Chapter 88

Surprisingly enough, entering the Witches' Road was a matter of a simple spell, though Agatha had said that it was best to do it sooner rather than later. So, after some brief discussion and a moment to brace herself, Agatha cast the spell, and Luz suddenly found herself in a dark forest. It was maybe a little spooky, but after the Isles, it was nothing she couldn't handle.

She felt a weird tingle, but she guessed it was just because she wasn't used to this dimension's ambient magic. After taking in her surroundings, Luz noticed that she seemed to be standing on a path through the forest, a literal 'road' if you will, and turning to see that she was currently standing at a dead end, she began walking. She took her time, keeping her head on a swivel, to make sure she didn't miss any important details.

"...Man I wish I'd thought to have some coffee before doing this," she mused.

Eventually, she saw an arch next to the road. Two trees that had grown together, and something was off about it. It was a dead end on the other side, but... She approached it anyway. As she did, it suddenly filled with stars. Feeling that it was something magical, she did the only logical thing and stuck her face in it.

On the other side was something she immediately recognized as Old Gravesfield... Back in the old days. A whole bunch of old-timey townsfolk were standing around a woman on a gallows as a man she recognized as a young Philip recited off an indictment of infractions cited from the woman's own journal and—wait, that was the journal he had when she saw him the memory of summoning whoever it was that helped him with the portal. This was that witch... Wait, was she one of the 'witches' Agatha had mentioned?

Just before a man, presumably someone involved in the sham of a legal system that allowed this, pulled a lever the woman, bound and gagged as she was, managed to struggle enough to free her mouth. She shouted "Dv L glh L frpplw pb vrxo wr Eloo Flskhu, zkr iuhhg ph iurp guxgjhub dqg jdyh ph wkh srzhu wr olyh ulglfxorxvob! Sudlvh eh wr klv dqjohv dqg hbh!"

The lever was pulled, the woman fell, and Luz was booted from this vision of the past while the woman's legs were still twitching.

"...I really don't want to know why I needed to see that.," Luz deadpanned. Taking a moment to compose herself, she carried on.

The next several arches were better. She saw King hatching from his egg, Eda's first meeting with Raine, her parents at a cosmic frontier convention(she was asking her Mom for cosplay tips later,) Amity and Willow playing together at the slayground when they were little, and even Eda's Vegas wedding to Stan... She would take just how obvious it was that Eda was conning him to her grave, she wasn't gonna begrudge an old man for getting stupid when he thought he'd found the one.

The next arch, however, was blocking the path entirely. When it filled with stars Luz pressed against it to find it had less give. Turning around, the path behind her was gone.

Taking a deep breath she pressed against the starry barrier as hard as she could and eventually, it gave and she stumbled through into something unlike anything she'd ever seen before.

The sky was dark, but not nighttime dark but like... Like 'the air was thin all over the planet' dark, and even though she felt fine she could feel the difference in her lungs.

Everything around her was dark, too. The ground was black and shiny and... Weirdly organic. And everything was featureless, flat, except for like, a raised dias a distance away. She was here for a reason but something felt... Off. Like she was in danger just being here.

Her first instinct had been to summon Stringbean but her staff didn't manifest when she tried. The realization had cut her like a knife. She had gone to another dimension and now had probably traveled through time and every time period she'd seen so far had been well before Stringbean had been carved so... She was on her own for now.

Feeling even less safe than she had before, Luz transformed, pulled her cloak over her shoulders, and called Toda Mi Amistad to hand. And then, not knowing what else to do, she walked toward the dais.

It was slow going, more out of hesitation than it being that fair, but...

Luz was shaken out of her thoughts by a dragon flying overhead. A real one. It had a wyvern body plan, mostly a dark inky black with with red wing membranes and a smooth, tapered tail. It was moving pretty fast, Luz didn't get too good a look but accounting for that whole 'your brain makes it seem bigger than it is' phenomenon se read about when studying the Moth Man at 3 AM on a whim one night... Technically morning, it still seemed to be roughly T-Rex size.

"Really hope I don't look tasty," Luz mused. "Being eaten alive is certainly one thing I don't want to have in common with Anne."

Eventually, she made it to the dais and began to climb the stairs up to the top, wondering all the while what it was she'd find when she got there.

Eventually, her questioning was met with an answer. At the top of the dais, across from the stairs, was an evil-looking black throne, and slouching on it, seemingly asleep, was a man with long white hair and pale blue skin dressed in a suit of inky black mail armor with a red logo of a stylized dragon whose wings resembled the spider-legs on Venom's logo.

"...This is him, isn't it?" She asked herself. "The King in Black... Knull."

The man's eyes snapped open, solid red and faintly glowing. He stood and towered over Luz, looking down at her with the gaze of a lazy tiger—an apex predator that knew it was an apex predator. He seemed somewhere between amused and bemused as he took her in, and Luz's feelings of danger worsened with every second.

