Kriegstag 3, Fifth Lunar Disappearance, 50 CE | The Owl House

Running over to the downed bird tube, Luz knelt down and checked how Hooty was doing. His eyes were closed, but peeling back an eyelid revealed the eye itself to be shooting all around, in short random movements. That was a good sign. Hooty wasn't dead, just asleep.

Letting out a small sigh of relief, Luz took stock of her current situation. Right now, the force field surrounding the house was still intact, which meant that the mystery demon that attacked Hooty had either passed through the shield without breaking it (Unlikely, Luz thought, but she had to consider all the possibilities.) or the creature was already inside when the shield was put up, which was an infinitely scarier thought.

The demon that had just knocked out Hooty was inside the house when the shield was put up.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Luz turned to King.

"King, random question, but has this house ever had a... demon infestation?"

"No."

"Then how do we explain the thing that just KO'd Hooty?"

Suddenly, a mirror flew through the eye-shaped window that was in Eda's room, and a loud screech could be heard from the freshly-broken hole in the wall. Falling to the ground, Luz and King barely scrambled out of the way before the mirror smashed into a thousand tiny pieces on the ground.

"Well, now we know where the intruder is," King quipped.

Ducking inside the house and pulling King along with, Luz finally got a chance to get a good look at the current state of the living room.

To say it was a total mess would be a gross understatement. The couch that Luz had propped Eda's feet up on had been torn to shreds, presumably by the intruding demon, and Eda herself was nowhere to be seen. A variety of feathers and other things that were used as stuffing for the couch's upholstery were scattered all around the room. Some of the feathers looked interesting, though. Luz knew that the down feathers that were in the couch were pure white, but some of the feathers on the ground were a much darker grey color and were also significantly larger.

Luz quietly walked over and picked up one of the gray feathers. It looked like it more belonged on an eagle or a hawk then in a couch. This had to have been dropped by the demon that was currently in Eda's room.

Motioning King to come over, Luz crouched down and started discussing her findings.

"Alright, so this feather probably came from the demon upstairs. Do you know about any feathery demons that would kidnap people?"

King thought for a second before responding. "No, but there might be something that could help in my demon book... which is upstairs, where the thing that took Eda is."

"Okay, so the demon book is a bust. Let me think," Luz said, trying to remember those little factoids that Mami had told her while she was working on birds at the clinic.

"See how his eyes are so close to each other, mija? That indicates that he's a predator. If his eyes were spaced out really far, then that would mean he was more used to being prey for other larger birds." Camila had said to the then 8-year-old Luz, who was more focused on petting the red-tailed hawk than.

Luz was about 99% sure that the demon that attacked Hooty was a predator.

"Ok, so this thing is about a foot taller than me, a quadruped, has giant black eyes, and is probably some kind of bird-demon."

"It has black eyes?" King asked.

"Yeah, why?" Luz asked back, trying to see where King was going with this.

"If I remember right, demons with big black eyes are usually really susceptible to sudden bright lights."

All of the sudden, a roar could be heard coming from Eda's room, and heavy footsteps stomped along the floor, sending dust and cobwebs falling to the ground on the level below.

"Well," Luz said, "If you can't tell, we don't have any lights at our disposal."

"What about that spell Eda was showing you?"

"I don't have a bile sac, remember? Plus, if I tried to morph one, I'd probably, like, catch on fire or something."

Luz got out her phone and pulled up the video of Eda casting the spell, pausing it right when she completed the spell circle. Mimicking the witch's actions, Luz spun her finger around to no effect.

"See? Nothing," Luz said for emphasis, sliding her phone in her back pocket and taking a seat on the hard wooden floor.

A CRUNCH could be heard emanating from where Luz just sat down.

Closing her eyes tightly, Luz let out a small, "Dang it," and pulled her phone back out to inspect the damage she had just caused in her foolishness.

While the glass no had a large crack going down the center, Luz was grateful for her screen protector doing its job and keeping the phone still operable. Although, the picture Luz saw on her screen now was different than the one she had seen just a few seconds prior.

Now, in the middle of Eda's circle, there was a pattern. Luz blinked, making sure the design was still there and she wasn't imagining things again.

Yup. It was real.

Right in the middle of Eda's spell circle was what looked like some kind of alchemy rune or something. It was composed of a circle inscribed with a triangle that was bisected by a line emanating from the top of the triangle that connected straight down to the circle. The bisecting line had two small slashes on it, both of them going up and to the right. Atop the triangle, but still within the circle, was a small circle that was topped by an even smaller triangle.

It looks like a weird bow and arrow in a circle, Luz thought.

Suddenly, Luz remembered what Bump had said about witches of yesteryear using a different method to cast spells.

Careful to not damage her phone anymore, Luz quickly but gently placed her phone on the ground.

Scrambling into the kitchen, Luz tried to find a pen and something she could write on. She found a pen in a drawer by the sink, but she couldn't find a real piece of paper, so she opted to grab a napkin instead. That would be a good substitute for what she was about to try.

Running back into the living room and taking her place in front of her phone, Luz laid the napkin on top of the screen and began tracing the design, thankful that she could see it through the napkin.

Starting with the outer circle, Luz made sure to get her recreation as close to the original as she could. After wishing she had a compass, she moved onto the big triangle and the bisecting line with its two little friends. Finally, Luz finished by drawing the small circle and the triangle it wore for a hat.

Confident in her drawing skills (Thanks, years of creating Hecazura fanart!), Luz put the pen down and admired her handiwork.

Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, Luz waited for the magic to happen. When nothing happened, she took a peek and saw the napkin still sitting there, being incredibly non-magical.

Giving the napkin a small defeated tap, it suddenly crumpled into a ball and turned into a floating ball of light.

Luz had just done magic.

She had just done magic that didn't involve hurting people!

Gazing at the floating light, Luz's eyes were filled with wonder.

"King, I've got an idea on how to stop that demon from hurting Eda."

"Ooh, what is it?"

"I'm gonna fight it."

"Are you kidding? That thing'll kill you! How are you gonna put up a fight with that little light ball?"

"Who said that the light ball would be little? Also, how fast can you run?"

Luz had no idea if the plan would work. She'd been lucky to find a thick marker that she could use to draw on the wall, but it was a little bit harder to find a place to hide her hulking Kraugh body.

"AHH!" King screamed, peeling down the hallway at top speed, the demon that took Eda hot on his tail.

The demon ran right past Luz, somehow not noticing the giant serpentine monster she was.

Coming out of hiding, Luz staid a few paces behind the intruder. She would need a running start if she wanted to take this thing down to the ground.

Luz watched King dive, paw outstretched, barely grazing the glyph drawn onto the wall. But that was all that was needed for it to activate.

A giant bright light filled the hallway, and Luz finally got a good look at the demon. It wasn't the raptor-like appearance she had expected, looking more like an owl-bear from Creatures & Caverns. The creature let out a loud screech and reared back onto its hind feet, inadvertently turning to face Luz.

Luz took that as her signal and bullrushed the owl-thing, slamming it to the ground in a vicious tackle, the beast's head slamming against the ground with a loud THUD. Waiting for a potential response, Luz rose a clawed fist and was fully prepared to begin trading blows with the demon.

When the demon didn't move for a solid five seconds, Luz cautiously climbed off its stomach. Quickly demorphing back into her human form, Luz waved her hand in front of the unconscious intruder's face.

"Woah, it's out cold. Wait, we forgot about Eda!"

Running into Eda's room, Luz looked for any sign of the witch. Scanning the room, Eda was nowhere to be seen. Luz felt her eyes once again drawn to the nestside table. It had been toppled over, and a drawer that Luz hadn't noticed before had fallen open, spilling its contents on the ground. The contents: more of those glowing orange elixirs, although a few of them had small tags attached to them.

Carefully stepping over the fallen debris and general pandemonium that had occurred, Luz picked up one of the tagged elixirs and looked at the tiny slip of paper.

An elixir a day keeps the curse at bay, it read, accompanied by a small pictogram of a red demon skull.

Luz slowly put two and two together. Eda drank these elixirs every day. The elixirs that were made to stop one from succumbing to a curse and, presumably, turning into a beast. The only way the "intruder" could have been inside the house was if it could get through the shield. Eda had walked through the shield after she put it up.

Luz had just knocked out Eda.

Holding onto the elixir, Luz ran back into the hallway and knelt down next to the demon Eda's head and gently opened her mouth.

"Luz, what are you doing?"

"This is Eda, King," was all Luz said, as she pulled the cork out of the elixir and slightly raised Eda's head, slowly pouring the liquid down the witch's throat.

As more and more of the elixir entered Eda's system, the feathers began to recede and her body slowly shrunk from that of the Owl Beast to the Owl Lady. Luz was finally not the one on the receiving end of a magical transformation, she realized, with a small laugh.

Once the elixir was all out and Eda was back to normal, Luz and King teamed up to carry Eda's still-unconscious downstairs and lay her as comfortably as possible on the destroyed-but-still-pretty-comfy couch.

As the night progressed, Luz and King waited for Eda to finally awaken. While doing so, though, Luz found an old little sketchpad and began drawing copy after copy of that symbol she had seen on her phone. With each drawing, tap, and subsequent ball of light, Luz's eyes grew wider and wider. This had to be the magic casting method that Bump was talking about. Luz knew that this wasn't all there was though. There had to be more glyphs out there. Yeah, that was a good word for these things. Glyphs.

"Ugh, my head is killing me," Eda proclaimed, rolling off the couch and faceplanting onto the floor.

"What time is it?" She asked, slowly getting up to her feet.

"That doesn't matter, look!" King said, pulling at the Owl Lady's pant leg and pointing at Luz.

"How is she doing that?" Eda asked, amazed at the sight.

"No idea, she just draws these symbols on the paper and taps it and boom, magic!" King exclaimed.

"Incredible. Hey kid, come over here!" Eda called out to Luz.

Luz quickly got up and ran over and wrapped Eda into a hug.

"I'm so sorry, Miss Eda. I had no idea it was you, I swear. I would never mean to hurt you. Please don't be m–"

"Kid, kid, it's fine. I'm okay. Just have a lil headache, that's all."

"That's such a relief. You're head banged against the floor pretty hard."

"I. Am. Fine." Eda disengaged from the hug before continuing, "Look, I haven't exactly been honest with the two of you. Back when I was a teen, I got cursed. I've got no idea who did it, but I don't care anymore. I've got my elixir system, and as long as nobody messes with it, we'll all be fine and dandy. If someone does jank it up, though, well... I guess you guys can tell why they call me the Owl Lady."

Luz pulled Eda back into another hug, but this time, Eda begrudgingly reciprocated the gesture.

"What! I don't get a hug? This is blasphemy of the highest order!" King said.

Luz quickly scooped King into the hug as well, squeezing tight. King tried to squirm back out, but failed and accepted defeat.

"HOOT HOOT! I'M STILL OUT HERE! IT'S COLD, HOOT HOOT!"