Chapter Text
All it took was a split second for their world to fall apart.
Gus knew there was a giant science-and-magic shield between them and Kikimora, her brand new and improved Abomotron allowing her to finally look down her nose at them physically as well as metaphorically. Her gaze was fixed squarely on Hunter but it felt like she was talking to them all.
“I always knew you were rotten to the core,” the little red demon sneered. “Belos will probably snap you in two after I hand you over. Maybe he'll make me the new Golden Guard.”
Hunter cringed back. Luz dashed to plant herself firmly in front of him. Gus couldn’t help but admire her gumption. Even when they were so thoroughly beaten, Luz somehow found a way to act like they weren’t and make it sound believable.
“Leave him alone!”
Kikimora admired her claws. “I'm surprised you're even here, human.” She shot Luz a poisonous glare. “Aren't all your friends at the Day of Unity?”
Luz gasped. Gus could tell she had not meant to. Kikimora could too.
“Oh, that's right. The Emperor has eyes everywhere, and they're all pointed at the Owl Lady.”
As she stomped her new Abomotron away, cackling like a villain on one of those kid’s shows Gus used to watch on the crystal ball on Saturday mornings, Luz edged closer to him and raised her hand to conceal her mouth.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” she whispered hurriedly.
It was a dumb plan. It was the dumbest plan he’d ever heard – and Luz had come up with a lot of dumb plans. It was definitely going to get her killed. Usually that would not be enough to make him say no to her – after all, for every dumb plan Luz cooked up, she also sauteed an equally clever solution when it went wrong. The stakes, however, were not usually this high. Something about the feel of abomination restraints around his wrists gave Gus pause, stopped him nodding like a bobblehead caught in the wake of Luz’s forceful personality. It was only a split second’s hesitation.
But it was enough.
“Gus!” Luz hissed. “We don’t have much time! Do it now!”
If he had not hesitated, she might not have raised her volume slightly. If she had not raised her volume slightly, Hunter might not have turned to fully focus on them. If Hunter had not turned to look at them, Gus would not have caught his eye over Luz’s shoulder. If Gus had not caught Hunter’s eye, he might have been faster to agree to her demands. If Gus had not hesitated, Kikimora might have been fooled.
Then Alador destroyed the containment sphere and they were all exposed, out in the open with no chance for anyone to subtly swap places under an illusion spell without being noticed.
Luz grabbed Gus’s sleeve while the Blights traded information neither of them had thought the other would ever know and the emotional miasma suffusing the courtyard climbed higher. Amity watched with her hands over her mouth as the true weight of her mother’s betrayal settled into her. For once, however, Luz did not run to her girlfriend’s side.
“Gus!” Luz forced the words out between gritted her teeth, possibly to keep from being overheard, maybe because she was mad at Gus. He couldn’t tell. “Switch us! Now!”
Hunter forced himself between them.
“Don’t you dare, Gus! Don’t put yourself – or her – in danger like that!”
“Hunter!” A pleading note crept into Luz’s voice. “You don’t under–”
“Ugh, I don’t have time for this!” Kikimora cut across them all. “There’s only so much family drama I can tolerate in my life and my own mother met that quotient a long time ago.”
She hit a button on the Abomotron’s control pad, sliding a shield into place over her head. Her new monstrous robot leaped forward, scattering them like cockroaches when a light turned on. Gus found himself frozen, staring up at the robot’s descending feet and feeling very much like a bug about to get squished.
He felt himself being whisked out of the way in a rush of jingling gold magic. Standing directly in between them, Hunter had been in a perfect position to clothesline tackled both Gus and Luz aside before the Abomotron landed. They both skidded across the concrete, kicking up dust and bits of dried purple goop that had formerly been their handcuffs. Hunter stood with his back to them, fists raised. It was both the bravest and most idiotic thing Gus had ever seen him do. In a fight of powerless witch versus gigantic killer robot, there was only one realistic outcome.
