Chapter 50

"And then..." Luz began, "he tried to get me to join him by... Offering to... And he didn't say it in so many words but I'm pretty sure... Offering to..." Luz looked down at the small demon sitting on her lap to provide emotional support and was mindful of his age. "To spare Amity and let me keep her as a... pet."

"A pet?" Lilith asked.

The rebels had to leave quickly after the incident but promised to be in touch and that they had a plan. Eda had sent a crow to hound Lilith until she picked up and Lilith came over as soon as she could.

"You know... a pet?" Luz emphasized.

Eda rolled her eyes and whispered something in Lilith's ear.

"He dies," Lilith said.

"There's a line," Luz deadpanned. She'd been angry in the moment but now having her relationship with Amity boiled down to just a vice to tempt her with left her feeling disgusted and vaguely unclean.

Hunter ended up crashing after his panic attack but after a couple of hours of fitful sleep that Luz tried not to be jealous that he'd even managed to get up, whipped out his scroll, took a grim-faced selfie holding up his bare forearm, and started texting. He was apparently done now, as he dismissed his scroll. "Okay, I revealed my real identity to the Emerald Entrails who didn't know, provided as much proof as I could of my identity, and warned them about the sigils so... They're all going to tell as many people as they can."

"So speaking of sigils," Luz began, "where's my palistrom?" She had a decent bit left. If she absorbed it all at once, that would... Well, it'd hurt like a son of a gun but it'd probably burn out the sigil, right?

Eda grimaced. "We... Had to use it all as a power source for the potion to get you and Blondie back."

"Oh," was Luz's only acknowledgment. She then looked down at her arm, still unbandaged from last night. Maybe it was just her imagination but... The itching was a lot worse. "Okay, I need a heavy-duty pain potion and a pairing knife."

"Luz, you are not cutting off your sigil," Eda insisted.

"It wouldn't work, anyway," Hunter added. "The actual sigil is only the surface level of the spell. That thing reaches down to the bone and spreads through your body via the circulatory system. You'd need to take off your arm at the elbow for that to work, and, well... Healing magic can't regrow limbs."

Luz then looked at Eda and Lilith. "So, about removing limbs..."

"You're not using the pain-sharing spell to take part of the curse, either," Eda deadpanned. "Look, Raine and co have a plan, no one's gonna die, just... If Bonehead knows for sure you've been to the past and knows you won't sign up with him, then... That's probably why he's been going softball with us. We need to get you kids out of here."

"No," Luz denied. "I have to help, I have to stop him."

"Luz," Eda began gently, "come on. You promised not to get mixed up in this stuff, remember?"

"Unless there was a really good reason," Luz countered, "and there is, I have to..."

"Why?" Lilith asked.

"Because, because..."

"Because you're both human?" Lilith questioned.

"What, no!" Luz replied. "It's not, it's... I'm... After everything I took in with my symbiote powers, and... The palisman souls... I kina accidentally took them in and they gave me all their knowledge of magic, so... I didn't really earn it but I'm the strongest witch on the Boiling Isles. And, I already beat him in a fight once, so like... If anyone can beat him it's me, so..."

"Luz, we don't need to 'beat' him," Lilith said. "There's been unrest and distrust among the people ever since the petrification ceremony. According to Darius, even much of the Emperor's Coven now feels like the day of Unity might not be so good. The Coven Heads are only still involved because Belos has them convinced that its true purpose is to merge the Demon and Human Realms and that they'll all be Royalty in the new world and even they don't know that killing everyone is the plan."

"But—"

"It'll be centuries before there's another eclipse like this one," Lilith continued. "If we expose his plans and stop the draining spell, that's it. People will turn on him and he won't get a second chance."

"Lilith, the palismen got some of their magic knowledge from Belos. If... Once the draining spell starts the only way to stop it would be to move the moon. Or destroy it," Luz declared. "He only has one shot... But so do we, and..."

"Luz, that's important information and we'll be sure to pass it along, but this isn't your responsibility," Lilith insisted.

"Yes, it is," Luz insisted.

"Why?"

"Because I helped him!" Luz admitted. "He... He learned the draining spell from The Collector. He never would have gotten it—"

"Without us," Lilith interrupted. "I fell for his manipulations just like you did, and I should have known better. I was the adult in that situation and it's not even the first time he manipulated me... Well, from my perspective at least."

"He manipulates people," Hunter added bitterly. "If it wasn't you, it would have been someone else. It's what he does. He fooled everyone for years."

"...Even me," Eda said as she got up and moved to sit next to Luz. "Lilly must have told you, how once upon a time I wanted to join the chief bootlickers. I was a rebellious little heck-raiser, but I still feel hook, line, and sinker for his propoganda and it wasn't until after I ran away from home that I started thinking about it and realized it stunk worse than my favorite appleblood." Eda hugged Luz. "This isn't your fault. All you falling for his crud back in the past means is that you're one of us."

King stood up and turned to face Luz. "Okay, now let's ask ourselves what would have happened if... If you'd never come to the demon realm. Yeah, that works... You can't use the time pools to go back because you're not there. Chances are, he'd have found someone else to help him get this mirror. But that person wouldn't be as awesome as you and Aunt Lilith, so they'd have died horribly," King said cheerfully. "But... Eda would either be petrified or the Owl Beast for good by now without you. Willow'd still be struggling with abominations instead of kicking all kinds of butt with plants. Amity would still be a bully."

"I'd still be the Golden Guard, following orders without question," Hunter added. "Or dead, because I failed him or he thought my loyalty was in question."

