Chapter Text
Magic zips and flies, crackling dangerously through the air. The world is dark. The Day of Unity has arrived and the battle for the Boiling Isles rages around them.
Amity moves swiftly, keeping light on her feet to dodge attacks meant to subdue her… or worse. It no longer matters that she is still a child. Belos’ army fights to win no matter the cost.
While they’d arrived together - chasing after Luz and hoping to stop the rest of the Abomatons to give the CATs a better chance - the chaos of the fighting that had already broken out quickly separated her from her friends.
Her father had stuck around the longest, subduing anyone who dared even look in her direction before she could get a chance to land any hits of her own. To be fair, Amity had expected as much with the way he’d eyed her and the twins on the ride here, the urge to turn the airship around and get them as far from the fighting as possible written all over his face. The newfound overprotectiveness felt equal parts infuriating and comforting, particularly given the day they’d just had.
He’d left her side only out of necessity. The Abomatons they’d initially disabled had come back online and without the other controller overriding his own, Alador could do little to stop them from here.
Amity had no doubt who was responsible for this latest development. What it meant.
Out there somewhere, her mother was actively fighting against them.
She shouldn’t be surprised, not really. There’s an entire childhood of proof, drilled in from as long as she can remember and yet it seems her mother had been right all along - Amity had never learned her lesson.
Despite it all, she’d truly believed her mother could change. The idea that Odalia Blight had known what the Day of Unity would bring, that she’d willingly hurt people, had seemed too absurd even by Blight parenting standards.
Edric and Emira had tried to warn her.
“She won’t believe you.”
“And even if she did, she won’t care.”
“We can shout as loud as we want, but money always shouts louder.”
But she’d stubbornly believed the truth would be enough to sway Odalia. That they could appeal to her better nature.
Except her mother had known the truth all along and it hadn’t made a difference. Not even her father’s dissent was enough to sway her. Her parent’s impending divorce and the implosion of her home life, just another in a long list of things she’d need to process later, when staying alive and helping her wonderful girlfriend save the world no longer required the entirety of her immediate attention.
With a flick of her wrist, Amity sends the guards standing in her way slamming into the side of a building, abomination goo solidifying to keep them properly restrained.
Her main focus right now is the Abomatons. Her family bears the burden of creating them and as a Blight, it is now her responsibility to take them down. Though as responsibilities go, this one is immensely satisfying. Despite the circumstances, it is hard not to revel in helping dismantle her mother’s ‘legacy’. Alador’s advice on which weak points to strike, as much as he’d hated to admit them, allowing her to make easy work of them.
She's just taken down four more with a catty flourish, when the world breaks.
Light pours from the castle, a column that crashes into the sky, black lightning racing along it. It’s a palpable change. A chill in the air that raises gooseflesh on her skin and makes her next puffs of breath visible.
Laughter, manic and childlike, bounces across the city, followed by an ominous dulling silence like the entire continent is holding its breath.
No one drops dead so the draining spell at least has been stopped, but something has gone horribly wrong.
The eclipse hits suddenly, an unnatural darkness enveloping the world before she can make out what causes it. It cannot last more than a few moments, but standing in that stifling blackness, a terror building in her heart because this isn’t part of the plan, she could have sworn it would last forever.
Even after it passes there’s still an inherent wrongness in the air. At first she mistakes it for a trick of the light. The shadows seem to shift, elongating in several directions.
Furrowing her brow and Amity studies her own shadow, moving her arm about to watch how it mimics the motion. It’s slower than usual… like it’s fighting against it. Because she’s watching it so closely, she catches the moment it solidifies.
‘Move!’
Ghost’s shout in her mind is the only warning she gets. It’s hardly elegant. She has just enough time to throw herself to the ground before a tendril of solid shadow crushes her, something cracking in the rough landing. The dent in the asphalt where she stood moments ago testament to the very real danger.
The shadow raises itself back up to full height slowly. Behind it, several others peel themselves from the ground and walls seemingly targeting anything that moves.
Before she can even think to do anything about it, the guards she’d restrained are yanked backwards, screaming into the darkness.
‘Amity!’
Her own shadow is reaching for her - clawed hands extending forward like serpents. A large unsettling smile stretched across its face.
