What's going on! I won didn't I!? I won!?"

"DiD yOu?"

A horribly distorted voice spoke from behind him and he spun around and came face to face with Lucy. Her eyes were empty and black, and her arm was burning with black flames, starting from the sigil he'd given her and spreading up her arm, consuming her flesh and leaving blackened bones behind.

"Do YoU fEeL lIkE a WiNnEr?"

Another distorted voice from behind him caused Adrian to quickly turn and see Darius in the same condition as Lucy, his eyes replaced with voids and his new sigil burning away his flesh.

"WhAt WaS yOuR pRiZe?"

This time it was Eber, speaking in the common tongue despite never having been able to before.

"WhAt DiD yOu TrAdE oUr LiVeS fOr?"

This time it was Osran, who despite not being branded by Adrian, was still being consumed by black flames.

The smell of the stagnating grove now blended with the smell of burning flesh and foliage as the fire spread from the burning bodies to the woods around them, turning the scene into an inferno… it was like a real vision of Hell!

"Y-You aren't real! You're fakes!" Adrian snarled, though he didn't dare touch them; his foot still throbbed from kicking the statue he'd thought was fake.

"PoOr AdRiAn." said a burning Severine as she joined the circle of witches.

"CaN't AcCePt ThE tRuTh." the illusionist he'd scolded earlier, Tom, joined the circle.

"NoT fAkE…" The Scout Captain joined.

"ThE fUtUrE." Principal Keyes said.

"ThIs Is YoUr ReWaRd." Ukla said.

"ThE pAyMeNt FoR aLl TrAiToRs." Hunter finished, as he and the others all pointed into the air.

The black flames consumed them completely, leaving only bones that still stood like living people. The flames then leapt from the ends of their fingers and formed together into a single mass where they'd been pointing, and from within the flames emerged a familiar monster.

It was Luz Noceda-Clawthorne, in the form of a Pseudo Titan like she'd become when Belos injected her with Titan Bile, only now she had six wings instead of four, and she seemed to loom larger and more monstrous than ever. She pointed a finger at Adrian, and it began to shine with the green light of the Petrification Statue's spell.

"N-No! NO!" Adrian screamed, trying to turn and run. The skeletons all grabbed him and held him down, with many making sure he could see their wrists, where their sigils were scorched into their bones. Then a new figure appeared, still burning from her own sigil.

It was the figure of Hettie Cutburn, who smiled ghoulishly; "JoIn Me In My ReWaRd, AdRiAn!"

"NO, NO, NO!" Adrian screamed with all his might as Luz's spell finally struck him, and all he could do was scream and cry and plead for his life as his skeleton captors clapped and applauded his demise, and his body turned cold as it began to turn to stone. The last conscious thought Adrian had was of terror, as he met his fate at the hands of the people he'd hurt.

Or at least, that's what Adrian believed was happening.

Because in truth, Adrian was not petrified; he was frozen in ice and still within Gus's mind-scape, with the boy himself watching from a short distance, panting and wiping away the slight nose bleed he'd given himself with his complex illusions.

"Phew… the plan actually worked. I've never pulled off a show that complex, especially by myself!" Gus sighed, feeling a slight headache at the back of his brain. Emmiline, still clutched in his hand, turned back into animal mode and sat on Gus's shoulder to nuzzle with him and give her compliments for a plan well executed.

"Thanks Emmie, but I couldn't have done it without you!" Gus replied, and he meant that honestly.

His performance had begun just before he'd first knocked Adrian's Amplifying Mirror out of his hands; Gus had secretly switched the real Emmiline out for a replica made of ice, which he'd covered in an illusion so Adrian would assume it was real. Then when he managed to knock the mirror out of Adrian's hand, the real Emmiline (camouflaged so she couldn't be seen) scurried over and grabbed the real mirror whilst replacing it with an ice replica Gus had already made. She'd then slipped it to Gus, who'd used its power along with the Power Glyph boost he'd given himself to take full control over the false mind-scape Adrian had created and blended with his own.

Gus had then cast a powerful illusion to make Adrian think the world was still as he expected it to be, when in reality Gus had erased the false mind-scape, leaving them all in just his true mind-scape, under Gus's total control. From there, he could have done anything he wanted; he had as much control over it as Adrian did over his false version, but Gus wanted to get some justice for the trauma Adrian had inflicted on everyone when he'd forced them into reliving their worst memories, and he was also a true showman; he wanted to defeat Adrian with true illusions, not the pseudo-world altering powers Adrian had used to mess with Gus at the beginning of their fight.

