Chapter Text
King glares down at the glyphs spread before him on the table.
Opposite him, Luz flips through a tattered old journal she fished out from her room, yellowed pages creaking even as she turns them as gently as she can. “I’ve read records of plant magic glyphs, but I’ve never….” Her voice drifts and she frowns, small, running her eyes over the faded notes. “I’ve never actually seen one.”
Ever since King’s unexpected glyph discovery a few days ago, Luz has been bombarding him with research. Among the cheesy YA novels and comics in Luz’s room she has enough old textbooks and salvaged scrolls to fill a small library, not to mention the pages and pages of notes she’s accumulated after years of hyperfixation, and King has lost track of the hours they’ve both spent studying ancient magic together. The sleep he’s missed out on.
But information on glyphs, apparently, is pretty scarce.
King opens a notebook of his own, clicks a pen. On a fresh page he draws a copy of each glyph, labeling each with LIGHT and PLANT respectively in scribbly all-caps handwriting. Practice. “Where did you even get the light glyph anyway?” he asks. He makes to draw a new circle, but this one comes out lopsided and he scribbles it out fiercely. “‘Cause I only got the plant one from Willow.”
“From a book.” But she answers it rushed, like she either wants to get it over with as quickly as possible or like she doesn’t even want to be talking about it in the first place. King glances up at her suspiciously over the rim of his notebook, but all he sees is Luz burying her snout in her own book, engrossed in her research. Or so she wants to make him believe. He huffs.
“So many studies on wild magic were lost after Belos rose to power,” Luz says now with a sigh, setting the book down forlornly. She eyes the glyphs on the table with an almost miserable tint to her gaze. “He claimed such magic was a gateway to evil. That it was…. corrupting the will of the Titan.” Another sigh. She looks away from the glyphs.
At that notion, King snorts indignantly, if not a little amused. “What is he, the Pope?” Another attempt at a glyph. Another crooked circle. He scribbles that one out, too. “The Titan’s dead. Who cares what a dead guy thinks??”
Luz is sullen a few seconds longer, but it doesn’t take much more than that to get her face brightening again. She chuckles small and soft, entertained but not entirely convinced. “You know, Eda and I have this exact same conversation every few months.”
“Well, maybe Eda’s on to something.” With that, King snaps the notebook shut and hops up from the sofa, swiping the two glyphs from the table and stuffing them in his pocket. “Either way, I’m still gonna need to know everything I can if I’m gonna rematch Amity.”
“You’re still on that?” King has come to associate disappointment with the sound of Luz’s claws scratching against her skull as she facepalms. Her head shakes. “King, we’ve been over this—she’s not your ‘rival,’ she’s just another kid—”
“A really mean kid.” And hey, isn’t Luz also Willow’s friend? Maybe she just hasn’t had the chance to see how awful Amity can be. “Why do you want to defend her so much?? She’s a bully.”
Luz’s words come out measured, a prepared response. She sets about tidying the books on the table. “I know people like Amity.” She doesn’t say who. “Maybe she just lashes out because she’s…. angry, or hurting, or…. I don’t know. Maybe that’s just what she’s being told to be. Amity’s just a kid.” She repeats, closing her eyes in sympathetic pensiveness. “But I bet that somewhere under that sour lemon drop outside…. is a hidden sweet center.” A smile.
He’s giving her a look. She knows he is. She can feel it without having to look at him. He’s not saying anything but he doesn’t have to. Her cheeks darken.
Sigh. “Okay. And she’s also very pretty.”
Now King is shaking his head in disappointment, tsk-tsking at his housemate’s confession. “You have terrible taste.”
Right at that exact moment, the front door flies wide open. “HEY HEY HEY, GUESS WHO’S BACK!!”
King jumps, but it’s only Eda, standing grandiose in the doorway with a grin on her face and a covered basket under her arm. The door bangs into the wall beside her and elicits a pained “OW,” but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“Hi, Eda!” Luz waves, grateful for the distraction. “How’d it go with the Bat Queen?”
“Don’t know yet!” Eda’s bustling merrily into the kitchen and Luz and King have nothing better to do than to follow her to the kitchen table, watch her set the basket down on top of it and peer down at it in anticipatory triumph.
“All she wanted to see me for was to ask me for a favor, can you believe that?” The Bat Queen is the wealthiest demon on the Boiling Isles. Getting in good graces with her is no small feat. Eda fluffs her hair proudly. “Being the most powerful witch on the Boiling Isles has its perks.”
It’s an ordinary enough wicker basket, its contents covered by a thick sheet. Curiously King reaches out a hand towards this cover, only for Eda to slap it away immediately, not flinching at his incredulous “Hey!”
“She’s promised me a handsome reward, and all I have to do”—she pulls the sheet back herself—”is keep this hideous little angel alive ‘til morning.”
Sleeping inside the basket amidst a nest of blankets is what can only be assumed to be a baby—if babies looked like chubby heads with fleshy bat’s wings where the ears should be. King grimaces. Luz claps her hands to her cheeks with an enamored “Awwwwwww!”
King pushes away from the table, his hands up in the air in a gesture of surrender. “Nope, babies are awful. Not happening!”
Unimpressed, Eda rolls her eyes. “Fine. Didn’t want you to get a cut of the loot anyway.” Nevertheless she reaches over the table to grab King by the hood before he can walk away, receiving a second incredulous “Hey!” in response. “But I still need you to do something else for me.”
