Chapter 100

The first thing Cipher did after transforming was to tackle Luz quite a bit faster and more forcefully than Luz would have expected. Thus, she was taken off guard and caught up in it. She was taken even more off guard when she hit a wall that wasn't there, broke through, and suddenly, there were a whole lot of colors and shapes. The world went sideways for a second, and...

Well, if the Boiling Isles looked like a painting by Bosch, wherever they were now was a mixture of Escher, Dalí, and Warhol... And also still a little Bosch. And a bit over in the corner looked like a very angry version of one of Van Goh's sunflower paintings for just a second before disappearing entirely and being replaced by a four-armed lobster-elephant thing making a rude hand gesture.

"Where are we?"

"The astral plane!" Cipher shouted. "Welcome to my world, bitch!"

Luz was about to call the triangle out for the cliche line-drop when she suddenly got the sensation of being grabbed by a giant hand, and then suddenly, she was somewhere really dark.

Just as she was about to wonder aloud where it was she was, her train of thought was interrupted by a man's voice from behind her.

"So normally, my schtick is to let you ask five questions, answer them more or less truthfully, and then send you back," he said. "But answering the same five questions every time gets boring fast, and I'm the one who makes the rules, so you're getting a couple of freebies."

Luz turned around and saw a bearded man with blonde hair. He was built like a truck and dressed from the neck down in a black symbiote suit with the same red dragon emblem she saw on the outfits worn by Knull and her 'Crone' future self.

Something about the face was familiar, but when Luz opened her mouth to question it, she was cut off by a raised finger.

"Where are you?" the man began. "The Un-Beyond, the conceptual space at the center of the Symbiote Hivemind. Who am I? The Eventuality, the King in Black of the current Cosmos. You might recognize me as Eddie Brock, but the Eddie of your timeline is going through some stuff. He'll be me eventually, but he's not the me that's talking to you right now. Don't worry about it too much, he's not relevant to your story right now. Why are you here? Frankly, I've been meaning to talk to you for a while, but your tiff with the dapper little psycho was the first chance I got to grab you and the only one I'd have gotten for a while from your perspective. Now you may ask your questions, but remember," he said as he held up his left hand, a small flame at the tip of each finger and the thumb invoking the imagery of the hand of glory.

Her first thought was, "What do you mean the King in Black of this Cosmos? I mean, there's more than one, right?"

A flame was extinguished as one of the Eventuality's fingers curled inward. "I'm the King in Black, you're a King in Black, well, Queen. You have the power, though you've barely tapped into it, but I'm the guy actually doing the job. Live to see the next cosmos, and I might pass it down to you when I retire, but frankly, you don't want it. That said, magically speaking you'd kick my ass if I fought fair."

"What do you mean?" Luz asked, only to immediately slap her hands over her mouth and... Another flame extinguished, another finger curled. Yeah, that counted.

"In this case," The Eventuality said, "it might be better to show you." A portion of the inky black void around them—Luz realized it was symbiote matter—pulled apart into a hole that dilated out into a dark realm filled with crumbled dark crystals and a strange black liquid under a stormy sky.

"This is a dead world, destroyed by desperation and impulsiveness," the Eventuality said. "And its destruction had consequences for other worlds as well. Stick your hand in."

Reluctantly, Luz put her hand through the portal, and then too quickly to even reach a bladed tendril shot from the lip of the portal and slashed across her hand, causing a spurt of cerulean blood to shoot out.

Luz naturally shouted in pain and pulled her hand back, applying pressure to the wound until her healing factor mixed with a first aid spell closed it. "Ah, Titan," she said, "I think you hit an artery." Her first instinct had been to ask what that was for and her second was to wonder how she could bleed when she was an astral form right now, but she wasn't going to waste any more questions.

"Look," he said, and she did and... Saw her blood vanish into the dark liquid, only for some glowing golden liquid to sprout forth and begin flowing around, mixing with and replacin th e black liquid and then more springs erupted and before her eyes, the world rebuilt itself into something glowing and beautiful with dozens of geisers of the golden liquid shooting off into the amethyst sky.