“It’s me she wants so I’ll draw her fire. Get to safety,” Hunter barked. He dashed away in another blur of gold before they could argue.
Gus watched his friend zigzag across the courtyard, deftly avoiding the tussle going on between Alador and Odalia, Kikimora’s blasts always a heartbeat behind him. Why had he done that? Gus knew how frightened Hunter was of the mere thought of going back to Belos. He had seen it and talked him down from more than one panic attack since that day at the school. Yet here Hunter was, intentionally baiting the loyalist psycho who would take him back to his crazy uncle in a hot second.
I guess a week of having real friends made more of a difference than we thought, whispered a voice in the back of Gus’s head.
Beside him, Luz reached into her jacket and pulled out a wad of glyph papers. Gus raised a hand to grab her arm.
“He said to –”
“I know what he said!” Luz snapped. “But apparently none of us are following plans today!”
Gus reeled back; fingers curled into his palm. She swept forward, throwing a fireball that knocked Kikimora off balance. The Abomotron teetered, regained its feet and whirled to blast a spray of purple projectiles at her.
“Luz!”
A wall of vines sprang up to block their path. The projectiles dashed tackily against the plants. Willow jogged up from Kikimora’s other side, her hands still glowing. She pointed and the abomination covered vines advanced, seeking to wrap the Abomotron in their thorny embrace.
“I don’t think so, child,” Kikimora smiled, corners of her mouth creeping so far above her collar just enough that Gus could see a hint of tusk. The cockpit shield slid back and she tossed what looked like a glowing red puddle of magic at the vines.
The moment it struck, the mess of projectiles detonated. Apparently, they had contained explosive components. Hot air and debris washed over Luz and Gus, who were forced to hold their arms over their eyes to shield them. Willow was knocked to the ground by the force of her rebuffed attack. The robot turned and raised a foot, clearly intending to crush her while she was down.
“Captain!”
In a blink, Hunter was there. He picked Willow up and heightened his speed again, removing her from the line of fire. The robot’s foot created a crater where she had just been. The pair reappeared on the other side of the courtyard, where Hunter set Willow down and turned to stand protectively in front of her, staff raised.
“Soft-hearted little brat!” Kikimora snarled. “You foul traitor! You were never worthy of being Golden Guard!”
“Trust me, it’s not a post you want, Kikimora,” Hunter deadpanned. “It comes with way too many strings attached.”
“You don’t get to tell me what I do and don’t want!” she shrieked, barrelling forward. “Not after you made me look so incompetent that everything I ever worked for was taken from me!”
A small, fierce smile creased Hunter’s face. “I didn’t need to try very hard to make you look incompetent. You did a fantastic job all by yourself.”
That seemed to snap something inside Kikimora. The little red demon let out a scream so high-pitched, it made Gus’s ears ring. He saw Luz clap her hands over her little round human ears and fall to her knees. Apparently human hearing was far more sensitive to demon cries than witches’. The whole world seemed to shudder for a moment and he could have sworn the walls of Blight Manor crumbled around the edges.
“Enough!” Alador’s voice boomed. For a usually soft-spoken man, he could really turn up the volume when he wanted. “Get off our property! Now!” Twin fists of purple abomination ooze extended from the pack on his back, reaching to pluck Kikimora from the Abomotron’s cockpit.
“Gladly!” Kikimora replied. “But I’m taking that traitor with me!” One finger of her hair lifted and Gus caught a glimpse of her other inverted eye, pupil nothing but a half-mad pinprick. The blue finger of hair glowed.
Abruptly, Alador’s attack died. The abomination ooze splattered against the concrete as his whole body went rigid, red and black lines racing up his arm from his Coven brand. Gus watched in horror as a thatch-work of dark magic covered his whole body, bringing him to his knees. Amity dashed across the courtyard towards him.
“Dad!” she screamed. “Leave him alone!”
Even Odalia looked a little shaken. “Y-you never mentioned … this wasn’t part of our deal!”
