Chapter Text
The scream that reverberated across the Boiling Isles was one of the worst sounds that Eda had never wanted to imagine.
The Owl Beast began to panic again, and time itself seemed to slow as Eda took in the scene before her.
The land was torn asunder in every direction and figures, many robed and armed, stood menacingly to the side, hesitating.
“Eda…” Raine was saying, but their voice barely registered any more than the other surrounding figures.
All Eda could see was a tiny form, shaggy grey with an exposed, horned skull, lying utterly still, covered in bluish blood.
Crouched above was another figure, face obscured, but hands covered in the same blood, cloaked in bright purple robes patterned half and half with a moon and stars motif.
Eda didn’t remember when she had shifted to harpy form, but she had halved the distance between them before she realized it, half running, half flying, the screaming still echoing, inescapable.
She felt her claws connect with their target…
***
…And Eda shot up in her nest, the screaming coming from her own throat.
She was nearly blinded by the bright sunlight streaming through her stained-glass window.
“Eda! EDA!”
She blinked wildly against the brightness, raising a hand - her only hand now - to block it from her face.
“EDA!”
As her bedroom loft returned to focus, Eda found herself looking down into the familiar face of the small, horned-skulled creature from her dream, this time very much alive and looking concerned, his claws resting on the edge of her nest.
“King.”
She reached down and picked him up, one-armed, wing drawing in to hold him close.
“You okay, Eda,” King asked from within the feathers.
Eda just made a strangled sound and hugged him as tightly as she could.
At one time, King would have probably protested, pushed away against such a display of outward affection. But things had changed and Eda had a sneaking suspicion that he needed this as much as she did.
There was the sound of rapidly-approaching footsteps and a slightly winded Raine Whispers burst through the door.
“Everything okay?” they demanded.
Eda looked almost surprised to see Raine there, but then she nearly always felt a bit of not-unpleasant surprise to find them still around. She still halfway expected to wake up one morning and discover that they had left again.
So far it hadn’t happened, but that didn’t stop Eda from being constantly on edge about it.
“Another nightmare, huh,” Raine said, sitting down on the edge of the nest and putting a firm hand on Eda’s shoulder.
“Eh, it happens,” Eda said, loosening her grip on King but not letting him go.
“Must’ve been a bad one,” Raine continued. “If it made you go all… this .”
They tapped one of the massive harpy wings.
“It’s bound to happen,” Eda said, taking a deep breath and letting herself relax back into her former shape, wings and claws melting away. “I’m a bit surprised, though. The Owl Beast and I haven’t exactly been seeing eye-to-eye lately.”
“You two have a fight?” King asked, making no attempt to move from Eda’s lap.
“It’s more like they’re a wild animal with some ingrained fears and instincts that I can’t reason away, and I have some ideas that go against their judgement.”
King squinted.
“You’re being preeetttyyy cryptic there, Eda,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” Eda tapped him on the skull. “I’m not going to do anything without talking to you about it.”
“I don’t know what you’re up to,” King said. “But I’m sure I one hundred percent support it.”
Raine sighed.
“You should come down for breakfast,” they said. “I was going to bring a tray up, but Hooty insisted on helping cook and…I’m not sure that was a good idea.”
Eda laughed, gently shifting King off her lap before stretching and climbing to her feet.
They made their way downstairs and, sure enough, Hooty was coiled over the stove, holding a wooden spoon in his beak and humming a song of his own creation.
There were lyrics, no doubt completely deranged, but with his grip on the spoon, it was hard to make much out other than something about demonic mice and “hoot!”
“Morning, Hooty,” Eda said, padding into the kitchen.
“Oooooooh, Edaaaaa!” Hooty said delightedly, dropping the spoon. “Look what IIIII made you for breakfast!”
Eda peered into the frying pan to see something very thin and breadish sizzling in it.
“Really flat pancakes?” she asked, flashing back to one of Luz’s favorite breakfast foods.
“They’re CREEEPS!” Hooty said.
“Creeps?” Eda asked. “You mean crepes? The human food?”
“Oh they’re like crepes,” Hooty said, bouncing excitedly. “But way, wayyyyy creepier! Guess what the secret ingredient is! I bet you CAAN’T!”
“Do I want to know what the secret ingredient is?” Eda asked.
“If it’s demonic mice, I’m not eating it,” Raine added.
“Speak for yourself,” Eda said.
“Can I guess?” King asked. “I guess the secret ingredient isss kindness! And goodwill towards all!”
