Work Text:
The first day Vee ever felt alive began like any other.
She knew she was alive, that much was for certain, but the guards' fearful whispers and the yellowing pages of the books on basilisks strewn across the prison corridor had made it clear that she shouldn't be.
The guard on duty outside her cage was dozing off, his Ruler's Reach book lying half-open on the stone floor beside him. Vee had read that page what felt like a thousand times now, but it was better to stare at the words then at the wide eyes of Number Six opposite her as he stared at the lifeless form of the rat before him, tears trickling down his scales.
She'd taught herself to read first on the numbers below the cages, linking the shapes up to the half-names that were spat through the twisted bars. Then it had been the wanted posters - scrawled black letters declaring strange names above even stranger sketches. One, directly opposite her cage, had always caught her eye: a wild-looking witch in a torn red dress, her silver hair loose and free, a tiny demon by her side. Underneath was the biggest reward Vee had ever seen. She'd heard the guards protest the Owl Lady's antics - Vee prayed that she'd burn this place to the ground.
Sighing, she curled up on the rough metal floor of her cage, the words on the page finally beginning to blur. She was still exhausted from the previous night's draining - repressing a shudder, she tried to forget the noises the rats made as their life was slowly ripped away from them.
Back to reading. Back to reading.
But the book had disappeared: the guard in front of Vee had finally awoken and was sleepily pulling himself to his feet. The guards were collecting the rats: this was it - the few minutes the basilisks had alone together each day.
It began as a gentle scratching on the left-hand side of her cage, like the rats' claws. Then, a whisper.
"Five!"
Number Four was leaning through the bars of her cage towards Vee, one clawed yellow paw outstretched. Behind her, Vee could see Number Three staring at her, their green eyes wide and imploring.
"We have to leave, Five."
Her voice was rough, and quiet - years older, Four had done more draining than Vee by far. It hurt to think of the toll.
"Five, I know you're not hopeless. I know you're- you're alive ."
Each of them looked towards Six: frozen, his eyes empty, tears still steadily falling. No words needed to be spoken. At that moment, Vee made a decision.
"Do you have a plan?"
It was the first words she'd spoken aloud in days. And as guards milled before the entrance, trembling rats in gilded cages being dragged to slaughter in their armoured arms, Vee finally understood how to save her own life.
"Officers," Three breathed as guards poured into the room, their voice barely a whisper. "Surely the Emperor would want to see the strength of every basilisk combined."
"Imagine the power…" Four sighed, tail twisting around the bars of her cage.
Vee took a deep breath, averting her eyes from the writhing rodents. "The three of us volunteer."
As the guards stood, whispering furiously, Vee could feel the eyes of each caged basilisk weighing on the three of them. Desperately, she tried to communicate her plea with her eyes, until the head guard called for silence.
"Very well." Their voice boomed around the dark, damp corridor. "I shall summon the Emperor."
A shadow fell across the floor.
"There will be no need for that."
The Emperor towered over the guards, golden antlers scraping the low ceiling, veins retreating into the stone where he had materialised. A hush fell over the guards; it felt as if a hush had fallen over the entire Isles. Vee had only seen the Emperor once before, a shadow in the blur of her first days alive, but he wasn't the kind of witch she could ever forget.
Heart in her mouth, Vee forced herself to move forwards as each cage door swung open in tandem . The basilisks were forming an uneven circle on the floor, surrounded by guards. Vee found her place between Four and Six, comforted by their presence. It didn't take long for the Emperor to join their circle and the cages of rats to be placed in the centre. He stared silently, wordless. Expectation loomed over the basilisks, heavy and cold.
It was Three who began, focusing her gaze on the terrified rodents and opening her mouth. A stream of silvery liquid magic poured from the rats' tiny bodies towards her, quickly joined by several others as the rest of the basilisks followed suit and began to feed too. Vee was last, gently brushing her tail against Four's before taking a deep breath and joining them.
Four had been right - the power was incredible. Vibrant streams of light lit up the dark corridor, vivid colour bouncing off of the bars of the cages and causing the wanted posters to flutter against the stone like birds. Magic surged through Vee's veins - fortifying her, a shield against her fear. The rats collapsed, motionless.
It was then that chaos broke out.
The cue had been the end of the draining and Vee knew that, but she could still hardly repress a scream when Three's chains fell with a crash to the ground. They were gone - somewhere in the pandemonium, there was another guard, trying to blend in, heart beating wildly in a body that was not their own.
Losing control for a second, Vee reached towards Four, only for her hand to fall through thin air. It was the same story: the fall and crash of empty chains, another furious guard, shouts and screams and flailing weapons.
She had to transform. She had to transform.
Time seemed to slow as Vee focused her eyes on the mess of shining metal around her, trying to commit a form to memory. She was almost there, she could feel the magic surging to the surface of her mind, when a voice behind her made her twist around in fear.
As she stared into the black depths of his eyes, it was too late to go back.
Her gaze blurred as the room seemed to spin around her. Robes of grey and white hung closely to her frame.
Emperor Belos had watched her transform. Emperor Belos knew their plan. Emperor Belos was coming for her, was going to kill her…
A hand gripped her sleeve, a hand that usually meant get out, Number Five, get out of your cage and drain, but Vee looked and saw, for a split-second, the face of Four, before all she saw was another guard, like a mirror of herself.
"Five, follow!"
Four was clearly having trouble staying transformed - her voice, which was masked as deep and authoritative, kept breaking, revealing her quiet, rasping tone beneath. Vee edged clumsily after her, trying to get used to walking with legs and tripping as stumbling as she did. Ducking into a cage lying empty now, she narrowly missed an explosion powering towards her skull and watched it collide with a different guard instead, falling and transforming swiftly back into a terrified Number Eight, a deep, thick pool of his blood spilling rapidly onto the rough stone.
