Chapter 52

King was having an absolute blast. Sure, his Dad wasn't here but he was still here among his people. Learning their ways. And it was fun. Tarak was even going to play catch with him, right after his initiation. They were on their way there now, right after Tarak got a crow call telling him it was time and... Why were Hunter and Luz flying all over Titan Trapper Island? Luz was flying around haphazardly until Hunter got her attention and pointed down to where King was standing.

Luz came in hot and landed in what she'd previously told King was a 'superhero landing,' clutching her staff and... Why was she transformed? Don't get King wrong, Luz looked really cool when she was transformed and King hardly ever got to see her like that but Luz usually only changed when there was danger.

"Luz," King asked. "What's wrong?"

"I got a message from back home," Luz said a little too confidently. The way she talked when there was something wrong but didn't want to admit that there was something wrong. "We need to get back. Now."

"Surely it can wait but half an hour?" Tarak asked. "The time of King's initiation is at hand."

All around them, even as Hunter landed, more and more Titan Trappers began crowding around them, and one, who from Tarak's descriptions was probably Bill, was setting up near the altar or shrine or whatever it was that Tarak had been leading him to. Luz turned around and saw all of them but she seemed to focus on Bill. "We just went over this!"

...That was... Luz's voice was always a little different when she was transformed. Kinda like Harpy Eda now that he thought about it. But this was something else entirely. Something dark and scary. Like if the Owl Beast just started talking all of a sudden.

"It'll take more than one witch's threats to keep me from glory when the foretold time is so close at hand," Bill replied. "Not when you'd have to fight us all to stop us."

Suddenly Tarrak grabbed King. He was a lot rougher than King would have expected but then Luz spun around and slapped Tarak hard enough to take his hexing skull off. Tarak dropped King who landed in Luz's arms and King stared up in horror at the now...

Oh. Luz didn't decapitate him. Because he wasn't a demon like King. He was a witch. Wearing a skull like King's as a helmet. Tarrak's moon-tattooed face contorted in anger.

"What? What's going on?" King asked. If... If the Titan Trappers were witches then... What was King? Why were they dressing up like whatever kind of demon he was?

Luz twirled her staff to form a large spell circle and suddenly the earth beneath their feet started to shake as stone walls shot up around them, a big area immediately around them and a narrow hall shooting off in the distance toward the teleporter thingy that had taken them to Titan Trapper Island in the first place.

These walls had separated them from the Titan Trappers, but the was enough of an opening that they could come around. Luz handed King to Hunter and a short of splotching type effect made Hooty's backpack-thingy slide off her where her cloak split open into tentacles that settled the house demon onto the teen boy's back.

"Hunter, Hooty, take King back to the ship. If I don't come out the other side right after you," she handed Hunter a stack of glyph cards, "destroy the teleporter on the other side."

"Luz, what's—"

"You can't just expect me to—"

"I promised I'd—"

"I don't know how well I can control myself right now!" Luz shouted and... King was pretty sure her mouth wasn't supposed to open that wide. Or that her fangs were supposed to be that long or... For there to be so many of them. Or that her tongue would be that long, either. "Go! I'll cover you!"

Just as she said that, some Titan Trappers managed to make their way through the opening left by Luz's hasty conjuring of the walls and Hunter dashed off with his gold light thing, holding King before mounting his staff and flying off, King looking back over Hunter's shoulders. Titan trappers saw Luz blocking the path and attacked her with spells that made King's heart skip a beat only for them to bounce off of her like... Right, when her powers fully came in while fighting Belos they fused with the Witch's Cloak Eda had knitted for Luz, most magic can't hurt her.

The Titan Trappers seemed to realize that wasn't going to work and immediately dogpiled Luz only to get thrown back as she gave out an unearthly scream and dozens of writhing tentacles exploded from her body throwing them off. The last thing King saw before Hunter got too far for him to clearly see Luz was her slamming her staff on the ground and conjuring a bunch of monster arms like Belos had used to drag him and Lilith away the day of the petrification ceremony, the arms grabbing at Titan Trappers and throwing them about.

"Hunter," King asked, "Hooty... What's going on?" King was confused and scared and...

"Well, you know how your blood test came back inconclusive... And how the blood sample was blue?" Hooty asked.

King shuddered in remembrance of the huge needle Tiny Nose had used. "Yeah."

"Look, we're not the best people to explain this to you," Hunter began, "but... Um..."

"The good news is, we know where your dad is," Hooty interrupted.

"You do!?"

"Yeah. Turns out he's closer to home than when thought," Hooty continued. "The bad news is, he's dead."