'You can't unring a bell," The Eventuality said, "but what has been broken can often be fixed. Knull, and by extension myself, channel the powers of the King in Black through the living abyss, which feeds on and amplifies magic, especially dark and black magic. The Titans, the race of experimental replacement Kings, instead channel it through their own vast black magic, generating magical energy and the power of nature ex nihlo and spawning life from their bodies... That and the things with the meat robots. You? You're both, sooner or later you'll be able do almost everything I can, everything the Titan's could, and the way they fit together and amplify each other... Well, in he right time and place, you can revive a dead world. It'll take time for this world's life to repopulate and to reestablish its place in the greater cosmos, but..."

"How powerful am I?" Luz asked, only to smack herself when the Eventuality lowered another finger.

"Power is hard to quantify, and you're going to get a boost sometime in the near future and a lot more as you grow into being an Elder God, but right now?" he said, "somewhere in the middle of the top twenty or so gods of magic in the multiverse. About 2000th in terms of gods and cosmic beings overall, give or take a few dozen. However, remember that when it comes to gods, there's a lot of 'as strong as they need to be' and 'narrative causality' at play."

"Okay, that's not too bad," Luz said. Realizing that she had no idea just how powerful she was was absolutely terrifying, and a little voice in the back of her head that she was hoping was the depression talking was screaming that she was a horrible person who didn't deserve that power but at least he didn't tell her she was omnipotent or anything.

Still she only had two questions left after wasting some and... Think Luz, think... what's a good...

"How do I beat Cipher?" She had a plan, but she hadn't actually expected this whole astral plane interlude.

"Hmmm. A tricky question," he said. The portal closed and then re-opened to show a carving or cave painting depicting the demented geometric figure in a circle surrounded by symbols, some of which looked a little too modern. "Supposedly, these symbols, or rather people who embody the traits the symbols represent, have the power to banish him for good, but in practice... In your case, fighting in the astral plane negates any power advantage you have over him, it becomes a matter of willpower and creativity. However, manipulating the astral plane is only slightly harder than manipulating your own mindscape."

Okay, okay, she could work with that... She did her best to memorize the symbols and guess at what they meant just in case and then... One question left... "What's Cipher's deal, anyway?"

"Oh boy, this one's a doozy," The Eventuality said as he closed his left fist entirely... "He comes from a two-dimensional reality that no longer properly exists. Now, this'll be a bit tricy to show you but..."

The portal closed again and then opened, showing what for all the world looked like a colorful cartoon of...

"How did someone that cute grow up to be a monster?" Luz asked... "Um, rhetorical question. I know I'm out of real ones."

Still, the portal showed an image of a squishy-looking Cipher with a big eye, floppy arms, and a giant pair of little kid style velcro sneakers sitting in a crib.

Another triangle person picked him up from the crib and began to rock the child and sing: "Rock-a-bye Billy, please don't you cry. It's not your fault you have that strange eye. Stay safe with Mommy, you'll never fall. We'll always love you, sharp angles and all..." Then, the image glitched and repeated. "Sharp angles and all..." Again, "Sharp angles and all..."and then...

"WhYdIdYoUdOiT!?"

Luz had to cover her ears the garbled scream was so loud. Even the Eventuality seemed disturbed as he closed the portal.

"That wasn't supposed to happen," he said. "I think we're done with visual aids, so I'm going to recap. Bill Cipher's 'strange eye' was the result of a mutation that allowed him to perceive the third dimension. Unfortunately for him, his home dimension was rather repressive, pro-conformist, and intolerant of deviation. In particular, so much as proposing the idea of a third dimension was considered an illegal heresy. No one he spoke to could even begin to understand what 'up' was. He was ostracized, and even his parents who claimed to love him unconditionally tried to change him, even taking him to a doctor who tried to remove his power, and in doing so hurt him immensly." Luz felt a chill in her heart. "One day, he came up with a plan to prove the existence of the third dimension, got a little too ahead of himself and... Well, no one quite knows what happened next. Not even him; he blacks out just thinking about it, but... It involved fire, mandibles, and lots of blood. When it was all over, he was alone in the universe and covered in the blood of other eculidians, the souls of an entire realm trapped in his body as he ascended to the status of a cosmic god. He might have eaten some people while blacked out, it's hard to know for sure. It wasn't what he had meant to happen, and he spent the next trillion or so years in the Nightmare Realm, coping with his pain and guilt by including in his worst vices and spreading his pain around to others. Even the people he came to care about—especially the people he cared about. I can't say I don't sympathize, given my own complicated history, but eons of abusing others to deal with the pain of his childhood and the guilt of his actions, things he'll never admit, have left him as nothing but a monster." The Eventuality sighed. "He claims he doesn't care, that he's glad he did it, but he still keeps the last remaining molecules of his dimension under his hat. Anyway, that was your last question so..."

