#EDA ADOPT HIM CHALLENGE | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ramblingguy54 · 2 years

Text

King Clawthorne: Arguably The Best Character In Season 2.

In regards for Owl House’s first season King Clawthrone was someone I didn’t have real attachment to, even though his outings with Luz in their stories were cute and enjoyable. It was the usual formula outing for King as a whole where he’d try to make it all about himself and have to get humbled afterwards. I didn’t hate his episodes in Season 1 at all mind you, but hoped that eventually his character would get more of reason as to why I should care about this little guy. Thankfully, Season 2′s fantastic use of what screen time they had left was put to great execution for this demon’s evolution from take or leave him, toward a highly endearing and relatable individual whom wants to know his origins.

Season 2 of Owl House is the literal definition of, “No time to waste. Let’s get the ball rolling.”, in utilizing each of the characters from their core cast. When you’re literally able to make me flip perspective on someone I thought was okay at best and have me absolutely adore him? Yeeeaaahhh, it really puts thing into hindsight on how terribly Disney fucked this series over. Owl House’s second outing managed to accomplish a lot in just twenty-one episodes, which got displayed through King fully coming into understanding exactly what he is, alongside said consequences from unfortunately existing as this species. King only wanted respect in being taken seriously for what he believed himself to be, Lord of Demons. However, once he found out that painful truth this guy didn’t want anything. All King truly wanted was the loving embrace from a family he never knew of. Maybe if he could accomplish that, King would feel content.

What stands out in the way King was written throughout Season 2 is redefining his connections and how he is perceived by others, too. Defining aspects like his bond to Eda & Luz are examined in a profoundly dramatic light, where the running gag of them playing along with his fantasy of royalty is studied. Eda & Luz merely wanted to make him feel good in doing something out of the kindness of their hearts, even building up a white lie. King, on the other hand, genuinely built his persona onto this story of being a creature feared/respected by all denizens of The Boiling Isles. Through this route of storytelling it helps amplify emotional weight from slice of life stories with Luz when Echoes of the Past turned everything upside down on its head.

You can have the best of intentions with what you say or do, but lying to someone, being especially a child, can have obvious serious drawbacks. Eda & Luz never meant to hurt King in playing along with his imagination, as they were doing what any family what do for a relative to make them feel better. Although, he was indeed badly hurt by the shattering of this illusion King had bought into. So much so, he was in tears questioning every little thing about himself. If any memories he had were all complete bullshit, due to all these lies he believed.

While we got to see Eda & King in Season 1 interact with each other, it was never enough for me to completely buy into them feeling like found family, yet. Season 2 succeeded for me where it previously didn’t before, as I felt the strong bridge built between Edalyn taking King under her wing as an adoptive mother. What they dedicate to King, Luz, & Eda’s chemistry hits every emotional beat necessary to succeed in nailing their found family dynamic. That’s how important Echoes of the Past is in setting this foundation, so other moments feel just as believable, where this episode set out to achieve in doing. One of the best things you can do as a writer is re-examining what parts of character are important and challenge them to their extreme. This way the dramatic writing will feel natural.

It’s crazy how much life they breathed into Eda & King’s parental and child dynamic with one episode alone, Eda’s Requiem. Eda’s anxiety of presuming King is moving out, along with King being so nervous to tell Eda about legally joining her family name lineage simply melted my heart. They were both so nervous about how the other would react and yet they grew all the more closer for it. The sad thing is, even in spite of King feeling better about himself, it still doesn’t change one thing plaguing his mind, “What kind of demon is he?”. In a way, King’s existential dilemma reminds me a ton of Faye Valentine’s arc from Cowboy Bebop. She had a dysfunctional family dynamic with Spike, Jet, Ed, & Ein, but was so focused on remembering her past Faye wasn’t pleased when the answer did finally arrive. King meets a similar destination when the mystery of his origins does get solved. King was desperate to know where his father was, why he got left alone on that isle shrouded in the mists, and why he isn’t like other demons, too. Yet, little did King know the answer was right under his nose.

“I’m probably not the best person to give Dad advice, you know. Never really met mine...”

He had been living on the corpse of his father for years and didn’t even know it. Making what he said back in Keeping Up A-fear-ances, “If my father doesn’t care about me, why should I care about him? Well I’m not going to him. He’s gonna have to come to me!”, very painful in the most ironic fashion. King does get the answers he always wanted to know, but they didn’t make him feel content. Instead all King feels is empty inside in light of learning he’s the last of his kind and won’t get to bond with said biological father, either. All King can do is make the most of that hand he’s been dealt and try to come to terms with it. I think that’s what crushes me most is seeing King attempt to better connect with the isles, so in turn he can get a better idea of understanding what kind of person his father was, overall. A consistent theme throughout Owl House’s second season is the tragedy of fatherhood whether you’re looking at Eda’s distant relationship with her father, Luz losing her’s at a young age, or Alador barely paying attention to his own children and their interests.

Dana had lost her father in a car accident years ago and wanted to explore a pain others out in the world have gone through, besides just herself. Losing a parent at such a young age or them dying before you were even old enough to walk can have serious effects on you emotionally much later on. King I’d say embodies this mentality the best, as he has it the worst of all here with losing a parent. He’ll never get to know that joy of father and son dynamic, unless Season 3 somehow revives King’s dad anyway. Watching him try to get inside the perspective of whatever intentions his father had many years ago just choked me up. King’s role in Season 2 is easily one of my favorites because he’s no longer that same power hungry kid anymore, but somebody who wants to better understand himself and grow closer to those the guy cherishes.

King wants to embrace the responsibility and power he’s been given to become a strong protector to his family, not to mention everyone else. If King can accomplish that then he’ll feel closer to his father, given all the bigger Titan sacrificed to create new life in their world. He wants to make this his new purpose to live for others’ sake, no matter what needs to be done. Leading us into the impacting resolution of his character arc, freeing the collector to defeat Belos. It’s hilarious and also fitting King is technically the reason why Belos got screwed over in his draining spell plan. Granted Luz & the others also helped, but if he wasn’t nearby where Kikimora was, then the events that freed The Collector wouldn’t have occurred, either. Finding out the symbol he carved onto his collar and one overhead in his baby room was a sigil to protect him from getting detected by the Collector’s dangerous playful behavior speaks volumes of the Titan’s love for King.

It’s this very same love that made King put his life on the line during endgame for saving Luz. He didn’t care about surviving at this point anymore. King merely wanted everyone else to experience happy lives, even if it meant not being there by their side respectively. It’s represents the powerful effect King finding out about his real origins greatly shook him to his very core. He’s not fighting to gain trivial power anymore, but to protect all existing life. For these many reasons alone it’s why I consider King’s arc in Season 2 to be the best and most heartbreaking developed character arc in what was pulled off here.

This little guy has come so far from what he once was in Season 1.

#toh season 2 #big analysis #my two cents #king clawthrone #his arc surprised the hell outta me for how great it was #the owl house season 2 #luz noceda #edalyn clawthrone

123 notes · View notes

grendelsmilf · 1 year

Note

I find it interesting you note Amphibia to push the envelope more than the TOH since I've seen others consider the latter to push more into serious topics and tones than the former. I've seen some people point to Luz's depressed state in the 1st S3 special as to how 3A Anne should have been written, but I feel like people ignore whether what works for one character would really fit for a very different character, even withstanding the series differences.

i mean, luz is someone who loved her life in the demon realm and hated her home, whereas anne loves her home and certainly did not go to amphibia by choice, so there was a part of her that was clearly just happy to be back with her family, even if she knew that she had to return. but it's not like anne wasn't shown to be stressed and upset, we see that she spends as much time as physically possible trying to build a portal back to amphibia. i enjoyed luz's depression though, i don't mean to undermine that.

and yeah, i can obviously see why people say the owl house explores more serious topics, i just happen to disagree? i don't really know how to explain it, but i feel like the owl house sort of... lacks nuance? it's a show that's really good for kids and i'm glad it exists and have nothing against it, but it's not a show that particularly concerns itself with moral ambiguity (i can only assume the horror show that dana terrace initially wanted to create would have been more complex in that regard). like, amity is a mean girl, but she's pretty harmless and almost immediately shown to be sympathetic. hunter gets compared to zuko a lot, but we never actually see him do anything particularly bad, and he's sympathetic and redeemable and morally pure for most of his screentime. eda is an outlaw but we never actually see her commit serious crimes, she's literally the most ethical and morally upstanding character in the show. even lilith really only made one mistake her whole life and spent the rest of it trying to make up for it. i think there's potential for the collector to be interesting as a completely amoral entity, as opposed to belos who is pure evil in every possible way, but i'll guess we’ll see.

