Chapter Text
"Where- where am I?" a voice says into the pale landscape that she had been warped into mere moments ago, unaware of why this has happened, or what did this to her, she didn't even think anything remotely similar to this could happen, and to her of all people, what had she done to warrant this?!
The woman has tan skin, long brown hair and light blue eyes as well as a lavender colored shirt and long tan pants.
"Hello? Mama? Mama?!" The figure cried out into the landscape, clearly with desperation in her voice, she would continue to call out for some time, the time spent unknown, desperately trying to call out for anybody to help her, after a while of shouting to someone who would turn out to be nobody, she sat down and started quietly sobbing into her arms, clearly lost hope of getting out of this place any time soon.
She had so much before, and now...
"There, the deed is done, I've contained her, are you happy now?" A voice above her said, loud enough to be heard anywhere in, whatever this place is that she had been placed in.
"Hello?" The quieter voice, now identified as a woman in her early twenties shouts back with hope to get out of here.
"Very good..." The woman's hope lifts further before plummeting once the being continues talking as she realizes that there are two beings, and they aren't talking to her, but about her.
"We still need to do something about the tyrant though, each day he's getting more power over those people, and we both know that his goal is to destroy them..."
The second being sighs, "So difficult, if that titan's magic didn't linger after it died this would be so much easier"
The woman, still listening to the two entities now identified as the ones to imprison her is utterly baffled at what they're talking about, titan? tyrant? magic? Nothing like that exists on earth, are they talking about another planet? universe? another plain of existence?
"That, doesn't answer my question though, how are we going to stop this, below? Was that his name? do we even need to intervene with this?"
"Belos" The other entity replied, "he's been disrupting the demon realm for long enough, in case you forgot, stabilizing all realms is one of our only jobs"
"When you aren't wiping out species because they can pose a threat to us..." The first, and likely inexperienced entity mutters to herself just loud enough for the still trapped woman to hear.
"Make another human that's close to the shack that the portal opens up in, we can wait for a bit longer before we go to extreme measures to stop him"
"O-okay..." the younger entity replies, "but, what do we do with this human?"
"Dispose of it, she's useless to us now, I've already removed every trace and memory of them."
The woman could hear sounds that sounded like something magical, before sounds she could only identify as falling, she had clearly been thrown off of, something.
As the object continued to to fall she decided to explore this world she's now in, not like she could do anything else. The floor was weirdly wet, yet her shoes weren't getting wet, as she continued to wonder this world she heard a louder crashing noise.
"W-what was that.." She looks around for what could have made that noise, until she realizes that her prison was falling, causing her to laugh to herself for a few seconds with no hint of joy.
This world was all white, aside from the shadows of all the objects in this place, she had just got here and she already was sick of these colors. As she continued exploring this place that was now her home she had stumbled across this area that was mostly flat with none of the liquid from everywhere else in this world, resembling some sort of grass plain, without the tree's, or flowers, or animals, or anything other than white grass.
She walked past the rest of all the weirdly grey liquid until reaching the plain, if you could even call it that, she kept walking through the plains for what felt like forever, but in a place like this it might as well be forever, or had it only been a few minutes? She had no way to tell, all she could do was keep walking, with no purpose, she didn't have any after being transported here, what purpose can you have when you're in world of nothingness?
after an unknown amount of time walking she saw some house in the distance, it looked like it had two floors, but that didn't matter to her, it was something, and soon her walk turned into a jog, her jog turned into running, and that turned into a full sprint to get to the one thing in a vast ocean of nothing
As she approached her destination she got a much better picture as to what the house actually looked like, it had a curved roof over the second floor which she could now see was more of an attic, the building also had a big broken circular window at the side of the house close to the roof, she could also notice a tall tower behind it that looked like it belonged in a medieval kingdom, the door also has hole in it where a door knocker or window would usually go.
As she opens the door she notices just how messy the house is, furniture scattered around the place, a poster on the wall behind the couch catches her, eye, it looks like some sort of police sketch, as she walks towards it she's able to read what it says more clearly.
"Owl lady, wanted for one, trillion, I wonder what this person did to warrant a bounty like that..." She says to nobody in particular as she continues to look at the poster.
It looks to be of some woman with pale skin and long orange hair, they appear to be holding a staff with some sort of owl on the end. She also noticed that this poster seems to have color on it, unlike everything else in this world, as well as the fact that the poster has a hole where the face would be.