"You're sending me back. It's okay. I know what I need to do now."

Just as Luz said that, she found herself back in the Astral Realm. This time, she was behind Bill, who was looking underneath a half-melted sculpture of the Eiffel Tower made out of dafodils and human teeth. Seeing as he was unaware of her presence, Luz pulled up a few copies of the lightning conjuring glyph combo and blasted the shape.

The bolts of lightning impacted Cipher who flinched and then shouted "Nice try jackass!" Cipher then rotated individual bricks of his being to turn to face her. "There you are, Queen. Where'd you disappear off to?"

"Deus ex machina told me how to beat you," Luz said while carefully omitting the bit about learning more about her power as a Queen in Black.

"Was it that ivrkmudiwnsz Pyramid Steve?" Cipher asked. "Because I hate that guy. Always copying my style."

"Yeah, sure, we'll go with that," Luz deadpanned as she called upon her sword. "And watch your language."

Rather than respond, Bill screamed, "Eat nightmares!" and shot lightning from his hands aroundher rather than at her.

From the substance of the astral realm emerged a carton of milk.

Luz rolled her eyes and slashed the image apart with her soul sword. "Okay, I know that I joke about being afraid of milk, but that hasn't been true for a couple of months now. Really rethought my priorties in that department."

The jerks on the internet who wanted to debate in bad faith, represented by a giant phone, met the same fate. "Really scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren't you?" The swarm of human souls in cat bodies was blasted apart with a variety of glyphs.

She sighed at the oversized depiction of Eda, lost forever to the curse. It would have been scary beforeEda made peace with the wl Beast and gained her Harpy powers, but now it was just another image conjured up by some kind of dream demon in a failed attempt to scare her and met the same fate as the others.

The giant figures of Carnage, Belos, Mephisto, Doctor Doom, and Knull? Those were admittedly pretty scary, but the thing was, Luz knew these were fake images and all of them wre easily dispersed with a mighty "Weh!"

And then Luz started marching across etheral space to confront Cipher. As she did so, a recreation of all the people who'd ever bullied or belittled her her whole life, all the disapproving teachers and judgmental parents. Everyone who'd ever made her feel small. Frankly, Luz didn't give a darn about them and just pushed past them: They deserved less of her time and energy than the real versions did, not even worth dispelling.

She shifted to Titan mode mid-step, only to be confronted by a construct of her mother. "Oh, what a hateful, ungrateful daughter you were. Lying to me for months. Why can't you just conform? Why can't you be normal like everyone else?" Luz ignored it.

A construct of Vee appeared. "I love math, mortgages, tax forms, checkbooks, and following the rules. I'm the daughter Mama wanted, and she loves me more than she ever loved you." Luz ignored it.

"You know, things made sense before you came along," a construct of Willow said. "Yeah, I was being bullied but life didn't get anywhere near as crazy as it did right after you showed up. And without you I'd still be home with my Dads right now." Luz ignored it.

"Yeah, I'd be home with my dad too," an astral Gus said. "You ruined everything. That's all you do, you try so hard only to break everything you touch." Luz ignored it.

"How many people died because Belos didn't get eaten by that Stone Sleeper?" A Hunter doppelganger asked. "How much blood is on your hands?" Luz ignored it.

"I never loved you, and I've been stringing you along this whole time so I could humiliate you in public when you were at your most emotionally vulnerable," a fake Amity said.

Luz had to laugh at that one. "You clearly don't know any of my friends. And you sure as heck don't know me!" Luz stomped her clawed foot on non-existent ground, forcing her will onto the astral plane. Cipher's control of the plane was strong, and he pushed back, but Luz had the power of determination on her side, and soon enough, all the constructs and trippy imagery were replaced by the clearing in which sat The Owl House. The Place where Luz felt safest. The place she felt strongest.

