Chapter 89

After the final meeting with her Dad, the arches weren't blocking her path anymore.

Each one she poked her head through showed her... Well, the first one showed her a version of herself, sitting in class in Gravesfield High, clearly suffering from a bad episode of depression... She has the same brow scar, her hair was growing out the same way Luz was letting it now, but... Something was different that Luc couldn't place. If it weren't for the fact that she was wearing Eda's grudgby jacket Luz would think that maybe this is what she'd have been like if she never went to the Boiling Isles.

Clara was there and... Wow, she actually looked a little concerned for the other Luz. What the heck had happened?

That vision had ended without anything really decisive happening. The next couple had been more... Varied? A couple where she seemed to be in Titan form all the time... There were a couple where it seemed like she was just straight-up a teenage Titan, a few where she was a witch, and one where she was dressed like a punk and was running around having a good time causing mischief with an Amity who didn't dye her hair. At least three where she seemed to be an angel, a couple where she seemed to be an actual, literal demon, one where she had two older brothers who were old enough to be her dad... and also it seemed a heck of a lot more PTSD.

Then she saw one that was like... It was her and Amity, but they were both eighteen-ish. Amity's hair was longer, wilder, and still dyed green but with more brown showing and her counterpart's hair was long and straight with a beany and two lengths of hair specifically framing her face. They seemed to be roommates and were arguing about something, then it escalated to some words that honestly made her ears burn, then they started making out and thankfully the vision ended there.

"...I don't know what that was," Luz mused to herself, "but I hope those two get some couple's counseling."

Luz carried on and looked into another arch, seeing a vision of herself at a very fancy summer camp being taught how to manipulate water by an older boy who Luz vaguely recognized from the cover art of a children's fantasy book she'd started reading because the protagonist had ADHD only to lose interest when it turned out no he didn't it was just part of his super special demigod powers. That Luz called him her big brother too and...

"Some of these are weird," She muttered. "Okay, like... Agatha said I'd see and interact with the Past, Present, and Future... I've already done the past so these are like... My counterparts in other universes and other timelines?" She asked. "Where things went different for me, or where the idea of Luz manifested differently."

Another arch showed a version of herself that clearly had spider powers kicking the crud out of some titan trappers.

"Yeah, that confirms it," she noted. "And these are like... How those other mes turned out and what they're doing right now? Gonna have a lot to think about later but... I like how I seem to be with Amity in most of them."

She came across one last arch off to the side, and an arch blocked the path a little after it. "Okay, so that one's obviously progress," she noted while looking at the one blocking her path, "if I'm seeing two at the same time it means that that one's optional... But if I'm supposed to be learning and healing and gaining perspective I should probably see as much as I can before going into what's either a trial or a painful moment."

She then dutifully stuck her face in the optional one, gasping at what she saw.

It was a version of her and Amity and a whole bunch of people she didn't recognize. Everyone was short, with big heads and stubby limbs, and all so tiny and cute!

It looked like they were filming a game show and... Yeah, a teeny Hunter was working a camera.

Oh, oh, oh, this was a couplegame show, with the winning couple getting to kiss on camera and a romantic cruise and... It was all so cute that part of Luz felt like she might die of cuteness and, and...

And it soon became clear that the gameshow was rigged: three couples were competing. Her and Amity's counterparts, and two boy and girl couples. One of those couples was entered by mistake and wasn't even dating apparently, despite what her counterpart and the other contestants seemed to think, and the girl seemed horribly uncomfortable with the whole thing... Which made it odd that they were being forced to compete, were getting points no matter how they solved the challenge or answered the questions they were given, and her counterpart lost a point on a technicality when she said that Amity's favorite color was lavender instead of periwinkle...

"Note to self, double-check Amity's favorite color."

Anyway, it was abundantly clear that this whole thing was a sham. At best, they were trying to force a girl to confess her crush, in public, before she was ready. At worst, they were trying to force her to publically kiss someone she didn't want to.

They were all lucky that this was just a vision and she wasn't actually here. If this had been a blocking-the-way arch she'd have given them all a piece of her mind and—

Oh, the boy from that team threw the game becuase he realized how uncomfortable the girl was. Good. He's a good friend. And to prove the whole thing was a sham, the game show just straight up ended there without either of the remaining couples getting a chance to answer the last question so it was Luz and Amity's counterparts tied with the other couple so both couples smooched on camera.