but what i love about amphibia is that anne, sasha, and marcy are all deeply, realistically flawed. after watching the first episode i literally turned around to my brother and said to him, "oh i love anne already. i love that she's mean." what makes anne such a better character than luz (in my humble opinion) is that anne consistently makes bad choices due to her many, many flaws. while luz goes around making friends through helping people out of the goodness of her heart, anne has to be forced kicking and screaming into doing any kind of work for the betterment of anyone else. anne is a friendly and caring person with a big heart, but she's also selfish, lazy, entitled, petty, impulsive, careless, irresponsible and ungrateful. so when we see her grow over the course of the show into someone who doesn't hesitate to help others, it feels significant because we've seen every step of her journey of personal growth. sasha and marcy, while given less screentime, are also characters whose flaws are established and challenged over the course of the show. but i think the fact that anne isn't a perfect person by any means is what makes the show work so well. luz being depressed for half an episode is quite literally the most interesting thing she's ever done, meanwhile anne was out here fucking up left and right, nearly getting her adopted family killed every other episode because she wanted to adopt a cat or eat a pizza.

i'm not saying the owl house is bad because its characters aren't morally grey, but personally, i have absolutely no investment in it or its characters, whereas i still find myself thinking at least once a day "oh god it's crazy how good sashanne is" even though the show ended like a year ago. amphibia also has multiple instances of cannibalism, suicide, and an entire episode parodying midsommar even though there's absolutely no way any of the children watching that episode got the reference (i had to explain it to my brother). i wouldn't call either show dark or nuanced, but amphibia definitely feels darker and more nuanced than the owl house. to me, at least.

#ask #anon #frogshowposting #like anne boonchuy is a girl of all time and none of those owl bitches even come close except for maybe eda #and even then its like. well you may have eda but you will never have toxic homoerotic teenage girl best friends #the closest they get is the willow amity friendship which is honestly one of the best aspects of the show #but even then its clear that amity was wrong and willow wasnt #whereas w sashannarcy its like. theyre all flawed and need to be held accountable for that #so it's just. well it's better.

32 notes · View notes

benwvatt · 4 months

Text

10 characters, 10 fandoms, 10 tags

okay! I am going to do this, I guess! tagged by the wonderful @nostradamus0 who never fails to yell about ducks when I want to yell about ducks.

tagging @gayrootvegetable, @ithinkhobiknows @kataangiscanon @coyotelemon @cursedheir @tiekawaititi @vibee2001 @acting-like-an-optimist @camilleleon22 and anyone else who feels like doing the challenge. Also, the character descriptions aren't necessary; I just felt like doing it.

Caspian from Pantheon. What a gay loser this kid is. He's got trauma, I'VE got trauma. I want my bedroom to be as purple as his.

Darcy Olsson from Heartstopper. A blonde weirdo who breaks the rules and makes new ones and definitely shouldn't have had vodka in Paris.

Callie Torres from Grey's Anatomy. A bisexual icon! A magical, magical person! YES I am still crying thinking about her yelling at the homophobic priest in that one episode. She really made me feel seen when I watched the show.

Bolin from The Legend of Korra. Such a himbo. Kind of knew but didn't really know his brother was in prison. Deserved better emotional storytelling. Sweet nerd. Would probably cry if you gave him a snack from your lunchbox.

Lena Luthor from Supergirl. SHE'S REALLY GAY AND SHE WEARS A LOT OF SWEATERS. SHE SHOULD WEAR EVEN MORE.

Uncle Ryan from Primo. He's so weird and he's so proud of himself for his community college training program. The man held himself a graduation ceremony that included him, balloons, and a printer printing out his certificate. PEAK COMEDY. Mike Schur, you mad genius.

Tahani al-Jamil from The Good Place. An absolute lesbian.

Ann Perkins from Parks and Rec. Also a lesbian. I NEED TO WRITE THIS FIC SOMEDAY. "Are you asking me how to flirt with men?" and "someone pointed out to me recently that, when I date a guy, I kind of adopt his entire personality as my own" and the banquet episode where everyone thinks she's Leslie's date and "tragically, we are both heterosexual" -- COME ON. THE WOMAN IS GAY.

Chris Beck from The Martian. He is a geek that other geeks bow down to. Scientist doctor man, I am in love with you.

Eda from The Owl House: look, I just think she's neat and I want her to be my mom. Also, obligatory shoutout to Lilith, an ace icon.

#benwvatt #tag game

4 notes · View notes

juliettedunn · 1 year

Text

Eda and Her Fear of Bonding

I really wish Disney had allowed TOH to explore Eda having brief romantic relationships with toxic people where she quickly uses them for something and then dips. I think it l would have added to her l arc. Eda has a really avoidant attachment style instated in her from her childhood.

She had a very close relationship with her sister and father, and both ended up in tragedy. With her father in particular, she learned that she was capable of hurting her loved ones at any moment, that she was dangerous to them.

And Gwen enforced this idea, telling her she was broken. Eda was isolated and singled out by Gwen and her peers because of the curse, repeatedly told something was wrong with her, so of course she wanted to hide that. Raine wants to support her, but Eda has been taught she's a burden and hurts those who want to care for her, so she pushes them away.

She lives a lonely life in The Owl House until she adopts King, who she originally brought home as a pet. After it became clear King was sapient, Eda didn't want to admit she had essentially adopted a child.

She introduces King as her "roommate" to Luz. She even is weirded out by hugging, expressing distaste for it even though we see her rush to hug her dad. She acts very emotionally immature in Season 1. She mocks Luz, she acts standoffish to her, she makes petty challenges with King and gloats over winning them, when King is about 8 years old. She often acts like a child herself, despite caring for two kids. She never learned that responsibility or maturity, because she isolated herself after Raine.

Her speech in Agony of a Witch shows how much she changes over Season 1. She starts to learn real responsibility, and actually admit affection. She always felt parental affection for Luz and King, but she repeatedly denied it, because admitting so is terrifying. It implies a kind of interdependence. And she has not learned how to be interdependent.

She doesn't know how to openly care for others, and she doesn't know how to let others care for her. Yet she shows so much love and empathy. Even toward Lilith, who is trying to get her captured. She cares so much. And through meeting Luz and being responsible for her, she starts to mature.

In Eda's Requiem, we see her again denying her parental relationship with Luz and King. She has matured a lot and is acting a lot more motherly. Then she thinks King says he is leaving, and she is so distraught over this fact, because she had just been easing into her role of mother to him. She is being left, again. She is not enough, she was only a temporary caretaker to King and Luz, before they go to their real parents.

She is prepared to die in this episode, she literally says this and goes to do it. She wants to go out a dramatic rebel against Belos, she thinks that's all she is good for. And she is a very good rebel, but she thinks that can be her only purpose, to go out fast in a "blaze of glory," she is the one that should be sacrificed, because she has no attachments, no bonds, so she can die.

She would have done so had Raine not stopped her. And then she returns, and King has taken it on himself to make him officially her son. And her role as his mom is cemented.

So we see her go on to accept the owl beast as part of her, to come to terms with the curse, to even talk to her dad. That incident that did so much damage to her, and he reassures her and has an incredibly healing conversation. She ran and hid for all those years.

Eda is always running and hiding. She hides in the Owl House, she runs from the owl beast in her mind, she runs from her mom and her dad and all those romantic relationships we didn't get to see but King says were always with toxic people and very short-lived.

She runs and hides until she is forced to stay. Because she has kids, and they need her. She's all they have.

EVEN in For the Future, she wants to deny her role in Luz's life. She says she's "with her real family now." But King has matured now, and he knows Eda has that tendency. He immediately calls her out and says "You know you don't mean that." Because she doesn't.

But she's so scared, of being unwanted and rejected again. If she doesn't have a permanent attachment, how can she be hurt?

I think she will meet Camila and Camila will make it clear that Eda's parental relationship with Luz can co exist with Camila being Luz's mom. Both can be true. And I think Camila will thank her for caring for Luz. And she will have this bond affirmed.

It's also interesting she found Luz. As I pointed out in my talk about the parallels between Lumity and Raeda, Luz also has a tendency to avoid her issues. She doesn't avoid having deep relationships with people like Eda in Season 1, but as the show goes on we actually see this tendency increase in her as well. She hides stuff from Amity and Eda, and then in Thanks to Them she hides everything from her friends. Luz doesn't have it as bad as Eda, but it could become that way.

Luz was also told she was broken by the world, and a burden. She also, through actions basically outside of her control, hurt people she loved. So she also is trying to isolate and break off her deep bonds with her friends because 1) she doesn't think she deserves to have them and 2) she thinks by doing so she is continuing to hurt them. Just like Eda.

And both her and Eda conceal a lot of their inner pain by making jokes and engaging in reckless "hijinks” behavior, laughing stuff off and moving at a rapid pace, always running, whether metaphorically or literally, from the issue at hand.