"What!?" Cipher shouted. "How!?"

Luz willed a glass pillar to slam down, trapping the triangle, and then reinforced the astral construct with her own power via a few choice glyph combos,

"Do not underestimate me, Bill Cipher, for I am the Good Witch Luz: Student of the Owl Lady, Queen in Black, and Warrior of Peace! Now, if this is anything like the stories, then..." She shrank the pillar down, forcing Cipher to revert to his original size, and made the zodiac wheel of weird symbols she'd been shown earlier from on the ground around it so that Cipher was trapped in the center.

"Oh. Like, that's gonna work! It failed the first time, and you're the only one here!" Cipher shouted.

"You compared me to someone named Shooting Star back on the Witches' Road," Luz noted as she stepped onto the symbol in question. "Now... Llama... Llamas are fluffy, fluffy means cuddles, cuddles means GF, so Amity!" Luz said and willed an astral construct of her beloved girlfriend to take her place next to her.

"...That's not how the zodiac works, kid," Cipher replied.

"So it does work then?" Luz asked rhetorically. "Now, wounded heart... Definitely Hunter, I think," Luz mused as a relevant construct took its place on her other side. "For the six-fingered hand... That's the same symbol from he journal. It could also mean Ford. Who is... Probably the author of the journal."

"Yes!" Cipher shouted. "Ford's the Author of the Journal. God damn, girl it's not like I was trying to hide it."

"Hey, it would ahve been rude to assume tha the only six fingered guy I know had something to do with the six finger's symbol on a book!" Luz defended. "Anyway, very studious person but I kind of get the feeling that if this is gonna work I need people who ahv somekind of existing relationship so... The most studious person I know is Aunt Lilith," a construct of whom appeared next to Amity... "Glasses... Glasses are usually used as a symbol for someone who's smart or clever... I already used Lilith, so... You know what, screw it, Amity's dad." An image of Alador Blight took the place next to Hunter. "Question Mark is Hooty, no question, pun totally intended, while the pentagram with the eye is my favorie little bro." The respective demons appeared in their respective places.

"You know, kid, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I think if we start over, and you just give me a chance, we could be friends," Cipher said. "So let's just forget about this whole possession thing and—"

"Ice Bag is... Cool, collected, maybe? the most cool-headed person in a crisis I know is Willow," who appeared on the marked spot... "Pine Tree's tricky."

"Yeah, good luck finding an overly excitable geek to fill that role!" Cipher shouted. Luz immediately made an astral construct of Gus appear in the correct place. "Damn it!"

"And the oyster... If the six-fingered hand was Ford... In the stories, there'd be some significance to the fact that he was a twin. For the sake of narrative symetry, one of the spots would be Stan and well, Eda's his ex-wife so..."

The mention of Stan sent Cipher into soeind of horrifying fit. As he assumed several horrific forms while ranting about how 'Stanley' and everything related to him ruined everything, Luz applied the last step.

"And if this is anything like in the stories," she declared, "then the final step is to..." Luz took the hands of the constructs on either side of her, who did the same with the constructs next to them, and so on... It was a bit awkward with the Hooty construct, but they made it work.

Cipher immediately began to glitch out and scream, assuming a variety of horrifying configurations before starting to glow white. Immediately, Luz willed away the pillar she'd trapped him in and reached out to grab him, succeeding just as he began to vanish.

The next few moments consisted of the sensation of being pulled through a long tube, stretched out like spaghetti, pressed flat, twisted into an origami swan, and then all of those at once, and then suddenly, she and Cipher were floating in a featureless white void.

"You idiot!" Cipher shouted. "You had me beat and then you screwed it up at the last second! I might b e stuck here now, but so are you! Sooner or later, I'm going to find my way back to the Nightmare Realm, but not until after I've spent a few centuries driving you mad."

"Oh, please, there's nothing you can say or do to me that my own brain hasn't done," Luz deadpanned. "I think the pathetic display a few minutes ago proves that. Also, part of the plan," Luz said and then slashed clean through the geometric being with her soul sword.

"I'm sorry," he replied with a laugh. "Was that supposed to do anything?"