So Gus had created an ice and water doll of himself for Adrian to fight in that final clash, and even allowed Adrian's final "spells" to work against it, leading to the doll's "defeat". He'd been sure to make Adrian cold enough that he wouldn't notice how icy everything felt as he picked up the fake Amplifier or touched the dolls Gus made, and when Adrian tried to dispel his own false mind-scape and leave Gus's mind entirely, Gus had created a large flash with his illusions and replaced the world around Adrian with a copy of the Glandus roof, complete with a real ice pole to climb down to a deeper layer of Gus's mind-scape, where a vision of the Paranoratorium awaited with more ice dolls to represent the others trapped in their bad memories. From there, it was just a matter of adding new illusions; letting Adrian "summon" his Sigil Branding Glove (which was another construct of ice and water) and brand the ice dolls, letting him throw open the ice doors Gus created to enter the other Paranoratorium illusion, and changing the illusion into the stagnant grove when he tried to use his fake Amplifier. The stone remains had been ice sculptures Gus had crafted, the burning people had all been illusions covering ice dolls, and even the smells of stagnation and burning had been olfactory illusions Gus crafted with water vapour in the air, before freezing the man solid to simulate petrification.

It had all been illusions and tricks Gus could largely pull off in the real world (so long as he had Adrian's Amplifying Mirror and a real Power Glyph), so Gus felt like he'd won the battle like a true Illusionist! Though pulling off so many complex spells and illusions within his own mind had been difficult and strained his brain a little, Gus felt it was worth it!

"Let's get out of here. Adrian is beaten, but we still need to free everyone trapped in their memories and finish driving the Covens out of Glandus!" Gus declared, getting an affirmative chirp from Emmiline. Raising the Amplifying Mirror into the air, Gus drew a spell circle with it and sent their consciousnesses back to the real world.

Gus's eyes flew open and he found himself back on the rooftop of Glandus. Adrian was still stood opposite him, and for a brief moment the Amplifying Mirror was still floating between them, shooting beams at their foreheads. The beams stopped and the mirror almost fell to the ground, but Emmiline caught it with her tongue and pulled it back to Gus, who felt a tiny rush of power from inside it.

"Wow… so this is the real thing's power. No wonder Vernworth was such a pain!" Gus muttered, before shaking that thought off and immediately raising the mirror and dispelling the memory-trapping illusion Adrian had placed on everyone.

Instantly, Lucy, Darius, Eber, and Osran snapped back to attention and looked around in terror, while the scouts (still tied up) groaned and began to mutter darkly about Adrian trapping them too.

"W-What happened?" Lucy asked weakly, getting back to her feet. She looked up at watched as Gus floated back down into the Paranoratorium on the back of Emmiline, with a whimpering and helpless Adrian thrown over the back of her staff form.

"It's a long story. Adrian trapped you all in your worst memories, then sent himself into my head and battled my Inner Self to try and destroy my mind. But I won, so it's okay now." Gus explained, hurrying over to make sure she was okay.

"You children never cease to amaze me…" Darius sighed, shaking his head ruefully. He looked down at his scroll and saw that barely any time had passed. Gus's entire battle within his mind had only lasted a few seconds in real time.

Eber got up too, still groggy from the memories, and Osran immediately summoned his flying book and rushed over to Lucy. "My girl, are you alright? I've been so worried about you!"

"I'm… well, not okay." Lucy admitted, "But I'm doing better, thanks to Gus and Hunter. I'm sorry I ran away from you, Grandpa Osran."

Osran chuckled and took her hand with one of his own, while patting the back of it with another; "Think nothing of it, my dear. I understand completely. I'm just glad you're safe." he then turned to Gus; "It seems I owe you yet again, young man."

Gus grinned; "It was nothing. Anything to help out one of my best friends!"

Lucy beamed at him, but their brief talk was interrupted when the doors to the Paranoratorium were blasted open and a few Coven Scouts came running in. They immediately froze upon seeing many of their cohorts captured, and Adrian unconscious on the floor, whimpering as his mind remained stuck in the nightmare. Facing three Coven Heads and the Emperor's defected Left Hand was far beyond their pay grade, but they pointed their spears shakily at them anyway as one reached for their Comm-Pact.

"All units, Head Witch Vernworth is down in the Paranoratorium! We need back-up!" he cried.