I think Eda was able to do a lot of self reflection from parenting Luz and helping Luz to undo some of that toxic mindset. She was able to see how it was wrong in Luz even if she couldn't in herself.

I joke and say "Eda really saw an ADHD bisexual with a tendency to hide all her emotional issues under humor, wacky hijinks, and self isolation and said 'Yep, that's my kid"" but it's not just a joke, it's 100% true.

I think if the "dreamscape" theory is correct, Eda will have her own. And there is heavy suggestion it involves the conformatorium, the place society told her she ought to be locked up because she doesn't belong. I hope her dreamscape will explore these issues she has. I really want to see the conclusion of this arc, it's wonderfully done and we've seen so much emotional growth in her.

She grew and matured right alongside her kids. They were so good for her; they forced her to finally grapple with truths she didn't want to face. They were a bond that she couldn't run from, because they are kids, entirely dependent on her. It was perfect for her to finally start to confront her own trauma. I love Eda's arc so much..

#the owl house #toh #eda clawthorne #Luz Noceda #eda TOH #TOH Eda #edalyn clawthorne

9 notes · View notes

gh0sti3-sm1l3 · 2 years

Text

Some The Owl House Fic Recs !

To Hell with the Titan's Plans

Status: Completed !

(81098 words | 48/48 chapters)

— Your standard canon-divergent longfic about Hunter coming to the Owl House post-Yesterday’s Lie, featuring quite a bit of gore, angst, and a ‘fun’ religious trauma angle!

(Trigger warnings are in the notes !)

(https://archiveofourown.org/works/33540175/chapters/83336968)

A Flock with Different Feathers

Status: Completed !

(24910 words | 4/4 chapters)

— Lilith pesters Eda into a return research trip to the ruins of King’s birthplace, and Gwen seizes the opportunity to turn it into a “family bonding experience.” Eda thinks this can’t get any nerdier. She is wrong. Except this nerd was definitely not invited.

Luz is adamant that she can “get through” to Golden Guard--and she gets the perfect chance when the castle defenses accidentally lock them all in.

(There is also a Season 2B spoiler-free version if you want it !) (My personal favorite :D)

(https://archiveofourown.org/works/37515994/chapters/93633598)

Camila is Hunter's Mom Now (SERIES)

Status: Ongoing !

(fifteen fics so far)

— A series in which Hunter runs away to the Human Realm and meets Camila and Vee. They go through many challenges and jump many hurdles, but they'd do anything for eachother, even if it's reliving the trauma they've been avoiding.

(https://archiveofourown.org/series/2520235)

i think its time i conclude these tests (and begin the rest of my life)

Status: Completed !

(17879 words | 11/11 chapters)

— aka my take on your typical "Hunter leaves the Emperor's Coven and gets adopted by Eda" fic. It is canon compliant for everything before Follies at the Coven Day Parade.

(https://archiveofourown.org/works/38011822/chapters/94939660)

Hunting Happiness

Status: Completed !

(17843 words | 23/23 chapters | the sequel is ongoing !)

— Luz didn't expect to see the Golden Guard again, not outside of his uniform at least. And yet there he was. Staring at her from the other side of the shelf.

Luz had to admit, she was very tempted to throw a book at him.

The random meet-ups of Hunter and Luz as Hunter slowly gets pulled into their found family dynamic.

(https://archiveofourown.org/works/33148999/chapters/82294087)

59 notes · View notes

sergeantsporks · 2 years

Note

Hello~! For a writing request, I'd like to propose the following: "On a scale of Dark Chuckle to Maniacal Overlord, how would you rate your evil laugh?" Basically King challenges the denizens of the Owl House plus Hunter and Lilith to an "evil laugh-off" in the name of diabolical glory (and also fun). Willow, Gus and Amity also join in.

Man, this was like-- such a great concept, but so weird to try to execute. A fun challenge, thanks! For convenience's sake, Lilith's adopted Hunter in this scenario

..........................................

Luz bounced a couple of stuffed animals around, flopping their arms over their faces. “Noooooo spare uuuuuuuus!”

“No! I, King of Demons, shall crush you and your families so that your bloodline is destroyed! Never again shall you or your kin blight my presence! Eeeheeheeheehee!”

Luz giggled.

“What?! No giggling, they’re supposed to be terrified!”

“Sorry, it’s just your laugh is so cute!”

“It is not, that is a diabolical cackle that spells doom!”

“Of course, of course.” Luz pushed back another giggle. “Very diabolical.”

“I’d like to hear you do one better!”

Luz deepened her voice. “Mwahahahahaha!” she cackled.

King yipped, then stuck his nose in the air. “Weak. Not even a little bit startling.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Fine, you want a judge? I’ll get a judge. HOOTY!”

Hooty?! “Oh, boy.”

The demon stuck his head in the room. “Hey!”

“Who has the better evil laugh, Luz, or, the obvious choice, me?”

“Mmmm, to be honest, both of you are kind of… lacking.”

Luz and King made sputtering noises in unison. “Lacking?” Luz demanded.

“Excuse you!” King yelped, “Who asked you?”

“You did, actu—”

“Oh, hush! Eda!”

Luz’s mentor clomped down the stairs. “What?”

“Hooty is making fun of our maniacal laughs!”

“Oh, yes, a truly horrendous offense. Okay, then, Hooty, let’s hear yours.”

Hooty opened his mouth wide, extending all the way to the floor, and delivered the most horrifying, shrieking laugh Luz had ever heard. The demon snapped his mouth shut, blinking expectantly at them.

Eda, Luz, and King all looked at each other, making a silent agreement to never ever admit how chilling that had been.

“Horrible,” King remarked.

“I’ve heard babies with more terrifying laughs,” Eda agreed.

Hooty slunk back out.

Luz grinned at Eda. “What about you?”

“Uh, my laugh already strikes fear into the hearts of any who hear it, thank you very much.”

“Wrong,” King said immediately, “Definitely wrong.”

“Well, aren’t you being judgy today.”

Luz jumped up. “Oh! I told Amity I’d help her with the story circle today, I’m supposed to read Destructo’s voice!” She wrinkled her nose at King. “She thinks my evil laugh is quite good.”

“Amity’s judgement towards you and your talents is questionable.”

“Oh, you want her to judge the contest instead?”

“No, I want Gus to judge. He’s all… announcer-y. He can do it.”

Luz shook her head. “Gus it is. I’ll give him a call to meet us up at the library.”

“What? I’m not going up to the library to watch you and Amity stare into each other’s eyes for half an hour, get him to come here!”

“No way, Lilith is supposed to be visiting today, and she and Hunter make Gus and Willow uncomfortable.”

“Oh, even more perfect, they’re both ex-bad guys who probably have an excellent grasp on what evil laughs sound like, we can have a whole panelof judges.”

“What part of Gus and Willow will be uncomfortable do you not—No, wait, this is good, actually. Bonding experience. A chance to be a little ridiculous, so everyone feels less tense around each other. It’ll be fun.”

“It will be tyrannical and diabolical and it will not be fun!”

“Yeah, sure, King, see you soon!”

Luz dashed off down the path to Bonesborough, slowing down when she reached the library. Amity met her at the door.

“Heyyyy, Luz, we’ve got a pixie infestation and… story hour’s been cancelled.”

“Awwwwwww.”

“Yeah… well, hey, you want to just… hang around town? Maybe look at some shops, or…”

“You wanna judge an evil laugh contest?” Luz burst out.

“I—what?”

Slow down, Luz. “King and I… are having a disagreement over who has a better evil laugh, and if none of us are doing anything anyway… dinner at the owl house?”

“I thought Lilith was coming over tonight?”

“Ah, she won’t mind. I mean, unless you mind—”

“No, no, sounds fun. An evil laugh contest, huh?”

“Yeah, Gus is judging. Hypothetically—Oh, I should call him.”

“Too late, King already did.”

Luz whirled around to see Gus and Willow standing behind her. “Oh, hey, guys! Yeah, I guess he’s pretty excited for this.”

“He said he’d crush you and you’d wallow in despair and shame for the rest of your life.”

“Hehe, aw, that’s adorable.”

The four of them started back towards the owl house, and Gus nudged Willow. “You should join in.”

“No thanks, I’m not looking to make another bunch of babies cry.”

A grin burst out on Luz’s face. “You can’t say that and then not join in!”

“Evil laugh! Evil laugh!” Gus chanted, “Evil laugh! Evil laugh!”

“Evil laugh!” Luz joined in, pushing open the door. Lilith and Hunter were there, and King was explaining the concept to them.

“Of course I would be an excellent judge,” Lilith said smoothly, “I could get a coven prisoner to break down at a mere giggle.”