She walks away to the poster and towards the stairs, as she makes her way up she notices just how many broken bottles there are on the ground, there isn't liquid around, so she can only assume these broken glasses have been here for a very long time.
"There goes any chance of having a friend here"
She reaches the end of the flight of stairs she goes into the first room she sees, the only things she could see where the broken window she saw outside and a sleeping bag in the room , at least she had somewhere to sleep, if she even needed to sleep here.
She woman goes towards the sleeping bag and sits down, just thinking to herself for a while, contemplating her life now.
"Mama, I wish you knew I was here, I wish anybody knew I was here, maybe mama will look for me? She wouldn't just forget about me, right?"
As she thinks about ways her mother could come to, whatever this place was she remembered what one of those entities said.
"Dispose of it, she's useless to us now, I've already removed every trace and memory of them."
There really is no hope for her.
With nothing left, she brings her knees up to her face, wrapping her arms around her legs.
And then, she finally broke.
She just sat there, sobbing, and nothing else for what felt like eternity to her, something wiping her eyes only to keep crying over, and over, and over.
"These people, they've taken everything away from me" The woman says, tears filling her eyes "and all for these people that I even know or care about!" the woman continues with anger seeping though.
"I don't even matter to these people, all they care is this 'owl lady' and that 'belos' person"
As she leans her head down she takes notice of a light starting to illuminate the room, she doesn't budge at first, not wanting to get her hopes up, but the light keeps getting brighter and brighter.
She finally turns to look at the source of this light to see, a small cube which appears to be made of some glass material, she starts to crawl over to it, not having to energy to stand on both feet but still curious as to what this cube is, as she looks into the cube she can see a place she's never seen before, nevertheless it peaks her curiosity.
A tall masked man with a white and gold cloak and a golden mask with what appears to be antlers is seen walking through some kind of palace or castle, the castle has turquoise carpeting, as well as gold and white walls, along with banners with a symbol of an emblem of some sorts all across the walls, multiple men with bird shaped masks are also following the taller person in an orderly fashion.
from the other end of the hallway a much shorter person with red skin and what appears to be a hand covering the top of their head and one of their eyes approaches the taller man, with the taller man looking down to make eye contact.
"Kikimora, were you successfully able to capture the owl lady this time?" The taller man asks the short demon now identified as 'Kikimora.'
"No, emperor Belos, we weren't able to, but! I promise you I will if you let me try again-
The emperor raises his palm to her, signaling her to stop before walking away with no sign of any emotion, leaving Kikimora standing there annoyed, but not surprised.
As the emperor approaches a door which presumably goes to some sort of room for him, he signals for the soldiers following to stop as he goes into the room alone as the soldiers line up outside the door, patiently waiting for him.
"Alright Collector, you can come out now"
Behind the throne that lay just below a giant, seemingly decayed but still beating heart, a black, shadow-like entity rises from the darkness.
"Hey Belos, for a second I thought you were never coming back for a second, good to know you're still here to be able to let me free!" The shadowy figure exclaims with childish joy.
"Now Collector, you still have your end of the bargain before I can release you"
The Collector groans, "why can't I just use the draining spell now so we can play some games already!" he says with a pout.
"We still need to capture the owl lady, and we can't do the draining spell if there are still covenless witches" Belos explains, "and wild would not approve of what you want you want to do."
"You, mean play my games?"
Belos simply nods.
The Collector continues to talk to the emperor, with Belos responding with mostly dismissive comments, neither of them aware that they are being stalked by someone in a completely different realm.
The woman eagerly listens to everything the two are saying, she had figured out how to work out this cube, how saying people's names causes the cube to show a different person and how you can only watch from glass materials.
"Well, I know who this 'Belos' guy is now, but that doesn't explain who this 'owl lady' is, I don't even know her name yet, I need to find out her name."
She looks down at the cube once more before saying the name of the next person for her to watch.
"Kikimora"
The cube goes back to it's bright white self for a moment before changing to a perspective nearby to the short red demon who is currently venting her frustrations to a particularly disinterested soldier, something about not getting a promotion and how she's better at her job than her Clawthorne coworker,
"Lilith thinks she's so much better than me, even though I'm the one that does everything for the emperor!" Kikimora complains.
The soldier just nods, clearly not paying any attention to the demon.