"You're on your own! We're being hammered on all sides! Severine and about a fifth of our own forces have defected and are helping the rebels and teachers! They're seriously mad about the spell Adrian put us all under!" came the reply from the Comm-Pact. It was clear the person talking was seriously considering defecting too.

"Well then knock out the Signal Termites and send a call to the teams infiltrating St. Epiderm and the other schools!"

"We've tried! St. Epiderm's team was crushed by the rebels already! They were lying in wait with former Head Witch Cadence! The other schools went just as bad! The CATTs won't let our people get close, and the townspeople are starting to get mad! They think we're the extremists from the rumours!"

"You kinda are!" Gus pointed out.

The Coven Scout with the Comm-pact immediately hung up, knowing he was getting nowhere. Instead he looked to his comrades and nodded ominously, before launching a suicidal charge at the rebel leaders. Darius and Eber were unamused and swiftly knocked most of them aside like they were nothing, but this attack proved to be a cover; one of the more unassuming scouts had snuck over to the tied up ones and freed them, whereupon they immediately grabbed the unconscious Adrian and made a break for it, leaving their rescuers behind. Darius and Eber immediately gave chase, leaving Gus, Lucy, and Osran behind; the children too tired to help and Osran too old to be running around.

Instead the trio tied up the scouts that had been left behind with scraps of their cloaks, before leaving them under the watch of one of Osran's spirits and exiting the Paranoratorium. They made their way out of the school, and as they went they found the remnants of other battles all over the place; groups of CATTs, teachers, older Glandus students, and even Coven Defectors (who'd shed their masks) were rounding up defeated scouts and illusionists and either tying them up or marching them to the school gym, where they'd remain until more CATTs arrived to take the prisoners away. In the courtyard outside the school, Gus and Lucy were met by both good news and bad news. The bad news was that the fleeing scouts had sacrificed more of their members to Darius and Eber in order to slow them down, allowing Adrian and his rescuers to board their waiting airship and fly away. A CATTs airship was in pursuit, but since they weren't far from Manubrium and Adrian's ship had a head start, it was unlikely they'd catch him in time.

The good news was that the Emperor's scheme had been a total failure; Principal Keyes, the Glandus school nurse, Hunter, and Matt were all stood together discussing it with Darius and Eber, both of whom were flanking Hunter. Darius had his arm around the boy's shoulder and Eber had actually climbed up to sit on Hunter's other shoulder. Gus, Lucy, and Osran headed over to them, and Hunter immediately hugged Lucy.

"You're okay! Thank goodness! Adrian didn't hurt you, right!?" Hunter asked, looking Lucy over.

"I'm fine, Hunter. I got caught up in that memory illusion, but it sounds like everyone did." Lucy replied, smiling at her brother, who'd definitely perked up since last she'd seen him.

"Indeed. The school counsellor is going to have their hands full for the next few weeks…" Principal Keyes griped, having spent far too much time comforting his crying students today. He looked utterly exhausted and furious; something he shared with his fellow teachers.

"I can recommend a great therapist!" Steve said, coming over to report to Darius; "All students and staff are accounted for, and no one was branded. It looked like only the Scout Captain and Adrian had functioning gloves, and Matt took out one while Gus took out the other."

The pride in the man's voice was unmistakeable, and he was quick to ruffle Matt's hair. Matt beamed at the praise, and Bria (who was sticking close to his side and holding Pebbles) looked almost awestruck by the boy. Gus wondered what the story with her and Matt was, and opted to ask about it later.

"How is the clean up going?" Osran asked.

Steve shrugged; "The lower floors of the school are in bad shape, but nothing a few days of Construction work won't fix. About 20% of Adrian's forces that came here have defected too, and helped capture some of their former co-workers. We've captured another 15%, but the remaining 65% got away. Most ran as soon as Adrian's spell was lifted."

At that moment, a female demon in a Scout Uniform (sans mask and hood) came over to address Gus. She has a vaguely reptilian head with orange skin, yellow eyes with black sclera, two large horns on her head (similar to King's) and small spikes running up the sides of her neck.

"Hello, Mr…?" she began.

"Gus. Gus Porter." he answered, "Do I know you…?"

"You've talked to me twice now. You stood up for me when Adrian was being a jerk." the lady replied.

Gus's eyes widened; now he recognised her voice! "Severine!"

She smiled; "That's me! I wanted to thank you for being nice to me even when I was here to do something bad… Honestly, I never should have agreed to join the EC reserves. I was so much happier in the Tiny Cat Coven!"

"EC reserves?" Gus questioning, looking to Lucy.

