Chapter 87

The fact that the meeting would be at the Sanctum Sanctorum was a relief, but after how the meeting with Doom had gone, even if Agatha Harkness wasn't a bad guy, nobody wanted Luz going alone, so that weekend, everyone came to the Sanctum—except for Masha. They had a family thing they couldn't get out of.

Strange transported them to the Sanctum personally and there they were greeted by a woman in purple with white hair, who introduced herself as Clea Strange, the doctor's wife, before she said she wouldn't be attending the meeting but that she wanted to meet them before going off to tend to her duties as the Dark Dimension's Sorcerer Supreme.

"May we ask what it is you have to tend to?" Willow asked conversationally.

"My uncle has been spotted in the outskirts of the dimension," Clea had said, "Considering that he should be incarcerated in the maximum security wing of an interdimensional prison beyond all time and space until he experiences genuine remorse and atones for his countless sins, this is of some concern. Not too much, mind you. He's nothing that Stephen and I can't handle, but I'd be remiss if I didn't follow up on it."

"...I'm sorry, we're new to this dimension, should we... Know who your uncle is?" Willow asked.

Clea then looked at Luz. "Luz, right? Stephen tells me that you were very studious about magic even before your adventures began. Do you know?"

"Dread Dormammu," Luz replied. "A real nasty dude, basically Doctor Strange's arch nemesis... Evil sorcerer, dimensional conqueror, you name it. He's serious bad news."

"But again, there's nothing you need to worry about," Clea insisted. "Even if he has escaped, I'll have him back where he belongs before you all finish your chat with Agatha."

Clea then left them and Strange herded them through the non-euclidian labyrinth that was his house until they made their way to a sitting room where an elderly woman, looking almost like a stereotypical wealthy upper-class grandmother in fine robes and a shawl was sitting.

Everyone else took a seat. Luz sat across from the woman, Agatha, with her mom on one side of her and Amity on the other. "Ms. Harkness, your magicalness, Ma'am," Luz greeted awkwardly. This was the woman who trained the Scarlet Witch and dozens of others. She was centuries old, and very experienced and... Just someone worthy of respect.

"There's no need to be so formal," the ancient witch declared. "You may call me Agatha, if I may call you Luz."

"You may," Luz agreed. "Um, Agatha."

"If I may," her Mom interrupted. "Ms. Agatha, I'm sure you have your reasons for wanting to speak with Luz but my daughter has been through quite a lot lately and what she needs most right now is rest and normalcy and getting caught up in this kind of thing when she isn't ready for them is just going to make things harder."

"Yeah," Luz added, "it's not like I'm made of glass or anything but, like... I need to be focused on my mental health right now so... If this is gonna be—"

"Oh no, I understand completely," Agatha said. "I wish I could say that this was just a friendly chat, but... I will assure you that Imean no harm to you, but... I was watching, you know. The charity event a few weeks ago? It's so nice to see young people working toward a good cause and enjoying themselves while doing it. And something caught my attention after you and your partner were brought up on stage," Agatha turned to the lavender-haired witch. "When you introduced yourselves as witches... Amity, is it? You said that you were born a witch but that Luz 'earned it?' May I ask what you meant by that?"

Amity closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled through her nose. "On the Boiling Isles, a witch is... Normally, it's what we are. Luz... She didn't have magic the way we do, as an inherent factor of her biology, not at first. But she rediscovered an ancient form of magic that witches used before we knew how to use our own, that tapped the ambient power of the Boiling Isles itself to function, and she worked hard to master it. When she started to develop magic of her own through... That's a long story, but when she did she worked even harder. The whole time, she worked hard to learn about us, how our magic works and how it's used, but also our culture in general... Luz... Became one of us," Amity finished. "And between that and all the good she's done for the people of the Isles, there's no one back home who can say she's not a witch and mean it, regardless of where she was born or what species... Also, the closest thing we had to a God liked her for..." Amity trailed off for a moment as if unsure how to finish.

"It wasn't a chosen one thing, or anything," Luz quickly insisted. "Not some lost prophecy of a hero from a distant land doing stuff that the locals can't or anything just... He liked the cut of my jib and gave me a few handouts so I'd have a fair chance at learning magic. He's not the only one who helped me, either, I had a lot of help from a lot of people to do everything I did... Amity's making me sound like some super special awesome lord donut steel type character but even now, after everything and with all the power I have I'm just Luz."

"Yeah, just Luz," Hunter quipped. "Just the person who helped me wake up and see that my uncle was a murderous cult leader."

"Just the person who helped me build the confidence to excel at my passions," Willow added.