Burning flesh tinged the air with the scent of terror. The Emperor was silent and staring, but encircling him were basilisks and guards alike: tied roughly to the ground with dark, bleeding veins, their broken limbs turned to stone.
Vee froze to the spot. The only thing louder than the blasts of explosions were the screams - hysteric, petrified, cracking and breaking at their frantic intensity.
It was all she could do to weakly breathe no as two guards grabbed her gloved hands and dragged her, stumbling, through the remnants of the crumbling wall of her cage and into the blinding sunlight.
In those fragile moments where Vee had dared to entertain the possibility of escape, she had never imagined it like this. The image in her mind had been one of bravery; heroism, all of the basilisks escaping together, leaving the prison smouldering behind them with Belos inside of it. She had dreamed of staring up at the red-lilac sky as herself, a basilisk , her two-toned scales shining under the streetlights. But now she was being dragged under the half-wreckage of the prison and the two guards were transforming back into Three and Four and oh, Titan , the Emperor was trapping the rest of the remains of the prison under a shield-spell and the other basilisks were still in there and there was nothing, nothing she could do.
But as she drank in the cold air, Vee finally felt alive.
The next few days held a series of discoveries. The first, coming as Vee cowered under the rubble with the others, was that she, Three and Four were the only basilisks that escaped. Vee hoped survived would stay unspoken. Then there was the realisation that they had nowhere to stay; at least in the prison they were safe from the boiling rain, which burned holes in their delicate chameleon scales as they pressed together under a broken stall. The third? That hiding in the Demon Realm was not going to be an easy task.
Vee had already watched a jug of bubbling seawater be thrown at a demon by a guard who hissed that they looked 'basilisk-y'. It got worse when Three and Four left - deciding on appearances, hiding their true faces, preparing to live as witches for the rest of their lives. Vee had looked them in their eyes as they transformed and swore that she would never hide like that - that she would find a way to be herself.
It was the day when The Emperor's guards were chasing her down the streets of Bonesborough that she began to wonder if she should have followed them.
"Stop, thief!"
It had just been one carton of apple blood - she'd only get kept in a cell for a night or so, but if she ran out of magic…
Vee ran faster, trying not to trip over her unfamiliar legs, as she wiped the sweat from a face she barely knew. A small crowd had formed at the edge of the marketplace: thankful, Vee ducked between the witches and demons, coming face-to-face with the stall that they were staring at.
A wonky sign reading 'Human Collectibles' hung over shelves filled with strange objects Vee hadn't even seen in books.
But it was the owner of the stall who really caught her eye. Even despite the shawl tied around her wild silver hair, she was unmistakable. Vee had seen Eda the Owl Lady's sardonic smile a thousand times, but never in the flesh. She stared shyly, almost starstruck, as Eda pulled a series of treasures from a sack carried by a tiny owl palisman. The final treasure was a well-loved paperback with a… unique drawing of a witch on its colourful cover.
"This will make good kindling," Eda shrugged, snapping her fingers and bringing a spark, then a flame, to the pages.
"No, wait!"
A sudden movement came from the shadows behind the stall.
Standing before the crowd and making a wild grab for the book was a human . Her round ears poked out from a mess of short dark curls, and she wore a purple and white cat-eared shirt over shorts and leggings. As the girl stared around the marketplace in wonder, Vee acted without thinking.
Ducking behind the girl and pushing back the curtain she had emerged from, Vee came face-to-face with an open door. Beyond it lay a swirling silvery abyss: a portal .
Detransforming, Vee froze. She had no idea what the door, staring emptily through her with its vivid yellow eye, would lead her to. No world would welcome a basilisk into its arms. But, yet…
Her heart beating like a drum in her chest, she dove through the door, the silence beckoning her in.
Alone before a rickety wooden house, the first thing Vee was aware of was the gentle rustling of the trees above; the second, as she opened her eyes, the warmth of the sun against the blindingly blue sky.
A call echoed from a house beyond: "Luz!"
Was that the girl's name? Pulling her form from memory to mind, Vee took a deep breath and transformed into her. She only had a moment to brush her round ears with her fingertips in amazement before the woman who had called appeared before her.
"There you are, Luz!" Her voice was warm and gentle; comforting, almost. But Vee knew she could never let her guard down.
"Hello, fellow human!" she stammered awkwardly in response. "Skin's sure weird!"
Fatal mistake, she realised as the words left her mouth, humans don't talk like that! However, the woman - Luz's mamá , Vee suddenly recognised - seemed unfazed. She laughed, and held a hand out to Vee.
"How about I drive you to camp instead?" She waved her car keys, and Vee noticed a tiny paper tag, tied on, reading Camila Noceda . "You'll have full control of the playlist!"
"I'd like that," Vee replied gently, and, taking Camila's hand, was led away from the door - away from the Demon Realm! - and towards the car.
Sunlight filtered through the leaves of the trees and dappled Vee's foreign clothing with patches of gold as Camila drove out of Gravesfield. Any guilt she felt was rapidly dissipating as she let Luz's strange human music wash over her, listening as it mingled with the rattling of her suitcase in the back seat. As the scenery rushed past outside the open windows, Vee finally allowed her mind to wander. Her promise to Three and Four came to mind, and somehow, when she looked at Camila and the summer camp leaflet lying beside her and the trees and the sun against the blue, blue sky, she didn't mind that she'd broken it.
She wasn't herself, but she was human.