Hunter snorted. “Yeah, of laughter at your little schoolgirl squeal.”

“Oh? Sounds like a challenge, perhaps you and I should join in on this competition.”

He flopped down on the couch, arms crossed. “Please. I could beat all of you, by a landslide. It wouldn’t even be fair. So I’ll just judge.”

“Bold words from someone whose voice still cracks,” Eda commented.

Hunter flushed. “It does not!”

“Just did,” Luz offered. Her friends nodded in agreement.

“Fine! Fine! I will join your silly little competition, and I will prove all of you wrong!”

King raised a hand. “Wait, if you two are joining in, then who’s judging?”

“I will!” Hooty offered.

“No!”

“I’ll judge,” Gus volunteered, “Totally nonbiased.”

“I can judge, too,” Amity agreed.

“Boooooooooooooooooooo, you’ll just give Luz a ten out of ten!” King complained, “No way! The judges are stacked!”

“Okay, okay,” Eda interjected, “Gus, Hooty, and I will judge. The rest of you dorks laugh evilly to your heart’s content. King, you first, since you started this whole thing. No screaming powers.”

King cleared his throat. “Ready for the best evil laugh you will ever hear in your miserable lives? Ahem. Ehehehehehehehehe, EHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEH!”

He snapped his mouth shut, staring expectantly at the judges.

“Kind of pitchy,” Hooty commented.

Gus nodded thoughtfully. “Needs work, could be scary, though, in a horror doll kind of way.”

Eda tilted her hand back and forth. “A solid 5, I think.”

“Fools, all of you!”

“Yeah, yeah, sure, Luz, you’re up.”

“Oh, gosh. Now I’m kind of feeling pressured.”

“Just do it!” Gus called with a grin.

“Don’t rush me! Hehehe. Okay.” Luz coughed. “Ehhhh. Mmmm. Okay. Mwahahahahahahahaha, ahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Amity clapped.

“Very nice, a classic villain laugh,” Hooty nodded.

“Little bit bland, but A+ for effort,” Eda agreed.

Gus gave her a thumbs up. “Sure, I can get behind it. Wouldn’t be scared, but definitely weirded out.”

Hunter cracked his knuckles. “Yeah, okay, amateur hour is over.”

“Boooooooooooooooooo!” King called, “I bet your laugh stinks!”

Hunter stuck his tongue out, then shook himself, taking a deep breath. “Ha. Haha. Ahahahahaha, AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, HAHA, HAHA! Haha… hehehe…”

Hooty twisted his head around. “Mmm, very maniacal.”

“Little deranged,” Gus nodded, “More a crazy laugh? Yeah, okay, that was alright, I guess.”

Eda clicked her tongue. “Six out of ten.”

“What?! Only one point better than the pipsqueak?”

Lilith put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, we talked about this, it’s okay to lose at something, it’s just a silly contest.”

He flopped back onto the couch, arms crossed.

Lilith rolled her shoulders, shooting him a grin. “However, it is a silly contest that I intend to win.” She stood up straight, holding her hands in front of her like a singer. “Ahem.” She laughed softly, mockingly. Then louder. “Haha… ohhhh.” And she faded off into another chuckle before stopping.

“Absolutely horrifying, Lulu,” Hooty nodded.

“I call bias!” King interjected, “Hooty is not a reliable judge for Lilith, and his input should not be counted!”

“Hey!”

“Seconded,” Eda commented, “Sounded like a bleating sheep to me.”

“Not fair!” Lilith complained, “If you’re going to count Hooty out for being my friend, then you have to discount Edalyn, too, since she’s my sister!”

“Aw, it’s just a silly contest, Lilith,” Hunter commented from the couch, “Don’t get so worked up over it!”

She flopped down next to him, somehow looking grouchy and amused at the same time. “Brat.”

“Willow! Willow! Willow!” Gus chanted.

“I call bias!” King yelped.

“I’m starting to wonder if you know what that means,” Eda commented, “Fine, Gus, you’re out for this one.”

“Go on!” Luz cheered.

“Oh, I don’t—”

“Do it!”

“Well…” Willow cleared her throat, opened her mouth, and let out a shrieking laugh, maniacal and cruel, like all of the horrors of nature combining into one sound.

Luz blinked. “You were not kidding, Gus, I can see why a baby would cry.”

“Amity used to have a pretty good one,” Willow said shyly.

Amity shook her head. “I couldn’t—”

“Awwww, c’mon, Amity, please?” Luz begged.

Amity blushed. “Okay, I… Ahahahahaha, AHAHAHAHAHA haha, haha, haha…” she broke off, rubbing her arm. “Aaaaaanyway, who won?”

Gus, Hooty, and Eda all looked at each other, then grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yes! Yes we would!” King yelped, “That was the whole point!”

Eda plopped down onto the couch and kicked her feet up on the table. “Man, I’m really tired, I don’t know if I want to cook tonight.”

Hooty nodded wisely. “And I could use a baaaaath!”

Gus snickered. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly make a decision without my fellow judges.”

“This is extortion!” Luz yelped.

Lilith put her hands together. “Bribery, is it? Well played.”

Hunter vaulted over the edge of the couch. “Last one to the kitchen has to wash Hooty instead of cooking!”

Willow, King, Lilith, and Amity all jostled for the door. Luz looked back at Eda, Gus, and Hooty. “Seriously, who won?”

Gus shook his head. “We can’t tell you, that would be favoritism, Luz.”

“I still need that bath,” Hooty offered.

Luz shook her head. “I don’t think it matters who had the best laugh.”

“No?”

“No. Whichever of us won is a fake villain, but you three—you’re the most evil ones here.”

Eda laughed, breaking off into a snort. “Aww, look, we’re learning a lesson! A word to the wise, Luz? Never judge a villain by their laugh.”

#toh #the owl house #toh fanfiction #my writing #writing requests #asks

13 notes · View notes

rohad93 · 4 years

Text

Moonlit Masquerade: Jokers Wild Pt 1

This is rated T for Violence and Blood

Luz is sitting at her desk, working on her homework from her plant track class.

She has a pretty easy time in plants, it’s a lot like gardening most of the time, though the plants have a lot more eyes… or teeth...but she digresses. She has Willow too, who is at the top of the track and is always willing to repeat spells for her so she can try to glean glyphs from them. She’s managed a couple, she’s still working on perfecting them so it always does what she wants, the part that makes plant magic so hard is plants are living things, and the ones on the Isles sometimes have wills of their own if you don’t exert the right kind of control. She’s had a few go haywire and nearly strangled herself with vines last week trying to get them to form a net.

That one still needed work…

All part of living in the Isles though. With every week that goes by in the Boiling Isles, she finds herself more and more acclimated to it, sometimes it feels like she's lived here all her life.

Her bedroom, which once was just a spare room where she slept on the floor in a sleeping bag, now looks like she's been there for years.

All of Eda's junk is gone, replaced with a bed and a desk, covered in framed photos of Gus, Willow, King, and Eda; even Lilith. Her photo of her and her mom sits on the bedside table, close by, along with the photo of her and Amity she took on their first date and a new one of all of them on the beach at Amity’s birthday a couple of weeks ago.

A dresser sits in the corner, filled with new clothes because she could only keep wearing the same ones she brought for 'summer camp' for so long, especially now that fall is here. She's pretty sure she's having a growth spurt too. She realized last week she now has no problem reaching the cabinets in the kitchen, unlike almost five months ago when she first arrived.

For the foreseeable future, she is a permanent denizen of the Isles, so it only makes sense to pick up on her home's history too.

She’s started taking extra lessons with Lilith about the general history and culture of the Isles while they all learn glyph magic together. Lilith will lecture about the history of things and Luz is enthralled by it, which is probably the only reason Eda only rolls her eyes and lets her go on. Though she does throw in her own brand of commentary often. Usually saying why something Lilith is saying is dumb or outdated, much to the older’s annoyance, but they very rarely get into anything truly heated so it's become a kind of Sunday night routine at the owl house. King usually joins them too. Adding in his own two snails whenever he sees fit.

Much to her delight, when she can, Amity has started to join them. She's started practicing some of Luz's glyphs; the portals are especially useful.

Things are still very tense between her and Lilith, who keeps trying, and Amity mildly accepts the efforts, she's still very terse and short with the older witch much of the time, which makes Luz frown, but she keeps it to herself.

She and Amity have had this talk. Amity will try, but by no means has forgiveness been given, which Lilith seems to understand and accept.

They had a private talk after Amity's birthday weekend, she doesn't ask Amity about it, much as she wants to, and Amity doesn't offer an explanation.

Sometimes she wants to talk, and sometimes she doesn't, that's fine. She and Amity have come to that understanding well over the last two and a half months they've been dating.

