Chapter 58

Amity steeled herself as they entered her home's sitting room. Odalia was sitting there, sipping on some kind of expensive liquor.

"Odalia Blight," Hunter greeted. "There's a security concern with the abomitons."

"Oh, there is?" Odalia asked while setting down her glass.

"The Emperor is concerned that a powerful enough wild witch with a talent for abomination magic might be able to support them and make them act against their programming," Hunter said. "But we understand that there's a master control device that could be used to shut them all down should that happen. My team is here to retrieve it."

"Hmm," Odalia vocalized. Then she fondled her Oracle focus and with a purple glow to it and her eyes, the illusions disquising their staves were dispelled. "You know, I could have joined the Illusion Coven. I was equally talented at both, but Oracle Magic just felt like a better choice. It's where the twins get it from, so really Mittens if you didn't want me to recognize your staff should have done a better job."

Everyone immediately took a defensive stance, including Luz moving to put herself between Odalia and Amity... Except for Hunter, who remained calm.

"Oh, the illusions weren't to fool you, Ma'am," he said smoothly. "They're to keep the rabble from realizing that my squad is getting special privileges until after the announcement."

"...Announcement?" Odalia asked.

"Yes, the announcement," Hunter continued. "This evening, as the Day of Unity commences and the Isles are freed of Wild Magic forever, Emperor Belos will announce the formation of new divisions of the Emperor's Coven: Once she completes her training under my personal tutelage, Amity will take her place as the Amythest Archivist, overseeing the process of rediscovering and cataloging ancient magics that were too dangerous to be practiced with the threat of wild magic."

"And what about her... Luz?" Odalia asked with a telling glance at the serpentine staff held by the witch in question.

"The Obsidian Observant," Hunter lied without missing a beat. "Once her special gifts have fully matured, she'll be taking the Emperor's place as the one who gives a voice to the will of the Titan."

Amity wasn't sure why, but Odalia looked particularly pleased with that. "Is that right, Luz?"

"...Yes," Luz answered after a moment. "In fact, The Titan has already spoken to me twice. Nothing big, just to tell me what was happening but... He has big plans."

"But before all of that," Hunter continued, "we need to secure the master control device."

"Oh, of course," Odalia said. "The remote is in a safe deposit box, but I've hidden the key. Follow me."

Odalia then led them back into the factory—Gus quickly restored the palismen hiding illusion—and marched them up to the air doc, where thankfully other than a pair of airships there was nothing and no one there.

With a gesture and a spell circle, Odalia summoned her oracle spirit and the specter quickly flew to a nondescript section of the wall and sort of shrank as it phased into one specific brick.

"It'll be a moment," Odalia said. "The disguise and storage spells are a bit tricky to navigate but nothing my spirit can't handle. They're such useful things, oracle spirits."

"You know," Hunter said conversationally, "there are a couple of gaps in my education and I never got around to asking Osran: What is an oracle spirit? They're clearly not just ordinary ghosts."

Amity was surprised that Hunter didn't know that. It was relatively basic stuff. Unless...

Odalia smiled. "Then let me have the honor of educating you. While oracle magic can interact with all manners of spirits and astral forms, oracle spirits, in general, are a class of phantasms, creatures that resemble ghosts but were never alive to begin with. Phantasms have all sorts of useful powers, and oracle spirits not only have natural oracular talents of their own but are naturally servile to those who have earned their loyalty and can channel and magnify a witch's magic rather easily making them ideal familiars to anyone who can subjugate one."

"Interesting," Hunter said with exaggerated interest.

"Which reminds me," Odalia continued while looking at the group, from witch to witch... Before making a frustrated expression and dispelling Gus's illusion again (prompting an annoyed grunt from the witling in question) and then she narrowed in on Luz, clearly identifying her by her palisman. "Luz, my role in the PCA gives me certain privileges and I can't help but notice that you've done very well in the Oracle track."

"I can read tea leaves pretty well," Luz conceded awkwardly.

"Normally a witch only claims an oracle spirit after joining the Oracle Coven," Odalia noted. "But there's no rule requiring it. I could pull some strings to get you the chance to bargain or barter with one, or bind one to your will."

"No, no, that's fine," Luz insisted. "That's not really my style."

"Oh, nonsense," Odalia dismissed in that tone that was so nice that it rolled back over to condescending. "You shouldn't squander your talents... I mean, it is quite a shame that Mittens never had a talent for oracle magic, but well... You're going to be family sooner or later."