‘We need to get out of here.’
“Ya no kidding,” she mutters breathless, scrambling up off the ground before her shadow self can get any closer.
Not willing to spare another moment, she hops on her staff. The tendril from before reaches forward, blocking her path and she throws a light spell at it. While it holds the tendril back, Amity immediately realizes her mistake.
The spell gives life to the world around them, creating new shadows from the jagged stones and angles of the wreckage - all of which shoot out at once to try and ensnare her.
“Get us out of here!”
Her palisman propels them forward, dodging the shadows that leap out to grab them, searching for an opening to get them into the sky.
Up ahead the road cracks, breaking towards them as something massive tunnels underneath it.
“Ghost…”
‘I see it’
Despite that, they continue to barrel towards it, shadows chasing them from behind and boxing them in from the sides and above.
Right before they’re set to collide, the ground in front of them explodes outward, what is distinctly a tentacle sailing through the air. The clubbed end rips through the ground, chunks of debris flying, before slicing upwards, tearing a building’s facade clean off and sending it tilting to the earth.
Their intended path projects in her mind’s eye.
It’s a terrible plan.
The collapsing wall creates the largest shadow yet and they’re going to brush right past it while trying to move fast enough to not be crushed alive. But Amity trusts her palisman's judgement and she doesn’t have a better plan, so she holds tight and complies.
The moonlight is eclipsed once more as they pass under the falling structure. She makes the mistake of looking down. It’s like looking into murky water. Right below the surface, the body of a massive creature moves, beak opening as it prepares to break through.
‘Focus,’ Ghost demands and Amity draws her attention away from the Eldritch horror beneath them and upwards to the task at hand.
Drawing a magic circle, she calls forth a compact grudgby sized ball of abomination goo, sending it crashing through the nearest window falling towards them. She presses close to the staff as Ghost propels them through the new opening, glass shards raining down on them.
Once in the air, she can make out what she could not from the ground. It’s one great creature - a kraken, if she’s remembering the page from Edric’s beast keeping book correctly. It’s taken over the entire street and already the damage is tremendous, two arms reducing another building to rubble as she watches.
Up here at least, she is high enough it cannot reach them. In the relative safety, Amity spares a moment to think of Luz. Begs the Titan keep her safe, because there’s no doubt that whatever this is, Luz is at the center of it.
Bracing herself, she surveys the situation.
It’s chaos. The coven scouts and guards have all abandoned their battles. The Abomatons however, carry on - whether because Odalia does not consider this development enough to put an end to the fighting… or because there’s no one left to stop them now… Amity does not know.
The shades take different forms - some humanoid, others beasts that range from recognizable to grotesquely disfigured even by Boiling Isles standards. They attack indiscriminately, chasing down resistance members and guards with the same ferocity, though she’d already seen that for herself.
While the majority are smaller, there are some behemoths - the kraken leveling the street she’d just been standing on among them.
‘Amity…’
Another faces her siblings.
The area around them has been raised to the ground. If not for the characteristic green of their hair she might’ve missed them, dwarfed as they are by the creature towering over them.
She doesn’t recognize it, though it appears to be made of a mix of characteristics most closely resembling a dragon and a bat. Multiple pairs of legs hold it up off the ground, great wings sending dirt and rubble flying. Spiked tails snap out behind it, destroying what little of the city still stands in that section. Its great horned head track her siblings closely, massive maw opening in a roar to reveal rows of sharpened teeth.
They’re holding their own quite well. They’ve always made a brilliant team, in sync in a way she’s only ever seen the twins be. They fight like it’s a dance, splitting apart to provide each other openings in the form of theatrical distractions, and coming back together to draw on each other's strength. Whenever any of the smaller shadows try to sneak up on them, Edric tosses potion bombs to disperse them.
But where they begin to tire, the monstrous shade does not.
She sees what’s about to happen seconds before it does and wonders if this awful taste in her mouth is what her mother's Oracle magic feels like.
One of the creature's tails has arched behind her siblings and as they ready the next spell it yanks back, slamming into Edric’s side and knocking him off his feet.