They know the other is there and will come if they need them.

It's weird to Luz sometimes, having someone she knows is always in her corner, that she can come to without question.

Before she came to the Isles, she had her mom, even though she never really understood her and was gone a lot, and now she has Eda, but that's different. She knows Eda will always back her up, protect her, but it's different from Amity. She looks up to Eda, and while it's not that she doesn't admire Amity, she does, it’s just in a different way.

She would try to protect Eda just as much as she does for her, but it's just a different dynamic, she's not sure how to put it into words other then Eda is like her mom, while she and Amity are equals, they depend on each other, Eda, as much as she loves her, doesn't depend on Luz.

She has Gus and Willow too, and that’s a lot closer but still different. She can’t really explain why. Eda says it’s because she doesn’t make out with her other friends, which makes her make a face. While that’s true, she’s pretty sure that’s not it either. As much as she trusts Gus and Willow, which is a lot, sometimes she just doesn’t feel comfortable sharing some things with them, or anyone, except her girlfriend.

Something she’ll have to puzzle out another day.

“Hey Luz, Amity’s here!” Eda yells up the stairs and Luz grins, jumping up.

“Coming!” she yells back as she pulls on her shoes and grabs her new Hexside hoodie off the hanger on the back of the door before she runs out. Her jeans make loud scratching noises as she runs down the stairs, not that her loud thumping wasn’t going to alert everyone in the house she was coming already.

She hops over the last few steps to land on the floor and smiles at Amity who is standing in the living room with her arms crossed but smiling at her in black pants and a matching black hoodie with a bright purple pentagram on the front surrounded by runes.

“Hey, cutie.” She grins, trotting over to kiss Amity hello before she pulls her hoodie on.

“Ready to go?” she asks, her blush at the complement tempered by watching Luz struggle to put her head through the right hole. She rolled her eyes and grabbed the hem, helping right the blue hoodie till Luz’s head popped out with a grin.

“Yup!”

“You two have fun, don’t do anything I would do, and if ya do, don’t get caught!” Eda smirked and the two grin.

“Bye, Mom.” she only pauses slightly when the word comes out of her mouth but Eda just smiles and gives them a little two-finger wave from the couch.

“See ya later, Kids.”

They leave the owl house, walking away quickly before Hooty can really get going about the squirrel he ate that morning.

Luz takes hold of one of Amity’s hands and shoves the other in her hoodie pocket, it’s chilly today and the leaves are falling from the trees more and more every day.

“So…, do you want to talk about that?” Amity asks after a few seconds, that’s the first time she’s seen Luz make that slip in person, though she knows it's happened several other times. Luz just shrugs. She still feels selfish for it, thinking of Eda as a parent, for never wanting to go back to the world of her birth, regardless of whether or not it's actually possible at the moment, but she's working more and more every day to come to terms with her feelings about never wanting to leave the Isles; about considering this her real home.

“I mean, I still feel a little bad when I do it, but it’s been happening more and more lately… and I dunno, I guess I’m just starting to get used to it? Seeing Eda like an adopted mom. She is a lot like my mom… I mean, you know, kinda,” she laughs.

“Your personality would make more sense if Eda was your mom.” Amity smirks.

“And what does that mean?” Luz grins, nudging her playfully.

“Your general disregard for rules and danger are very ‘Eda’," she says matter of factly with a grin.

"I don't know what you're referring to," she says with mock haughtiness, sticking her nose in the air.

"Oh? I have a list prepared then." Amity clears her throat dramatically and holds up her free hand and begins counting off on her fingers.

"You broke into the conformatorium to steal a paper crown when we first met you snuck into Hexside pretending to be an abomination…"

"You're the one who almost got me dissected that day, otherwise it would have been fine." Luz cocked a brow at her. Amity pursed her lips.

"Okay, I'll give you a by on that one, but then you animated the entire owl house and took it on a joyride, you tried to fight Odabin as 'Luzura'." She smirked, glancing at her out of the side of her eye, and Luz pinked. "You tried to steal from the Emperor, then fought him and Lilith, challenged Boscha to a grudgby match when you didn't even know how to play the game, you stole…"

"Borrowed!" Luz corrected.

"...my training wand and shot a Slitherbeast with a fire spell…," Amity continued as though she hadn't been interrupted. "Speaking of Slitherbeasts, you almost got yourself eaten picking thornberries for my birthday cake!"

Luz chuckled, guess she was still mad about that one.

"Then you deliberately put yourself in danger by taking my place as grom queen…"

"You let me!" Luz accused.

"I didn't want everyone to see my worst fear was getting rejected by you and know I had a crush on you!" she argued while Luz just grinned at her.

"Aw, you had a crush on me."

"We are literally dating…" Amity gives her a deadpan look and holds up their intertwined hands.

"Yeah, but still…!" she laughed as Amity rolled her eyes, but she's smiling too.

"So, yes, you have a tendency to ignore danger and rules, just like Eda."

"Well, I guess I picked the right teacher and adoptive mom then." She grins. Amity just shakes her head as they walk through the woods toward town.

"Where’s Ed and Em?" She asks as they get closer to town.

"They said they'd meet us there." She shrugs. She tries not to worry about all the trouble her siblings have a tendency to get into when left to their own devices.

When they're just outside of town Amity reluctantly pulls her hand out of Luz's and misses the warmth immediately. Luz pouts and shoves her hand into her pocket with the other.

They meet Ed and Em just outside town on the main road.

"Hey, Luz," the twins call in unison as they approach and Luz grins sticking up a hand to high five both of them.

The twins view Luz like another little sister, she’s good to Amity and means a lot to her, which means she means a lot to them.

They also like to privately tease Amity that they may as well start now since she's gonna be their sister-in-law someday. They delight at how impossibly red she turns when they say it, but say nothing about how happy the idea seems to make her simultaneously even as she yells at them that they haven’t even been dating a year yet.

It's a chilly Saturday as they follow along behind the twins through the market. It's not their first choice, their first choice would be of course, to be able to go anywhere they want and be an obvious couple, impossible as that is right now, but they wanted to go to the market, and they'd been to town alone together several times this week already and the twins needed some stuff anyway, so it makes a good cover.

They decide to stop and eat lunch at the Redstone bakery, which also sells a variety of sandwiches. Luz still doesn't know what's in it exactly, but she's had it several times and knows she can eat it, and it's tasty; so it really doesn't matter to her. Amity still stands by, watching her carefully anytime she tries something new in case she has some kind of reaction, which really, has only happened three times but it is a possibility, and Amity is nothing if not prepared, and one has to be extra prepared when it comes to Luz.

Both Clawthorne sisters think she might grow more tolerant the longer she lives here and her body grows accustomed to it.

She hopes so, for all the weird foods, there are just as many tasty looking ones she wants to try. It's not like she didn't have allergies in the human world, being lactose intolerant.

They eat and talk, Ed and Em talking animatedly about a prank they played on two other upperclassmen earlier in the week.

Apparently they embarrassed them in front of the entire illusion track during a presentation that had them running from the room to the entire classes laughter.

Amity rolls her eyes at that and Luz nods along, half-listening, distracted by her food and her girlfriend, who's holding her hand under the table, slowly running her thumb back and forth across her knuckles.

Luz is stuffed by the time her sandwich is gone, as well as the second half of Amity's, she'd slid to her when she was done. Where Luz ate like a horse, Amity did not, but she still has the thornberry muffin sitting in front of her, and as much as she wants to eat it, she might pop if she does. It won't go to waste though.

She slides it across the table to Amity, who looks at it before smiling at her and takes it. They must be looking at each other in what Eda calls 'that gross gooey way' because Emira pipes up.

"You two need more couple friends," she says, rolling her eyes at them.

Amity frowns at her.

"Ignoring the fact that we literally can't tell people we're a couple, why do we need more couple friends?" she looks at her sister skeptically. Before she can say anything Edric jumps in with a witty remark, or at least what he thinks is witty.

"Because you're on a double date with us," he teased.

Amity scowls at that and Luz smirks. Normally, she stays clear of these back and forths between the Blight siblings, she's not as quick-witted as the twins or Amity, but today she can't help herself.

"Well, if this is a double date, you're the only one here on a date with their sister," she shoots back.

Edric's face drops, while Amity and Emira burst into peals of laughter.

They laugh at him for a solid minute before they can even speak.

"Oh, that was a good one. You walked right into that," Emira cackled, wiping at a tear. Edric crossed his arms and pouts.

Amity is still snickering when she glances back at Luz, who winks and Amity's hand squeezes hers under the table.

"Anyway, I was going to say, so Ed and I don't have to watch you two be so sickeningly romantic, but now I think I just need to meet someone so I don't have to be Ed's date," she snickers and Ed scowls at her.