"Maybe," Luz said. "I'll think about it but I'm gonna be real busy after the, the thing, so..."

"Oh, I'm sure you will be," Odalia continued. "You know, the Emperor's Coven searched the Owl Lady's shack earlier this week? No one was there, but they did return to me some property that Mittens left behind."

"Oh yeah?" Luz replied.

"Yes... You know, it's so satisfying that you and Mittens aren't playing such silly games with criminals anymore. It must be so much nicer, listening to reason with the Emperor's Coven."

"...Yeah," Luz agreed nervously.

"Speaking of which," Hunter interrupted, "we really need that master control. Can you put a rush on that? We need to bring it to the Emperor before the ceremony this evening."

"Yes, yes," Odalia said. "My spirit will be back any moment now. But, about the ceremony... Emperor Belos told me that he had a special announcement concerning my Mittens and her Luz... But not that they were being given special titles."

"Oh?" Hunter noted. There was no change in his voice but Amity could feel a slight hint of panic.

"Yes, you see... I'm a rather talented oracle. When I mentioned off-hand that I had foreseen several futures with a certain key detail in common, the Emperor said he liked the idea and swore to me that he'd see to it that one of those futures came to pass."

"And what exactly did you see?" Amity asked, unable to keep her frustration that Odalia was trying once again to control her future out of her voice.

Rather than answer, Odalia simply said "The Emporer assured me that at this evening's ceremony, he'd declare the two of you his heirs."

What the... Was she serious? Amity couldn't believe that her birth giver could possibly be that stupid and... Honestly, it concerned her that she'd seen futures where Luz and Amity were seemingly ruling the isles. Something would have had to have gone horribly wrong for that to happen. She was about to express her incredulity with that idea when Luz had her own reaction.

That being to explode with peals of deep, belly-rumbling laughter. For nearly a minute. Amity actually started to feel concerned that Luz might make herself sick when she finally stopped and composed herself.

"Thank you," Luz said. Then giggled again briefly. "I needed that. Look um... Putting me anywhere near being in charge of a whole country um... Not a good idea."

"Oh, nonsense—"

"No, seriously," Luz continued. "There's no way I'd do a good job. Even if Amity was doing everything and my job was just to sit there and look cute I'd probably get bored and wander off in the middle of a meeting on tax policy."

"Hey now, don't you even think of leaving all of that on me," Amity joked.

"Lo siento, Hermosa."

"Está bien."

"The point is," Odalia continued coldly as her oracle spirit phased back out through the door into the factory, "that I know that the Golden Guard was lying through his teeth."

The door opened up and about a dozen guards and scouts came through followed by many abomitons.

"And don't think I don't recognize your other worthless friends," Odalia continued. "The human is one thing but Titan take me if the Emperor's Coven would take the porter boy or, er... What was her name again? The one I explicitly forbid you from being friends with?"

"You remember the Everlasting Oath I made you swear, don't you?" Amity replied. "The one that explicitly forbids you from interfering in my relationships."

"It's hardly my fault if your friends get petrified for impersonating a coven scout, now is it?" Odalia quipped back. "Nor to mention high treason, aiding a rebellion, that little plan that dear old Whispers has... They really should have checked for spies: We knew you were coming the whole time. Well, I did, and the head scouts," Odalia conceded. "Having the Golden Traitor bluff his way past the rabble was smart, I have to admit that much."

Amity was suddenly hit by a wave of despair. "...Belos knows about the plan?" Luz asked quietly.

"Of course," Odalia said sadistically. "As we speak the traitors are walking into a trap. The Day of Unity will progress as planned and—"

"Everyone will die!" Luz said as her symbiote suit manifested, tearing through and throwing off her scout disguise. Everyone else discarded their own disguises as well, given they were pointless at this point.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Odalia dismissed. "Now, my daughter and her human need to be escorted to the Head. Maybe the Emperor himself can talk some sense into them. The rest of them... Well, let's see how they like the Conformatorium this time of year."

"You don't understand! Belos is a wit—Ahh!" Luz was cut off by a scream as she clutched her arm and fell to her knees as vines formed over her body emerging from where her coven sigil was. Hunter was also down but...

Amity looked to the scouts and saw one maintaining a spell circle. She saw red and moved to attack them only for Gus to beat her to the punch.

"Don't hurt my friends!" He declared while holding his hands outstretched, a spell circle in each, and the scout who'd activated Luz and Hunter's sigils were enshrouded in illusion blue magic and fell to the ground screaming.