The vision ended after that but just as Luz was about to go to the other arch she was startled by a voice from right behind her.

"Terrifying, isn't it?"

Luz screamed, called upon her sword, and turned around to see that triangle from her weird dream last week.

"You... Cipher, thingy... ahh, crud, that was real," Luz realized. She was gonna have to find time to ask around about that warning then.

"As real as you or me, kid," came the voice of the being that was... disturbinglylike King's.

"Okay um so... What is it you want?" Luz asked.

"Oh, nothing much. I was just wandering the astral plane and saw you walking the road so I thought I'd pop in and say hi."

"Fair enough," Luz agreed. "So what's so terrifying?"

"That," Cipher said with a gesture to the now dormant arch that Luz had been peering through. "A world where countless beings from across the multiverse co-exist in a singular synthetic reality in a deformed state with their limbs shaved down to nubs. Such a horrible place that Chibiverse."

"It's called the Chibiverse!?" Luz asked. "That's adorable!"

The tirangle blinked. "...You know kid, you remind me of someone. You mind if I call you Shooting Star 2? No, what, that's a mouthful... Uh, SS2?"

"Okay, I guess," Luz conceded.

"Cool. Now, I suppose the most terrifying thing about that place is that you and Princess Purple's counterparts actually tied with Little Ms. Genocide and her boy toy."

Luz blinked. "What now?"

"Well you see, SS2 what you three-dimensional organic life forms call 'love' is a constructed concept that encompasses hundreds of emotions, impulses, and biochemical reactions, and what you call romance is applied in the form of complex social rituals that are meant to attract a partner for copulation, companionship, or a dozen other fun things that you'll find out about when you're older," Cipher lectured far too cheerfully for something so cynical. "It's all a big sales pitch, presenting yourself as the superior choice compared to their other options, and as any huckster will tell you a good sales pitch requires effort: You have to at least pretend to care about them. Dwarf SS2 didn't know Pinky's favorite color but had made enough of an effort to be able to guess it and did so with one of those fancy gestures mortals care about for some reason. Blondie pelted her partner with a fruit while confidently giving the wrong answer even though they literally had a whole episode on that exact topic which, while hilarious, goes to show that her interest is mostly superficial and she doesn't care enough to make the effort to fake it."

"Okay there's a lot to unpack there," Luz began, "but that's not the part I was talking about. I meant um, genocide."

"Oh, see it's a funny story," Cipher continued. "See it turns out that the princess found out that her ancestors were actually brutal colonizers who stole the land their kingdom was on from the monsters that were treated like garbage in the kingdom to this day and went full reformist to try and make up for it, which ticked off some people who tried to do an ethnic cleansing against all the monsters with these thingies that couldn't be killed and were powered by magic so she impulsively and unilaterally decided that magic itself was the problem and destroyed the dimension that all magic users in her reality and a few attached dimensions drew their power from... Which killed everyone who needed magic to live in those dimensions, which counting all of the fully sapient beings in her wand was... Well, she doesn't seem to recognize that she stopped a genocide by doing a genocide. Just kind of blew it off, you know."

"...Oh my Titan."

"You mean 'Oh your you,' right?" Cipher asked rhetorically. "But yeah. Girl accidentally a Belos and doesn't really care. At least in most timelines... I can't actually say for certain if the stubby freak version you saw did that yet, the Chibiverse is weird with continuity and in this timeline, I think your dimension's Sorcerer Supreme beat her over the head with it until it sunk in when he went there to grab some kid and ended up getting caught in having to clean up the fallout of her actions." Cipher's body flashed through a series of images like one of those conspiracy theory videos. "Yeah, that was this timeline. She's in therapy now. That's as good a punishment as anything for making her section of the cosmos a more boring place. Anyway, just wanted to see how you were doing, I'll get out of your hair now."

He started to fly off but suddenly turned around and shouted "Think fast!" before throwing a glowing ball of somethingat her. On reflex, she swung at it with her sword which seemingly dissipated it and she suddenly felt as if she'd been punched in the gut for a second.

"The heck was that for!?" She demanded.

Cipher zoomed back. "Oh, it just sort of popped into my head that I needed to get rid of some trash and your sword looked like it would work."