"I'd either still be a pointless bootlicker, or I'd have shared Edalyn's fate," Lilith concluded. "And the special privileges that Belos gave me... That's clearly because he remembered that I didn't have a coven sigil when we met in the past. So without you, I'd have been branded and Mike would have been eaten."

"So who cares if you helped him?" King finished. "Even if this was your fault, well, it's also your fault that there are people here who know how to stop it."

Luz wasn't convinced, but it was a nice thought. "Thanks. Um..." She searched her pockets. "Has anyone seen my phone? I should... Call my Mom. She needs to know."

Hooty stretched into the room and coughed, depositing Luz's phone and a black letter on the coffee table. Luz stared at him as if to ask why, but he just curved as to give the impression of a shrug.

She took the phone while King took the letter and made the call. It took a couple of rings before her mother answered.

"Mija?" She started sleepily. "It's pretty early."

"I know Mom, but... Something came up. Uh, remember, a little bit ago, I mentioned going back in time and learning that Philip was lying in his diary to make himself look better and was, in fact, just as bad if not worse than you'd expect one of the Gravesfield witch hunters to be?"

"...Yes. Luz, are you alright?"

"No," she said bluntly. "I'm not. He's... He's Belos. The Evil Emperor of the Boiling Isles, and... He's going to kill everyone."

Luz's Mom was clearly awake now.

"What? How?"

"There's this Eclipse... A week from today, in the evening. And he's going to use it to cast a draining spell on everyone, that'll suck out their magic through the coven sigils and when they run out of magic it'll take their life next. He's plotting a total genocide."

Her mother didn't respond for nearly a minute. "Luz, don't, don't you have one of those coven sigils?"

Luz swallowed. "Yes. And I'm scared to death," she admitted. "I haven't been this scared since we found out that Papi was sick but... It's not my first apocalypse. We have a plan... But..."

"I don't like buts here, Mija."

"But we only have one shot to save everyone," Luz continued. "So I need you to do me a favor."

"What?"

"I need you to call Doctor Strange, and ask him if he can put a rush on getting the portal from the Earth side," Luz said. "Because... The draining spell doesn't work across dimensional barriers. If we can get the portal open then we can maybe evacuate at least a few people..."

"Or send in reinforcements," her Mom suggested. "Mr. Logan did say to call if there was anything they could do for us and stopping a genocidal lunatic sounds like something the X-Men would want to help with on principle."

"I'm pretty sure that's a Tuesday for them, but... Yeah, yeah! And... I think this qualifies as a major emergency for the Avengers hotline and... Yeah, do it. And um... If—"

Luz was cut off by a sound she hadn't heard in a while. The sound of the portal door snapping to life.

She wasn't the only one who turned in time to see it float in the air and unfold. This could only mean one thing: Belos had fixed the key.

"And um, give Vee my love," Luz said as quickly as she could, "tell Masha that Philip murdered Caleb and their theory that Philip got mad when Caleb got a hot witch GF is right, and if the plan fails I want you to know that I lo—"

The line went dead at the exact second that the portal vanished.

Luz swallowed. "So um... Things just went from bad to worse, but... Maybe Doctor Strange will get there later today, find the portal open, and beat up Belos for us?" She started laughing nervously.

"Yeah, hopefully," Eda said while clearly playing along to try and reassure Luz, which she appreciated. "But we can't really count on that, so... Chances are he's going to be sending people to come capture us and we need to get out of here. And, as much as I hate to say it, we might have to split up because a part of six will attract too much attention and the town is swarming with Guards. I'll call the BATTs to figure something out and—"

"We could go here," King said while holding up a map. While Luz had been talking to her Mom, he'd been reading the letter. "This Letter that Hooty ate instead of telling me about, it's... From some people who saw my stream! They say they know about my heritage and want to teach me their ways and... They're a clan of Warriors! They could help us stop Belos!"

Lilith took the map and then looked over it. She then waved Eda over and the two huddled conspiratorially for a moment before turning back.

"Alright, here's the plan," Eda declared. "Luz, you and Hunter will take Hooty and King and follow up on this lead. You're gonna need to hop a ship, but..."

"I know a captain who might take us!" Good Ole Salty, she'd worked with him on the selkidomus hunt, and... Technically, he worked for the Golden Guard, so... "Yeah, I can do that." She'd be helping solve the problem, they'd finally get some leads on King's birth family, and... "Yeah, let's do it!"

"Yeah!" King shouted.

"What do you think, Hunter?" Luz asked.

When Hunter didn't respond, Luz turned to see him staring at Hooty.

"I think you can guess how I'm voting on this plan," Hooty declared from his porta-Hooty birdhouse backpack.

"...I saw everything," Hunter whispered, and, walking around him Luz saw he was glassy-eyed. "I thought last night would be the most traumatic experience of my life. I was wrong."

"I thought that when I saw him do it, too," Luz replied. "Then he ate me... Hooty, what in the name of the Titan are you?"

"I am the oldest and most powerful bug demon on the Isles, hoot hoot," he said in his characteristically innocent tone. "I am older than the Isles themselves, born a parasite in the Titan's still-living body. I have seen everything."

"Hooty, you're scaring me," Luz replied nervously.

"That's okay, I'm scaring myself, too," Hooty replied without changing his tone. "So I'll cut it short: I'm a friendly birdworm-shaped eldritch monstrosity who will never let anything bad happen to you if I can help it because you are all my family and I love you."

"...So, are we going or not?" King asked, which slightly killed the mood but at least ended the awkwardness.