When lunch is finished they wander back out into the market. It's crowded the way it usually is on Saturday.

Just as they cross a street Edric stops and smirks, looking at something across the street.

“See those guys over there?” He points across the market at two guys standing at a stall looking at something. One is tall and blonde, the other a little shorter but he has a bright green mohawk that Luz doesn’t know how she missed, but then again, this is the Boiling Isles. Just ten minutes ago she saw a guy with wings and a briefcase shopping for pet demons, so…

“What about them?” Amity asks.

“Those are the guys we embarrassed Friday,” Emira laughs.

“Oh boys!” Edric yells waving and the two look up and see them. The twins just grin and wave as the other two scowl darkly at them and walk off into the crowded market. The twins snicker and Amity shakes her head. Someday her brother and sister are going to give themselves problems with their tricks and mean pranks.

They continue browsing for a while, looking over the different wares offered at the stalls, there are a lot of regular merchants in the same spots every day but there are always a bunch of new ones too, selling all manner of weird and exotic things that some days Luz can’t even guess at. It's become a game for her and Amity to wander around and Luz to guess at the uses for things and Amity to affirm or correct her. Just something fun they like to do together at the market.

Some large guy with horns and two mouths is shouting across the market, advertising his wares for something that makes light with no magic.

“Pfft, I have glyphs for that.”

“That’s still magic, Luz.” Amity glances at her.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t take energy like when you cast spells. I can make glyphs all day long so long as I have paper.” She goes to emphasize this by pulling out her pad, but as she pats her pockets, she realizes she doesn’t have it.

“What’s wrong?

“I guess I left my glyphs and pad at home, didn’t think I’d need them for our date,” she says with a shrug and then grins. “I know you’d protect me.” She nudges Amity who rolls her eyes even as she smiles and nudges back as the four walk along the street.

There are few people in this section of the market, so they don’t have to whisper to each other.

“I thought you were MY fearless champion?” she teases, and then snorts as Luz stops suddenly to pose, one fist on her chest and the other on her hip, chest puffed out.

“Amity Blight, I will always be your fearless champion!” she declares and Amity giggles at her even as her heart flutters in her chest.

“I guess we’ll just have to protect each other.” She smiles adoringly at her and Luz grins back.

“Congratulations,” Edric says suddenly, crossing his arms. “You two are officially, that couple.”

“What couple?” Luz looks at Ed over her shoulder.

“That nauseatingly, romantic couple who are always doing cute things,” Emira explained, hand on her hip.

“At least I have a girlfriend…,” Amity huffed at them, arms crossed and nose in the air. Luz stuck her tongue out at them.

The twins frowned before smirking and simultaneously twirled their fingers.

Both their hoods suddenly pulled down over their heads, drawstrings pulling tightly closed, making Luz yelp and Amity snarl as the twins laughed.

Amity yanked the hood off and glared at the two as Luz’s head popped out of her hood.

“We’re going to the bookstore…," she growled, grabbing Luz’s arm and turning them in the right direction before having to drop it again.

“We’ll meet you there in a little bit!” Edric called after them, still grinning.

Amity grumbled to herself, fixing her hair before looking at Luz, whose dark brown locks had been mussed as well.

They were nearly alone now, and she reached up and carefully smoothed it out, making Luz grin as Amity fussed over her. She was fine if it was a little messy, but it was easier to just let Amity do her thing. Besides, she very much liked the feeling of her fingers running through her hair, and the warm affection it made tingle across her skin when Amity fretted over her.

She wanted so badly to take her hand but held back.

“I heard the bookstore got the newest Azura book in just yesterday,” Amity says after a minute and Luz brightens.

“I’ll race you there!” Luz suddenly shouts, taking off down the sidewalk, laughing. Amity grins, taking off after her. Luz turned the corner up ahead and Amity pushed herself to go faster but when she turned the corner her girlfriend was nowhere in sight. She stops, looking around.

Luz is fast, she knows, but not that fast.

“Luz?” She walks a few more feet, passing an alley as she looks around.

Suddenly a hand on her shoulder drags her roughly into the alley and she yelps.

Amity grimaces as she falls to the ground on her backside. She looks up and finds herself staring back at the snarling face of the upperclassmen with the green mohawk her brother had pointed out earlier.

“Amity!”

She turns toward the call and her face pales.

Luz is pressed back against the alley's stone wall, while the other student, the blonde, holds her there, a hand fisted into the front of her hoodie, but Luz is looking at her.

She looks like she starts to move over toward her but the blonde, draws a spell circle with his free hand and flames erupts from it, which he shoves next to her face, making Luz flinch back against the stone.

“Don’t even try,” he snaps, and Luz glares defiantly at him.

“Luz!” She jumps up but stops short of dashing over when Mohawk steps right in front of her, blocking her view of Luz and the blonde witch.

“If it isn’t the twin's precious baby sister and her little human friend, what a coincidence," he hissed, quite literally as a serpentine tongue flicked out between his lips.

Amity glared right back. Her arm starts to shoot up, index finger extended but stops short as she catches sight of Luz, back up against the wall, helpless against the other student without her glyphs as he teasingly shoves the fire closer to her face. Slowly, she lowered her arm and swallowed; If she fought back Luz would pay for it. She clenched her fists.

“What do you two want?” she growled.

“To get back at your rotten shit siblings!” he snarled, stalking closer to Amity, who takes a step back for each of his, till they've stalked past Luz and the blonde toward the back of the alley until she had no place left to go.

"It's not enough they're top of the class, they have to harp on the rest of us all the damn time too with their stupid jokes and pranks!"

His arm shot out and he grabbed Amity's wrist, tight, and she cried out in pain as he yanked her forward and she slammed to the hard ground, it bit into her palms as she tried to cushion the fall. Her knees still knocked hard against it and Amity glared up at him.

"They think they're so funny and clever?" he spat, standing over her. He spins a finger and a dark blue spell circle appears before fire crackles in his palm. "We'll see how clever they are when we send their little sister home fried!" He kicks her for good measure making her yelp.

"Amity!" Luz jerks forward but the fire crackling near her face is shoved closer and she can feel the heat licking at her cheeks and swallows thickly.

"Don't even try human, or I'll cook you!" The guy barks. She stiffens, but she’s focussed on Amity, lying on the ground. They've both turned to look back at her and blondie, and Amity's pained expression turns scared as she stares back at her, and it's like ice water running down Luz’s spine when she realizes that Amity isn't scared for herself, she's scared for her. Scared to fight back because Luz might get hurt; she knows Luz doesn’t have her glyphs.

Her fists clench, white knuckled.

Maybe she doesn't have her magic right now, but if they think she's going to stand by and let them beat up her girlfriend, she's going to introduce them to the good 'ol human version of a ‘witch’s duel’. She takes a deep breath and too fast for blondie to react, her fist flies upward and she connects, fist cracking against the underside of his jaw.

Blondie reels backward, stunned, the fire in his hand dissipating but Luz doesn’t wait for an invitation, and jolts forward, swinging again, ignoring the pain in her hand and nails him in the nose.

“Argghh!” She must have gotten Mohawks attention again because despite her heart pounding in her ears she hears Amity’s voice somewhere behind her,

“Abomination rise!”

She wants to go to her, but Luz knows damn well that so long as she has her magic, Amity can defend herself; and she has her own hands full already.

The guy looks up at her, eyes filled with rage and suddenly Luz’s world is awash in pain as his fist connects with her face and she stumbles backward. She rights herself quick enough to see him coming, but not to stop the next punch that topples her to the ground, and then he's on top of her, a hand fisted into the front of her shirt.

Adrenaline is coursing through her veins and Luz kicks him in the gut.

He doubles over and she kicks him again, sending him sprawling to the ground before she turns toward Amity, who has an abomination shielding her from the fire spells the other upperclassman is firing at her while she rapidly draws spell circles, flinging back spikes of ice.

She runs forward but only gets two steps before she's yanked back roughly by her hood.

Blondie swings her by the hood into the alley's stone wall. Her face and hands scrape against the stone, but she manages to cushion most of the blow with her arms. His hand grabs the back of her head and grinds her face into the wall and Luz winces under the pressure, crying out.

“Get away from her!”

A spear of ice fires down the alley out toward the street, and Blondie lets her go, jumping out of the way before he's impaled. Luz has to capitalize on the opening.

She turns and flings herself at him, toppling them to the ground, and she just starts swinging, he raises his arms to fend off the wild, rapid punches. She knows she needs to keep his hands busy because she isn't going to be any match for his spells without her glyphs, though in a fistfight she can, apparently, hold her own.

A few of her hits connect, but then he hits back, getting in another punch that sends Luz reeling and her head spinning as he throws her off and she thumps to the ground.