"Just the person who helped me learn all about the people and places I'm passionate about," Gus quipped.

"Just the person who accepted me as a family within moments of meeting me even though I tried to steal your life," Vee said.

"Just the wonderful girl who refused to let anyone stop her from being the person she wanted to be," her Mom said warmly.

"Just the girl who gave me the courage to be the person I want to be," Amity finished. "We all know you didn't get here by yourself, but that doesn't mean you aren't an awesome person and you deserve recognition."

Luz felt her face warm as she muttered "You guys don't fight fair."

"Well that was a touching display," Agatha noted with the kind of gentle snark that only the elderly could pull off, "and a good answer. Unfortunately, there are many in this world who would disagree: By the standards of this world, being a witch isn'tsomething you can earn. You are either born a witch or warlock—"

"Sorry to interrupt but, so we're all on the same page," Luz said before turning to her friends, "for reasons I don't understand, 'witch' is a gendered term on Earth: Girls who use witchcraft are called witches while boys are called warlocks."

"Well that's dumb," Gus said.

"May I continue?" Agatha asked. "In the magical terminology of this dimension, a witch is someone with the ability to use witchcraft, a subset of sorcery that one is born with."

Gears turned in Luz's head for a moment. "So... If I'd never gone to the Boiling Isles, I'd never have been able to become a real witch."

"I'm afraid not, which is a true shame: I apologize if you feel I've intruded but I did a bit of research on you before requesting this meeting and I can't help but feel you'd have had great potential if you did."

"Thank you but... I'm not sure how you'd know that?" Luz was confused, either you were or you weren't a witch, Agatha had just said, so... How would you know that someone who isn't a witch would be a good one?

"A true witch, as we understand them on Earth," Agatha began, "differs from a sorcerer in one key way: We are gifted the ability to channel the limitless magic of the cosmos through our bloodlines and heritage by the Goddess of Witchcraft. Whereas a sorcerer will draw on their own power, which must be built with practice, the power around them, and the power they are gifted, steal, or barter from various higher beings, a witch has energy supplied to them and channeled via magical phrases and rituals. Primarily, this energy is drawn from the Earth and from the concepts of masculinity and femininity, while the rituals require creativity, willpower, and for a novice witch are often instinctively shaped by the traditions or spiritualism of their ancestors."

"And you lost me," Luz admitted. This was... Not common knowledge, according to the literature she'd found.

"You are a girl who not only loves nature but loves allof nature, even that which repulses others like spiders and serpents," Agatha continued. "You are a girl who does not conform to the expectations of such and has traditionally masculine interests but are no less feminine for it and are utterly unashamed to love who you love. You are remarkably creative and artistic, and your rich heritage draws you back to three cultures that are in turn comprised of and influenced by many more," Agatha finished. "Between your ancestry and your character, any right-thinking witch or warlock who came across you would be prepared to fight for the right to help nurture your gifts had your bloodline been blessed by the Goddess."

"...Is that a good thing?" Luz asked. Some of that was...

"It wasn't meant to offend, and I apologize if it did," Agatha said.

"I'm not comfortable with a total stranger knowing so much about my daughter," her Mom said.

"Yeah um, you did a better job of doing your homework than Doom did," Luz noted.

"And again I apologize, but I needed to know young Luz's character before I made this offer," Agatha said.

"Look I have enough mentors and honestly I'm not interested in having any more power right now," Luz declared. "I am still baby, I have enough power."

"...Wait, is fourteen considered a baby in the human realm?" Willow asked randomly.

"It's an expression," Luz dismissed.

"I'm not offering you power, and even a novice hedge mage could tell that your magic is different enough from what most on Earth have access to that I could only guide you, rather than teach you," Agatha declared. "No, what I am... Let me keep explaining, we got sidetracked a little bit: There is a long, mostly hidden, society of mystics and monsters in this world, and this occult society is bound by many ancient rules. In truth, these rules are only held up by what amounts to gentlemen's agreements, but they've been in place for so long that many, even those of us who were there when they were founded, sometimes forget and treat them like ironclad laws of nature. And many of these 'rules' were simply the entitled attitudes of ancient monsters insisting they had the right to work their wills on mortals who could not resist them. While most would not begrudge a young sorceress for calling herself a witch—I knew a few when I lived in Salem who called themselves that simply because they were Puritan women who didn't know better when a dream demon best left unnamed offered them the power to cast off the oppressive chains of their society... Too bad they went drunk with power..."

"People who didn't conform were accused of being witches," Luz noted, "so they chose to call themselves witches when they rebelled."

