Chapter Text
"I Sing The Body Electric," no one else seemed to hear the words but Taylor as Sophia finally cornered her, but their jaws dropped as Sophia's arm jerked and she punched herself in the face, falling bonelessly to the ground.
While her minions were seeing if she was alright no one noticed the red haired boy wearing a blue beanie ghost past them and take Taylor's hand, leading the shocked girl away from her bully.
"Finally, how is it that it's so annoyingly hard to find a moment to speak with the least popular girl in school?" The boy asked as they entered a abandoned classroom.
"Hi Taylor!" Greg said, sitting at one of the desks, along with a girl Taylor had never seen before. "Glad Jason was finally able to get you away form the Mean Girls."
The girl looked at Taylor before winking flirtatiously, shooting her a jaunty two finger salute while blowing a bubble of bubblegum until it popped, "Sup," she said simply, before going back to looking out the window.
"Greg, what the heck is going on, how did that guy make Sophia punch herself?" Taylor asked, wondering just what the hell was going on before she realized something else. "Wait, and who are these two, I've never seen them around here?"
"I'm Jason, and the girl trying to look bored is my friend Lacey," Jason introduced, ignoring how his friend flipped him off. "The reason we're here is that Greg said that he thought that you were like us, and the fact you heard my Spell against Sophia supports it, you're probably an Evoker."
"A what?" Taylor asked confused only to jump as Greg was suddenly in her personal space.
"You're a Wizard, Taylor~" Greg practically squee'd. "You have the ability to use Magic!"
"What the heck are you talking about?" Taylor said with a huff. "Magic isn't real!"
"Oh yeah? Watch this!" Greg said, flipping the coin, and half way up the words 'Redo!' blared out in Greg's voice before he actually spoke. "It's gonna be heads!"
Taylor watched as the coin landed in his hand in the heads position, and watched as he proceeded to repeat this trick twenty times, her repeatedly hearing 'Redo!' as he did.
"You've been hearing all my Redos, right?" Greg asked her, smiling as she nodded her head. "That's what my magic lets me do, it's apparently super strong, but it's the only thing I can do."
"Evokers' power are based upon how many 'Words' the Evoker has access to," Lacey explained before blowing another bubble and popping it with her teeth. "People with only one word like Greg are super rare, and stupid strong magically but are pretty much one trick ponies. Whereas people like Jason are pretty weak in the greater scheme of things, but they have a lot more flexibility since they can chain multiple words together, meaning if you give him enough time he can create some crazy powerful spells."
"Lacey meanwhile is between Jason and I," Greg explained rapidly. "Meaning she's in the middle between us in terms of power and adaptability."
"And how exactly do you know that I'm one?" Taylor asked curiously.
"We brought you here to test that, since some norms can hear Evocations, if you'd just give me your hand for a moment?" Lacey asked, holding out her hand, smiling kindly as Taylor took it, Jason and Greg placing their hands on Lacey's shoulders. "Strangers like me~"
The reaction was instant, Greg glowed brightly, Jason gave off a much dimmer glow, and Lacey's was somewhere between the two.
Taking a deep breath, Taylor looked at her hand that was holding Lacey's, to see her skin glowing less brightly than Greg but more brightly than Lacey.
When she looked back at the three of them all the teens were smiling at her, and for some reason, it made her feel like her mom was smiling at her too.
"Looks like you're stronger than me, but weaker than Greg, so I'm guessing you have around ten words," Lacey said as they all slowly stopped glowing. "But we won't know until we see the Crowfather."
"The who?" Taylor asked.
"One of the Eldmages, Mages that became so powerful that they surpassed the need for Evocation entirely, accessing pure wordless magic," Jason explained. "They're so strong that they have to live on the other side of this world to not mess up reality."
"How does living on the other side of the planet help that?" Taylor asked cluelessly, huffing and crossing her arms as the others laughed. "I don't see what's so funny..."
"We're not laughing at you, Taylor," Greg replied, meekly holding up his hands in mock surrender. "We're laughing because we all asked the same thing the first time any of us went to the Neitherworld."
"That's where the Crowfather and a mess of other magical beings live," Lacey explained, approaching a wall and pulling out a piece of chalk from a pocket on her skirt before drawing a door on it. "It'll be easier to show you then to try and explain."
Jason placed his hand on the drawing of a door, Lacy taking his hand and Greg taking her available one before holding out his open hand to Taylor.
Taylor hesitated, some part of her still fearing this is some kind of prank, but she steeled herself and Grabbed Greg's surprisingly warm hand.
"Everyone ready?" Jason asks, only speaking again once everyone nods. "Then steel yourselves, because Here there be witches."
The world seemed to twist and invert and spiral around Taylor all at once, making the girl imagine that this is what it must feel like to be taffy in a taffy puller. Psychedelic lights and patterns swirled around her, through her, and finally Taylor closed her eyes.
And when she opened them again, she was still holding hands with Greg, who was holding hands with the others, but everything else had changed.
The room they were in looked like it had been an ancient log cabin once, but had swiftly been reclaimed by nature, almost unnaturally so.
The only piece of the room that didn't seem to be having a branch or root growing out of it was the window, one that let Taylor see the completely alien sky outside, letting go of Greg's hand, she approached it.
The sky outside was red as blood, runes and all manner of unnatural winged beast filling it, backed by a colossal glowing moon that seemed to have a skeletal face, a rocket smashed into one of it's long rotted away eye sockets.
"Welcome to the Witch House Taylor!" Greg greeted cheerily as he walked up next to her and slowly closed her dropped jaw for her. "Our home away from home here in the Neither World."
"Next stop, the City of Murders," Jason said, making Taylor jump before she realized that they were going to meet someone called the Crowfather, of course he'd live in a city named after a group of Crows. "But we should give you the crash course on a couple of rules for being here first."