"One of mine, yes..." He noted, "But it's got the flesh of some mortal creature merged to it... The power of a strange god that is similar to but distinct from my own. And I smell the taint of Celestial interference as well."

He slowly reached out to touch her and Luz's reflexes all went off at once. She jumped back, landing in a stance Anne had shown her with her sword held up, ready to fight.

Knull looked like he would be chuckling if he had any capacity for humor and said "Alright. I'll play," and Luz's blood froze as she briefly flashed back to her first meeting with Belos. His armor shifted for a moment, revealing it to be a symbiote and a portion of it shielded into his outstretched hand to become a solid black claymore that he held in a single hand.

Upon seeing the sword, Luz felt a tingle in her spine, and thoughts of heat, noise, and pain filled her mind for just a second, as did a name. If this was like, some kind of action game, the words 'All-Black' would have flashed on the screen as Knull brought the massive blade to a two-handle grip.

Things were tense for a moment, but then Knull struck. Quick and like a viper, faster than someone that big and with a sword that heavy should have been able to move. Luz was barely able to block it and... This duel was hardly fair, considering he had a big giant sword and she had... Well, she wasn't sure what she had actually. She originally thought it was a saber but turns out those only have one edge and are usually curved while her soul sword was two-edged and straight.

No, bad Luz! Focus on the fight!

Knull was dominating the duel and it was all Luz could do to block his strikes even as he pushed her back. Then, as she neared the end of the dais, she remembered that she was under no obligation to fight fair and also that she was a witch.

A few light glyphs in his face made Knull recoil with a scream and let Luz slash out his wrists.

He dropped his sword, which twisted and returned to his armor, and then he glared at her, his face twisting into a too-wide scowl on a too-big mouth filled with too many, too-sharp teeth, and suddenly something grabbed her leg. Luz looked down and saw a tendril had come out of the dias itself. She slashed at it and jumped off.

As she fell, she focused really hard on her cloak and it split open into a pair of wings on which she glided down to the ground. Apparently, Belos had managed to fly when he had her body but she hadn't figured out how to do that, yet.

As soon as she landed, more tentacles, as well as arms and symbiote heads—their eyes replaced with a jagged red spiral—emerged from the ground and grabbed at her.

Luz quickly came to the chilling realization that this whole planet was a symbiote.

She dropped her sword, which vanished back to her soul and, and... Focus, her Titan-form was still her symbiote more, the cloak wasn't the only part and...

Blades. Lots of places. On little jagged spider limbs from her arms, back, and legs. Curved and edged, just right for slicing, cut at the symbiote limps which kept coming but... There were too many of them, and that Knull creep was still up there and he was probably coming to get her and the thin air was starting to get to her and she just wanted to—

"Weh!"

She screamed and a sudden pulse of sound and magic destroyed all of the symbiote matter around her. Right, Titan... Should...

She was suddenly tired and fell to her knees just as she found that she was back on the Witches' Road.

"...Note to self, double check that he's dead in my time." She was pretty sure he was but... An Elder God turning up randomly looking for a rematch was...

There was another arch blocking her path, but she took a few minutes to regain her strength before she pushed herself and, still in Titan form, walked through. She'd be ready for whatever trial this one was, too.

...Or so she'd thought.

This was... She was in a hospital room. And there was a man on the bed, hooked up to some machines. This wasn't the kind of room they kept you when they were trying to save you though. This was the kind of room where they put you to try and keep you comfortable while your family was on the way to say goodbye. And she recognized the man in the bed.

She took out her phone, to check the date. If this is real then it should connect to the network and... Yeah. August 22...

This was so much worse than fighting Knull.

Luz walked forward and looked down at the man. At... At her Dad.

Why was... When she'd talked with Papa Titan after the thing on Titan Trapper Island, he'd given a considered and measured argument for not changing the past but all Luz could think right now was 'stuff that!'

Diagnostic spells are pretty basic healing magic. She was good at healing magic and...

...The cancer was everywhere. It'd started in his blood but it was everywhere... But he'd been getting better before he collapsed, had... Had the chemo failed or something or...? No, Focus Luz. Healing magic was good. Healing magic could cure cancer... Not cancer this severe, but maybe that's just becuase no one had ever tried!

With a spell circle in each hand Luz began casting every spell she knew that could help. Tumors shrank, damaged cells mended, fatigue toxins cleared away but... Not fast enough... He was gone within thirty minutes of Luz seeing him carted off in the hospital, before she and her Mom could get there to say goodbye, every second counted and...

He started to stir, his eyes slowly opening as Luz worked. They focused on her face. "Mija?"

Luz broke with tears pouring from her eyes as she answered "Si Papi," with a sniff.

"How long was I out?" He asked, weakly but jokingly.

"Not long, this is..." Luz wracked her brain for how to explain it. "A lot has happened."

"I can see that," he said glancing up at her horns.

