Chapter Text
cat·a·lyst
/ˈkad(ə)ləst/
noun
- a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change.
- a person or thing that precipitates an event.
-The Warden-
If she had been asked, later on, to choose a precise moment where things went from the usual brand of Boiling Isles weirdness to something entirely unique and strange, Willow would have probably settled on crashing the coronation of a potato. The fact that it really was a lovely little scene only made it worse. Especially when, immediately after tearing a hole in the wall of a rundown shack that might have otherwise been the seat of a monarchy, she could only stand to the side as a flock of ink-crows stormed the throne room, falling upon the attendees like a storm of dripping, gleaming death.
She was fairly certain the creatures didn’t need to eat, but the witch next to her hadn’t been very forthcoming when she’d asked her. And were they laughing ?
Honestly, it was probably better if she didn’t get an answer to that question.
Instead, Willow glanced to her right, reassessing her impression of the witch in question. Technically, Emira was an illusionist, but the crows she’d summoned were anything but fabrications. Humming to try and drown out the sounds of carnage from within, Willow summoned her scroll, opening up a shared note between herself and the other members of their paramilitary group and crossing “ Solanum nobilis ” off the list.
She shuddered as one of the crows, a scrap of potato in its beak, fluttered out of the tear in the wall and landed on her fellow witch’s shoulder. This one was larger than the rest, her feathers an iridescent black rather than the dripping pitch of her flock. With a little pang in her heart, Willow noticed that the bottlecap crown that had previously rested on the (top, head?) of a rather noble-looking tuber now rested jauntily on its head.
“Aww, Badb, did you find a souvenir?” Emira asked her palisman, turning her head to nuzzle against the crow’s beak before it fluttered to the tip of her staff, its wings drawing into itself as it completed its transformation into an ebon effigy of itself The bottlecap clattered off to the side and Amiera sighed sadly. As she reached down to pick it up, Willow could see the emotions warring across the witch’s face.
“Willow, are we the bad guys here?” She asked suddenly, voice thin.
“Why are you asking me?”
“Well, you’re the plant witch,” Emira replied, gesturing towards the tableau between them, “Figure if anyone knows how to feel about this, it would be you.”
“I’m…” Willow began, trailing off. How did she feel about this, exactly? They were potatoes, roots, and under any other circumstance she’d have no problem eating them. But as one of them attempted to make a break for it, little root legs scuttling across the earth and through the gap, an ink-crow darting out after it, talons biting deep and dragging it back into the shack, she couldn’t help but feel bad for the unfortunate little creature.
“I’m conflicted,” Willow admitted at last, unwilling to meet Emira’s gaze. She caught the illusionist nodding out of the corner of her eye, seemingly satisfied with the non-answer.
“I almost hate asking you to see if there are any left then,” Emira replied, voice apologetic.
“No, it’s fine,” Willow sighed, “someone’s gotta do it.” Drawing a spell circle up between her hands, the witch closed her eyes and pushed her magic into the earth around her. One-by-one, little lights flashed against her shut eyelids; each a flickering representation of something living, breathing, being . Which meant that the world around her was full of them. Focusing the spell, she narrowed her search to the area immediately around the building in front of her.
Sure enough, the ink-crows had done their work. She shuddered at the way they came across as little voids in her lifesense, at the way they picked across the ground, hunting down every flicker of light and snuffing it out with brutal efficiency. As the last of these executions concluded, her shoulders sagged, and she dismissed the spell. Turning to Emira, she nodded. By the look in her eyes, it was clear she understood.
Their work was done.
Emira whistled a low tune that never failed to send chills up Willow’s spine. The flock poured out of the hole in the wall, practically a singular mass of dripping feathers and sharp, nib-like beaks. As they flashed past her, Emira lowered her coat to her elbows, revealing the pale skin of her upper arms to the night air. One-by-one, the ink-crows broke formation, diving towards their mistress and melding with her skin on impact.
Willow had never gotten a straight answer out of the (self-professed) eldest Blight about just how many of the creatures she and Viney had managed to capture, but by the time the last of the beasts had vanished from the sky, her arms were covered with realistic, glimmering images of her own personal corvid swarm. She turned to Willow, eyes conflicted, mouth opening to speak, and right as she formed the first word, the ground behind her exploded.