"That wasn't trash," Luz countered.

"It kind of is," Cipher insisted.

"What kind of trash?" Luz asked.

"The kind of trash that destroying here and now breaks a time loop that would see the End of the World as you know it occurring in the year 3012 and lead to a despotic future under a nigh-omnipotent tyrant," Cipher said casually. "And now that won't happen in this timeline. You're welcome. Now remember kid, Nietzsche-was-right-God-is-dead-nothing-at-all-truly-matters. Byeee!" He said right before he vanished.

"... There's no way he isn't up to something," Luz noted. "Not sure what yet, though, and... Wait, what did he mean a whole episodeabout that boy's favorite color?" Luz shook her head to try and get her thoughts as clear as they ever got when she wasn't caffeinated and then pressed on through the arch that was blocking her path.

She found herself on a farm in the middle of the day, near a swampy-looking body of water. Looking around, the farmhouse looked all rustic and cute and...

"Wait a second," Luz muttered to herself as a few stories from the support group came back to her just as the door of the house burst open and a purple and orange blur popped out, tumbled several times, and landed so as to reveal a young-looking anthropomorphic frog in overalls who was aiming a crossbow directly at Luz.

"Don't move!" The girl declared.

"...By any chance is your name Polly?" Luz asked as she dismissed her sword.

"Hop Pop!" the girl shouted. "We've got a trespasser and they know my name!"

"What kind of trespasser!?" called out an aged male voice from... Yeah, that seemed to be a barn.

"I don't know!" Polly called back. "They look kind of like a human but they're covered in black fur, have teeth like some kind of predator, and horns like one of those weird things humans have instead of cowapillars."

"They're called cows," Luz noted. "And um, I can change this." She reverted to human form, which seemed to make things worse.

"They're a shapeshifter!" the frog girl shouted, firing a bolt from her crossbow.

Luz casually blocked the bolt with a shield spell. "I know Anne."

"Prove it nose-haver!" Polly demanded.

Luz sighed, pulled out her phone, and flipped to a picture of the Calamity girls. "See, I know all three of them."

Polly hesitantly lowered her crossbow and approached, a suspicious look on her froggy face, but once she was close enough to see the picture her body language changed entirely. She went bug-eyed and then shouted again. "False alarm!"

"Will ya quit shouting!?" Came the aged voice again. "I don't remember raising you here in this here barn. If there's no problem you can come to tell me in person."

The little frog girl sped off and Luz, for lack of better things to do, followed her to the barn in question. Inside, an elder frog was tending to a giant snail and...

Luz was immediately distracted by the existence of some large sparrows with snail shells. They were adorable. Since her phone was still out, she immediately snapped a picture.

The sound seemed to briefly startle the elder frog, who turned around with a look of excitement that dulled as he saw Luz. "So, is this the trespasser?"

"She knows Anne!" Polly shouted.

"Yeah," Luz began, "we met in a support group for girls who had adventures in other worlds. I know her, Marcy, Sasha... They've actually been helping me out a lot and..." Looking past the older frog, Luz noted that the snail didn't look so good. "Is that Bessie?" She asked. "Is she okay?"

"Yeah, this is Bessie," the frog said. "She'll be fine, just one of those infections you get from time to time. Natural risk of being a working snail but she's strong, she'll pull through. She's just a little miserable right now."

"My Mom's a vet, and I've studied healing and beastkeeping," Luz noted. "Do you mind if I check if there's anything I can do to help?"

"I'm not sure what you could do but feel free," the old frog agreed.

One diagnostic spell later and Luz identified what amounted to a cold virus. One spell boosted the snail's immune system, another cleared up the worst symptoms, and a moment later an adorably giant snail was nuzzling Luz while making adorable noises.

"Aww, now I see why Anne loves you so much," Luz replied as she hugged the snail back.

"Well that was mighty impressive," the old frog noted. "Are you some kind of witch?"

"Yes, yes I am," Luz confirmed. She let go of the friendly snail and offered a hand to shake to the frog. "Luz Noceda-Clawthorne."

"Hopidaiah Plantar," the frog answered as he took her hand. "But everyone calls me Hop Pop. So, if you're a friend of Anne's," he continued, "then the question that comes to mind is just how you got here."

