Chapter 76

Amity gripped the borrowed hammer tightly and glared at Belos. "Give her back."

"No, I don't think I will," he said with a twisted and demented smirk that looked horribly unnatural on Luz's face. "You know, I spent so much time trying to save her soul... I even went so far as to offer to let her keep you, hoping she'd be more pliable if she were allowed to keep the pet with which she exercised her vices."

...Luz had not told Amity that part. She felt sick at the thought of being offered up as some kind of love slave to keep Luz in line by an old creep who wouldn't know what love was if it bit him on the—

"And it turns out I was wasting my breath," Belos continued uncaring of Amity's inner thoughts. "I thought she was a witchbreed, twisted and bestowed unnatural powers but still fundamentally human... But then Kassady and his starspawn parasite stumbled across my old home and I sought refuge within his body," Belos clicked Luz's tongue. "A pair of twisted minds, devoted only to the pursuit of power and the joy they took in killing, but easily convinced to aid me, imperfect tools by which I could fulfill my holy mission. With the same life-sustaining power that kept Kassady functioning as a spirit riding a corpse, I was quickly restored to my full power from what remained after The Collector's betrayal... But more importantly, I gained access to their senses. Their knowledge... Luzura isn't human at all..."

"She's more human than you!" Amity shouted back.

"A starspawn hybrid, born from the descendants of a devilish false god, with the potential to mature into one such heathen idol herself, nursed with wild magic and the power of The Titan," Belos continued with only an ugly glare to acknowledge Amity's outburst. "So if the little monster wants to be a witch so badly then once I'm done with her she can die like one."

"Sixty-five," the man in the red and gold armor muttered.

"What do you even want with her!?" Amity demanded as she racked her brain for some way to get that monster out of her.

"Just like your teacher, never paying attention to the important details," Belos mocked. "I just explained it: Luzura has power. Power of a dubious source, but power nonetheless. Power over life and death, and the power of the carcass I convinced your people cared for the wellbeing of the scavengers living on it. The power that I will use to cleanse that perdition and save this world from itself!"

"Twenty-seven," came another mutter.

"I see it now," Belos continued. "What she did to nurture this power... The Titan's humors I suspected, but palistrom... If it was that wild magic she wanted, then a palisman's essence would have been more effective." Belos then held Luz's staff as if he was about to break it, Amity's heart skipped a beat but Stringbean animated and flew away cowering behind Amity. "No matter. The wretched thing can't hide forever."

"Ninety-nine."

"What are you going on about, you blasted machine?" Belos snapped, seemingly mistaking the armor for a robot.

The armored man stepped forward. "Well, you see, my friends and I have been in this business for longer than any of us really care to admit and we hear so very many speeches by homicidal megalomaniacs that I've started keeping track of how often I hear certain cliches."

"I assure you, you've never heard from the likes of me," Belos replied with narrowed eyes.

"They're all like you, mister one hundred!" was the reply. "Self-righteous people boasting of their moral superiority, or enlightenment, or faithfulness as they go around hurting and killing others to glorify themselves."

"You're the third witch hunter I've fought this week," the woman in red added.

"You speak like the followers of the young man from Nazareth," Thor added. "It saddens me to see yet another man act so against the values of the God he proclaims to worship."

Belos responded by throwing out Luz's hand, replacing Luz's black spell circle with one angry red, and firing a blast of energy directly at the armored figure. It moved like a flash of light and the man flew back, hitting the ground near the now-ruined stage.

The white-haired man in the green and silver costume vanished with a gust of wind only to reappear back where the armored man had landed. After a moment he shouted, "He's okay but his suit is fried!"

The white-haired man turned to return but he just sort of blurred before slamming hard into the ground and being enveloped in vines.

"Someone that quick would have been quite the problem," Belos noted with amusement. He made a show of flexing Luz's fingers. "I was angry when I first heard she was branded, but the ease at which her body channels this infernal power and the knowledge of it she's obtained, even if most of it it seems has come from her trespass into my own mind... Now I only wish she'd been more restrained before I claimed her body."

"Get out of her!" Amity demanded... Possession by something physical was almost unheard of in the Isles, so... And even if normal exorcisms would work, Amity deliberately avoided learning any oracle magic.