~---~
Vision narrowed to a point, Willow closed the distance between them in an instant, her left arm pushing the illusionist behind her and her right already forming the circle to call her armor. The twisting mass of white, tuberous roots that caught her in the arm threatened to knock her off her feet, but the hastily-formed armor there held. Her feet, roots of their own newly sprung from the earth, dug into the ground and held against the sheer mass of the creature.
It was a potato.
Oh sure, it was this awful mass of twisting, pale limbs and a jaw set with shards of jagged stone, but the body of the thing was still a potato. She should have known that picking up a few of them off of Eda was a bad idea. There was no telling how they’d react to the Isles. Some plants just withered the moment they crossed the boundary, others mutated into strange and (occasionally) dangerous new forms. She’d been delighted when the potatoes had just sort of… sat there. Not really doing much, but at least not causing problems for her. The last thing she needed was more problems.
And then one of the greenhorns had gone and mixed up the fertilizers.
Which was quite the strange confluence of events that had found her grappling with a multi-limbed potato monster roughly the size of a bear and twice as ornery. Her armor finished growing across her form, the faceplate settling into place and lighting her lifesense in the process. Green fire outlined the world around her, allowing her to pick out the center of this creature’s life force - a blazing orb of white fire just behind its gnashing jaws. Once she knew what to look for, she could see it, a little black bulb the size of her fist.
Her attention was distracted by another eruption of clay and earth, and then another, and another. As one beast after another pulled their way free of the earth, her confidence flagged. None of them were as big as the creature whose jaws she was slowly prying open (lucky her), but they were quicker to make up for it. As the first scuttled towards her, she briefly contemplated how you’d carve “eaten by potatoes” on a tombstone, but a sudden burst of strength from the monster in front of her drove that thought from her mind.
Gritting her teeth, she rooted herself deeper into the ground, gasping aloud at the strain on her legs as the creature pushed harder and harder against her defense. Her left arm joined in the chorus of pain as the right left it to fend for itself, forming a spell circle that flashed green and called a thorny vine to drive through the creature’s flank. It gave her the space she needed, its attention momentarily diverted, and she found her own drawn to Emira as a burst of magic sent ripples of power across her lifesense.
The illusionist had dodged past the first creature, and whatever spell she’d cast seemed to have drawn the attention of the other four as well. Staff in hand, she spun magic to life around her form, ink-crows fluttering free of her shoulders and condensing behind her head. With a single motion, the crows-turned-knives flashed forward, cutting one of the beasts to wedges and pinning another in place.
Well damn.
Suitably convinced that Emira could handle herself, Willow brought her focus back to her own problems. The creature redoubled its assault, another arm darting beneath her defenses and striking her in the chestplate. Roots snapped and the witch skidded back, a vine wrapped arm darting out to a nearby tree in order to right herself. Seizing on the connection, she reeled herself out of the beast’s path. It stumbled past her, new-formed legs scrambling to find purchase against unfamiliar earth.
Turning to face it, Willow had just enough time to catch Emira dissolve into a flock of crows, her body reforming on the flank of one of the smaller beasts, before the charging form of her own foe filled her sight. Stance wide, eyes forward, the witch rooted herself even deeper into the earth. This thing was strong alright, but it wasn’t anchored the way she was. And when push came to shove, she refused to let a broiling potato push her around when the strongest witches in the Construction track hadn’t so much as managed to budge her.
The impact between them was loud , thunderous even, but both held firm. Luz had mentioned that she was practically an immovable object on the battlefield, and Willow found herself liking the comparison. She was a tree, an ancient one, gnarled and unyielding to the worst nature had to offer. She would not be moved, and as the creature’s strength waned, she began to push back. First gaining a few feet, and then, when the creature had the idea to root itself, simply taking that strength and using it to force the creature’s jaws apart.
Crying out in defiance, Willow let go of the creature’s lower jaw with her right hand and drove it into the gaping maw. Jaws of flint and slate met armor of vine and bark, immense pressure driving down on her arm, but she gritted her teeth through the counterattack and poured even more strength into her left arm. Straining, effort breaking past her lips and turning her cry into more of a snarl, the witch pried the creature’s fangs off of her arm and drove her right hand further still, seizing the core of its being and pulling .
There was no reason a potato should be able to scream. Absolutely none whatsoever. But it did. Titan, it did. This awful, rending, mournful sort of tone that creaked out of its body as she pulled its very essence from its body. Resistance at first, fangs scrabbling at her armor in panic, but then a slight give that broke into a full, awful ripping sensation as she tore the bulb free.