Several of the other Scouts rushed at Gus, only for King to jump onto the young witchling's shoulder and with a shout of "Weh!" sent them flying back with a blast of sound and magic.

They didn't fly far, however, as some vines produced by Willow caught them and locked them in place before branching out to attack the guards and scouts.

"Oh for the love of... Did Belos only give me his least competent?" Odalia asked indignantly. "Abomitons! Seize them!"

As the abomitons moved to attack them, Amity came to a realization: She wasn't powerful enough to take control of or destroy them all... At least not with just abomination magic.

Drawing a circle, Amity summoned Dulzura. "Ghost, you ready to try out those upgrades I told Luz about?"

Being as she was a staff at the time, Ghost couldn't respond verbally, yet Amity still got the impression of her partner answering "Of course."

Flicing a switch she'd installed at the head, a slot opened up and in a flash of light Amity's staff vanished as Ghost installed herself in the instrument, the head becoming a version of Ghost's own. With Ghost's power added to the device, Amity was able to activate another new feature, one that had needed quite a bit of slime: With the press of a button, a cord of abomination slime and assorted bronze parts slid out from the base of Dulzura and formed behind her into a duplicate strapped to her back and connected by the cord. At her back was Dulzura's bass form, at her front was the guitar.

Using her connection with Ghost, Amity could make the duplicate instrument to play the notes she wanted on its own as long as she knew how to play them herself. She got the bass rhythm started, hit the switch that the pre-programmed drum track would start on time, and then struck the first guitar chord. The human song she'd been practicing with. The one Luz had found her the sheet music for. The one they'd danced to that evening in the human realm. The one that awoke her love of human rock music. The one that summarized her feelings for Luz and how she thought of their relationship.

She began to sing the opening vocables: phonetic nonsense lyrics that helped st the melody. And as she played, she channeled her magic into the instrument. Bard magic and abomination magic combined. Just as one of the abomitons raised a weaponized limb to attack her, she seized control of it and went into the first proper words, thinking of her Luz más preciosa.

As she played and sang, she took control of more and more of the abomitons, forcing them to turn on whatever guards and scouts had yet to be subdued and the few, higher-quality models of the machines that evaded her control at first. One when she played the final note and sang the final lyric—"I can't get enough of you, baby! Can you get enough of me!" did she will all the remaining abomitons to self-destruct, covering the ground with slime and the unconscious or restrained bodies of what she believed to be all of the Emperor's Coven goons stationed at Blight Industries.

"...Is that the sort of music you've been learning to play!?" Odalia shouted, clearly scandalized and horrified which brought a smile to Amity's face.

"Yes," she insisted. "It is. I learned about it when I visited the human realm."

"No, no no no," Odalia said.

"Yes!" Amity insisted. "Yes yes yes."

"But... It's so... Undignified. That is no way for a proper young lady to... Why wouldn't you learn something refined!?"

"You seem to be under the impression that you get a say in how I live my life," Amity said with a glare. "You don't. Not anymore!I've been told that you used to be a good person, but if that person still exists I've never seen her. All you've ever done is hurt me, or try to control me." Amity dismissed Dulzura, Ghost animating and climbing up on her shoulder as she did so, and slowly walked up to Odalia, a confident smirk on her face as she maintained eye contact. "But you can't hurt me anymore. You can't control me anymore. I'm not afraid of you anymore. You are nothing. Now... Give. Me. The key!" she finished as she stepped up to Odalia.

Odalia tried to glare back at her, but she broke eye contact first. "Fine. You win," she said reluctantly. She began rummaging through her pockets. "I don't know why you're so opposed to this. I mean, really, it's not like anyone who matters is going to die. You don't even have a sigil," she muttered... And a horrible idea came to Amity's head: She'd never seen Odalia with bare wrists.

She reached out, grabbed her birth given by the sleaves, and tore them both open.

"Oh come on now! I just bought this top!" Odalia complained but... She hadan Oracle Coven sigil, but it was faded and slightly off...

"You... You never got a sigil, you just faked it with a tattoo," Amity said. "You... You know you're safe from the draining spell and you don't care what happens to anyone else! You, you..." She didn't think she could possibly hate Odalia more.

"Oh please, anyone with a brain in their head would have done the same," Odalia dismissed. "Now, I have your key right... Here!"

With a fluid motion, Odalia ripped something from her pocket and slid something over Amity's head and down her neck. Amity had just enough time to recognize the necklace that she'd been made to wear for most of her life before Odalia's telepathy spell kicked in and the pain and shame of a lifetime of beratement and abuse hit her all at once.