"No," Belos refused. He then made Luz stand there and tank a bolt of red energy from the woman in red. "Luzura's assimilated a substance called witches wool into her being, Witch in Red. It seems that she's impervious to most spells."

Belos then made Luz step forward, only to immediately faceplant, having tripped over nothing at all.

"Good thing my hexes aren't spells then," the woman in red said.

"Kid," the blonde woman in the blue and red costume began, "we're going to have to be a little rough with your friend here."

"The method by which the Carnage symbiote fully shed its vulnerabilities to heat and sound left it with new weaknesses to Light," added the strange red-faced man in the yellow and green outfit.

"And Viz and I are solar-powered," the blonde woman finished. "We burn Carnage off and your friend's symbiote half should reject the other parasite."

Amity was about to demand a promise that Luz wouldn't be hurt too badly but before she could blasts of brilliant, blinding light shot from the strange man's forehead and the blonde woman's fists. The light engulfed Luz and remained for nearly twenty seconds before the two... Heroes let up their assault...

And Belos had used Luz's power to conjure a shield. "A little advice," he said, "never let something like empathy get in the way of doing the job: Had you simply attacked instead of wasting time reassuring the Blight girl that might have worked."

"The shield doesn't seem impenetrable, but any blast powerful enough to break it would risk undue harm to the child," the strange man said.

"Still, I don't want to take any risks," Belos continued and held up both of Luz's hands as the shield dropped and spell circles formed. Immediately the two local heroes began to petrify, feet first. The line where flesh became stone rapidly advanced until, as it reached the halfway mark of each hero's torso the woman in red intervened with another red bolt that caused the petrification spells to fizzle. At the same time, the man who'd loaned Amity the magic hammer tackled Belos and held Luz's body between his giant arms, Luz's arms pinned.

"I can fix this," the woman in red said while looking over her half-petrified allies.

"Yes, yes," Belos said calmly as if this whole situation was for his amusement, "Fix it. Go ahead. Take your time. Every second that passes is more of Luzura's life drained away."

Amity tightened her grip on the borrowed hammer. "Take care of them and the other two who got hurt. Let me handle this."

"You're a child," the woman in red said.

"I know Belos," Amity replied. "And I know Luz. You don't. I can do this," Amity said. "And Luz would hateit if the heroes of the human realm got hurt saving her."

"Her mind is made up Wanda," Thor declared, "and we can better aid in this endeavor if we take the time to regroup."

This Wanda clearly didn't like the idea but she sighed and began to lift her half-petrified companions with a telekinesis spell and carried them off. Thor gave Amity one last nod before releasing Belos and flying off after Wanda.

Belos smirked at Amity, causing her to suspect that he was physically incapable of expressions that looked natural on Luz's face. "You're a fool to fight me on your own."

"And you're a coward," Amity replied.

"Oh?" He said as... Luz's limbs and torso stretched unnaturally long while remaining as thin as ever. Two long aws filed with sharp teeth tore open at the sides of her extended ribcage, and there was an almost disinterested look in her eyes, tainted as they were with Belos's blue light. Belos flexed her clawed fingers. "What makes you say that?"

"Because hurting Luz was clearly an elaborate attempt at suicide," Amity said coldly before she leaped forward.

She had a plan. The lightning blast had hurt Belos-Carnage, it probably counted as light. She was a witch. Belos would want to savor beating her s if she goaded him successfully eventually he'd leave an opening to... She hoped it wouldn't hurt Luz too badly but they needed to get that monster out of her ASAP.

Amity never appreciated how fast Luz could move until she had to fight a parasite that had stolen her body. Even elongated, Belos was able to dash and twist and swerve out of the way of every attack. He remained on the defensive, never striking back even once, for several minutes before adopting a bored expression. "Can we wrap this up?" He said. Luz's cloak then shifted, splitting into six parts and muscular structures extended from her back, and soon enough where once was a cape was now six massive draconic wings, each like the sails of an old-fashioned warship. "I have worlds to cleanse."

Then with each wing beating faster than something so large had any right to do, he took off into the sky. Amity flew after him and went to strike at him with a bolt of lightning from the hammer but he turned at the last moment, and twisted around and...

It didn't hurt, exactly. She felt pressure, but she hadn't realized she'd been run through until she saw the blade he'd turned Luz's arm into sticking into her abdomen. "My only regret," he said as he withdrew the blade, "is that Luzura can't see what she just did."