“Ew, no,” Hooty said. “It’s the entire bag of sugar that Luz brought us from the Human Realm.”
“It’s a lot of sugar,” Raine said.
“Yeee-eeees,” Hooty said. “And Luz said it causes caves in your teeth, and caves are CREEPY!”
“Cavities, Hooty,” Eda said. “I guess I should make another list of things for Luz to pick up in the human realm, since we don’t have any sugar left. We’re going through it all pretty fast. Or I could go get it myself. Flex my bandit muscles.”
Raine laughed as Eda flexed her arm.
“Oh! Oh!” King said. “Take me! We can be a bandit duo!”
King sounded earnest, but Eda could tell that something was off. It had been for a while, and it was pretty clear that King was going through the motions of normalcy, as if desperate to return to something…Something before the revelation that he was the last Titan, before the Day Of Unity and before The Collector had wrought havoc on the Boiling Isles.
“I won’t leave you behind, King,” Eda said.
The group sat down at the kitchen table and Hooty served them Creeps, which were essentially breaded sugar.
Eda and Raine fell into a debate about whether it was appropriate to drink hot apple blood, and Hooty held forth about his latest correspondence with Lilith.
King was quieter. He scarfed down his plate of Creeps and then hopped to the window, staring out at the path intently.
“You okay there, King?” Eda asked.
“I’m just waiting for Luz to get back. If she comes back.”
“She will. She’ll be here soon.”
Luz had been spending a decent amount of time in Connecticut, now that a stable passage between worlds had been reestablished. It did make life in Eda’s house a bit quieter when she and Hunter weren’t there, but it seemed like King missed her the most.
“You wanna’ talk about anything, King?”
He shook his head.
The house itself had needed, and still needed, some pretty significant repairs.
Much of the contents were still missing after having been taken by Coven scouts. Recovering it all was proving more difficult than anticipated. Not only was the former Empire in complete chaos, but The Collector had thrown the warehouse containing all the confiscated material two miles east after getting bored playing hide and seek with the Coven scouts inside.
“I wish I knew what he was thinking,” Eda said quietly, clearing the dishes away while King continued to sit in the window. “I know he’ll talk to me when he’s ready - and he knows he can anytime - but there’s some stuff we really need to talk about.”
“You’re not sure how to talk to him about your plan, are you,” Raine said knowingly.
“It’s not a plan, I don’t have a plan,” Eda said. “It’s an idea, and I still don’t have a clue where to start. There’s nothing in the library, and you couldn’t find anything in the Castle.”
“What’s left of the Castle,” Raine said. “That didn’t hold up well, either.”
Eda found herself staring at them, not for the first time in recent days. She usually looked away when she caught herself, before Raine noticed but, on the times like this when they did notice, they simply gave her a warm smile.
Eda felt her face go flush, but she couldn’t help but smile back.
She felt like her heart was going to explode, but along with it was something else.
Maybe it was the residual anxiety that was always with her from the curse, but Eda couldn’t shake the feeling that this wouldn’t last, and at any second it was all going to fall apart again.
***
“Raine!”
At first Eda couldn’t process what was happening.
King, Luz, her friends were who knows where and the plan to thwart the Draining Spell had failed.
Everyone around her, nearly everyone she knew was dying, their magic, their very life energy being pulled from them into the eclipse above.
Everyone.
But all Eda could focus on was one.
“ Raine. ”
Her best friend, sometimes more, lost and regained, now dying at her knees, their last act having been to save her life.
The Owl Beast was screaming from her subconscious, but it didn’t matter. It was all over.
Raine was dying and there was nothing Eda could do. Nothing anybody could do.
But then someone did.
It was as if a great shudder went through the entire fabric of reality and, before Eda could even react to that, there was light.
Bright, blinding light.
It was so sudden that it took a moment for her to realize the light was coming from the sun overhead.
‘ They’re here! ’ came the panicked knowledge from the recesses of her subconscious where the curse lived. ‘ They’re HERE! '
The eclipse was over already, the draining spell dissipating with it.
Except eclipses weren’t supposed to end that fast.
With some effort, Eda tore her gaze away from Raine and raised it to the sky.
“Did we…lose time…” she whispered in confusion.
Not only was the moon no longer eclipsing the sun, it wasn’t anywhere near the sun.
“What’s going on?” a voice asked from nearby.
“The moon just…”
“Did it just move ?”
“Get up.”
“Here, let me help you.”
