Chapter 90

After leaving Amphibia, Luz noted that she wasn't really finding any more arches. Not blocking her path and not off to the sides either.

After what felt like half an hour of walking down a single spirally stretch of the road, or worse just going in circles, Luz stopped, parked herself on the ground to give her legs a short rest, and thought.

"Okay so... I've seen the past and the present, so that means that what's left is the future..." After thinking about it some more... And when her feet weren't hurting quite as much, she stood up and began working oracle spells. It wasn't easy without tea leaves or a crystal ball but after a bit of experimentation, she was able to work something and then a new side path became visible in the trees.

Walking down his new path, which was much straighter than the Witches' Road had ever been since she got here, for another ten minutes eventually brought Luz to a clearing with three statues.

...Or maybe it was one statue of three people? One pedestal, three statues, and a carved plaque that read "Virgo, Mater, et Crone."

"Hmm, Latin... Virgin, mother, and crone—No, maiden, mother and crone, the three faces of Hecate!" The Greco-Roman witch-god, that is, not the Azura character.

Luz hummed to herself and looked more closely at the statues only to startle when she realized they were statues of her.

To the left was obviously the maiden, as this was the youngest. She was more or less the same age as Luz was now, and was dressed in a rockin Azura cosplay, with a look on her face that was... It wasn't innocent, the way you'd think the maiden would be, but... Hopeful?

In the middle was a Luz who looked to be in her thirties. She was wearing casual clothing, sweatpants, and a sweater, as well as Amity's pendant and a wedding band. She um, filled out a little bit. Still tall and thin but somewhat more matronly, and was noticeably pregnant. Her expression was a warm smile and Luz noted that she had reading glasses.

"Okay, that one's obviously the mother, which means that the last one is..." The statue on the right looked to be the same age as the 'mother' but couldn't be more different. Whereas the other two had gone back to Luz's naturally curly hair, as she had, this one's hair was still straightened. Like, it was how her hair was done towards the day of unity, but longer. On her face was a bitter scowl and she was dressed in... In armor like Knull's, her hands held on the pommel of a sword that was buried in the stand. "She doesn't look like a crone, but she's got the vibe," Luz finished, somewhat disturbed.

Examining the statues further, Luz found a stone basin hidden behind the plaque, along with a razor-sharp athame. She sighed as she figured out what needed to be done and cut one of her fingers with the athame and let drops of cerulean blood flow into the basin.

"Really hope nobody does anything weird with my blood," she mused, and then in a flash the statues were gone.

"Don't worry," came...

"Oh, Titan, this is like hearing yourself in a video times a hundred," Luz mused as she turned around to see herself... And herself... And herself but scary.

"Yeah, tell me about it," Maiden Luz replied. "But um yeah. All your blood got used up letting this happen... I think."

"Okay so, what is this?" Luz asked. "Are... What? My possible future selves?"

"More like... You couldhave become one of us," Mother Luz said gently. "If different things had happened, if you made different choices, or if... Well..."

"I mean I'm pretty sure your timeline split from mine trillions of years ago," Maiden added. "Like, real talk girl your dimension is insane."

"You could still end up becoming someone likeme," Mother continued, "depending on what choices you make, but you're past the divergence point for all of us."

"Count yourself lucky," the third one muttered.

"So what happens now, do I just... Ask you about yourselves?" Luz asked.

"No clue," Maiden said. "We're here to like, help you like... I guess our stories are supposed to help you learn something about yourself." She looked at the other two. "So there's clearly a theme going on here. I'm the Maiden, she's the mother, and um..."

"I'm a thousand years old," the third future Luz said, "Crone fits."