He flew off again and Amity just floated there... She couldn't feel her legs, but she felt her grip on the hammer slip. Moments later, all the power it had given her left her body, she was back in her normal clothing and began to fall...

Her mind was blank, how could she... She barely managed to close her eyes and brace for the inevitable stop.

...The stop came much sooner than she expected and was much gentler. As if she'd been caught by someone... She remembered when she was very little that a woman from the Emperor's coven had talked to a bunch of kids and said that if you were good, when your time came a servant of the Titan would carry you away to paradise... Had Belos been accidentally right about that? She opened her eyes and saw a dark-skinned human, maybe a year older than she was... The glowing blue hair and matching eyes, a warmer, kinder shade than Belos's eyes, were not what she was expecting.

"Hey, you're Amity, right?" the girl said in an echo as she gently carried her down and set her on a sheet someone had put on the ground. "I'm Anne. I'm a friend of Luz, from the support group. We've got a plan and we're here to help."

"...That looks pretty nasty," came another echoing voice.

"Let me take a look," came a voice that... Doctor Strange? Her vision was blurring, she couldn't make anything out, but she felt vaguely... Fiddling around her abdominal area.

"Is there anything we can do?" said... One of the echoey voices...

"Save, Luz..." Amity choked out as her eyes closed. Belo's malice was growing more distant and Amity could feel the concern of... Four people? No, five... Six counting ghost, who nuzzled her face as she lay there. But one of them was a bit away and approaching.

Amity could feel reluctance as three of the figures flew off after Belos... "I'm not gonna make it... Am I?"

"Can you feel what I'm doing now?" Strange asked.

"No," she was losing feeling in general... Everything was cold. Strange's silence was all Amity needed. "Ghost... Keep an eye on Luz for me... Don't let her blame herself." Her palisman meowed her agreement and Amity's thoughts turned briefly to how she'd never see her Dad or Ed and Em again.

The other concerned figure approached. "Will she make it, Stephen," came the deep but warm voice of Thor... Deep and warm, like a hug... That was how Luz had talked about The Titan's voice. Would she see him on the other side, before she got to whatever comes next? Maybe he could give a final message to Luz for her?

"It's not looking good," Strange said. "Even under the best circumstances this would be hard to fix, she doesn't have enough time to get to a hospital and even if she did even teleporting her straight there would necessitate moving her in a way that could... And healing spells are notoriously difficult to cast."

Amity raised a hand, to summon to herself the remains of Dulzura. There was a spell, a spell that could be cast with bard magic that... Wasn't as good as a healer's patch but it might buy her a little more time. Except she couldn't see to play the song, and...

"...She's gonna be so sad," Amity said... "Luz... When she found out she might live forever she was sad because she didn't want to outlive everyone... I told her there was magic that could help, that I'd be with her as long as I could... I wish I had more time."

"I need you to stop talking now," Strange said. "You're losing... Just... Hold on."

"Worry not child," Thor said. "You fought valiantly and for the most noble of causes. Surely there is a seat for you in the Halls of Valhalla..." Amity didn't know what that was but she appreciated the worlds of comfort... But then Thor continued "And yet, I think that seat shall go empty for some time."

Through her closed eyelids, Amity saw a bright light, and... Witches, unlike sorcerers, didn't sense the ambient magic around them. They had no need to. The exception was areas like the Knee, where the magic was so pure and concentrated that it became almost palpable... This made the Knee feel like... The opposite of the Knee.

"I, Thor Odinson, King of Asgard," said Thor in a voice that rumbled with the might of a thousand storms, "God of Thunder and Lighting, of the Sacred Groves, the Hallower, the Protector of Mortalkind," wait, he was a god? "Do decree by the power cultivated by my forefathers and by the gifts of my mothers—the vísendakona, the life-giver, and the bearer of flame—that this child, this soul who hath proven most Worthy, be welcomed now and forever, in body and spirit, into the sacred ranks of the Valkyrior!"

Suddenly it was like Amity had been struck by lightning again and then, and then...