After a while of not finding the name, or any information about the owl lady, she decided to observe this coworker that Kikimora wouldn't shut up about.
"Lilith Clawthorne"
The cube once again goes pale, switching to a perspective near a pale woman with long dark blue hair and formal clothing, she was by herself so it could concluded that this is Lilith. She is currently a room where judging by the wall design this was clearly still in the emperor's castle.
The woman takes note of how the woman looks remarkably similar to the woman illustrated in the poster downstairs.
"This, 'Lilith' has many of the same features as that owl lady had, skin color, body shape, heck, even their hands have a similar shape."
She keeps watching over Lilith, she knew this woman would have to spit out the name of the owl lady, even if they weren't related they had to have crossed paths before right? Belos said earlier that the owl lady needed to be captured, and Lilith works for the emperor as well.
After a long time of watching, Lilith finally starts to speak to nobody in particular.
"Sister, why can't you just join a coven? The emperor knows what's best for you Edalyn-"
"Edalyn, is that the name of the owl lady? Well, I guess there's only one way to find out." The woman says to herself without a hint of care for what Lilith is saying, it's not like she can affect it.
"Edalyn Clawthorne"
As soon as the perspective inside the cube changed the woman could immediately tell that this was the owl lady, but what she wasn't prepared for was for the owl lady to be scavenging through the carcass of a giant beached creature resembling some kind of worm with large red eyes on one of the sides and a mouth resembling that of some kind of squid.
As she looks around the what she can in the cube she also notices the giant skull far off in the distance, it looks vaguely like one from a human, however it has a smaller jaw than a human, as well as a nose on the skull, most strikingly however are the giant horns on either side of the skull.
"Is this that 'titan' the people who trapped me here were talking about? Well, it certainly lives up to it's name."
She was looking at the titan's remains for so long she almost didn't notice the owl lady walking away after getting everything she needed from the carcass of the giant animal, quickly noticing her departure, she quickly uses the cube to follow them. The orange haired witch continues walking to her place of residence, bag of junk alongside her as she continues her walk towards the house, her expression going from relatively happy, to annoyed as she sees what, or rather who, is still at the front of her property.
"Hey, didn't I tell you when I left to get out of my door?" Eda says, confronting the bird, head, that looks to be attached to her door.
"I ATE EIGHT BUGS WHILE YOU WERE GONE!" the owl head replied, oblivious of the question being asked to it.
The owl lady facepalms before entering her house with her bag of goods while Hooty is distracted by yet another bug.
The woman stops looking at the cube for a while, before picking it up and bringing it downstairs, she slowly makes her way down, careful not to step on the broken bottles that she almost forgot about.
As she exits and walks a few meters away from the house she holds the cube up to her face to compare to the house she was just in, it was absolutely certain that at least one of them was based off of the other, and she was willing to bet that the one she's looking at in the cube was the original.
"Why, what does this mean?"
"Why is there only one building here?"
"Why am I being used for something in a completely different realm!?"
"Why is this-"
Her ranting is interrupted by a loud landing noise above her, and light tapping afterwards.
After a good few minutes of standing still and thinking to herself the woman comes up with an idea to possibly see what's going on in the outside world, she says her own name to the cube.
The cube does what it's done every time she's said a new name, it glows before showing a large hole almost like a small crater, dirt is all around what she can see in all directions, aside from upwards where she can see the sky, trees with red leaves, and a giant skeletal finger of what she can assume to be a titan.
She's still able to hear tapping, as well as occasionally flapping noises, she watches for a while, the animal was clearly some kind of bird, but after what she's seen, the noises could be coming from anything.
Her doubts of the animal being an actual bird are proven true as a small gray and brown creature, it has the wings and beak of a bird but the limbs look like they would belong on a terrestrial mammal. the bird-mammal hybrid walks towards where the woman is watching from, pecking around a bit before walking on top her view.
"Go away you stupid animal, I'm trying to find a way to get out of this place!"
The creature did not move, it just stood there, looking down at her, it felt humiliating, that an animal can do more with their life than her now. The bird then began to back away little by little, never turning away, until a flash of light comes from where the human is watching from and decides to fly away.
"What the fuck? Now what?"
Just then she noticed something, something so small that some wouldn't even notice at all.
An echo, her voice had an echo.
She decides to experiment a little, with a deep breath, she shouts as hard as she can at the cube, and right on cue, she saw several more of those bird creatures fly up and out of the trees.