She only just managed to scramble to her feet, still a little dazed, her face is throbbing and she can taste blood. He grabs the front of her shirt in both hands and lifts her off the ground, feet dangling.

“You shoulda just kept quiet you stupid, little bit-”

Anything he was going to say is cut off as Luz flings one of her legs up, hard as she can, nailing him where the sun doesn't shine and he groans, dropping her instantly and falling to his knees. He’s curled up in the fetal position, cursing.

She spins around, looking down the alley where Amity is still fending off the upperclassman, but he’s backed her into a corner. The sleeve of her hoodie is burned away and she’s favoring her left arm; she’s hurt.

With a strangled scream of rage and fueled by adrenaline, Luz sprints down the alley and throws herself onto his back.

“Leave her alone!” She wraps her arms around his neck and he chokes staggering backward.

“Luz!” Amity yells as he thrashes around, clawing at her, trying to get a hold of the human as she squeezed her arms tightly around his windpipe. He finally gets hold of her hood and hauls her over his shoulder, back smacking the ground with a sickening smack. She groans, rolling into her side.

Blondie is back, his face is covered in bruises and blood is dripping from a bloody nose and a gash over his eyebrow as he runs toward them, but before he can get there a blast of magic shoots him in the back sending him to the ground, followed by several more as Edric and Emira appear in the alley’s entrance, scowling and drawing spell circles furiously.

The twins heard Amity’s yell as they were passing by on their way to meet them at the bookstore. The twins move down the alley against the wall, firing spells so as to maneuver themselves between the two younger teens and their classmates. The two battered witches turn tail and run, outnumbered. The twins give chase.

Amity lets her abomination fall as the twins continue to fire off spells at their attackers retreating backs as they race toward the alley's exit, and quickly turns, looking wildly at her girlfriend.

"Luz!" She shouts the second her eyes land on her.

Luz groaned, blood is coming from somewhere, she's not sure where, but she's watching it drop to the ground, in blotches on the dirt, staining it crimson beneath her as she tries to right herself, stumbling to her shaky feet. The adrenaline has begun to fade and the pain in her entire body makes itself known in throbs, in sync with the quick beat of her heart, but especially her face.

Amity races over to her, eyes wide with fear, hands raised in the air but she's still lost in an adrenaline-filled haze that makes it hard to think straight, and she doesn't even know where to start with Luz's injuries as she looks at her.

Her left eye and the skin around it is starting to turn a deep, ugly purple as it starts to swell shut. Her bottom lip is split open and blood is running freely from her nose.

Luz's legs begin to tremble as the fight induced adrenaline leaves her and she lets them give, dropping back to her knees in a heap. Amity's hands shoot out to grab her arms, trying to slow the fall as she kneels next to her. She shakily digs through her pocket and pulls out a handkerchief and starts gently wiping at the blood still coming out of Luz's nose, but it just keeps coming and soon the thin white material is stained crimson.

The twins run over once they're sure the other witches are gone.

"What happened?!" Emira shouts.

"Why were they attacking you?!" Edric looks wildly between the two.

Anger flares up in Amity like demon fire as she turns to glare at her siblings, lips pulled back in a snarl.

"They were attacking us for what you two did to them at school!" Amity practically screams at them. "They were after me and they were trying to use Luz so I couldn't fight back!" She spits and the twins' recoil, complete surprise, and horror are painted across their faces. Amity wants to yell at them more but she has more important things to do. 'Take care of Luz.' is her prevailing thought.

She turns back to Luz who seems to finally be responsive after hearing Amity scream at the twins.

She reaches up to grab the hand dabbing at her face, her one still open eye on her. Amity glimpses the bloody knuckles as she does.

"I'm okay…," she says, squeezing it.

"You are not okay, Luz, you're hurt!" She chokes as the rest of her emotions start catching up to her, drowning out her anger with a sea of fear and Pain.

Fear for herself and for Luz, and pain, in her arm and in her chest as she looks at her beaten bloody girlfriend.

"I know… but I'll be okay. Are you okay?" Her one open eye roams over Amity and lands on the burn on her arm. The skin is red and looks raw with dried blood and soot around the edges from where the left sleeve of her hoodie had been burned away to create the injury when a fire spell had struck home.

"Forget about, me! You're bleeding everywhere!" She holds the crimson handkerchief to Luz's nose and pinches it shut. Luz winces.

"We need to get her home…," Edric says quietly as he walks up and kneels down to help pick up Luz but Amity snarls and shoves him away. He falls back, looking at her with wide, surprised eyes.

"Don't touch her! This is your fault, both of you!" Tears are dripping down her angry face.

"Amity…" she hears Emira's pained voice.

Luz grabs her hands, forcing her attention back to her.

"Shhh, mi amor…," she soothes, which only makes Amity cry harder as Luz tries to comfort her with blood still running down her lips and angry purple bruises blooming across her face.

"Please, Amity, we need to get Luz home, and you're hurt too." Emira's voice is tight, sounding on the verge of tears as she kneels next to her sister.

Edric bites his lip turning over onto his knees.

"Please, Amity…," he begs.

The hands wrapped around hers squeeze and Amity looks at Luz who nods tiredly.

"Let them help."

Amity jerks a nod and Luz let's go as Edric wraps an arm around her back and holds her arm over his shoulder to help her stand.

Emira moves to help Amity but she flinches away from the touch and stands on her own. That stabs at Emira's chest.

Luz winces with every step. It's a long thirty-minute walk to the owl house, made all the worse by the intense stifling quiet, as no one says anything.

Amity's burnt arm hurts, badly, but it's overshadowed by her intense worry, watching Luz wince. It looks like her nose has stopped bleeding but her face is a bloody, black, and blue mess and though she makes no sound, tears are still dripping down her face. Emira trails behind her, watching her carefully but says nothing.

When they finally arrive Hooty sees them coming and stretches quickly around the house, sticking his head in one of the windows for a minute before pulling back and a few seconds later the door slams open and Eda and Lilith come running out.

"What happened!?" Lilith yells first.

Eda meets them in the yard, but other than the panicked expression on her face, says nothing as she takes Luz from Edric, gathering the beaten girl in her arms and hurrying back into the house. Lillith takes one look and Amity and ushers her toward the house as well.

The twins move to follow but Amity stops.

"Go home," she sniffles, barely looking at them over her shoulder.

Ed and Em just stand there, they say nothing, just looking at their sister sadly as Lilith looks between Amity and the twins, before turning to them.

"I will tend to her injuries," she says, before continuing to lead Amity into the house. The door shuts on the twins still standing in the yard.

Luz is sitting on the couch when they walk in just as Eda hurries up the stairs, still not saying anything. Lilith leads Amity to sit next to her and looks over her burnt arm and the bruise forming around her wrist in a distinct hand-print shape before she also hurries to the kitchen, leaving the two teenagers alone in the living room.

The front of Luz's new hoodie is spattered with blood, the hood is ripped and theirs some small tears in other places, as well as on her jeans, while Amity's is singed, the whole left arm burned away to reveal her burnt arm. Ash and soot cling to the skin around it and the front left side is blackened.

They don't say anything, and soon enough both sisters return and Eda, face tight with anger and worry, begins gently cleaning Luz's face.

Lilith helps Amity gently pull off the ruined hoodie and starts cleaning her arm, making her tears start anew as she wipes at the tender and raw, burnt skin.

Luz's hand finds hers on the couch and holds it. Amity sniffles and runs her thumb over bruised knuckles.

When they're finally cleaned up and bandaged Eda leans back and lets out a long, tense sigh.

"Someone tell us what happened, now." She finally speaks, looking between the two teens.

They spend the next fifteen minutes explaining the events of the afternoon to the sisters. Eda looking, angrier and angrier with every word as Lilith's frown deepens and her brows pull together between her eyes.

"Those stupid little…!" Eda growls

"Edalyn" Lilith stops her with a word, drawing her sister's angry gaze but she's looking at Luz and Amity. "Why don't you two go upstairs and we'll call you when dinner is ready?" They nod and head for the stairs, the sisters watching them go.

Luz plops on her bed tiredly, back against the headboard. Her whole body hurts, but not nearly as much as her head, she's got a headache.

Amity sits next to her, leaning her head on her shoulder and they sit there quietly for a while.

Luz never could stand the quiet.

"Aren't you glad now I have that general disregard for danger?" Luz smiles weakly, trying to lighten the oppressively, heavy mood. Amity looks at her sadly, glassy eyes roaming over her face. Her left eye has finished swelling shut and it's an ugly black color. Her split lip has stopped bleeding but it's swollen too, closed with dark, dried blood. She has a rash of scrapes on the right side of her face from being slammed into the wall and several dark bruises dot her face, and Amity's lip trembles.