"They're a group of people who were recruited into the Emperor's Coven but didn't actually want to join it. But Belos didn't want to waste their skills or let it be known that people didn't want to join his coven, so he made the reserves. Recruits joined that instead and were given the EC sigil, then told they could go and join any other coven they wanted without needing a new sigil. But in return, they could be called into service when needed." Lucy explained. The reserves were a small group of only about 200 people, and Lucy would wager her lyre that most of the defectors today were from that group.

"Huh." Gus hummed, before grinning; "Happy to help! If you want, I'll put in a good word for you with Luz and the others, and you can join the CATTs! Only if you want though; we don't force people to join like some groups do."

Severine beamed; "I'd like that! Steve already told me and the others about the oaths, and most of us are willing."

With that, Severine happily hurried off to gather up the rest of the defectors so they could begin preparing to fly back to Bonesborough to join the CATTs. At the same time, Principal Keyes and the Glandus teachers were doing another head count to make sure all students were present and accounted for, while the CATTs took the role of actually corralling their prisoners onto the airships that would take them back to Bonesborough too. Some of the CATTs would remain to help the Glandus staff explain the situation to the townspeople and form a new militia like the one in Bonesborough, so the people of Pancrea City could protect themselves without the need for the Covens. Considering the city's reputation, Gus and Matt were confident they'd be able to handle it pretty easily. Osran also contacted the other teams at Hexside, St. Epiderm, and the smaller schools, and confirmed that none of the Coven Scouts sent to those locations had even breached the building; the smaller schools were warned about the plot, and while they hadn't believed that Belos and the EC was directly behind it, they had believed that the CATTs were helping and the Coven Scouts who'd arrived to brand their students were villains… albeit they assumed they were extremists in disguise or acting against the Emperor's wishes. St. Epiderm had been the only other major attack, with the brunt of the forces not at Glandus attacking it… only for them to be easily repelled by the CATTs, with some subtle assistance from Healer Dorothea's Combat Healers (the replacement Healing Coven Head was too frightened to act overtly, but she'd still disapproved of Belos' plan). And of course, to the surprise of no one, Hexside hadn't even been approached, and Eda and Lilith had instead been dragged into being tutors for the day, much to the joy of the students.

All in all, while it hadn't been easy, the CATTs had won the day and with the Day of Unity only a week away, they suspected they'd also won the last fight before the definitive final battle.

But with their job now done, it was time for Gus, Matt, Darius, Eber, and Osran to return home with the rest of the CATTs, which meant goodbyes were in order.

The first ones to say goodbye were the Glandus kids led by Ukla, who'd approached Gus and Matt in particular,

"Well, it looks like we've got to thank you. It's kinda embarrassing that we all needed saving by a couple of Hexside kids, but we're still grateful." Ukla said.

"Yeah. I guess we were wrong about Illusionists. Turns out you guys can be really freaking scary!" one boy shuddered, being joined by many of his peers. Getting forced to relive all your worst memories via Illusion Magic was a hell of a wake-up call about the powers of Illusionists, and the knowledge that Matt had used it to beat up a whole squad of scouts on his own, and Gus had used it to beat Adrian, a full Coven Head (something that had been quickly spread around by the CATTs) was even more incentive!

"It was pretty cool though. And to think we thought you were just a loser drop-out!" another kid said to Matt.

"It's weird to think a kid that had to drop-out could come back and save us all. Still, I gotta admit it was cool. So thanks, Matt." a female horse demon said gratefully.

Both boys received quite a few thanks for their assistance, making Gus give a little showman's bow while Matt soaked in the praise. It was gratifying to be adored for saving the same people who'd once tormented him… it made Matt realise how far he'd come!

That was exemplified even further when Bria stepped up to him, looking a little nervous. "So… you're leaving now? You've got a big fight with the Emperor coming up, right?"

"That's right." Matt agreed, trying to appear as cool as he could; "Luz and the rest of the Hexsquad are gonna need me. But before I go, how about we swap contact info? I'd like us to try and be real friends."

Bria blushed and nodded, summoning her scroll. "I'd like that." she said, and the two swapped contact info.

Once Matt saw Bria's name on his contact page, he smiled suavely and said; "Great! Now if anyone dares to pick on you again, you can call your buddy "Man" Tholomule to come protect you! No one will bully you on my watch!"

To the amusement of Gus, the shock of Matt, and the horror of the watching Glandus students, Bria growled and punched him hard in the arm, making him yelp and rub it. "Ow! What the heck was that for!?"

