Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Luz glared out at her captors, the DUP soldiers driving the APC, not even looking at them as the four struggled in the restraining cuffs they all wore, though they made sure not to hit them against anything, not wanting to give the dupes any reason to look back.

It had been one day like any crappy other one, ever since she was taken from her mother when she was six by the cold, sadistic, concrete wielding conduit that was Augustine. She still remembered the screaming, the hands of the soldiers as they ripped her away from her mother, and the shriek of pain as Augustine sent concrete shards into her mother’s legs when she started threatening Augustine.

But, Luz proved herself. She made damn sure to follow the woman’s orders, and sure enough, the shards were removed, and she was even allowed monthly calls if she kept being good. That doesn’t mean she was happy with that situation though.

Now though, she honestly wished she was back in Curdon Cay, behind the safe concrete walls and not in an armored truck, heading straight to the military where she just knew every last bit of privileges she earned would be taken away forever, if she wasn’t outright executed.

She looked around at the other three with her, before freezing as she saw the oldest of the four of them, Hank, with his hands up to his mouth, and she heard the soft clicking of metal on metal when she realized what he was doing.

“Are you insane?!” She whispered urgently, drawing attention from the other two, their eyes widening in surprise as they had either zoned off, or were glaring at the floor in deep contemplation.

He glared at her past the cuffs, but couldn’t talk as he kept working, so Luz kept talking, “She probably knows you ‘snuck it in’ here Hank! It’s going to be another one of her bullshit ‘tests’, which you’re failing and will finally get you killed.” She tried to warn him, her voice going from surprised to pleading a bit.

Afterall, Hank was one of the few conduits that really looked out for her at Curdon Cay. He was, in a way, like the uncle she never had. Her thought process was cut off though, as the cuffs fell off into his lap, and he smiled, “Not if we get out of here fast enough.” He says as go grabs Fetch’s and Eugene’s cuffs, snapping them, before moving onto her hands, kneeling down and letting his smoke get in the mechanisms, undoing each one far faster than he would have with a traditional pick.

As hers fell off, she caught them to prevent any noise, and they all rocked with the truck they were in with each bump in the road as Hank spoke up, “Ok, I’m going to smoke out our drivers, try to get ‘em to pull over. While I do that, Fetch, Luz, you both try to burn us a way out of the back doors, Eugene you stay on their comms, keep ‘em deaf and mute, got it?” He says, and after getting nods, they were off.

It all happened too fast. One second, she was helping Fetch, when suddenly, the truck made a hard turn, sending them into a wall, before it struck something else and sent itself into a roll, the four of them bouncing around the metal box roughly, the weakened doors hanging open when they finally came to a stop, but as they tried to exit, Hank’s smoke had superheated the gas tank, making it explode and pinning him underneath one of the doors while stunning her and the other two for moments, which was just long enough for a distress signal to be sent.

When Luz got back up, she saw Eugene trying to get Fetch to stay and help, but she bolted off in a blaze of neon light, too fast for the video conduit to see. After taking one last look at Luz, he spoke, “I’m sorry,” before summoning wings and flying as fast as he could towards the city.

She growled swears in Spanish under her breath and ran over to Hank, the older conduit coughing up his lungs as he was struggling with the door as well, the lack of their powers at the moment putting them at a severe disadvantage in terms of strength as she couldn’t even lift one door.

She kept struggling as Hank finally spoke up, “Luz, Luz, hey, just go.” He started to say, struggling between each breath as he kept trying to lift.

She shook her head, “H-hell no, Hank. You got us out, only fair you get to leave too.” She says, starting to fight tears now from the effort, her powers still lagging as she stopped focusing on them.

“Luz I can hear people comin’, you need to leave before they see you and get you too. The last thing I want to see is a kid go back into Curdon Cay.” Hank says, imagining if his own daughter ended up there, “Just run kid. Get the hell out of here, and never look back, you hear me?” Hank asks as Luz finally stops struggling.

She nods, unable to speak anymore, the smoke finally starting to affect her lungs as Hank draws it in, healing himself first as she starts to head off towards the forest, inland. As she runs, she starts to draw her power in, absorbing light wherever it pokes through the trees, the shadows providing too small of an amount to really be felt.

Before she can get far though, she already hears DUP soldiers on the edge of the woods, pushing further into the trees at a faster rate than she expected, but she keeps running, pushing it harder.

When concrete wielders start joining them, she knows she’s now within their sight, but she keeps running.

Bullets and shards start flying, and she grunts as multiple shots enter her back, and several shards find homes in her arms, back, and legs, but she keeps running.

Finally, as she breaks a treeline, she can feel her power increase once more, and she finally lets it loose, transforming into light as she dashes away, breaking the sound barrier in a blast of air pressure as she’s off at double the speed of sound.

For a few more minutes, she’s in Oregon, before she enters Idaho at mach 3. It’s an even shorter amount of time when she enters Wyoming, and everything around her is a blur. Obstacles mean almost nothing as she slows her perception just enough to dodge trees and rocks, running through bushes as if they’re not there, and up steep hills and cliffs as easy as walking on carpet.

Halfway though her run though, something goes wrong. She can feel something change in the air, and faster than she can even react, a glowing orange disc materializes right in front of her, and everything goes white as she barrels into it, and then through it, what trackers that were on her clothes shorting out as Luz left Earth behind in a blaze of speed and light, hopefully reaching what she had wanted most. Freedom.

X

Eda sighed as she finally closed up her shop. She had barely been able to sell anything today, what with the Emperor’s Coven finally having wizened up to her usual spots that she rotated through at the market.

As she hopped on her staff, she did a mental inventory of her remaining stock, some of which Owlbert had replenished from that cute little human town, Gravesfield if she remembered the name correctly. She had gained over 300 snails today, which wasn’t a bad haul, and should be enough to cover groceries for the next four months.