"What just happened?" Amity asked as she felt... Everything. She opened her eyes and... Saw that she was now dressed in golden-scaled armor. "...Is this like the hammer, or..." Dulzura was fixed, too, though the bronze had been replaced with more golden metal. She thought about it for a moment and suddenly both the armor and Dulzura were gone... As were all signs that she'd ever been injured. She thought about it again, the armor and her instrument were back... She felt, vaguely, stronger too. Not as much as with the hammer, but... A lot, and it stayed even without the armor.

"What happened is that Thor just saved your life and bestowed onto you a great gift, at a cost he'll have to pay later. You must have really impressed him."

"I like her spirit," was all Thor said as he offered a hand to help Amity up.

"Alright then. Now, I have a plan to save Luz..."

TLOA

Philip from his position high above the strange city sighed. It'd been so long time since he'd been to the human realm. Gravesfield had changed drastically and for the worse, and the world outside it even more so... But here he was now, to set things right... Once he finished with the demon realm.

"Be not afraid," he recited to the world below, "for behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy," The context was different but a new savior had come all the same.

Suddenly, he sensed a presence approaching at high speeds. "Oh what now?" Three more young women flew at him. Each was surrounded by an unnatural glow, one blue, one green, and one pink... Each was clad in armor as well, two of them in shirts and the pin one in some kind of armored coat... "Oh great. More witches."

"The puritanical definition of witch was a human who made deals with malevolent beings and sacrificed the innocent, especially children and small animals, for power used to harm others, often becoming something inhuman in the process of meddling with unnatural powers beyond mortal understanding," the green one declared with echoing voice and an accusatory point of the finger. "By the definition used in your time, you're the only witch here!"

Philip sighed, and with a raided hand shot a blast of energy at the poor deluded fool... Only for that blast to be locked as a construct of green light in the shape of a massive sparrow formed around the girl...

"How?" he asked... Luzura had the power of the Titan, and the Titan was supposed to be the most powerful creature in that perdition.

"Learn the algorithm, bro," the firey pink one declared as she charged, a sword of energy in each hand that he was only barely able to block. "Cosmic trumps magic."

"Who are you!?" Philip demanded.

"Luz's friends from group therapy," the blue one replied. "You're Belos, right? She's told us all about you."

"My name is Philip," he insisted.

"Is it?" the green one asked, "because when you spend four hundred years calling yourself one name it inda becomes your name. Like Belos is the name you chose, isn't it?"

Philip barely managed to break his deadlock with the pink one in time to fire a new spell at the green girl who just wouldn't shut up. Petrification was too good, but he knew a spell that would make these damnable children rot.

Unfortunately, a pink construct resembling a one-eyed toad intercepted the spell. "Not today, Satan!" the pink one exclaimed.

"How dare you!" Philip demanded. "I am—"

"A creep committing demonic possession while looking like three traitors and a lake of ice short of the Devil as described in Dante's Inferno?" The green one interrupted.

"And I'm not Christian but I could have sworn that your book has like, a whole section that says that that false prophet thing you were doing is a big no-no," the blue one added.

"So that was just an expression but yeah, what they said," the pink one finished.

"Which brings us back to the matter at hand," the Green one said with a glare as countless weapons that Philip couldn't even identify formed around her. "We've only known Luz for a day, but she's still our friend and we don't take very kindly to body-jacking creeps going after our friends, do we girls?" she bounced a large, emerald dodecahedron with its sides plainly numbered as she asked this.

Constructs in the other two colors joined the arsenal and Philip released only moments too late that he was, in fact, surrounded.

The next ten minutes amounted to Philip being thrown through the air like a clown juggling a ball before finally crashing into the Earth once again. He pushed himself up, only to be faced with the red-clad witch from earlier, and the so-called doctor in flamboyant clothing who had aided Luzura on the day of unity, and with a wave of each of their hands he found himself wrapped from head to toe in crimson bands that would neither break nor budge no matter how he struggled. A firey circle became a portal and he was dragged to face not only Luzura's friends and family but nearly a dozen others, some he recognized from spying on her and others who were strangers to him. There was an odd focus on a man in a metal helmet and sitting in some sort of floating, armored chair. The three witches from the sky battle landed, their powers seeming to fade as their hair and eyes became normal human colors and their armor vanished. No one said anything, as the man in the chair held his hands to his head.

