Chapter Text
"Alright kid, you're staying home. Me an King will check the markets for a cure."
Luz looked at her left arm, covered with a rotten blackness, itself covered in shifting white lines. It wrapped around the entire arm, stretching from the bicep to the brace of the thumb. One of the lines shot up to her index finger, and within a second the back of her hand was covered. "Please hurry".
"Of course we will! I will never let my boo-boo buddy stay hurt!"
"You gonna stay and talk or you gonna come with?" Eda snarked from Owlbert. King laughed and skittered on the staff. Luz simply lied down on her sleeping bag and tried to ignore the creeping feeling up her arm, covering her shoulder.
Eda spotted the cross-shaped gaping maw of the medical stand, and landed. She walked up to the counter, and saw what looked like an old plague doctor. King got his attention, causing the 'eye' holes to open up to a tunnel of flesh and teeth. He asked what they needed help with, and Eda described the rash.
"Yeah, I don't not know nothing about that myself," he said "but I don't not know a guy to the not East who doesn't know how to not fix it". He opened his beak and inside was a map. Eda was disgusted by how dry it was despite being inside of someone.
"Where are your eyes?" King questioned. The doctor creature shoved his beak into King's face, and moved his head so King could see through the thin skin in front of his eyes at the beak's tip. The set of five blinked discordantly.
"Don't ask where the rest are."
Luz sat up. She scurried over the floor to a dark corner. She saw her entire body covered. She felt the rash creep even more. She noticed it cover her eyes.
It still grew. Luz didn't know where it grew. Luz couldn't remember what was growing.
It hardened around her, and started growing outwards. Ten minutes later, the room was filled with piles of Growth, as though the night sky was ripped apart and placed on the ground and on the walls. A hard shell was in the corner, empty.
"Hey, Willow?" Amity approached her ex-friend. "Have you seen Luz today? I wanted to ask her something, but she wasn't in Abomination class."
"No, I haven't. Gus, you?"
"Me neither. Maybe she's sick?"
A horrible screech echoed the halls, causing everyone to give the three dirty looks.
"It's probably not Luz this time everybody! She's not even here!" Willow shouted.
"Probably?" Gus joked. Willow and Amity gave him a Look, and they agreed 'yeah, it could be her'.
"We should probably check that out" Amity said.
They ran down the halls of Hexside into what looked like a warzone. Splattered abomination goo was all over the floor, students hung inside pods attached to the ceiling and walls, and weird growth over the walls. Curved lines of white on a deep darkness were everywhere. They ran past the oracle classes, then noticed them clean because nobody was there due to foreseen events. Construction was filled with... constructs. Barricades were in front of all doors and a ruined one was in the hall.
They ran into the cafeteria, where dozens of students were entombed in the growth. Then, a shape moved from in front of one node, a giant butterfly. Pitch black with lines and dots across its body.
Eda followed the map to, of all things, a giant book. She talked to the first creature inside, but it just directed her to the back where its brother could help. The brother was 12 feet tall and a foot wide. His hands rested on the ground, but his first elbows were level with his shoulders. He bent down, but his back went nowhere, his face just slid down. "So, you need help with Luz's condition?"
"Ho--"
"Yes Owl Lady, hoo hoo. But that's not what you were saying. I know most things Eda." His face shot out of his stomach, folding his body into itself. It reformed slightly larger than King, and he reached out a three fingered hand towards King. "And ol' One Eye Willie! Haven't heard from you since time died!"
"Listen buster, we're here because we need help. Stop talking in circles and we'll pay half of double!" Eda interrupted.
"Mmmmm. How about double of half-off?! Sir Glossaryck of Terms, at your service! You scratch my back" he twists his torso around to show a minature Triassic forest with dinosaurs "I scratch yours!" Glossaryck's fingers split themselves down the middle a few times until 48 fingers with jagged nails made a scratching motion. Just as quickly as they split, Glossaryck's fingers collapsed into 6 on each hand. He reached both his hands out for a handshake. "I promise you by the time you're done Luz's illness will be gone. She'll be better than ever!"
"What do you want us to do? We're not gonna sell our souls without details!"
King piped up, shouting how he loves making bad deals and sealing his deal.
"Well, Eda, it'll just be some minor errands. A few hours at most."
"Deal!"
"Girls" reverberated throughout the cafeteria. The creature ripped a bind of vines from the floor, freeing itself. Gus made an illusion of himself, and it ran the monster in circles around, with Willow's newest vines tearing up the floor. The beast tried to fly again, but the binds and the exhaustion kept it grounded. It did pull the vines up, cutting a diamond shape out of the floor.