"What!?"

"Hooty, you're not helping!" Hunter shouted. "Um... You know how I spent my whole life thinking I was one thing and it turns out I'm something else? Well um, welcome to the club, Buddy."

"I don't get it," King said. If anything he was even more confused.

"You're not a Titan Trapper," Hunter explained. "You... You're not even a Demon. You're a titan, King."

"I'm a what?" King asked again. No, that was crazy. He wasn't, he couldn't be...

"A titan," Hunter repeated.

"...So my Dad is..."

"The Titan," Hunter continued. "The Boiling Isles so... You know, silver lining... If Luz is right he's not... All the way dead..." Hunter laughed incredibly awkwardly but King couldn't make himself respond.

By then they'd gotten to the... Transporter thing and used it going from Titan Trapper Island to, from what King had been told, was the clear other side of the world. The side of the Boiling Isles... King's Dad's body. His Dad had... Been right under his feet the whole time.

Hunter waited for what felt like a minute and then started planting glyph cards around the base of the thingy.

"What are you doing!?" King demanded.

"Luz said to destroy the gate if she wasn't right behind us," Hunter replied.

"Yeah, but you can't just do it!" King insisted before he tried to leap up and take the cards from Hunter.

The two boys struggled for a bit before the gate activated again and Luz fell out and face-planted on the ground next to them.

"I'm okay," she said as she pushed herself up.

"Are you?" King asked. "Luz, back there you were like... Did you get cursed?"

"What? No!" Luz insisted. "I'm fine."

"But..."

"To be fair, Luz, you did get kind of monstery there right before we flew off," Hooty added which made Luz pause.

"...There's nothing wrong with me," she insisted nervously. "It's just... I'm part space alien, and the alien side tends to get a little monstery when they're angry, and... I've never been that angry before." Luz didn't sound all that sure about that. "But... Hunter, Hooty, did you tell him?"

"They told me," King answered.

"Well, Bill figured out what you really were and... I couldn't let anyone hurt mi hermanito," Luz insisted. "I was so scared that it all flipped back into pure rage. So... Maybe I'm a monster," she said as though she was really uncomfortable with the idea, "but I'm the kind of monster who makes sure nothing bad happens to mi familia. And I think the Titan Trappers got the message but we should still probably blow up their transporter thingy just in case."

With that, they finished planting the glyph cards and then got back into the rowboat they'd used to get from Salty's ship to the small island in the first place. Once they were far enough away Luz pointed her staff back at the structure and with a glow all the glyphs went off at once, destroying it in a burst of fire, ice, and choking vines.

"...You think Salty has any of that gumbo left from last night?" King asked. For once he wasn't really hungry but the silence was too much to bear.

"You'll have to ask him and... Honestly I'm not hungry right now," Luz answered. Why did that make Hunter flinch? "You know, there's one good thing that came from all of this."

"What?" King asked.

"Well, you're the son of the Boiling Isles Titan," Luz said, "and... I'm part Titan because I took in the humors of the Boiling Isles Titan. So, in a way, I'm your real sister."

That just made King more confused. "But you were already my real sister."

This prompted Luz to pull King into a hug, "C'mere you little peach"

Luz's arms, her warm hug. This was safe. This was normal. "Luz... I don't want to be alone tonight," King said. "Can... Can I sleep with you?"

"Sure."

TLOA

Luz hadn't exactly gotten much sleep since traveling into Belos's mind and... The things she'd done on Titan Trapper Island made her want to sleep even less, but it's not like she had much of a choice with her little brother curled up on top of her like a cat.

So she lay there, desperately wishing that her stupid neurodivergent brain would let her stop focusing on the horribly traumatic things that had happened over the last few days. After a few hours, she started counting sheep only to get distracted by the thought of how such an idea could have gotten started in the first place. Like, what do sheep have to do with sleeping? What does counting have to do with sleeping and wow it's been a while since she's had any caffeine.

She wasn't quite sure how late it was when she finally drifted off but she hadn't expected to find herself floating on that dark lake surrounded by floating cubes again.

This time, she was able to sit up, and as she did she saw that she wasn't alone. She saw their feet first, and looking up first saw black pajama pants decorated with the glyphs, a Bad Girls coven shirt framed with a brown bathrobe itself framed by large bony wings, and finally a skull-like face. Like King's, but with more teeth, two more horns, and one of the eyes was replaced with a little tiny hooty.

"Hello again, Luz," the Titan said. His voice was still warm and gentle but now there was an undercurrent of sadness. "I think I have some explaining to do."