"That 'Collector' kid seemed to be trapped kind of like me, I'll need to observe more"
"Collector"
The woman eagerly watched the cube for a very long time, learning more about her world and how to escape it...
19 Years Later
Amity looks at herself in the mirror, only seeing an adorably goofy smile looking back, she is currently in her room at Blight manor, preparing for a date with Luz in the human realm, they were going to meet outside the Camila household as she was spending the day with Vee and her mom.
Neither of them wore anything special on their dates anymore, they had done that the first few times but it eventually faded out (or just them calling anything they did with each other a 'date') being together was enough for the both of them, so Amity just decides to wear her usual abomination themed clothes.
As Amity gets outside she checks her scroll to see what the time is before she goes.
3:47 am
Amity sighs, "of course, I'm an hour early, I guess I could walk, it's not that far."
She starts her walk to the owl house, Ghost on her shoulder as she looks around at the scenery of the forest, she had been on a few expeditions recently so she hadn't been able to observe the environment up close for quite some time, so it felt nice, even if she was only going to be walking for half an hour at most.
As she continues walking Ghost leans her head onto Amity's cheek, causing the witch to start scratching the palisman's chin.
"You like that don't you Ghost?" Amity asks, to which the palisman slowly closes her eyes, showing her comfort.
Amity suddenly stops, causing Ghost to look up at her, only for the palisman to start looking in the same direction as Amity, the both of them are looking, or rather listening to noises that sounded like, crying? With no hesitation, Amity speed walks towards the direction the noise is coming from, away from the direction the owl house was located, but that didn't matter right now, someone could be hurt, and she was early to her date anyway.
The noise leads Amity to a small area of the forest without any trees in it, yet surrounded by them. Inside the small clearing there lays a small disc-like object, it looks to be made of a glass like material, on the top at least, most noticeably however, is a symbol resembling a sun engraved on it. As Amity walks over to the peculiar object she immediately realizes that it's the cause of the crying noise.
"Seriously!? This is what was making the noise?" Amity sighs before she begins to walk away "Such a funny prank..."
"Wait!"
Amity looks back towards the disc with a confused expression.
"I'm trapped in here!"
The witch walks back to the disc before kneeling down in front it, only now noticing the similarities it has to what King described the object the Collector was trapped in to look like.
"Hello? Can you hear my voice?" Amity says, testing if she can communicate with the trapped person.
"Yes, I can, you're the only person I've talked with for so long a-and, I-"
"Slow down there miss, how did you get in this, object anyway?" Amity asks.
"Oh, yeah, this group of witch I didn't know restrained me, before using a spell to trap me in here..."
"Weird, I've never heard of a spell like that before"
"By any chance do you know a way I can get out of there?"
"Well, when those people where trapping me in here, they were talking about how only energy from the archivists could release me, and I doubt you have any of that around..."
Amity thinks to herself for a moment, "where could I get magic like that, we have no idea where the Collector could be..." She keeps thinking for a while, before before she realizes something.
"Hey, do you think just a little bit of magic from the Collector would be able to release you?"
"I-I don't see why it wouldn't"
"Okay, I'll be back soon, don't worry." Amity assures before running off.
The witch runs as fast as she can to the owl house, it's the only place she knew of that actually had Collector magic left over.
After a few minutes of running, she made it to the owl house, and approaches what part of it she needed, the portal door, more specifically the magic around the portal door, in the form of small bright lights reminiscent of snowflakes. Amity conjures an abomination spell, covering the door with it so we wouldn't miss any of the magic, to play it safe, she also briefly went to the human realm to do it again on the other side of the door.
It's not like they would need the magic in the future anyway...
As the witch finishes collecting the leftover magic she morphs her abomination into a makeshift container for all the magic, not letting any of it escape, someone's freedom was on the line after all...
The witch makes it back to the disc once more, magic with her.
"Hey, I'm back, brought back some magic leftover from the Collector with me." Amity says to the trapped witch.
"Oh my gosh, thank you so much!"
"No problem but, how exactly do I do this?" Amity asks.
"You just put the magic near the disc, and it should activate the disc, that will give an opening that you can put your hand into the pull me out" the trapped woman explains.
Amity nods before picking up the disc, resting it on it's side next to and tree, and putting her abomination goo in front the object, before commanding the goo the open on the side facing the disc. As the abomination follows it's master's command, the disc glows with a light yellow color as it pulls in the rest of the magic.