Oh bother. “And what is that??”
Eda traces a spell circle into the air above him. “I need you to return the books I checked out from the library.” And right on cue, a stack of musty books falls from the spell circle and King barely has time to catch them in his arms, and even then the sudden heaviness almost sends him pitching forward towards the floor. “Whoa!”
“Don’t worry, King, Eda and I have this handled!” But most of Luz’s attention is centered solely on the sleepy bat-head baby in the basket; she makes purring little cooing noises as she caresses the soft fuzz of hair on its head. “Our greatest adventure yet—learning about love and life through a child’s eyes—”
“You’re going with him.”
“What?” Luz’s eyes go puppy-dog wide at the thought of having to leave this adorable little monstrosity.
“Someone has to show him how to get there.” Eda’s already ushering the two of them out of the kitchen and towards the front door, still swinging open from Eda’s grand entrance. Hooty’s either too dazed or too miffed to bother shutting it. “And I have a reward to bag.”
“But—”
“No buts!” A shove from Eda has Luz and King suddenly standing under the front door awning, still processing what the heck just happened. Blinking, Luz turns back towards Eda—
“You two have fun! Don’t stay out too late!”
SLAM.
King and Luz are left glaring at the shut door, before turning to each other with a resigned gaze. King shifts the weight of the books in his arms, hugging them to his chest with a grumble.
“Um. Well.” Luz claps her hands together. She can’t physically smile but it’s amazing how well she can manage the motions of one. She beams up at King.
“At least now I can show you the library!”
As it turns out, the Bonesborough Library isn’t that different from the fancy libraries back in the Human Realm. King is almost disappointed that a Demon Realm library doesn’t look a little more…. well, demonic.
Luz notices his pout as they climb up the stone steps to the front doors. “All of the cool stuff is on the inside!” she chirps mysteriously as she shoves open the door. But guess what—the inside proves to be pretty average looking, too.
Okay, maybe human libraries don’t have the books literally flying around the place but still, compared to everything else he’s seen in the Demon Realm, this seems pretty tame. It still doesn’t stop Luz from excitedly piping up, “This place is amazing! I don’t know why we didn’t think to bring you here sooner!”
King shrugs, looking around at the stacks and shelves. “It’s just a library.”
Luz screeches to a stop. Literally screeches. She whirls around to face King, jaw agape, finger pointed accusatorily. “How can you say that?!”
King elbows his way past her, aiming for the front desk. “It’s just books and computers and old people.” He grunts as the stack of books starts slipping from his grip. “I get enough of those at school.”
And he’s going to say more, but right at that second he finally bumps up against the front desk just in time for the heavy pile of books to finally go spilling from his arms, scattering across the desk and the floor and nearly taking King down with them—he catches himself on the edge of the desk before he can go sprawling over it. The witch working there blinks down at him stoically. He blinks back with a sheepish grin and an apologetic “Heh….”
Unfazed, the librarian simply rolls his eyes and picks up the battered books. Passes them through a spell circle in lieu of a scanner.
“Late, late, bloodstains….” Ever expressionless, he glances down at King once more. “These are Eda’s, aren’t they?”
Unsure what else to say, King just smiles and shrugs.
“Ugh, I’ll put them on her tab….”
With that business settled, King makes to leave the library—only to immediately crash into Luz.
“Luz what the heck I almost knocked you over—”
“Oh no, mister!” And now Luz is shoving him back in the direction he just came from, steering him against his will towards the main atrium of the library. “We are not leaving this building until you learn to appreciate the joys of public media centers!”
“What—Luz! Let go!” With some flailing he’s able to dislodge Luz’s grip on his back, but he doesn’t stop himself from following her anyway. Less like humoring her and more like feeling compelled to stick by her.
“I can’t believe you don’t like the library!” Luz’s arms are thrown out at her sides as she signals the splendors of the library: sunlight drifting in through tall windows to illuminate the archives, colorful banners emblazoned with pro-reading mottos hanging down from the ceiling, displays of every type of book from heavy encyclopedias to trashy gossip magazines. Witches and demons of all ages wander through picking out books; some sit at desks studying crystal balls the same way people back home study computers.
The whole place is, appropriately, library quiet, broken occasionally by the sound of pages rustling and whispered inquiries to the staff.
It doesn’t stop King from speaking at a normal volume. “It’s just books,” he reiterates, dodging an annoyed “SHH!” from a librarian. “I don’t get what’s supposed to be so great about them.”
A bemused little hum from Luz as she turns her chin up at him in mock offense. “Ruler’s Reach is ‘just a book.’”
King winces. “W-well—well that’s different.”
“Different, riiiiiight.” Luz rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t really mean it. Her smile is friendly. “A library is never just a library, King.” She trails her eyes over the shelves, the titles embossed in gold on the spines. “You never know the kind of misadventure you’ll find yourself in—”
She stops.
For the second time today, King comes dangerously close to bowling her over. “Hey, you okay?” Luz’s eyes have gone wide, her fur bristling as if startled. Mildly worried, King follows where her stunned gaze is staring….
No. Oh nooooo no no you have GOT to be KIDDING ME—
The archway over the entrance reads KIDS’ CORNER. Fittingly, the section is populated by young children, tucked away in a corner, sitting in a semicircle on the floor listening in rapt awe to the story being read to them, their eyes brimming with the eternal fascination of the fairytale.
The story being read to them by none other than Amity Blight.