“Where’s Belos? Where’s the Emperor?”
“He betrayed you, can’t you see ?! He was trying to kill you, he was trying to kill you all!”
“How did the moon move that fast?”
“It must have been Belos.”
“Nobody else has that power.”
Eda stared at the moon for a long time, trying to understand.
“Who?” she whispered. “ Who’s here?”
She looked down at Raine, grabbing their shoulder with her remaining hand and shaking them roughly.
“Raine! Raine! Wake up!”
Raine did not respond.
“Come on, come on. I need you to be okay. I’m not sure who I’ve got left right now.”
There was still no movement from Raine, aside from Eda’s desperate shaking.
Then there was a hand on her own shoulder and she yelped, not just from the surprise but because it was the shoulder of her arm that was now missing. And, to her surprise, she had the realization that it was hurting, and had been for a while.
“Eda! Oh good Titan, your arm. I didn’t see…”
It was Darius, and he quickly let go and crouched down beside Eda and Raine. He was holding a nearly-unconscious Eberwolf under one arm.
“Don’t worry about my arm,” Eda said. “We’ve got to get Raine out of here. I can’t rouse them, but someone or something is coming and we have to hide now .”
Darius put a hand on Raine.
“Is it Belos?” he asked.
“No, not Belos. Something older and far, far worse.”
“How do you know that?”
“Benefits of having a curse, I guess.”
There was a massive rumbling, cracking sound and questions and murmurs of confusion rose from the nearby survivors as they all looked around to locate the source.
It didn’t take long for everyone to discover that it was coming from the Titan’s skull itself.
For a moment, Eda half wondered if it were the Titan returning to life, but she quickly realized, as did most everyone else, that the skull was cracking and ripping apart. Pieces were being swept up into the air and the tremors could be felt across the Isles.
There were no words from within, but Eda knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that this was the doing of the mysterious new threat.
“That’s them,” she said, turning back to Darius. “We need to go.”
Darius, to Eda’s relief, did not question her.
“Do you think you can carry Eber?” he asked.
Eda stood up, an act that proved slightly more difficult than she’d anticipated, and held out her arm.
Eberwolf weakly tried to help, but was too out of it to do much. Fortunately, Eda’s grip was strong.
Darius seemed better off than most and manifested an abomination sling to carry Raine.
“Right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He looked regretfully at the other Coven Heads, who were struggling to regroup and recover.
Eda could see his conflict. They’d all been victims of Belos’ true plans. She too was looking around, hoping to spot Lilith or Hooty.
But she also knew that staying here much longer would condemn them all. Activity was starting to break into confusion.
“ Lily !” she called. “LILY IF YOU CAN GET HOOTY, WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE! SOMETHING BAD IS COMING!”
“I’ll get them, Owl Lady,” a voice said from beside her. Alador Blight, of all people. “You get going. There’s a defunct factory workshop on the Knee. We’ll meet there. If you get there first, this will get you in.”
He held out a key that seemed to be made of dried abomination goop.
Eda felt a wave of relief. If Alador was here, that no doubt meant that Luz and King had made connections with Amity. She’d have to have some words with him later about allowing the kids anywhere near this location, but for the moment she was simply grateful.
“Put it in my hair, Blight,” she said. “And you better bring Luz and King with you. Whatever just showed up is bad news and I don’t want them to meet it.”
Alador gave her a stricken look that she didn’t like at all.
He did, however, hide the factory key in her hair.
“Keep your word,” Eda said coldly, even though Alador had not promised anything, or spoken a word since telling her about the warehouse.
And she and Darius, carrying Raine and Eberwolf, hurried down the steps and ran for their lives, bursting through the Abomatons, which seemed to have been decommissioned, most likely by Alador. Eda once again felt a sense of gratefulness towards Amity’s father.
“Luz, you’re a good influence,” she muttered to herself.
Something about Alador’s expression kept bothering her, though, and she wished she’d asked him a few more direct questions instead of making assumptions.
It was too late now, and the wind was picking up.
Eda and Darius pushed their way through the throngs of witches and demons who were also intent on making a break for it.
At the edge of the woods, they momentarily turned and looked back.
“What in the name of these blasted Islands,” Darius muttered.
The Titan’s skull had nearly disintegrated by now, much of it had collapsed in on itself, but a not-insignificant portion of the debris was swirling into the sky.
And from somewhere amidst the swiftly-turning vortex, there was the sound of joyous laughter.