TLOA

One moment, Luz realized with horror that Belos, the monster who had done so much to hurt so many people including almost everyone she loved, had with the help of the Carnage infected and taken over her body.

The next she was wandering around a foggy town that seemed to be a twisted amalgamation of Gravesfield and Bonesborough. She saw landmarks she recognized from both towns scattered about with no rhyme or reason, the town switching from dirt to pavement seemingly at random and, with the fog so thick even if the layout of the town made sense she couldn't navigate it regardless.

Every so often, she'd stumble across... A body. A witch or demon shriveled up clutching at their coven sigle while deep scars traced along where the lines of the draining spell would be, seemingly sucked dry and... Sometimes she saw a palisman she recognized, broken and drained off its essence. Amity's dad. The goose with the bell from the Bat Queen's brood. Willow's parents. It was hard to force herself to keep walking when she saw a palisman she recognized as Owlbert.

The wind seemed to whisper "Your fault" whenever she found one.

The third time she passed by Hexside, the gates were open, and having nothing better to do, she went inside. She was greeted by the body of Principal Bump, Frewyn, broken cleanly in two, just outside the steps to the front entrance. Ignoring the voice in the wind, Luz walked around them and entered the building.

Much like the town, the inside was a random assortment of traits from Hexside and Gravesfield High. Walks went from brick to plaster, floor from stone tiles to linoleum, with no rhyme or reason, normal lockers lined the walls but demon lockers lay strewn about on the floors every so often and...

The bodies inside weren't branded witches and demons killed by the draining spell. These were classmates, from both of her schools... Dismembered. 'All Your Fault' was written in blood over and over again across the walls.

"It's not true," she said to herself even as she began to shake. "This isn't real."

She kept going, not knowing what she was looking for... She came to a room that resembled Hexside's photography classroom but was decorated like the art room from Gravesfield High. A plaque of rules that had been installed in the Gravesfield art room just before school had ended for the summer was prominently displayed.

No Taxidermy

No Spiders

No Snakes

No Animal Parts

No Fire Works

'No Snakes' was underlined with a line of blood and underneath the sign was.

"Stringbean! No, no, no," she said at seeing her own palisman lying shattered. "This isn't real. This isn't real!"

From behind her Luz heard the loudest and most irritating nails-on-the-chalkboard sound she'd ever heard and realized that she wasn't alone.

Slowly she turned around until she saw a man dressed in slacks but no shirt or shoes. He was thin but muscular, seemingly on the younger end of middle age. He might have been handsome, if not for the demented smirk on his face and the dark circles around his eyes. Messy red hair topped his head and the hand he was dragging across the chalkboard was blood red with sharp talons in place of his fingers.

Luz's first instinct was to blast him with a spell, but she found that her magic wasn't working. So she tried going symbiote-mode, to get weapons of her own. That also wasn't working. She searched her pockets but... No emergency glyphs.

The man seemed amused by the entire exchange. "I always like it when they try to fight back," he said as the red spread across his body until only Carnage remained. "The look on their faces when they realize it's pointless."

"But, bones, and Belos, and—" she was pretty sure she'd killed at least him, right?

"My bond with my other is so strong that I don't need a body anymore," Carnage said. "And as for Philip... The funny part is he thinks he's in charge. What he doesn't know is that when he's done eating you, I'm gonna eat him and then all that power will be mine... Then, once I'm a King in Black, spreading out through that giant corpse he's obsessed with sounds like the next logical step toward Godhood."

"...You actually want that?" Luz asked, trying both to distract herself from her fear and try to buy herself time... And also honestly she couldn't imagine anyone wanting the responsibility that came with being a god.

"Need to be a God to be a Godbutcher," Carnage replied. "Need to be a Godbutcher to be able to kill everything."

Well dang if that didn't make a twisted form of sense. Not having any ideas on how to stall things further Luz ran for it, dashing back into the hallway which was suddenly much more mazelike.

After a dozen turns and what must have been a good ten minutes of running, Luz found herself in a dead end. She turned around and found Carnage standing behind her.

"I like it when they run, too," he said as he grabbed her by the throat and pinned her against the wall. She couldn't breathe, her strength to struggle gone all of a sudden as Carnage made a show of cycling his free hand through a variety of blades, spikes, and screws before settling on what seemed to be an industrial-sized chainsaw. "Slow and messy," he said as he made it loudly whir just like a real one.