"That was for treating me like some little Damsel in Distress! I can stand up for myself!" Bria snapped, flushing red with embarrassment. Her cheeks then faded to a rosy blush as she leaned forward and gave Matt a peck on the cheek; "B-But that was for saving me earlier… you won't have to do it again though!" and with that, Bria turned and ran off, leaving a stunned Matt behind.

Gus snorted in amusement as he saw the faces of the other Glandus students; seeing Bria punch their saviour with no reprisals had probably done more to stop her being bullied than anything else Matt could do! Meanwhile Matt was torn between rubbing his shoulder and touching his cheek, his face an amusing blend of blushing shock and confusion.

"She punched me and then kissed me… is that a normal girl thing!?" he asked, terribly confused.

"That's a "Girl who desperately needs therapy" thing." Darius helpfully answered.

"I'm pretty sure everyone attending Glandus needs therapy now…" Ukla said with a deadpan look, before saying to Matt; "Don't worry about Bria. I doubt she needs it after you gave her a wake up call, but I'll look out for her."

"Thanks, Ukla." Matt replied.

"We need to thank you too, Ukla." Hunter said as Lucy nodded beside him; "You gave us a helping hand when we were in a tight spot. We're really grateful."

The girl waved them off; "You helped save my school, so I'll call it even. What are you two going to do now? Belos will know you were here…"

Hunter and Lucy both nodded grimly, as Darius put his hands on their shoulders; "You two can come with us; back to Bonesborough and the CATTs. We'll protect you."

"Are you asking us to join the rebels?" Hunter asked with wide eyes; "W-Would we even be allowed after everything we've done?"

Darius nodded; "No one was happy to hear how Belos treated you. The others will welcome you with open arms, even if only as another refugee from the Emperor. All the CATTs leaders are in agreement with this, and the rest of our forces have already been informed that this was our intention. You'll have no trouble. Edalyn has offered you room and board at the Owl House, and myself, Eber, Osran, the Blights, the Porters, and the Parks have all offered to house you both too, should you wish it."

Hunter and Lucy were shocked; not only had their former Coven Head colleagues offered to take them in, but the families of Luz, Amity, Willow, and Gus had too!?

"B-But we did so much to hurt you all! The Selkidomus-" Hunter began, only to be cut off by Eber.

"Selkidomus is fine; not hurt at all. Mission worked out good, revealed fun boon for CATTs!" she barked, skirting around the mention of Digale Island due to her oath.

"We fought the Owl Lady before the Blight Ball!" Lucy pointed out.

"Well technically, Eda just chased you guys around. She started that fight." Matt replied.

"The Ash Moth Desert! We caused that whole mess!" Hunter reminded them.

"And then spared the Palismen despite having a moment of advantage." Osran retorted; "And before you mention them; you helped save Luz's life and fought alongside King and Amity on Titan Trapper Island, stood by her when Hettie attacked before Coven Day, tried to warn the Emerald Entrails about the prize of HECK and risked yourselves to rescue them when they won, AND chose to help the Clawthornes at Dell's forest. And that's not even mentioning the help you gave today."

Hunter and Lucy were completely speechless as Gus said; "Stop trying to find reasons for us to hate you. We're your friends! Let us be good friends to you and give you a place to crash. You don't even need to join! Just swear not to betray us and we'll set you up with a safe place to live! No strings attached; I'll swear an oath of my own to prove it!"

"I-I don't know what to say…" Hunter uttered, looking choked up.

"I know it's hard. You've lived your whole life believing you had to work yourself to the bone to be worthy of some common decency. But for pity's sake, let us take care of you. You both deserve that much." Darius implored.

The two siblings stared at the man, as Eber gently took Hunter's hand and Osran took Lucy's, while Darius put his hands on both their shoulders once more. Faced with their earnest concern, it was hard for the two to say no… so they both thought about it seriously. They thought about what they wanted to do, and what they wanted to say… and what the consequences of those actions would be. Finally, they each came to a decision, independent of each other.

"I… I'll join the CATTs." Hunter agreed, feeling resolute; "Belos needs to be stopped. He needs to pay for what he's done and be defeated before he can destroy this world. I may just be a Grimwalker… but I'm still a person. Gus taught us that, and you've all reinforced it. I'll fight for the world we all share. I'll come with you to Bonesborough."

Darius and Eber both beamed, while Gus grinned and offered his hand for a high-five (which confused Hunter for a moment, though the boy smiled when he eventually figured it out and returned the gesture). Flapjack tweeted proudly from Hunter's shoulder, and playfully preened the boy's long lock of hair.

