Chapter Text
Luz liked to think she was one of the best wild witches around. She was certainly one of the most skilled and powerful. At sixteen she had already completed more successful rescues and retrieval missions than most of the other members of the underground. She’d infiltrated the conformitorium almost a dozen times. Stolen important books from the libraries of almost every single coven head. She’d even managed to steal the true emperor’s crown from the castle vaults on an, admittedly stupid, dare. With all that in mind, this mission should have gone smoothly. It should have been a piece of blood cake. It should have been a quick and quiet affair.
“Over there! We’ve got her cornered!”
Too bad none of those things had ended up being true.
Luz bit back a curse as another barrage of spells shot over her newest hiding spot behind a decorative vase, some of them managing to graze the magic-resistant hooded cloak she wore on all raids like this. Her eyes darted back and forth around the room as she searched for any hint of a way out she had missed. Her knuckles went white as she tightened her hands on her staff and scowled when nothing new revealed itself. Just like her initial search when she darted into this room the only ways out were still only the door the emperor’s guards were pouring in through and the door to the vault.
“Circle around her! We have her now!”
Now if only those guards would leave her alone for more than a second so she could actually put together an escape plan. Her fingers traced over the two, no, three potions she had left on her bandolier. The metal eater she’d gotten specifically to break into the vault, a healing potion, and the itching powder one she’d initially made as a joke for a friend’s kid. She’d actually forgotten about that one. She couldn’t help smirking as a plan started to come together. It was a terrible plan that relied on at least one bit of information she’d gotten actually being right for once in this mission but it was all she had.
“You want me? Come and get me!” she shouted as she threw the itching potion into the air. As expected the guards immediately shot everything they had at it, smashing the bottle and turning the potion inside into a quickly expanding gas. A quick spell circle later and a sudden wind was spreading the cloud throughout the room, acting as the perfect distraction to let her lob the rust potion at the vault door. WIthin seconds a hole had been corroded through the magically reinforced door just large enough for her to slip through.
“Disperse the cloud you idiots! And stay on the door! We can’t let her get away!”
Luz grunted as she wiggled her way through the ever-growing hole in the vault door. It wouldn’t be long before the guards managed to get in, especially with the door continuing to corrode away, but if she could get her hands on the right relic it wouldn’t matter. Going into this she’d hoped she’d have a chance to fully clean out the vault of forbidden artifacts but now all she could hope for was to get her hands on the Rainbow Staff and teleport out of here. She darted from display case to display case, desperately hoping that the thing’s name was a good indicator for its appearance.
“Stop her! Stop her now!”
Once more Luz was forced to dodge a barrage of spells. Glass cases shattered around the room and ancient artefacts of the wild ages were knocked to the ground. Her heart was in her throat as she caught sight of an iridescent crystalline staff almost as tall as she was. Her eyes narrowed and she grimaced as the number of spells being cast into the room only increased. It was now or never. Darting from behind a display case she leaped into the air, one hand stretching out to try and reach the staff. She forced down a wince when a particularly powerful spell was deflected off her cloak before slamming into the staff. Her worry bout the artifact’s integrity only lasted a moment before the entire room was enveloped in bright light and she was knocked unconscious.
As far as Eda was concerned there weren’t that many things in life better than managing to get her hands on a good haul at rock bottom prices. Apparently there had been some friction between the mister and the soon to be ex missus of the estate and they had both been very eager to unload as many of the other’s sentimental items at hilariously low prices in an attempt to screw each other over as much as they could out of sheer spite. Sure, they’d been a little miffed when they realized that she’d been going to each of them separately to try and get all the deals she could but by the time they realized what they’d done to themselves she’d already loaded up the trailer and was on her way out. She didn’t bother holding back her lopsided grin as she recalled the looks on their faces as she drove off and they realized they had no one to blame but themselves.
“Nothing like pulling one over on a couple rich pricks like them, eh King?” she asked her passenger. King, for his part, happily accepted the head scritches until he decided that Eda had exceeded the allotted physical contact for the hour and batted her hand away. “Fine, be that way you little brat,” Eda muttered without any real annoyance. Even with a cat as friendly as King you got used to rejection. That and it wasn’t like there was much that could really get her spirits down right now anyway. The three hour drive back home was almost over, she’d picked up a fortune of new things to sell in her antique shop, and she even had sales receipts for everything she’d gotten this time around so even if the previous owners tried claiming she’d stolen something the cops wouldn’t be able to do much more than detain her for a bit to make sure everything was in order.
Honestly, she kinda hoped that they would try that. The only thing better than outsmarting the cops was getting to sit around and get them to admit that she had done everything legally and there was nothing they could do to her. There really wasn’t anything she could think of that could dampen her mood.