"I'm sorry…," she mumbles thickly, tucking her face into Luz's neck.

"Hey, it's okay. This wasn't your fault," she says, wrapping her arms around her and holding her tight.

At that Amity's anger returns stronger than ever, and she pulls away, scowling.

"No… it was my stupid brother and sisters fault!" she spat through fresh tears, looking away.

Luz wants to argue with that, she really does, but can't, because it's true. If the twins hadn't needlessly pranked and then provoked those two upperclassmen in the market, this wouldn't have happened.

"They didn't mean to," she tries weakly, but it sounds feeble even to her own ears.

"That doesn't make it any less their fault, them and their stupid pranks!" she rages. "They're always provoking someone, and now you're hurt because of it!"

"So are you," Luz reminds, her one eye flickering to the bandage wrapped around Amity's left arm from wrist to elbow.

"That doesn't matt-"

"It matters to me," Luz cuts her off sharply. "I'm supposed to be your fearless champion… and you still got hurt… you had to save me," she mumbled, looking down. She hears Amity sigh, and the bed shifts and Amity's head tucks back into her neck, arm around her tightening.

"You were my fearless champion," she mumbles, snuggling into her and Luz squeezes back, burying her nose in mint hair.

"And you were mine."

#Moonlit Masquerade #lumity #luz noceda #Amity Blight #edric blight #emira blight #Eda clawthorne #Lilith clawthorne #violence #fighting

58 notes · View notes

uselessgaywhovian · 3 years

Text

Holy Shit, D&D Y'all.

We dungeoned our dragons so hard today y'all

We had an extra long session to make up for being off two weeks, and OH MY GOD, EVERYTHING HAPPENED SO MUCH. brace yourselves, word dump is coming.

So we escorted Aubreck Drallion, the new councilman who we just salvaged a bunch of promissory notes and deeds from a sinking ship for, to Seaton so he could cash out the notes and pay us our 10% (10,000 gp!). Poppy, the little orphan girl we accidentally adopted the last time we were in Seaton, said she wanted to come along with us. Since we were, y'know, acting as security for the councilman and his moderate fortune on this trip, Bree tried to say that we'd take Poppy another time and leave her back with Eda, who's been looking after her and the two boys we'd found her with, Jack and Oscar. Their parents were apparently in Deadwater prison so they were on the street. We had brought all three of them back to Saltmarsh for Eda to look after last time we were in Seaton.

Well we get everything ready and head out on the road, and when we go to make camp the first night... we find Poppy stowed away in the wagon. Apparently she found a Ring of Invisibility and used that to sneak away and hide in our supplies.

So Bree gives her a come-to-Jesus talk about how when we say something's dangerous we mean it, etc., etc. but now it's too far down the road to take her back so we press on. We get to Seaton without issue. Drallion heads off to deal with his business, and we've got the day in Seaton to do what we want.

Now, the last time we were in Seaton, Bael-lys took exceptional dislike to the head of the Deadwater prison. So the first thing he wants us to do is go kill this guy. Which we did manage to talk him down from open murder because Shamys was like "Well, first of all, I feel like this is not the type of guy you just challenge to a fair fight. There are quieter ways to kill someone like that. But also we're in town so Mr. Drallion can get the money and pay us, and murdering the head of the prison seems like it would prevent that business from happening."

......... and then Poppy fucking ran away.

Shamys noticed first and took off after her, which shouldn't have been a problem catching up to a 6 year old as a Tabaxi rogue but the kid fucking disappeared. We had taken her ring away, so we thought she couldn't be turning invisible, but she was just fucking gone. Most of us kept searching for a few hours. Meanwhile Bael-lys decided to go deal with the head of Deadwater whose name I can't remember. Since he didn't want to get us all in trouble for murder, he decided to just.... go get some horse laxatives and stop by the bar where the guy stopped for a drink every night after work. Lucky for him, the elf lady who runs the bar at the Magnificent Mizzen is into Bael-lys, and she doesn't much care for the Deadwater guy, so he was able to convince her to help him slip the laxatives into a drink. Everything went off excellently for him.

Anyway, it gets dark and we still haven't found Poppy. What we did find were some posters for a pair of missing boys... who looked an awful lot like Jack and Oscar... the boys whose parents were supposed to be in prison, leaving them abandoned... but before we could look into that more, there was a huge flash of light from the Temple of Procan, which was where Drallion had gone when we got to town. So we run for the temple and find a whole bunch of dead clerics, an expended Glyph of Warding, and Poppy hiding under the altar. She was pretty shaken up, said she'd snuck in to hide a token of Umberlee in the temple (worship of Umberlee isn't allowed in Seaton so she doesn't have a temple, Poppy said she thought Umberlee would like her hiding a token in Procan's temple because Procan would hate it). Poppy said she was hiding and there was a fight, then the bright light, then it was quiet... We didn't have long to check around beyond confirming that fortunately Drallion was not among the dead. Then the city guard showed up and shooed us off, fortunately they didn't think we were involved.

So we go get rooms at an inn and in the morning check out more about the missing boys poster.

And uhhhhhhhhh turns out the boys we knew as Jack and Oscar, whose parents were in Deadwater and likely dead, leaving them abandoned... were actually Luke and Ezra, whose parents were very much alive and free and looking for them. So Bree comes back and questions Poppy...

... and then shit got REALLY fucked up.

Poppy didn't really have an answer about Jack and Oscar, and then she decided it was time to drop the ruse... She turned into Xendros. Then Arnot the Huge. Then Keladek. And then finally into Gellan Primewater.

POPPY WAS GELLAN GODDAMN PRIMEWATER

THE ENTIRE FUCKING TIME

HE WAS NEVER IN FUCKING PRISON

FUCK US SIDEWAYS

Anyway, we get into a fight. He has a crazy high AC so few of our attacks hit, and those that do he practically laughs off the damage. Shamys, who doesn't know who this guy is or what's going on does get ready to bolt, but the "fight" only goes on for two rounds before Primewater gets tired of toying with us and disappears. Fun fact: Counterspell did not stop him from disappearing, however he did. Which can only be a good thing, tbh. If he'd actually attacked, we'd probably have been fucked. But he did apparently steal a spear from the Temple of Procan, and he's still interested in the trident that Yara has, wherever she is... so that's not at all worrying. Totally fine. Definitely not gonna be a problem.

We pack up and head back to Saltmarsh in a hurry. Bree goes to see if Poppy is actually still with Eda. She wasn't. So that's not good. She also checked on Jack and Oscar, trying to see if they were actually Luke and Ezra. They didn't recognize the names... but we also found they didn't remember anything before meeting Poppy. So we were pretty sure their memories were modified... Also Eda confessed that Poppy was a very inquisitive child, and particularly liked asking Eda about her job on the town council...

Bael-lys went to check on Xendros, since we're now also super suspicious of her since that was one of the forms Primewater appeared in. Xendros was waiting outside her shop for him, already knowing what had happened in the creepy way that she does. She swore that she was real and was not Primewater, and what she gave to prove it was FINALLY EXPLAINING HOW SHE CREEPILY KNOWS WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO ALL THE TIME apparently it's thanks to the sword Bael-lys has that Xendros had enchanted and apparently put a little extra moxie on that lets her keep tabs on us... But she also agreed to help with the boys and checked them over and undid the spells on them.

Guess what, they were Luke and Ezra, the missing boys from Seaton. Once the magic on them was dispelled, they didn't know where they were or how they'd got there, and were incredibly confused. Eda arranged to go to Seaton to settle everything and check on the Primewater situation.

Well, at this point Shamys goes with Drallion to settle our payment, we each get a nice 2,100 gp, and settle down for the night.

Bael-lys has a weird dream, first about his father's death and then this weird ghosty thing causing trouble for his mother. So he wakes up and immediately decides he needs to go home to the Dreadwood and see what's up. He goes to the Seagrove and meets our new party member, Hans. He'd actually been sent by Bael-lys's stick-up-the-ass brother to come get him, because there was trouble with their mother.

So we pack up in a whirlwind yet again and hit the road to the Dreadwood. We ran into a random old man asking for directions on the road, and after the shit with Primewater the party is SUPER SUSPICIOUS of everyone and Bael-lys for some reason demanded to search the old man's bag? So the old man gave him the bag and fucking ran away, thinking he was being robbed??? it was a Time™.

We make it to the Dreadwood, fight off a surprisingly large pack of hobgoblins, and get escorted??? To a palace???? Because Bael-lys is a fucking prince????????????? what is going on.

EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING SO MUCH Y'ALL. EVERYTHING.

#personal #D&D #Nobody Knows I'm A Pirate™#Nobody Knows I'm A Spy™ edition

4 notes · View notes