"Anyway, I guess I'll start," Maiden said. "I... I don't have powers like you or magic of my own, and... Actually, if I understand this right you actually saw me earlier but a few weeks ago from my perspective...? Anyway, um... Well, a lot of little things were different for me, like... I got together with Amity when Hooty kidnapped her and forced us both on a tunnel of love he built in the basement in a misguided attempt to help me ask her out, which admittedly I did need help doing becuase we were both too afraid to make the first move even though we both knew we liked each other and" Maiden slapped herself. "Sorry, anyway, I um... Since all I had were the glyphs and Owlbert I couldn't beat Belos in the first fight and I had to sacrifice the portal to save Eda. So I didn't get to talk to Mom before I got stranded, and when I was able to establish contact and found out about Vee and... I um, made Mom think I ran away on purpose and she had a breakdown and begged me to stay with her once I got the portal working..." Maiden blew out some air. "I was so upset about hurting her that I agreed but... At the time it felt like I was promising to never go to the demon realm again."

"Ouch" was all Luz could say.

"Yeah, which caused a lot of stress and anxiety and..." Maiden laughed. "She's more open to the demon real after taking care of everyone after the Day of Unity... Actually, we should probably go over that in detail at some point just to clear the air, but... Anyway, after everything... I don't want to play misery poker," Maiden said, "but not being able to clear the air with Mom and having all of this guilt about how my actions hurt her meant that all the stuff leading up to the Day of Unity hit me a lot harder and... I was basically planning to break up with Amity and swear to never go to the Demon Realm again, since I was convinced that all I ever did was hurt, people."

That... That hurt to hear. "Would you like a hug?"

"I'm fine," Maiden insisted, "I was just... Really depressed. Mom basically insisted on coming back to the demon realm with me after we found a way back and had to drill it through my thick skull so that people make mistakes and make me genuinely feel like I was understood for the first time to get e out of it... And I needed to get another pep talk from The Titan and actually beat Belos for good to get out of it completely and..."

"...And you went through all of that without Stringbean," Luz noted. Realizing that she wanted to be understood was what had made Stringbean hatch

"I did," Maiden replied. "I've got her now, and she was well worth the wait," she insisted, "but... Well, the thing is I'm getting better now. I have a lot of work to do on myself but... I'm okay."

"...Okay," Luz said as she started to piece together what she was supposed to learn from Maiden. "Now can I ask about the Azura cosplay?"

"Halloween was insane and then we didn't really have a chance to change clothes for a few days," Maiden replied.

"...Should I keep an eye out for—"

"It was Belos," Maiden confirmed. "And he's dead in your timeline, so like... Problem solved."

"...Why didn't you and Amity get together at Grom?" Luz asked.

"She never asked me out," Maiden replied. "Things ended up way different so she never really had the push she needed to work up the nerve, and... So I didn't find out she liked me until she kissed me on the cheek after I got her unfired."

"She got fired?" Luz asked.

"For taking me into the forbidden stacks without permission," Maiden confirmed.

"...Why didn't she just ask Malphas?"

Crone scoffed. "Obviously she was thinking with her—"

Crone didn't get to finish becuase Mother casually drew a sandel and waved it, causing Crone to shut up.

"So, anyway, that's basically my story," Maiden finished. "I hope it helped you."

"I think it did, at least a little bit..." Things were bad for Luz, but they could have been so much worse... And yet here was a Luz where things were worse and she spiraled worse with less support and still managed to get better. It was weirdly comforting to know that.

"I guess it's my turn then," Mother Luz said. "Obviously I'm much further into the future than she is," she said with a gesture to Maideb, "I'm not going to say what exactly made you and I split off from each other, since it was recent but... Well, I'm a version of you who went through almost everything you did, and... I grew up to be a happy, healthy, and functional adult."

"I can see that," Luz noted while staring at her older counterpart's baby bump. Motherhood wasn't really something Luz had thought about because, you know, she was too young to be thinking about it, but...

"Yeah... I'm not going to tell you what choices that Amity and I made in our lives, because I want you to take your own future instead of following a roadmap to one like mine," Mother said, "But, well with our lifestyle and chosen careers it made more sense for me to be the one to carry our little witchlet. Could be different for you though, so..."

"I get it," Luz said. "But that's the gist of it? After everything you still got to grow up, marry Amity, get jobs, and start a family?"