Unfortunately, one such thing she had never thought of being possible began happening in the sky just overhead. With a sound like a thousand nails being dragged across a chalkboard, a ragged crack tore open in the sky in front of her. Shock and confusion were at the forefront of her mind as she realized something had fallen through the tear. Her eyes widened and she bit back a curse as she recognized the falling object as a person. Heart thundering in her ears she pulled off to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes, eliciting an angry yowl from King as the sudden stop sent him sprawling to the floor of the car.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” she muttered under her breath. Her eyes never left the falling figure as she all but leaped from her car and rushed towards where it looked like the person would be landing. A sickening crack rang out as they hit the ground and Eda couldn’t help the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach when they only noiselessly flopped around like a rag doll. “Come on, you better be alright, don’t leave me here to deal with your dead body. I do not want to get detained for suspected murder again.” Eda couldn’t stop the sigh of relief that escaped her when she finally reached the person’s side and noticed the slow rise and fall of their, or her rather, chest that indicated they were at least still breathing. “Hey, uh, kid. You alright?” Eda asked with a wince. Of course they weren’t alright. They got spat out by some sort of hell pit in the sky and dropped onto the shoulder of the highway. She may not have been too sure what was going on but it was pretty clear that ‘alright’ really wasn’t on the menu. Thankfully it appeared that the mystery girl was more than willing to prove Eda’s pessimistic assumptions at least partially wrong.
“Potion,” the girl coughed out. Her eyes fluttered open and closed but couldn’t seem to focus on anything. Her head trembled as she tried to lift it off the ground, but only managing to knock the cloth mask around her face loose. “Only one on my bandolier, please.”
Normally Eda would be a bit more suspicious about anything that a person called a potion. As a consummate scammer herself she recognized a scam when she saw one and all that holistic medicine with potions and healing crystals and crap pinged her scammer sense something fierce. But normally those potions came from people who reminded her of her, very short, hippie phase. Not people that had been spat up by hell. Moving the girls cloak aside she quickly found a thin glass vial filled with a golden liquid that shimmered with little motes of light. She didn’t hesitate to pull it free, uncork it, and lift the girl’s head ever so slightly to pour it into her mouth.
With the immediate concerns, hopefully, taken care of Eda let herself actually take a good look at her unexpected visitor. The bluish-purple cloak and cowl would certainly make for a solid disguise once properly applied and her clothes underneath reminded Eda of the ponces she’d seen the one time she’d snuck into a ren faire. Everything else just screamed brown. Brown eyes, brown hair, tanned brown pointed ears...
“Pointed ears?” Eda muttered as the girl swallowed the potion. “Is she a witch?” Her normal suspicions about things like this were, once again, being pushed aside by the very nature of how the girl had come to be here. Her musings were brought to a sudden halt as the sounds of nails on a chalkboard assaulted her ears once more. Her head whipped up again to see dozens of smaller tears opening up in the sky. This time much further out, almost all of them overhead the city. It might have been her imagination but she could have sworn she saw small specks of light falling from them before tears closed up, leaving the night sky immaculate once more. Eda couldn’t help her slowly growing frown as she stared out at the city. Even if she didn’t understand what exactly was happening one thing was for sure: things were going to be getting very complicated very soon.
Luz counted herself lucky when she only woke to feeling like she’d tried to ride a slitherbeast. Again. To say that her memories of last night were fuzzy would be a drastic understatement, but she did remember the heist going wrong. That and someone that either didn’t know who she was or was sympathetic enough to the underground to help her drink her healing potion. Everything after that was a blur of indistinct colors and sounds but the fact that she had woken up on someone’s couch and not chained to a wall awaiting petrification was always a good sign.
That said she really didn’t want to push her luck. Between her cloak, mask, and judicious use of illusions Luz had managed to keep most of her crimes from being directly associated with herself but she was still a wild witch. All it would take was her host noticing her lack of a brand or connecting her face to one of the lesser circulated but still present bounty posters all confirmed wild witches had.
She hissed and placed a hand to her forehead as her attempt to sit up was met with a lance of pain that nearly sent her back to laying on the couch. Apparently she’d been even worse off than she’d thought if she still felt this bad after a potion. Gritting her teeth and working through the pain Luz forced herself all the way up and took a look around the room. On the plus side there wasn’t any emperor’s coven paraphernalia hung up so at the very least her savior wasn’t one of the brainwashed fanatics. On the minus side there was a lot of very fancy looking stuff all over the place. Sure the giant black mirror looked way too bulky and ineffective for her to care for it but something as unique looking as that had to have cost a pretty snail.
“Finally up eh? I was starting to wonder if you were ever gonna wake up.”
Luz tried to jump to attention at the sudden voice, but adrenaline could only overcome so many of the aches and pains she was still suffering and it certainly didn’t manage to do anything about the blankets still wrapped around her legs. Her full body collection of bruises was soon given several new additions as all she managed to do was tumble into an undignified heap at the feet of the person who had saved her.
“Woah there! You already fell out of the sky once, don’t go trying for a repeat performance already!” the woman said as she knelt down and did her best to untangle Luz’s legs from the blankets and help her back up on the couch.