Just as she could feel the vibrations of the blades approach her skin, everything went wonky. The world around them got shimmery and hazy for just a moment and Carnage dropped her. She scrambled away and ran again but then started to hear a voice, clear as day.

"Luz, can you hear me?"

"...Yeah. Who are... Professor X?" Luz asked.

"Yes. Luz, you are currently trapped in your own mind."

"I kind of figured that part out on my own... Also, Carnage is in here with me and I need to not die, so... Any help at all would be appreciated."

"That's what we're here for," the professor replied.

"...We?" Luz asked.

"Well yes, Luz. Doctor Strange has gathered up everyone willing to help you and, my, what an assortment of friends you have."

Then another voice joined in. "Hey, Luz, it's Marcy. From the Support group? Hey, I've been exactly where you are right now. I don't know what you're seeing, but none of it is real. It can't hurt you unless you let it."

"That's easier said than done, Marcy," Luz said as she ran into Carnage again. "I can't even—"

"It's your mind isn't it?" came a third voice... Anne? "Don't you decide the rules?"

"Luz, if half those stories you told us are true then you're stronger than these creeps," Sasha.

As Carnage menaced her again, Luz held out her hands while willing her magic to work and managed to force out a fireball that hit Carnage. It didn't really seem to do much but... It was better than nothing.

"Luz," came another male voice... Ford? "Combat in the mindscape isn't like real fighting. All that matters is willpower and imagination."

"Yeah," that was... Dipper? "Once in the mindscape, anything is possible. And since it's your mind, you're in control of... Everything. You decide how this goes down."

"You got this, girl!" came Mable's voice. "Just... Think of someplace where you feel safe and strong."

"You said you were the daughter Marilyn never had" Stan, "what would she do here?"

Safe and strong... What would Eda do?

Luz closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, they were outside the Owl House.

"You think a change of scenery will let you beat me?" Carnage asked.

"No, I can't beat you," Luz admitted. "But he can."

Carnage was immediately tackled by an imaginary Hooty, who began to wrestle the killer.

"Okay, Carnage is occupied, now what?"

"Carnage is probably the one keeping you down there," came April's voice. "You need to get rid of him before you can wake up. Captain Marvel and the Vision tried to burn him out but... Carnage bonds deep, and he's clearly mixed all up in your Living Abyss. The only way to get rid of him is to subsume him..."

"You're asking me to kill him?"

"Cletus Kassady is already dead," April continued. "And the Carnage symbiote is a monster who gives the rest of us a bad name. What did you say about that Belos guy? He has it coming? So does Carnage. You finish him off and even the most pacifistic heroes are gonna praise your name for years to come."

"...I don't think I'm strong enough."

"Oh Baloney!" came the voice of April's friend, Molly. "You're plenty strong. You walked off the Iron Fist for Cripe's sake."

"And you've got... So many friends here," Molly's girlfriend, Klara. "You even have the girl that beat up those jerks who harassed me for being a mutant back in LA."

"You're welcome," Sasha interjected cheerfully.

"And I know that when I'm not feeling strong enough having friends around makes me feel like I can take on the whole world."

"Once you got your ESP working right you kept up with April, and she's as strong as her sister, her dad, and Venom combined," Gabby interrupted. "You're way stronger than you think you are."

"And physical strength isn't the only thing that matters," said Pei, the last of April's friends. "The stories your friends shared with us, the power you have to forgive... Your strength of heart is unmatched. I'd gladly fight by your side and this strength will ensure your victory here."

Carnage had wriggled free of the imaginary Hooty after failing to injure him and leaped forward. Luz raised her hands and formed a glyph combo in the air. Something more complex than she'd ever done, something she didn't think even Beos knew about which just... Came to her. It formed a clear, orange, circular barrier around her and repelled Carnage, sending him flying across the imaginary mindscape.

"Hey, I'm here, too," came the voice of Spider-Man. "Luz, I'm famous for saying that with Great Power there must come Great Responsibility. I get it from my uncle... But the thing is? I had it backward. Power doesn't give responsibility, responsibility gives power. Right now, your responsibility to get out of this situation and live a long, happy life with the people who love you. I can't think of a greater one, so use the power to comes with it."