Her brother falls, the spell the twins had been joint casting dissipating into nothing. Emira throws up a hasty barrier between them seconds before the monster crashes into it. It bellows in rage, through being taunted and now sensing weakness, it fights to claw its way through.
Emira clearly waivers. Caught between maintaining the shield that guards them and checking on their brother who is trying and failing to get back to his feet.
Whatever she sees is concerning enough that as the monster rears, she chances dropping her magic, rushing to Edric’s side. The moments they spend unprotected feel agonizingly long, but Emira manages to get it back up, though smaller in size, before the shadow beast swipes at them again. For the moment it holds.
With frightening clarity however, Amity realizes the shield is going to shatter.
While powerful witches each in their own right, the strength of the spells they cast separately is fractional compared to what they can do together. They’re both already tired and now her sister supports the barrier alone.
Even worse, for some reason Emira is dividing her attention - partially maintaining the shield, partially attempting to heal their brother. What little help Edric can provide right now won’t be enough.
The shield will shatter and that creature will drag her siblings down into the shadows.
The world tunnels. Just as she fears, the beast's next strike cracks a mosaic of spider web like fractures spiraling outward from the point of impact.
If not for the thundering of her own heartbeat, Amity would swear she should be able to hear it beginning to snap over the battle around them.
She doesn’t think. The shadow that next lounges for her, a flying griffon-like breast that swoops from the sky, doesn’t stand a chance, swept aside like nothing.
She points her staff their way in the next moment, flying faster and more recklessly than she ever has in her life and even that doesn’t seem to be enough. Urging Ghost onward, she curses the seconds lost dodging stray spells and other obstacles.
Her name sounds on the wind behind her but she ignores it. Mind occupied with this singular goal.
Amity cannot lose them.
Her siblings drive her crazy.
They haven’t always seen eye to eye. A separation cultivated by their mother’s strategic games – from years of pitting them against each other. The distance had once seemed insurmountable but ever since the library, ever since Luz, they’ve been getting better. Learning to be a family again, slowly but surely, after a lifetime of tearing each other down just to survive the only way they knew how.
In the months leading to this moment, with the end of the world looming on the horizon, they’d found each other again. In late nights, divulging fears in hushed whispers under the stars. In distracting their parent’s gaze, allowing each other stolen moments of freedom. In breathless laughter that no longer came at her own expense.
She’d gone from a bone deep loneliness within the walls of Blight Manor to a semblance of belonging. From dreading the sound of Ed and Em at her door, to relying on their company and council to keep her sane.
She hasn’t even told them how much they mean to her. Not in the words they deserve to hear.
The creature rises again, massive and hulking over her siblings, and what’s left of their protection fizzles away. Emira throws herself in front of Edric – the eldest sibling – protective and fierce to the very end. There’s nothing he can do, injured and depleted of magic as he is, but Edric fists the back of Emira’s shirt, first trying to pull her out of the way and when that doesn’t work, drawing her close instead.
Amity loves them. They are the closest family she’s ever had.
She needs them in her life and right now, they need her.
An understanding passes between witch and palisman. The promise made, remember. Ghost echoing back her sentiment tenfold.
‘I want to be a powerful witch,’ she’d spoken to those intelligent blue eyes what feels like a lifetime ago. ‘Not for my parents or the emperor’s coven or to uphold the Blight legacy… I just…’
She cannot lose them. She will not lose them.
Magic builds in her chest. Fire in her blood, ferocious and wild.
From one blink to the next the space between them is gone. Ghost teleporting them forward - where they need to be.
Time slows.
Amity slams to the ground before her siblings in a roll, ignoring the sting in her palms and knees in favor of getting to her feet again.
One wrong move now and they're all dead.
Behind her, the twins cry out in realization. Shouting warnings and pleas for her to run away. Terror in their voices at her expense.
But she’s not going anywhere.
She throws her staff like a javelin, instinct guiding her through the motion. It shimmers through its arch, solid palistrom wood shifting to the palisman’s form. Ghost snarls, the cat's ears pinned back, claws extended, white fur glowing like she’s never seen.
Having reached its full height, the creature makes to crash down on them at full force.
Amity digs her heels into the ground preparing for the impact and lets all the magic building in her chest burst loose.
‘I want to be strong enough to protect the people I love.’
‘We will be.’