“Sorry,” Luz muttered as she let herself get manhandled back onto the couch. Seeing as her rescuer seemed more concerned about her wellbeing than asking awkward questions about how she’d ended up falling from the sky Luz took a moment to take stock of said rescuer. A tall, older woman dressed in pajamas and a garish t-shirt, with sharp golden eyes and a chaotic mess of grey hair that probably massed more than Luz’s entire body did was tucked back behind a pair of round ears. Luz shook her head in a vain attempt to shake some sense into herself as she stared at the woman’s ears. “I… are you a human? What’s a human doing on the Boiling Isles? How did a human get to the Boiling Isles?”
A strange look crossed the woman, the human’s , face at Luz’s questions. She glanced down at the mug Luz only now noticed she was carrying before seeming to come to a decision. “Come here kid. Might be better easier to explain if I can get you to the window.”
Luz didn’t resist as the human helped her to her feet and led her over to a window and pulled back the curtains. Luz squinted and blinked furiously as her eyes adjusted to the sudden change in light. What she saw when her eyes had adjusted took her breath away in all the wrong ways. If it weren’t for the human’s surprisingly strong grip she would have collapsed to the floor again.
Outside the window were crowds of humans. Metal monsters rushed down a wide black stone street flanked by buildings of shining metal and glass and brick, and beyond them even more buildings of the same make, taller than any she had ever seen before. “Did… did I teleport into a secret human sanctuary hidden somewhere on the isles?” she asked. Her voice shaking with fear and quickly dwindling hope.
The human snorted. “Unless us humans have managed to hide an entire planet somewhere on your isles I don’t think so.” Her voice softened as she continued, “You’re a long way from home kid.”
The kid hadn’t moved once since Eda had led her back to the couch. Not much of a surprise there though. It’s not every day you find out you got dumped somewhere you’d never seen or heard of. And unlike that time Eda had gone on that bender and wound up in what had to have been the smallest town Nevada had to offer the kid couldn’t exactly call home and get someone to come by with a ride and some fresh clothes.
“I’m gonna go make something to eat. You good with egg salad sandwiches?”
The kid made a noise that, very charitably, could be interpreted as something resembling a yes. Maybe. Either way it was a good enough reason for Eda to leave the kid to come to terms by herself for a bit. The fact that it also gave Eda some time to process the fact that the kid was either really into playing a role or was an actual real-life witch was an incidental plus.
Further pushing off dealing with the inevitable world-shattering revelations Eda busied herself in her home’s tiny kitchen. A quick sniff made her sure enough that the egg salad was still good and some rummaging around the pantry turned up just enough bread for a couple sandwiches and some potato chips that, though on the broken down side, were still perfectly fine. Before long she had two perfectly serviceable plates of food and it was time to face the music once again.
A tension she didn’t realize she’d been feeling left her shoulders as she saw that the kid had at least moved around since she’d left to get the food. “Here ya go kid. Eat up.” A look of shock passed across the kid’s face, almost too quick to see before she took the plate of food and poked at the sandwich. After a few moments she seemed to come to a decision, picked up the sandwich and took a bite. She blinked and chewed slowly, obviously not sure what to think of the food. In the end it looked like she’d decided it was good enough and tucked in. A new, ever so slightly less awkward silence settled over the room as they both worked through their meals.
“Luz”
Eda blinked and looked over to see the kid had stopped eating and was watching her.
“My name. I’m Luz. Luz Noceda.”
For the first time since she’d seen the kid crash land Eda smiled. “Nice to meet ya. I’m Eda Clawthorne.”
While Eda and Luz were getting to know each other a very different scene was playing out on the other side of the city. A white-cloaked man wearing a beaked mask bit back a hiss of pain as a human woman did her best to both apply a splint to the man’s broken arm and ignore the fireball poised to be thrown at the children that had been sleeping in the healer’s building he had woken up in.
“Isn’t there anything better you can do to heal me human? And remember, no lying.”
“All we can do is set the bone and immobilize the arm,” the human replied. “We might be able to do more with some surgery but…”
“And let you knock me out and cut me open? I’m no fool human. Now finish your work.”
The man suppressed another wince as the human continued to wrap his arm in fabric. He was really starting to regret not progressing beyond the basic healing spells offered to the emperor's coven. But then again he never expected to get stuck in some backwater city of magicless primitives, incapable of doing anything but covering up a wound and waiting for it to heal. His fireball grew in intensity as his mind turned once more to the wild witch that had caused him to be thrown into this pathetic realm. He would find his way back home, no matter who stood in his way. And if the witch happened to be here as well he would take great pleasure in exacting his revenge on the disgusting criminal.
“It’s done,” the human said as she applied a series of metal clips to the cloth covering his arm.
He glanced down at his arm and nodded in acceptance of the treatment. A twirl of a finger and he cast a spell of one of his more preferred schools placed and an oracle’s curse on the woman. “I suggest you don’t tell anyone about me human. I will know if you do so and I will find you.” The fireball crackled ominously. “And you will not like what happens when I do.” Dismissing the fireball he turned to the window and threw it open. With a thought he summoned his staff and took to the sky. He may be far from the Boiling Isles with no idea how to get back home but he was not going to let that stop him from returning. No matter what.