“I’m making a new deal,” Kikimora replied archly. “And unless you want him to die, you’ll agree to my terms.”
Odalia’s gaze flicked from her husband to Kikimora and back again. Her throat bobbed uncertainly. Gus could not believe she was even hesitating. Odalia was a powerful witch. Surely she could do something to stop all this. Surely she loved her husband – her family – even a little.
“Actually, I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before,” Kikimora pronounced with an airy wave of her claws. The finger of hair turned to point at Hunter and Willow. The same black and red lines now cocooning Alador leapt from Hunter’s wrist.
Hunter yelped, his whole body stiffening into a statue of pain. His staff clattered to the floor in his suddenly nerveless grasp. Gus saw his teeth clench; his fists try – and fail – to bunch and the way his eyes registered familiar panic. This was not the first time Hunter had experienced this. As if called by this previous acquaintanceship, the black and red lines swept rapidly up his body, caging him in a prison of his own flesh.
“Leave him alone!”
Willow’s eyes glowed such a bright shade of green that it left spots on Gus’s vision. Fresh vines erupted from the floor. Kikimora dodged, the Abomotron’s speed incredible when she wasn’t caught by surprise. Alador was a fool but his craftsmanship was excellent. The robot’s back seemed to catch fire, increasing its speed even more. It closed the distance to Willow too fast for anyone to counter and smashed the ground with both heavy arms.
“Willow!” The cry ripped from Gus’s throat. He felt the desperate urge to do something – anything – but what could he do? His mind felt scrambled. He could remember no offensive spells and illusion magic was useless right now.
Unless …
He threw out his hands and darkness enveloped everything and everyone. It was a simple illusion but the enormity of it took a lot of effort. If Kikimora could not see at all, she could not see who to attack – who to hurt. Maybe that would give Willow space to grab Hunter and run.
“I don’t have time for this!” Kikimora screeched.
“Over here!” Luz’s voice echoed from somewhere to his left. As ever, here was Luz, serving up a fresh helping of ‘reactive planning’ when real planning failed.
Kikimora sent a bolt of magic in the direction of the sound.
“Ha! Missed me!”
“No, over here!” Amity called out, picking up on Luz’s tactic.
“All you brats are so aggravating! No wonder that traitor gravitated to you!” Kikimora blasted in Amity’s direction.
“Why not try over here?” King called from somewhere else entirely. Gus heard the little guy’s claws clicking as he dashed from one place to the next. “Or over here?”
Gus concentrated. Copies of himself, invisible in the gloom, blossomed around him and started adding their voices to the confusion.
“Here! Here!”
“Over here!”
“No, over here!”
“Can’t catch me!”
“Heeeere!”
“Slowpoke!”
“You couldn’t hit the broad side of a selkidomus!”
“This is outrageous!” roared Kikimora. “The Emperor will have all your heads for this!”
“Are you sure you’re really in the Emperor’s Coven?” sniped one of Gus’s copies.
That was, evidently, the exact wrong thing to say, since it triggered Kikimora to stop firing at sounds and just fire everywhere, wildly and randomly, screaming out her rage. Fire crackled past Gus, dangerously close to his face. He felt one ear-tip singe, the little jolt of pain arching his back. In the void, Amity let out a cry of pain and Luz shouted her name, panic lacing her voice.
“Amity! Are you hit?”
“I’m okay …”
“Where are you? I can’t see you!”
“Stay down, Luz!”
Another blast. King grunted and Gus heard the unmistakable sound of bone hitting concrete.
“King!”
Gus squeezed his eyes shut. Instead of helping, he had just made the situation worse. Voices swarmed in the gloom. He felt his chest growing tight. Not now. He could not afford to break down now. The last thing this situation needed was an explosion of unchecked illusions adding to the confusion. Nonetheless, he felt the old familiar tingle behind his eyes. His vision started to tinge blue.
He had to drop the illusion.