However, seeing everyone's pleased reactions made Lucy feel guilty as she gave her own answer.

"I-I'm not ready." Lucy confessed, looking downcast; "I can't do it. I can't face Belos… I can't face Luz! The man who made me and the girl I was supposed to be… I can't bring myself to face them while I still don't know who I really am…? I don't feel like "Lucy" but I don't feel like "Luz" either. I don't know if I want to be either of those people… but I do know that I don't want to fight without knowing who and what I really am. I would just get in the way, and Belos would be able to use me for his Day of Unity plan."

The others were disappointed, but they could understand her reasoning. Lucy's entire sense of self had been shaken, and while Gus had helped her realise that she could choose for herself who she was, she still hadn't actually made that choice. She needed time, and she didn't think she could find herself if she was so close to Luz… The Dark Angel wanted to see who she was away from Luz's light, and out of her shadow. And another part of her, buried deep, wanted to see who she'd become when she didn't have her brother to eternally lean on. She wanted to grow up a little and become a true and equal partner, rather than the little sister Hunter always needed to protect.

"We understand, though that does pose a minor problem. All the places we have for you to stay are in pretty close proximity to Luz, being in Bonesborough and the homes of her friends." Osran frowned. His own home was on Digale Island and even if Lucy could activate the Teleportation Circle, it would still require her to go through the Owl House and potentially run into Luz.

That was when Steve chimed in. He'd been stood off to the side with Matt and Pebbles through most of the conversation, playfully teasing his brother about Bria's kiss. But now he had something to say.

"My Mom operates a safehouse for the CATTs in Palm Stings. It's a nice, warm, relaxing place for Lucy to stay and since the Blight Operation, it's been pretty empty. I'm sure Mom would be glad to take Lucy in for a while." Steve suggested.

The rest of the group exchanged looks, then Osran asked Lucy; "Does that sound okay to you?"

"That would be wonderful. It'll be nice to go to Palm Stings and not need to wear that awful hot uniform." Lucy smiled, trying to hide that she really was apprehensive about leaving her brother.

Hunter could sense her true feelings and hugged her; "Just say the word, and I'll stay with you. You know that, right?"

Lucy nodded, then smiled sadly; "You're a hero, Hunter. Luz, Willow, and Gus all need you in the fight with Belos. I… I can't face him, but you're brave and strong. You can get justice for the both of us, and until I can sort my feelings out, I'm useless to you anyway."

"You're never useless. But I understand… I'll see you again after the Day of Unity." Hunter said, forcing back tears as he kissed her forehead and held her tightly. Waffles tweeted and cuddled with Flapjack briefly, before switching to cuddling Emmiline as Lucy moved to hug Gus.

"Please protect my big brother… and tell Luz that I'm sorry." Lucy whispered.

"I will, I swear." Gus whispered back, his newly acquired Amplifying Mirror now tied around his neck.

"Thank you, and please be safe. I-I want to spend more time with you later. I want you to see the person I am once I've finally found myself." Lucy whispered, before giving him a soft kiss on the cheek.

Unlike at Dell's Palistrom Grove, there was no hasty retreat or awkwardness after the kiss; just Gus's steely blue eyes and Lucy's lavender ones. Innumerable emotions passed between the two, before they finally separated, their cheeks painted with a faint blush.

After that, Lucy said a heartfelt goodbye to her Grandpa Osran, and prayed for his continued good health, before sharing a more casual farewell with Matt, Darius, and Eber; all of whom wished her well. From there, the CATTs all boarded their airships and Steve hitched a ride with Lucy on the back of Waffles' staff so he could personally introduce her to his Mom. The two groups gave each other one more wave goodbye, knowing they wouldn't see one another again until the Day of Unity and beyond. Lucy and Steve then shot off to the north east while the CATTs mini fleet of airships began flying north west.

The Sigil Branding Scheme had failed and the Isles' children were safe. Matt had reconciled somewhat with Bria and left the door open for a real friendship between them, as well as getting the respect of his old classmates. Gus had defeated Adrian in a battle of illusions, claimed his mirror, and helped Hunter and the girl currently known as Lucy take the next step forward in their lives. And Hunter and his sister had found a new purpose, even if they were apart for the time being. It had been a trying day, but it was nothing compared to what waited on the horizon.

As the sun reached its zenith in the sky and noon came, the CATTs realised that they were precisely one week away from the fated Day of Unity.

One week… until the world as they knew it came to an end.