Her thought process was interrupted though, as a bright light shone out of the forest beneath her, drawing her interest to the beacon among the red and orange leaves.

Now, normally on the isles, seeing strange lights isn’t necessarily a good thing, especially when one lives out in the forest, with many a young witchlet having disappeared forever by chasing such occurrences, but Eda was no young witchlet. She was a fully grown and VERY powerful Wild Witch, and she needed to know if this was some new danger near her home, and if Hooty could handle it. He probably could.

She was also just really curious as to what it could be, so setting off in that direction, she casted a spell that took the rest of her stuff home.

Landing in a nearby clearing, she froze as she saw a trail of blood on the ground, finding it distinctly red. While witches may bleed red, and even some bipeds, there was no small swirl of extra color here and there to denote magical bile, and there were no other creatures on the isles that bled that dark of a crimson, meaning only one thing. There was an injured human on the isles.

With a bit more sense of urgency she followed the trail, internally cursing that she never picked up beast magic, like her mother had, or healing. Both tended to be excellent for tracking, but she made do with just her senses and other, more wild spells.

When she finally reached a cave, she noticed the blood still hadn’t stopped, and she was honestly worried if the human had died. Not even big bipeds could bleed this much and live, so she prepared for the worst.

She wasn’t ready. What she found was so much worse than she thought. There, in a secluded, tucked away corner, was the human.

That’s a kid, she thought with a horrible realization. It was the only explanation for them being so small. It made the strange shards of stone sticking out of the girl’s legs and arms that much bigger, and her heart burned with rage, her magic making her eyes start to glow an even brighter shade of gold.

She felt her breath catch in her throat though when her eyes pricked up, and she heard the shallow breathing of the girl in question, her chest slowly rising and falling, so small she almost missed it, and as she took another step closer, the human’s eyes started to flutter open, their irises bright shades of gold with flecks of dark red, giving them an almost rose gold-like appearance from a distance.

The human’s face contorted in pain as she tried to move away, crawling with one arm as Eda rushed over, “Hey, hey, don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.” Eda says softly as she kneels down next to her, making long, slow, deliberate movements to convey that she’s no threat.

When the human seemed to slow down a little, Eda made a small light spell, so they could both better see each other.

That action alone made Luz calm down more, dismissing the weirdness of the circle, in her delirious mind she just guessed Eda was another conduit, and with that relaxing she started to fall asleep once more.

Eda, meanwhile, gained a bit more urgency once she saw Luz drifting off. Taking care to avoid the shards of stone, Eda carefully picked the girl up, mentally telling Owlbert to take them back to the Owl House as quickly yet safely as possible.

When they arrived, everything was in order, and Hooty almost spoke up before he saw the injured bundle in her arms and quickly opened up his door without a word.

Setting the girl down on the cleared off coffee table, for lack of a better surface, Eda immediately went to analyzing what she could do while Owlbert managed to start preparing a large, boiling pot of water with soap to start soaking rags, before he flew off to fetch Eda the first aid kit.

The witch, meanwhile, only felt her heart sink lower the more she looked over the girl. The kid was positively filthy, absolutely covered in soot to the point that she looked like someone cast a fireball at her point blank, on top of the shards sticking out of her limbs and back.

Then there were the shards themselves. When Owlbert finally got the rags and first aid kit over, Eda took a deep breath, and made a grab for one of them. Her surprise was almost palpable when the thing didn’t budge.

She made a few more tugs, each harder, all while trying not to wake the girl and with a sleep spell ready at any moment to put her back under to prevent as much pain as possible, all she accomplished was causing the wounds to bleed faster.

Thankfully, what little healing she knew did include a scanning spell, and with another quick circle, she sucked in a breath. The shards were embedded in the girl’s bones. She also found a lot of small, metal cones stuck inside the girl’s back as well, correlating with the holes, though those were much easier to remove.

Channeling her magic into strength now, she grabbed a hold of two of the shards, and with a whispered sorry and a powerful tug, she yanked them loose, before immediately rapping them up as fast as she could, repeating the process over and over until she had 13, blood soaked shards of stone next to her.

Applying a few more healing spells to stop bleeding, and making sure the bandages were on tight, Eda threw a towel over the couch and gently laid the girl down, before all but falling back in her armchair with an explosive sigh, holding her head in her hands.

She was silent and contemplating for a few more moments, wondering how in the Titan this could happen, before she looked up at the girl again, taking time to actually take in her features now.

The first thing she noticed was the slight resemblance to a certain Bard that she knew, only with dark brown, nearly black, hair with small flecks of red instead of mint and round ears instead of tapered points.

The next thing she noticed was the rest of her face, how she had dark bags under her eyes, how every little scratch, nic, and even slight injury seemed to stand out just that much more on her, and how, no matter how many cleaning spells to make sure her wounds weren’t infected, the ash she spotted earlier seemed to cling to her.

After that, there was her outfit, and that started to make Eda confused. From what she could see, the girl was wearing bright, highly visible orange clothing, and Eda swore she saw some writing on the back, but she was unwilling to move the girl for now. However, words or not, Eda had been in enough problematic situations to know that she was wearing a prison uniform, so the question on her mind was wondering why?

The final thing she noticed was the girl’s stature. At first, Eda thought she was underfed and slightly malnourished, but looking closer, she realized it was all lean muscle, like some of the more serious EC members have.

Rubbing her eyes one more time, she figured it would be smarter to just ask the girl in the morning, and after going over it in her head, she decided to move said girl, as gently as possible, into her nest while the witch herself would just take the couch.

Getting ready for some serious back pain tomorrow, Eda gave one last sigh before closing her eyes, and falling asleep.