The void retreated, revealing Amity on the ground clutching her side. Her clothing wafted smoke from where she had been hit. Odalia sat slumped against a wall, which had cracked, as if her body had been smashed into it and she had slid down into her current position. Alador was still on his knees, covered in black and red magic. Luz sprinted to Amity’s side, pulling out a healing glyph to slap against her girlfriend’s torso. King reverted to running on four legs to join them. There was a new crack just below his horn but otherwise he seemed okay. Gus looked around for Willow and saw a sphere of tightly packed vines where she had been. He breathed a sigh of relief. Willow had protected her and Hunter during the blind ruckus. Of course she had. She was Willow. She knew what was at stake and had taken the opportunity to shield Hunter while it was there and Kikimora was distracted.
But where was Kikimora?
Her echoing laughter, lit by unambiguous flames of insanity, made them all look up. The Abomotron had a jet pack. Because of course it did. And it was apparently capable of not only giving the thing giant bursts of speed on the ground, but actually taking it into the air. She was already just a dot in the sky. Alador was a crazy genius. Still, at least this way she was gone and they could pick up the pieces, lick their wounds and figure out their next move in the horror story that was their lives.
Gus got shakily to his feet and stumbled across the courtyard. “W-Willow…”
The vine shield did not move. Not even when he reached it and lay his hands between the enormous sharp thorns, each as big as his palm. Willow sure was strong. Or maybe she had been extra motivated to protect someone she cared about. After this was all over, Gus was totally going to tease her about her obvious crush on Hunter.
“Willow!” he called again, slapping his hand against the non-pointy spaces he could reach. “She’s gone! Kikimora’s gone! Open up!”
The vines still did not move.
He turned, beginning to worry. “Luz?”
However, Luz was busy propping Amity up as they made their way over to her father. Amity reached for Alador but drew her hand back with a sharp intake of breath when the red and black magic crackled at her touch.
“Do you … have any more healing glyphs?” Amity asked in a small voice.
“Sure,” Luz said with faux confidence, producing one from inside her jacket. “With how we fight, I made a bunch of these before we left.”
“Smart and beautiful,” Amity said, but there were tears in her eyes and she could not look away from her dad.
Luz placed one of her paper glyphs on Alador and touched it. The glyph activated and sank into the morass of red and black. Instead of making the it retreat, however, all it seemed to do was cause his body to shudder.
“Try again,” Amity insisted. “Maybe … maybe it just needs a bigger spell. More glyphs at once.”
Luz complied. She placed five glyphs on Alador and tapped each in turn. They sank into him, lighting his ossified body with a soft blue glow. He shuddered a little more with every one, until his whole body toppled over and hit the ground with a dull thump. He was still trapped in Kikimora’s spell.
“Dad!” Amity struggled out of Luz’s grip and dropped to her knees beside him. “Oh no, no, no, no, no … please no.”
“Maybe Willow knows a healing plant or something?” Luz suggested. She looked around, seemingly only just now noticing Gus with his hands against the vine sphere. Luz hobbled over to stand beside him.
“Luz, I … I’m sorry,” he gabbled before he could think better of it. “I should’ve just followed your plan.”
“It’s fine,” she said tightly. Then, noticing his expression, her face softened. “No, really, it’s fine Gus. We’re all here and okay, Kikimora is gone and we can … we can figure out the rest as we go. We need to fix Amity’s dad … and possibly her mom. And definitely Hunter since he got hit with that double whammy whatever-it-was too. Then we need to warn Raine and Eda. All little things. No biggie.”
Gus nodded, grateful Luz was such a good friend and so very bad at holding grudges. They both turned and slapped at the vines.
“Willow! We need you!” Luz called.
“Willow, please! Are you hurt in there?”
“Kikimora is gone and Mrs Blight is out for the count! It’s safe to come out now!”
Gus pressed his ear to where one vine met another, forming a small well in the impenetrable plant covering. He could hear something inside the shield. It sounded like cheeping.