"Exactly. But... Well, you introduced yourself as a witch while having magic quite different from that of any other witch... And your partner's claim that you earned it despite not being born one... Would rub a few creatures the wrong way. Throw in your apotheosis later that night, the birth of a juvenile elder god was felt across the world... Several, and... There's been some talk about an upstart bragging about earning a title she has no right to and collecting power she didn't earn."

"...Well that's one way to describe what happened" Luz deadpanned. "Not the right way, but..."

"We're talking about black magicians and literal monsters, Luz," Agatha noted. "They tend to not be the most rational with their grievances. The point is, it's possible that you may be attacked. Possibly by someone who is genuinely offended, no matter how misguided and ill-placed it is, or possibly by someone who wants to claim your powers for themself, or eliminate you as a threat, but by the same rules they feel you're flaunting would need some sort of casus belli."

"Which by supposedly breaking these rules that I never agreed to, didn't even know about, and shouldn't apply to me anyway, I've somehow given them," Luz lampshaded.

"Again, old monsters and dark magicians tend to be entitled and hypocritical," Agatha noted. "Often these rules only come up when a monster is offended that their prey has the 'audacity' to successfully fight back or when someone is upset that someone finally worked up the nerve to execute a dark wizard but not so much when a murderous wraith lures a child into their territory."

"Admittedly, sometimes when you're used to dealing with old laws that actually do exist for a good reason or are magically enforced," Strange added, his first contribution to the conversation, "one can develop bad habits like treating these rules with more respect than they're due. There was a man who went by the name of Gaslamp active as essentially a magical drug dealer in the streets of New Orleans, hollowing out people's souls to create addictive wishes from their hopes and dreams. We should have done something about him years ago, rules or no rules... If we had, the tragedy that occurred in my absence at Strange Academy may have been at least partly averted."

"He's dead now," Agatha insisted. "Very, very dead, and the sort of dark magic he trafficked with has nasty consequences when one finds themselves on the other side. That said, well, you have a few people in your corner who are trying to handle the situation: Wanda has leveraged her reputation as the Scarlet Witch and the Living Darkhold to... Discourage anyone for going after you, while the Queen of Limbo has taken to pre-emptively murdering some of the nastier monsters who might come after you using their own infractions as justification. I am here, however, to offer you a more permanent solution."

"What do you have in mind?" Luz asked.

"There is a certain rite of passage performed by the witches of Earth," Agatha began. "And sometimes by other mystics who have been trained by witches. If you undergo this rite and succeed in some relatively simple trials, there will be no one who can argue that you don't have the right to call yourself a witch and if that doesn't remove the casus belli from that who would seek to attack you my own word on the matter would."

"What kind of trials?" Luz's Mom asked sternly. "I don't want Luz to have to deal with any entitled old creeps but I don't see putting her in a different sort of danger as much better."

"Nothing physically dangerous," Agatha insisted. "The trial tailors itself to the abilities of the aspiring witch: Whatever trials Luz faces will be trials she is able to overcome, and if it is hard or painful it will only be because it is something that needs to be done in order for her to grow. If you accept, Luz," Agatha continued, "you will be sent into the domain of the Goddess of Witchcraft, a dimension that transcends time, space, and the multiverse, and be confronted by, and maybe even interact with scenes from your past, present, and possible future. You will face the forces that have shaped your life and confront your destiny and, if successful, will be rewarded with... Well, that tends to vary somewhat. Some witches will find that their power has grown, or that their skills have become easier to master, but for most, the reward is more subtle: Knowledge, understanding, perspective, closure, or some degree of healing of their spirit... Rarely, it's all of the above. Truthfully I might have made this offer sooner or later regardless," Agatha finished, "as quite a lot of magicians seem quite taken with you and it's always good for a young witch to have perspective."

Luz's mind caught on two things. Closure, and healing... "And the thing I confront... Even if it's hard it won't be something I'm not ready for, right?"

"Right."

"Okay... I'll... You said this was like, a formal rite of passage, right? Does it have a name?" Luz asked.

Agatha laughed: "I'm sorry, I must have forgotten to tell you that: What I am offering you, Luz, is the opportunity to walk the Witches' Road."

AN: Just so we're all clear, while I'm kind of cherry-picking since she's been around for a while, this should be read as the Agatha who babysat for the Fantastic Four, trained Wanda when she was realizing the full extent of her powers, and helped protect the ideals of freedom as one of the Daughters of Liberty. Not the morally ambiguous Agatha who screwed up Wanda's plans to deal with Cthon permanently and definitely not MCU Agatha. This is not a trap. I repeat, this is not a trap.