"I wouldn't really say we started a family so much as we grew it, but yeah," Mother confirmed while giving her belly a rub. "Little Sabrina's gonna come into this world surrounded by an army of aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents who'd do anything for her. And I don't want to make it sound like my life is completely mundane, we all still get up to plenty of adventure and I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that Calamity and the Mighty Mittens are on the Avengers Reserve list, but, yeah. After everything, normality is still possible and so is satisfaction."

"That's good to know," Luz noted.

That just left the Crone. "The difference between you and me was chance. Two things, really. The first is that The Collector's mirror broke when Belos tossed it, poor kid. The second is that when I tried to bluff him, I stumbled the wrong way and he didn't fall for it. A fight ensued, but becuase he didn't open the door the heroes on the other side took longer to get in." Crone sighed. "We lost Hunter. We lost Gus. We lost Willow. We lost our palismen. I was almost dead myself, damned draining spell, and... I saw that Belos was about to finish off Amity, and something inside me snapped. I drew on something dark, and... Of the four of us here, I'm the only one that killed the bastard myself. I stopped the draining spell, but not before a lot of people died, including..." Crone went silent for a bit. "It took me years before I was anything close to resembling okay again. Amity either. We um... Maybe leaned on each other a little too much, you know. It's not like we had much of anyone else anymore but... Eventually, we overcame everything but, we were never the same again. The Isles were in chaos that whole time and I'm still not sure how it happened but, in the end, Odalia got what she wanted... Not like she could enjoy it." Crone laughed bitterly. "You can imagine how bad things were for that to actually be a reasonable call."

"Yikes."

"My Amity and I are still together, but we never formally tied the knot and never had kids," Crone continued. "At this point, I'm not even sure if we can. The stuff she did to be able to stay with me forever had some nasty side effects, but I digress... It took a long time to get things fixed and now I'm constantly terrified that if I abdicate power things will go straight to Hell but... It's not all bad, either. I don't go to the human realm very often anymore, but I am the patron goddess of a cult of sneople back on Earth and the little ones are always happy to see me the first time they successfully cast the spell to summon 'Graunty Light.'"

"I'm assuming Vee and Masha?" Luz began.

"Yep," hmm. "If there's one other bright spot to how things turned out for me, is that even after all the loss and pain and centuries of hard work that Amity and I are still together, still in love... If anything all the pain and struggle helped us appreciate what good there was in our lives more... We make it a point to go on a pilgrimage once a year, visiting the graves of all of our loved ones to remind them that they are loved and missed. So my advice to you, Luz... I know that you've still got your friends and family. And that you've got a better way around the whole 'outliving your loved ones' thing that me and my Amity do... But don't let that get you complacent. Take the time to truly appreciate the people around you, and enjoy the good times as much as you can, becuase you never know what could happen or how long it'll take to get better."

"...Would you like a hug?" Luz asked.

"Don't cry for me," Crone replied. "There's nothing you can do to help and better uses for your time. And, well, I guess that's it."

All three of the other Luzes were glowing and suddenly faded away in dozens of balls of light.

Alone in the clearing, Luz sat down and began to ponder...

"So first I saw the pasts of my friends... And those were all before something bad happened... But they're all okay now... Then I fought Knull and got back to the road after I 'wehed' for the first time... That's a power I should have known I had but had never occurred to me to use until I was desperate and running on instinct and... then the last talk with my Dad... Kind of feels like Knull was a side trip, something to do while I was visiting the past anyway, instead of the main point and... Things can be good in the past and good again in the future and... The guilt over not sayin' goodbye to Dad was holding me back? But what about the witch hanging? Unless... It was a reminder? That woman's journal was how Belos summoned whatever it was that helped him make his portal, so..."

"Then the present, I saw a bunch of different versions of myself in different circumstances. Some were doing better than me, some we doing worse, and one of them was Maiden before she was Maiden... That's obviously putting my life in context, and... Then I talked with Mr. Plantar and... Family finds each other, that's... That hopeful isn't, but... That thing with the Chibiverse... I was there but it wasn't about me and... Thinking about it it was weird that it was there in the first place, and then right forward... How did Cipher know what I saw unless... Unless he tampered with the Road somehow? Was that a distraction so he could talk to me? I'll come back to this later."