"I'm undergoing a mystical rite of passage that's sending me all across time and space to give me perspective," Luz explained.

"Well if it's perspective you're after you've come to the right place," Hop Pop said. "I've been around the old block a couple of times."

"Okay, but first," Luz said as she reached into her jacket and pulled out a pen and notebook. "Anne and the others have been curious about how everyone here's been doing and I'd feel bad if I didn't get answers for them while I'm here."

The conversation quickly moved to the inside of the Plantar house, a lovely and quaint home, and Luz studiously took notes as she was told that Sprig and his girlfriend Ivy were on an expedition exploring a new continent and thus were only home for a few weeks every few months, but had already made several fascinating discoveries including a 'legume a bit like a human world peanut but not as tasty. You can't eat them but they make good fertilizer,' that Stumpy's Diner was now serving pizza, that 'it turns out the Moss Man is real,' that a girl called Maddie was now offering magical solutions to common everyday problems as a side business to her family's bakery and plenty of things about Anne's extensive list of friends which was apparently everyone in town.

"And we're not really sure how Joe Sparrow and Bessie were able to reproduce together but the snirds are all happy and healthy so that's what's important," Hop Pop finished... Or not. "As for things outside of Wartwood, Grime's back at Toad Tower but things are really different now. Got frogs in the Army and Toads learning how to farm now, never thought I'd see the day. There's been some election reform at local levels so it's more fair. Don't really leave the valley much anymore but news travels, Lady Olivia's running the interim government until we get together a proper replacement for the monarchy. Been talking about having a federal election like you have on Earth, but we'll have to see. Rumor has it that something's going on with Olivia and General Yunan, too."

"Now, um, speaking of the Monarchy," Luz began a little awkwardly, "and this might be a weird question to ask considering um, everything I've been told but... Marcy is concerned for Andrias's wellbeing."

Hop Pop grimaced. "Well, he's alive. For now. The first year or so after everything happened, he spent as much of his time personally trying to fix the damage to Aphibia's landscape as he could but we're past the point where it can be fixed by hand, gotta let the life come back on its own now. And rumor has it he's not getting his cybernetic insides fixed, so there's not really anything but him keeping him alive anymore," he continued. "Nowadays he's living under guard somewhere near the old capital. Telling his story to anyone who wants to listen, hoping people won't make his mistakes. Seems like he's tired to me," Hop Pop concluded. "He's over a thousand years old, and not even the strongest Newts are supposed to live that long on their own. Seems he just wants to let nature take its course and spend his time trying, as best as he can, to make up for what he did until it does. Not all that many people hold much of a grudge, after learning about who was really in charge and how he was treated his whole life but... Sometimes the hardest thing to do is forgive yourself, you know?"

"Yeah," Luz said sadly, "I know."

"How's Anne though?" Polly asked suddenly.

"She's doing great," Luz replied. "She's applying herself in school, she wants to be a herpetologist when she grows up, her family's restaurant is doing well... Marcy and Sasha are also doing good, Sasha's said she wants to be a therapist and help out kids who had problems like she had. Marcy still had to move and it was hard on her but they were still in contact and now things have changed so they can see each other whenever they want, they're all dating each other now—"

"Hah!" Polly shouted. "Pay up," she demanded with a hand outstretched to her grandfather, who reluctantly pulled out his wallet and gave the younger frog ten copper coins.

"And um... Well, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up, and it might be a while, but there's a lead on how the girls might be able to come back here and visit," Luz finished, thinking of the discussion about the Calamity Box in Eda's basement.

"And that is wonderful to hear," Hop Pop said.

"Again, it's not a guarantee," Luz said.

"And that doesn't matter," Hop Pop insisted. "Family finds each other. Even if it's just a chance, that's good enough. If it doesn't pan out, well, if there was a chance once then that means there could be a chance again."

"I like your attitude," Luz said. Something about that... About family finding each other clicked with her. "I'm not sure what it is I'm here to learn but I think this conversation alone made it worth it."

Luz then suddenly found herself back on the Witches' Road, on the other side of a now blocked-off arch.

"Wait," she asked, "was that itor...? I'm gonna have to have a long talk with Agatha when I'm done here. ...Hope just vanishing like that wasn't taken as rude."

With that, Luz continued onto the next leg of her journey down the road.