“Flapjack?” he tried.
The cheeping grew more frantic. And with it came … groans, as if someone was coming to after being knocked out. They sounded distinctly Willow-esque.
“Willow!” Gus called. “Luz, I think she’s hurt in there.”
“Willow, tell us you’re okay in there! Yowch!” Luz sucked her hand where it had caught on a thorn. “This is some shield.”
“She’s getting stronger all the time. She might even be strong enough to become … Coven leader … someday …” Gus trailed off. Of course. That was so dumb. After this there may be no more covens, Plant or otherwise.
Luz, thankfully, chose not to pick him up on his idiocy. Instead, she stood back and produced another glyph paper. From this emerged an icicle shaped like a sword. Luz began hacking at the vines. She made little progress, shattering the sword more than once against the thorns and having to reform it. Eventually Amity stepped up next to her and shook her head.
“Let me.”
Amity drew a small circle in the air and bits of abomination ooze lifted off the ground. Gus realised at the tears in her eyes that it was the stuff her father had dropped when Kikimora attacked him. Amity shaped it into a pair of hands, which gripped two of the vines and slowly prised them apart.
“Willow!”
Gus strained on tiptoes to see through the gap. Was she okay? Willow was his best friend in the whole wide world. She was the strongest young witch he knew. She had to be okay. She had to.
Something flitted behind the gap. It cheeped.
“Flapjack!” Luz cried. “Are Willow and Hunter all right in there?
Flapjack’s noises got louder and more frantic. Something was not okay in there.
“Pull harder, Amity. Please,” Gus begged.
She nodded grimly and summoned more abomination ooze from the floor. More purple hands grabbed the gap and slowly, painfully yanked the vines apart. When they were sure the gap was not going to snap shut on them, they surged forward.
Willow was collapsed on her back, a large welt on her head. Flapjack sat on her chest like he was feathery red attack hellhound. His little wings flittered anxiously at their arrival. Luz immediately leaned in, placed a healing glyph on Willow’s face and tapped it to life. The blue glow sank into her skin and so did the welt. Willow’s eyes scrunched.
“Willow?” Gus said nervously.
Her eyes opened. They were bleary but they were open and she was sitting up and she was okay. Gus could barely contain his joy. He wanted to run and hug her but restrained himself in case she had other, less obvious injuries.
“Bwuh?” she said groggily. “Mfwuh?”
“Take it easy, Willow,” Luz soothed. “Looks like you got a real bump on the noggin there.”
“Kikimora …”
“Is a colossal jerk,” Luz finished for her. “But she’s gone now.”
Willow was not pleased at this news. In fact, she seemed downright dismayed. “Gone? Oh no! No!”
“Willow, chill. It’s going to be okay.” Luz glanced over her shoulder at Alador and winced. Gus felt that wince down to his bone marrow. “Not sure how yet but it will be. We’ll make it okay.”
“My dad,” Amity added. “Kikimora … did something to him. The same thing she did to Hunter. We were hoping you knew of some healing plants to help them?”
“Hunter? Hunter’s out there?” Willow struggled to get up.
King jumped up onto Luz’s shoulder. “Uh no, he’s in there with you. Isn’t he? Isn’t that … why you made this vine shield thing?”
“Yes, but Kikimora grabbed him and hit me while I was doing it.”
Dread settled over them like a weighted blanket. As one, they looked up at the sky, where Kikimora’s Abomotron was no longer visible no matter how hard they looked.
“Aw … crud.” King’s words were not nearly enough to encapsulate the situation.
Luz’s fists balled. “She’s taking him to Belos.”
“We have to get him back!” Willow clambered over her own vines. “Luz, Belos will kill him!”
“We’ll save him” Luz said staunchly, every inch of her determined. “We will. I won’t let that … that monster hurt him again.”
Gus looked around at the destruction left from the fight and wished he had that same degree of confidence.