"Hey, hi there, cutting in," came a girl's voice that Luz didn't recognize. "Saw what was happening here, name's Sprite, I'm a friend of Gus... I don't know you or what you're going through but if you're Gus's friend then you're too cool for whatever this is so just deal with it already."

The Eternal? When did Gus make friends with an Eternal?

"Luz, when we were trying to get the portal working, we got desperate enough to call up this weird dream spirit," came the voice of Magik. "He called you a baby Queen in Black. Is that true?"

"...Yeah."

"Well then every Queen needs a sword," and suddenly, through the connection Professor X had established, a set of instructions for a complicated bit of magic. A spell anyone could cast, that drew out something from your soul and made it into a weapon.

"They're right, Mija," came her Mom's voice. "You're stronger than you know, in body and spirit. And you know what else? You are a Noceda. You're too stubborn to let these jerks use you. I'm so proud of you for how far you've come and what you've accomplished in just a few months, and I know that your father would say the same. Te quiero mi Bruja Buena."

"Luz, you came to Bonesborough and changed all of our lives overnight," Willow added. "You're... Like a ball of lightning in a person-shaped bottle, a force of nature... But more importantly, you're my friend. You're not gonna let Belos win, are you?"

"The Luz I know wouldn't let anyone stand in her way," Gus contributed.

"I don't know much about this Carnage guy," came Hunter.'s voice. "But I know you, and I know Belos. And I know that Carnage is what's standing between you and Belos getting away with everything he's done again. Are you gonna stand for that?"

"Luz, the day we met you were kind to me even though I stole your life," said Vee. "You welcomed me into your family without a second's hesitation. You don't deserve to go through this, you deserve to be happy and these monsters are keeping you from it, so, so..."

"Luz," Masha interrupted. "Fuck'em up."

"Do not underestimate yourself, Batata," Amity recited, "for you are the Good Witch Luz, Redeemer of Bullies, Toppler of Tyrats, Child of Two Realms, and Warrior of Peace!"

It was like a dam broke in Luz. Happy tears began to pour freely from her eyes as an almost overwhelming warmness formed in her heart... A Warmness that she focused on, and pulled on until a ball of light, slowly shifted between pink and blue. She focused on giving it shape, and as she did so a bit of living Abyss jumped from her hands to join it, spiraling and webbing through the light, and, in a flash she held in her hands a straight, double-edged, cruciform saber. The pommel, crossguard, and so on were purple with a pair of sneak-heads that resembled Stringbean at the ends of the curved, scaled guard. The Blade was pink and glowing. Set in the guard was a large, blue, heart-shaped gem, and embossed upon it in gold was the light glyph.

"Hola, Toda Mi Amistad," she declared as she named it.

Carnage reappeared from the tree line, clearly angry. "I don't care what they say, you're powerless here!" He then leaped for her, dozens of bladed tendrils writing around him.

"My friends are my power!" Luz declared. "Now eat this, Suckah!" With that, she swung her new sword through him and he shattered, and the next thing she knew...

The next thing she knew, she was opening her eyes. She wasn't sure where she was, but she could feel all of her friends and supporters were there. A few other people, too. It was hard to make out her own body underneath what she was pretty sure were the Crimson Bands of—no, geek out later. Under the bands, she was pretty sure that her symbiote costume was back to normal, but she could still feel...

"How!?" Belos demanded with her mouth. "Kassady was supposed to keep you—"

"Get out!" She commanded as she used up every bit of strength she had to will Belos from her body.

Belos screamed with her mouth as if he was in pain. "No!"

"I said out!" Luz repeated and with a scream, projectile vomited a whole lot of nasty green sludge. The bands were released, allowing her to force herself up, and she faced down Belos just as he reformed. He was clearly confused and infuriated by what had happened and her ESP picked up both.

"You want my power so bad," Luz declared as he seemingly lost himself and charged her. "You can have it!" stretching her arms as wise as she could, she drew a massive spell circle and as she did so she imagined dozens of light glyphs crashing into each other.

With a loud crack, dozens of bolts of lightning flew out and struck Belos, blasting him to pieces. One piece, it seemed, was trying to escape and as she went to finish him off she suddenly found all of the strength leaving her body. She hit the ground just as she heard all of her friends calling her name.