Luze responded by raising her fingers and silently counting down from three. When the last finger lowered, Cipher's eye turned into a fanged outh, and he immediately bent forward and vomited up a prismatic glowing liquid from which a bunch of non-descript, vaguely defined ghostly entities emerged. Quite a lot. It was a few minutes of vomiting up ghosts before he stopped, and the spirits dispersed.

"Huh, I kind of thought there'd be more," she noted.

"What did you just do?" he demanded, sounding incredibly sick.

"So the guy who grabbed me as soon as we got to the astral realm to fill me in on things because this was the only time to do it told me about destroying your home dimension, how the souls of your victims were inside you, and how those symbols were supposed to banish you... And then it all clicked for me that I don't need to just beat you," Luz said. "The first realization was that if the symbols banish you they have to banish you to somewhere, right? Usually, a supernatural banishment sends you back to your plane of origin. Then my spirit-and-magic cutting sword of love and friendship cuts loose the souls trapped inside you so they can be at rest, and then..." A tendril from her cape reached off and snatched Cipher's hat while he was still recovering while Luz cut her palm with the blade of her sword.

She let her blood, Titan blood, pool in her palm as Cipher scrambled after her. "Give that back!"

She jumped back and then let the contents of the hat, a single speck of dust giving off many tiny motes of light, fall out and land in the palm of blood.

They reacted explosively, giving off blinding light and a shockwave of some kind, and... Well, Luz wasn't hurt, but she had to close her eyes.

When she opened them, she was standing in a field in a world composed of bright colors and simple, two-dimensional shapes... Kind of hurt her eyes to look directly at anything.

Cipher was stunned to silence. "...It's... Euclidia, my home, but..."

"Good, it worked!" Luz declared.

"No, it's... The objects, the background, it's... IT's all just as two d as always, but the dimension itself was rebuilt in three... If... If any complex life evolves here again it'll naturally be able to see in three dimensions, I... This is..." Cipher glared at her. "Why?"

"I don't know. I was trying to fix it, not make it better," Luz replied.

"Not that!" he screamed. "Why do this in the first place!?"

"I don't like you," Luz replied, "and while I could theoretically, if you were sorry, forgive the attempts at manipulating me and whatever else you've done involving me I can't absolve you of what you've done to others: I might be a god now, but not that kind, not now or ever. But... Nobody deserves to have their entire life dominated by an impulsive mistake forever."

Luz could literally see the little record player in Cipher's brain start skipping. "Why? Why would anyone, how and why?"

"Well, I knew I could do that from the same ex machina who told me your backstory and how to vanquish you, but the why... Look, I get it." Luz admitted. "I grew up an ostracized outcast too, and... If I hadn't stumbled into the Demon Realm when I did, I could easily see myself making a mistake like the one you made. Maybe even one as big, maybe even ending up like you. Heck, this could have ended up being that kind of mistake. I clearly didn't think this through all the way." Luz made a note to be sure to apologize for being stupid when she explained all of this to her friends. "But what I'm trying to say is... I don't like you, but I understandyou."

"...I'm done," he said lamely.

"Huh."

"I'm done," he said. "I give up."

"Oh, okay, well, surrender accepted, I guess." This was going a lot better than she thought it would.

"Not you!" Cipher shouted. "That frilly, all-seeing bastard. Get out here, I know you're watching!"

Once more, Luz felt a sensation of being grabbed and dragged before the euclidian field vanished and was replaced by a realm of stars and pastel blue and pink fog.

Above her and Cipher manifested an absolutely massive pale pink axolotl...

"Wait, didn't I see you when I got eaten by Hooty that one time?" Luz asked.

"I'll admit you caught my eye once when I was passing by," the large amphibian recited gently.

"Cut the rhymes, guppy!" Cipher shouted.

"No, I don't think I will, not until you admit it, Bill."

Cipher shrieked something that sounded like tone-dial run through a chipmink voice filter and then said, "Fine! My world view was wrong, the only way out is through, send me back to the Cvb icfiwhj rifj Theraprism."

"As you wish," the axolotl said, and then Cipher vanished.

Despite knowing he was a monster, Luz couldn't help but feel a brief stab of sympathy. "Is he going to be okay?"

"Not for some time, but eventually he will," the creature said. "You already know the tragic tale of Bill. For epochs, he's lived inflicting pain and hurt, but thanks to you, he might finally do the work."