"I can fix that," Luz said, but before she could change back to human her Dad stopped her.

"No," he said. "Mi hijita es hermosa incluso como un demonio."

"Gracias Papi."

"Now, what's going on?"

"It's... It's been a while. I'm... I'm a witch now," Luz said. "I'm walking the Witches' Road, it's some... Big milestone where I get sent across time and space to see and interact with things... I just had a sword fight with a Lovecraftian god."

"Did you win?"

"I blinded him with a light spell, slashed his wrists, and ran for it," Luz admitted.

"Sounds like winning to me," her Dad insisted.

"Then yes, I did win," Luz agreed.

"I'm not going to make it," he said. Not asked, said. As if he was saying what the weather was like this morning.

"I'm trying but..."

"Mija, one of the hardest lessons I had to learn as an ambulance driver? You can't save everyone," her Dad said. "Whatever it is you did, you... You gave me a little more time, another chance to see you before I go... That's good enough. Let's not waste this."

"Are you sure?" Luz asked with another sniff.

"Yes. My only regret is that I'm leaving you and your mother behind... How are you? How are things after I go?"

"We don't make it in time to say goodbye," Luz admitted.

"It seems like you did," he said. "It just took you longer than you thought."

"...Yeah," Luz agreed. "I guess I did. Uh, things were hard for us for a while, but we managed. And now things are getting better, and..."

"Did you like the book?"

"Yes!" Luz declared. "I loved it, I... I read the whole series, it... Not only did it help me through the first few weeks but reading it was like a life-defining moment, I wanted to be like Azura and... I am," Luz said. "I'm a witch who goes on magical adventures and has cool powers and lots of friends who love me. I'm... Things are hard right now," Luz admitted. "I'm in a support group for girls who had bad experiences adventuring in other worlds and therapy for trauma and depression but I'm doing the work to get better and otherwise I'm living my best life. I'm... As long as my brain isn't being mean right that moment, I'm happy."

"I'm glad," her Dad said. "Tell me about your friends."

"Yeah, they're amazing. I wish you could get a chance to meet them," Luz said as she took her phone out to show him pictures.

"Here's Willow and Gus, my first real friends... This is Hunter, he's kind of a grumpus but he means well... Vee, she's more than a friend, she's a sister... Literally, she was in a bad situation so Mom adopted her. Here's King, who um... He's a brother, becuase his Mom, my mentor a witch, um... Adopted me. I kinda got stuck in the demon realm for a while and Mom wanted to make sure my position over there was secure and I was already the daughter Eda never had so... So I'm Luz Noceda-Clawthorne now."

"A good name for a good witch," her Dad replied.

"Um," Luz said as she cycled through photos. "These are the Pines, a couple of cool old guys and their great niece and nephew. Mable here is... Kind of like me, you know," Luz admitted. "High energy, creative... We got a box of hand-knitted sweaters from her the other day," Luz noted. "Not gonna ask how she got everyone's sizes exactly right. Oh, and she's the girl who got the Electoral College abolished," Luz added as an afterthought... "I don't have any pictures of April and her friends," Luz noted, she'd have to fix that, "she's one of Spider-Man's kids," Luz explained. "Her friends are a wolverine, Iron Fist's daughter, and a girl from the same team as my fourth favorite superhero."

"You're moving up in the world," her Dad noted.

"Yeah... Um, here's Anne, Sasha, and Marcy," Luz said as she showed him another photo. "They're girls I know from the support group, they have cool Anime powers, Anne's teaching me sword stuff and also they're a polycule."

"Alright then, as long as they're happy."

"And last but certainly not least," Luz said as she swiped to a picture of herself and Amity. "We have Amity. We got off on the wrong foot," Luz explained, "but after a little bit we really managed to connect and got super close."

"I can see that," her Dad said... "Is she..."

"She's my girlfriend, Dad," Luz said. "My partner, my, my soul mate. We haven't been together for all that long but... Every time other people talk about our relationship all they can say is how much we help each other grow and how good we are for each other and I want to marry her when I grow up. She feels the same way, and... I love her, Dad. And she loves me."

"I wish I could meet her," he said with a smile. "She sounds wonderful and if she makes you happy then... It's such a load off my shoulders knowing that your future is going to be so bright."

"Yeah."

His eyes closed suddenly and... "Dad?"

"I think this is it," he said. "go... You don't need to see this."

Insad, Luz took his hand. "No, I don't," Luz said, "but you don't need to be alone. either."

"... Stubborn girl," he said with affection. "Tell your mother... 'Through supernovas and solar wind.' She'll know what it means, and... I love you."

"I love you, too, Papi."

He went limp, his face became very peaceful, and the heart monitor that had been beeping the whole time went flat.

"Goodbye," Luz said, "te quiero por siempre."

A moment later, she was back on the Witches' Road. She let herself cry freely. She didn't know for how long. But, when she was done, she kept walking. She felt... Lighter.