The beast’s body shuddered for a moment before falling limp, hitting the earth with a solid thump that ushered in all the sensations she’d been blocking out with it. The once-dull, now-sharp cutting pain in her arms let her know that, no, her armor had not been enough to keep its fangs from meeting her skin. The faint whistling noise that echoed from behind her as Emira made quick work of the smaller beasts. And the nausea, this overwhelming sense of revulsion that found her tapping at the side of her faceplate in a desperate attempt to get it open.
Cool air hit her face a moment before she decorated the ground in front of her with what was left of her dinner. Trembling, she realized that the bulb was still clenched in her hand, and she immediately dropped it, trying and failing to kick it away while her body wracked itself with aftershocks.
“You alright Will- Oh,” came Emira’s voice from behind her, which she responded to with an open palm and a shaking head.
Dimly, she registered the sensation of a hand patting gently against the shoulder plate of her armor, but she was more focused on trying to get that awful sensation out of her mind.
“I’m fine,” she replied, even though she wasn’t, but how do you explain that visceral of a reaction to killing a potato , “just wasn’t ready for the way that felt.”
“Yeah, first time’s never easy,” Emira replied, voice distant.
“You killing potato monsters without me, Blight?”
“Besides the ones back there? Not quite.”
“Ah,” Willow responded, because there was not enough time to unpack all of that . Really, there wasn’t enough time for her little breakdown either. So she gritted her teeth, wiped her mouth, and looked up to find Emira just tapping away at her scroll.
“Oh no,” she snarked, “no need to worry about me. Not having an existential crisis or anything. Feel free to send flirty messages to your girlfriend while uttering cryptic references to your mysterious past.”
“Sorry,” Emira replied, genuinely apologetic, “Viney was keeping me updated on things from on high, and last she checked in was over fifteen minutes ago.”
Willow felt a chill run up her spine. Gus and Skara had been with her, trying to locate more hideaways with their magic combined. Trying to quell her panic, she summoned her own scroll, but seeing that neither of them had checked in either only served to stoke it further.
“I can’t help but have a bad feeling about this,” she muttered, earning a nod from Emira.
“She’s still up and conscious,” the illusionist added, “that much I can feel. But I have no idea about anything beyond that. She’s too far away.”
Willow nodded, agreeing. Her own Bond with Gus may not have been as strong as the one between Emira and Viney, but she could still feel him, faintly, at the edge of her consciousness. Too far for her to pick up on any emotion, but close enough that she could tell his essence was still going strong. Still, it wasn’t like him to fall behind on updates. He knew how important it was that they get things under control quickly.
“Can you pick up on a direction?” Willow asked, “Because I can’t.”
“I think so…” the illusionist replied, trailing off as she closed her eyes. Willow felt the slightest pulse of magic emanate past her, and not for the first time that night, she wondered just how much power Emira was working with that she could feel it even when she wasn’t trying to.
“Crown-and-bay-ward,” Emira replied, pointing in the direction she’d indicated. “She’s fine, I think, but she’s agitated too. Nervous, even. Speaker’s Oath , love, what are you doing.”
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s on the ground, which is not what we agreed on.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Willow assured, not quite able to keep the edge of disbelief out of her voice.
“Be that as it may,” Emira replied, flinging her staff to the ground in front of her, “none of them are fighters, and she wouldn’t have broken a promise unless she had no other choice.” Rather than hitting the ground, the staff came to a rest about three feet above it, Badb’s wings stretching wide from her position atop it. Emira settled onto the length of it sidesaddle, reaching a hand out to Willow as she did.
“Care to join me and get our fool Bondmates out of the trouble they’ve inevitably gotten themselves into, Miss Park,” Emira asked her, wolfish smile not quite hiding the worry in her eyes.
Dismissing her armor to cut down on weight, Willow nodded her assent. She’d barely settled onto the staff beside her fellow witch before they’d shot off into the air like a comet. Their target? The pillar of smoke that she’d just noticed curling over the darkened woods, pitch black and growing, and directly in the path of where Emira had pointed. Willow drew in a breath at the sight of it, but took a moment to calm herself. She needed to be prepared, ready to face whatever they might find.
Their night, it seemed, had only just begun...