"And finally, the faces of Hecate... Those lessons were baked into the stories. Maiden was a me who was weaker, and so her story unfolded so that everything hit her harder, but now she's gonna be okay. Mother is a me who went through most of what I did and grew up, still having adventures, but also a mundane life she's satisfied with, and Crone is a me where everything went wrong and she lost a lot of people, but... She still has some good in her life and she appreciates it all, so even she's okay, so... I'm not here to learn a lesson, am I?"

Luz shot to her feet and started pacing. "I'm not here to learn something, the perspective... It's not a lesson, it's a reassurance. I'm... The work I'm doing... Is goingto work... When I walk the Witches Road, the rite of passage, the message I need to figure out by confronting my past and future is... That I'm going to be okay? I'm going to be okay!"

Titan, it sounded so dumb out loud but... Even after everything, the support group, the therapy, the epiphanies just having the reassurance that it was all going to work out for her was something she needed. She just... Needed to do the work and the work would get done and...

"...There is no way to phrase this that doesn't sound like a tautology, is there?"

Regardless, moments after the realization hit her she suddenly found herself back on the couch in Doctor Strange's sitting room. Agatha and Strange looked pleased, but her friends all seemed confused.

"Did something go wrong?" Amity asked. "You were only gone for a like half a minute."

"It was longer from my perspective," Luz said, "and no, there was an unexpected complication but otherwise everything went exactly how it was supposed to."

"And I feel the Goddess's blessing on you, Luz," Agatha said. "No one on Earth can ever say that you haven't earned the right to call yourself a witch now."

"Thank you," Luz replied with a smile.

"May I ask what lesson the Goddess's realm guided you to?" Agatha asked.

"I'm still processing everything, and I've got some ideas for things I need to bring up in therapy but... The lesson I learned is that I'm going to be okay," Luz declared. "There's so much I want to tell everyone but I'm kind of tired so... Mom?" Luz said while turning to her Mother. "In the part when I was confronting the past, I... I got to talk to Dad, one last time. I finally got to say goodbye. I told him everything that happened, and made sure he wasn't alone when he went, and... He told me, to tell you 'Through supernovas and solar wind.' He said you'd know what it means and..."

Luz noticed that her mother's eyes were beginning to water, and suddenly she found herself in a warm hug. This quickly resulted in a group hug from all of Luz's present loved ones that lasted until Clea walked into the room.

"So Dormammu has once more been incarcerated in the Theraprism," she declared. "But... Okay, I didn't think I'd literally be back before you were done. Stephen, we have some things to discuss when they leave."

This resulted in some laughter, and after Luz shot off a couple of quick texts to Anne her group quickly packed up and went home.

TLOA

Marcy's parents had, after some tense negotiation... Well, tense by normal standards, kind of folded quickly by what Marcy was used to, had finally, albeit reluctantly, agreed to let her fly out to LA for the weekend to spend some time with her girlfriends. Marcy was currently having the time of her life, just sitting with them at the beach when Anne suddenly got a text message.

"Guys?" She said as though she was conveying an earth-shattering revelation. "Luz was doing a magic thing and ended up in Amphibia for like half an hour. She talked with Polly and Hop Pop and she has updates on how everyone's doing."

This resulted in a lot of Marcy and Sasha instinctively trying to talk over each other until another text notification. Anne read that one off, too. "She says it's a lot to explain over text but she'll tell us what she was doing, how she ended up there, and how everyone else is doing, at the next Group meeting unless you two can find the time to come to her next sword lesson, then she'll do it then." Another notification was met with a loud, shocked gasp.

"What now?" Sasha demanded.

In response, Anne turned her phone to them to show a picture of a sparrow with a snail's shell. "Joe and Bessie had babies!"

Suddenly and unprompted, everything Marcy knew about both avian and mollusk biology from both Earth and Amphibia flooded into her conscious mind. "How!?"