"I can't control you!?" came Odalia's angry, shrill voice in her head. "You are my daughter! Mine! You will do as you are told! You are—" and then there was a roar of some kind and Odalia's spell cut off.

Amity could feel several distinct emotions right now. Terror from Odalia. Concern from Hunter, Willow, Gus, and King... And mind-shattering rage from Luz.

Luz was in her symbiote form again... But it was considerably less cute than it usually was. Her cloak was split open into writhing tendrils, and her limbs were too long and spindly. Especially her fingers which were more like knives. The... slime extended up her neck to cover her face up to the nose, except that wasn't quite right because a massive maw full of long, daggerlike fangs and a disgustingly long, tampered tongue dangled out between them. She looked feral.

Two things happened in the next second. The first was that Luz leaped toward Odalia and raised her hand as if to tear through the witch. The second was Amity throwing herself between them.

"Luz, I know you're mad," she said, "but..." Amity made a show of taking off the necklace and shattering it in her hand... Part of her wondered why she never tried that before. "I'm fine. That was just one last pathetic attempt from someone who realized that her time was over. So please," Amity finished as she hugged her girlfriend. "Come back to me." From her shoulder, Ghost moved to nuzzle Luz's face.

Luz wasn't responsive for a moment, as if she was confused before finally, she said "Amity...?" Amity could feel Luz shrinking back to normal as she said it.

"Yeah. I'm here, Luz. I'm okay. And I love you."

"...I, I lost control again, didn't I?" Luz asked in the most heartbroken tone of voice. "I..."

"It's okay," Amity reassured. "You didn't hurt anyone this time."

"But I could have," Luz said as tears came to her eyes. "I... I could have hurt you, just... You threw yourself between me and... That was... I could have hurt you."

"But you didn't," Amity replied. "And I don't believe you ever would, even if you lost control completely. Because I love you, and I trust you, absolutely."

"...You shouldn't," Luz said. "You should, you should... I'm a monster, Amity. You shouldn't be... You should be afraid of me."

"Oh do not give me that!" Amity shouted. "Nobody whose opinion matters is afraid of you. Gus, Willow, Hunter, King? Are you afraid of Luz?"

There was a resounding chorus of "No!" in answer.

"And they're telling the truth," Amity confirmed. "Because I can feelit. With my abnormal talent. My mutant power."

"You have an abnormal talent?" Odalia asked.

"Not now!" Amity shouted, which shut the older witch up. "The only person here that's scared is Odalia. Everyone else is concerned foryou," Amity continued as she turned back to Luz. "This... This... We'll figure this out. Maybe, if you're going to be having control issues, then elixirs like Eda and Lilith use could help you?"

"...Yeah, maybe," Luz admitted. "Thank's Amity."

"Yes, thank you, Mittens," Odalia said having regained her nerve to speak once again.

"I didn't do it for you," Amity said. "Now, for real this time. The key."

"Right, right... Or—" Odalia grabbed her oracle focus and her spirit surged out and flew into Amity. Sudden, and rather mechanically, Amity's body moved on its own to break the hug and walk to Odalia's side. "If you care for my Mittens so much that just her words can bring you out of such a horrific state, then obviously her safety is paramount to you, yes?" she said as she carefully walked around the permitter of the air doc, Amity's self-moving body always between her and everyone else. "So... Mittens and I are leaving. We're going to get on an airship and fly to the Head, where she should have been all this time. If you try to stop us... I'll give my spirit the command to stop her heart."

"Your own daughter!" Willow shouted. "You monster!"

"Mittens has made it abundantly clear that she doesn't want me as a parent so why should I act the part?" Odalia replied smugly as they inched closer and closer to one of the docked ships. "If you want her back, safe and sound... Well, Luz, you're going to have to come to the head yourself and accept the Emperor's gracious gift."

Luz was even angrier than she was earlier but kept her cool. She looked desperate as Amity's body stepped backward onto the ship.

Surprising Amity, Odalia seemed to actually have a halfway decent idea of how to fly an airship, and none of her friends it seemed had figured out how to stop this by the time the ship began to fly off.

"Oh, I get it," Odalia said as she cranked it up to top speed and turned on the autopilot. "You hate me. You've said it and more than made it clear. I bet if it was anyone else you would have just let them tear me apart, no?" Amity of course couldn't answer. The oracle spirit controlling her body wouldn't let her. "I swear... Everything I do is for you," Odalia lied. "You'll thank me when you and your human are sitting on the Emperor's Throne."