"I don't mind the rhyming," Luz said, "but this conversation might be a little hard if... What happened there? I wasn't expecting that to work out as well as it did, and—"

"Bill Cipher was broken long ago by the massacre he inadvertently performed," the axolotl said. "And he's been living in misery ever since, coping with it via denial and sadomasochistic behaviors. He convincied himself that he'd liberated his home dimension, that death was preferable to mundanity in an opressive, limited world, and that his acts of pain and destruction were appreciated by his victims thoughI cannot say for certain how much of that was denial and how uch it was conflating love with pain, since his loved ones often caused him to suffer in his youth. After eons of destructive hedonism in the Nightmare realm, he'd been reversed to the worst kind of nihist: believing that nothing matters and that all beings are inherently cruel and selfish, incapable of true empathy."

"And then I undid his mistake," Luz said, "because I could. Just an act of kindness... Because I understood his perspective, and..."

"You finished the breakdown he's been undergoing for the last trillion years," the amphibian confirmed. "I won't lie to you, right now Bill is in more pain, is more confused, than he's ever been... But once he recovers, he may finally mourn, finally accept his mistakes, and finally be willing to confront his problems and undergo true repentance."

"So... This stupid, impulsive thing had a good outcome?" Luz asked.

"Yes, though the ends do not necessarily justify the means: Several of your friends are quite concerned right now and are going to be rather upset with you when this is all over."

"Yeah, I should have seen that coming, but..."

"I wish I could say this would cure your depression," it said, "but it won't. Only a change in your cognition can, and no one act or experiance. But take it from one god to another: Today, you have done more good than you've ever done bad. You're a good person, and if it's possible to earn the kind of power you've been gifted, then you've done it on this day."

"Thanks," Luz said, astral blood rushing to her astral face.

"I'm going to return you to your body now. You have work to do and a few more trials to face, but... If you could pass along a few messages for me?"

"Yeah, sure."

TLOA

Amity stood nervously as the others argued over how to go about exorcising the entity from Luz.

"Do we have to go get Gideon?" she heard Mabel ask. "I know he's trying to be better, but it'd be so awkward."

She immediately tuned them out, however, when she noticed Luz's body stiring. She opened her eyes; they were back to normal and quickly widened, and Amity immediately felt the guilt radiating off of Luz.

"Um, he's gone, everyone," she said nervously. "There was a little huccup but, my plan worked. I know how to open the portals and Cipher's gone for good, so... Um... I'm in a lot of trouble, aren't I?"

Masha rushed forward and did that third-eye spell that was named after an artifact. Then they screamed. "Okay, okay, bad idea... Not possessed anymore, but that was a bad idea."

"...Yeah, it turns out I'm a lot more powerful than I thought I was," Luz admitted. "Um, I can step out of the barrier. If you're all here, you saw how it trapped him, and so if I step out, that proves he's gone, right?" She said, and then she stepped out of the circle.

She then got rushed by Dipper, who started checking her eyes. Meanwhile, Mable went over to Camila, who had Luz's unicorn sweater, and very carefully, the two walked around behind where Luz was and forced it over her.

"Okay, she's clean," Dipper declared.

"I'm missing some context here," Luz noted as she adjusted the sweater so she could fit her arms through the sleeves. Then she looked up to her mom. "And probably grounded."

"We'll talk about that later," Camila said diplomatically. "Right now, all that's important is that you're okay."

"Is it?" Luz asked. "I um... We had a plan, and then the depression hit, and suddenly, I'm dumb-dumb Luz again. rushed off and doing things without thinking about it and.. And I'm gonna work on that. That's not an excuse, and... This could have gone so badly in hindsight like, my god,"

"Yes?" Amity asked before she could stop herself.

This prompted Luz to pause, then explode into a short peal of laughter that killed the tension. "So we should probably all sit down somewhere so I can walk you all through what happened on my end but first, I have some messages to pass along. First, Dipper. Mabel... The axolotl says hi." That seemed to mean something to the Pines, but they didn't react verbally. "Anne? The axolotly also told me that it had an encounter with The Guardian recently. The guardian knew axolotl would be meeting me soon, so it asked the axolotle to tell me to tell you that the Guardian was joking about the exact age you'll be when you die."

"Oh, thank Frog," was the immediate response.