"Hey Luzers, waiting for someone to save your asses!?" Boscha screamed. She yote a flaming grudgeball as hard and as fast as she ever had, terrified for her life.
Justly terrified for her life, as the creature caught it with it's bare hand and threw it back twice as fast. "Bad girl!" The beast's voice echoed into itself happily.
"Alright, next time don't shout my attack beforehand. Noted." The debris from the grudgeby ball bouncing and breaking the floor shattered Gus' illusions, and the creature lunged at the young witch. It bound him in a pod hanging from the ceiling, and went back in the fray.
"The torture! The unholy torture!"
"Quit your yapping, King! You're literally just feeding him pudding. I'm trimming infinite toenails! Every time I clip one, another toe pops up!"
"Don't forget my other feet!" Glossaryck shouted as he propped his feet on Eda's shoulders. "Wait, that's enough toenails!"
Glossaryck promptly collected the lost nails, solidified them into a sickly yellow ball the size of a baseball, and mixed it with the pudding King fed him. He shifted into a bottle shape, and stirred himself. Grabbing a second bottle, Glossaryck leaned and poured the mixture into the bottle.
With a snap of his fingers, the floor opened up to the underworld. He handed the bottle to Eda and told her to get royal tears and cook it in lava.
Abomination muck covered the walls, and mutilated vines littered the floor. Unknown potions poisoned the environment. Animals fell to the beast, retreating to Viney for aid. All able-bodied witches were helping the fight.
Poorly. It seemed that every attack they did, every effort to incapacitate the creature thinned their numbers. Every attack they succeed led to it hiding among the pods, ambushing the group seconds later.
Finally, the core group stood in the middle of the cafeteria. Willow and Amity had to support each other, Boscha was heaving heavily, and Emira was getting winded. They looked around, waiting for their turn to fall. Gus' pod cracked open, and he shouted for them to run. He saw the symbol on the floor, made of ruin.
The creature landed behind them, crashed its hand into the ground, and finished the glyph. Snow blew, and blew, and blew, and Emira reached for her sister, and grabbed a hand, and protected Willow. She couldn't find anyone else. Boscha summoned fire, and fire, and eventually just heat. Amity could barely move, unable to do anything.
And Luz was mindlessly happy with her prey. "Pretty girl!"
King scurried up the stairs first, holding the finished potion so that if the Lucitor family did end up catching Eda it wouldn't be a total loss. Eda barely made it through the portal before the ground reformed. "Okay, you sob-story, you've got Hooty cleaning for a week."
While they were arguing about the ramifications of insulting the Prince of the Underworld's choice in girlfriends, Glossaryck took the finished product and drank it in one gulp. His eyes glowed white, his mouth emanated a blue light, and he rose his hands, chanting the Chant of a Thousand Voices and a Million Tongues.
To conjure a broken fridge, containing expired milk, catfood from a world where cats and tomatoes are reversed, a 6 pack with a brown liquid that Eda didn't recognize, some melted ice cream, some frozen fire, and a vast, horrify swirl of madness between these objects.
"Take these" he said, grabbing the bottles, "and tell her congratulations on her magical development! Thank you for your service!"
Luz woke up dazed. She didn't remember going to sleep, but the warmth shes cuddles up with is too nice to care. Wait, warmth? Hooty, I swear if you're being a body pillow again... She opened her eyes to see green hair. "Amity?"
"Praise the Titan! You're back Luz!" Amity jumped up, half out of the fact she's free and half gay panic. "Is... is that a normal human thing?"
"Is what a human thing? Sleeping?"
"No, turning into a giant monster. Wait, Eda's curse. Do you think she spread it to you do we need to get you out of this house!?"
Luz did not answer, rather shifted her eyes back and forth hoping to find something that can give her context for how 'cuddling with my girlfriend without knowing how we got there' led to 'curse demon monster transformation disease's. Unfortunately, the only unusual thing was the cloud of tiny lights floating to the sky above the Owl House, which she didn't see.
Fortunately, though, Eda came in with a drink for her. "Hey Luz! We're back, finally! The apothecary had some unusual and especially illegal favors we had to do for him, but we've got a treatment!" She handed her one of the bottles, and looked at her like she was crazy when Luz laughed.
"Eda, this is Pepsi. It's a human beverage, not medicine. I haven't had it in months! Amity, you've got to try this!"