Amity crouches down and carefully reaches both of her hands out towards the disc, the hands going straight into it, much like the portal to the human realm.
"Okay, you grab my hand, I'll pull you out!"
Amity is confused when she doesn't feel anyone grabbing her hand, she can definitely feel around, but she can't feel anything around where she's grabbing.
"You're, gonna need to grab my hand, I can lower it you can't reach-"
The witch is cut off by something on her right hand, not grabbing it, but tugging onto it. Amity tries to free her other hand but she feels another arm grab right above her left wrist, slowly pulling her towards the disc as Ghost runs behind one the surrounding trees, scared and confused as to what's happening.
"Stop, pulling, me!" Amity mutters between breaths, "I can't get you out if you keep pulling me in!"
The woman remains silent as she continues dragging the witch inwards, causing the Blight to fall from her crouched position, face first right in front of the disc while still being pulled in.
"Please, stop! I can't, help, if you, drag me there too!" Amity begs with a shaky voice.
In response, the woman tugs even harder, enough to pull Amity's face even closer to the portal, forcing her to pull her head away to avoid it going into the disc as well.
In a last ditch attempt to get out of this situation, Amity tries to summon an abomination with her left hand that isn't being grabbed, as she tries to do it she feels a knee get trust right into her left wrist, causing her to cry out in pain as her she is pulled far enough in for her head to be in it.
Amity opens her eyes, still recovering from the blow to see a tall person with skin very similar to Luz, long messy brown hair and unkept clothes, most noticeably is that woman lakes a right eye, in a way that looks like it was forcibly removed.
The woman gives one last tug as Amity's full comes through the portal into the surprisingly white world, as Amity goes to pick herself up the woman quickly walks toward her, looking to the portal she just came from, making sure the stomp on both of Amity's hands on the way there, causing the witch to shout out in pain once more.
The witch weakly gets up, just soon enough to see the portal close behind her, with the mysterious woman nowhere in sight, concluding that they slipped through before it closed, as Amity looks around her she can see some weird replica of the owl house, still the same color as everything else though.
She also notices the cube that appears to be similar to what Luz said were in the in-between realm, on closer inspection she notices it displaying the place that the disc was just in, with the woman right in front of the view, looking right back at her.
"W-why? Do you even realize what you did?!" Amity shouts out.
The mysterious woman leans closer to the disc, seemingly knowing that's where the cube was watching from.
"I know exactly what I did, I just don't care about your wellbeing."
At that moment Amity also notices the woman's rounded ears.
"You, aren't a witch?"
"Of course not, but hey, guess that means I'll just have to take magic from others" The woman says with a smirk.
"Why were you even in this disc? What do you mean by 'taking magic?' Who even are you?!"
"Don't worry about that Amity Blight, while I'm not staying here, I'm sure you can get to know me very well"
"How, how do you know my name? I-I've never met you before" Amity manages to stutter out.
"Your questions will not be answered, but I can assure you of this..."
The woman leans further towards the disc, staring right at, and right at Amity.
"I'll take good care of your girlfriend."
The woman turns around and walks away, ignoring all of Amity's pleas not to hurt Luz, taking sadistic pleasure in breaking Luz's girlfriend.
Amity keeps pleading for a few minutes, even if deep down she knew the woman wasn't coming back, a couple tears make their way down Amity's face, before she hears a familiar sound.
"Meow!"
"Ghost! I'm so happy that you're okay!"
The palisman responds by walking over and tapping the disc with her paw, possibly as a way to comfort their owner.
"I, need you to go to the portal and go get Luz, I need to warn her about that, person"
Ghost looks at Amity for a bit longer before walking in the direction of the owl house, leaving Amity hoping that Luz is okay.
The woman walks through the forests of the boiling isles alone, looking at the flora that surrounds her as well as some griffins flying overhead, as she continues her journey she can see coast of the titan as well as the corpse of a trash slug, as she approaches she can see all the items inside of it, but that's not why she walked over.
She goes to one of the many teeth of the giant animal, before lowering herself, yanking at one of the pieces of skin around the giant tooth with as much strength as she could, but it wasn't enough.
Looking around for something to help, she sees a pointed rock nearby, she goes over to the rock before grabbing it, as she goes back to the same tooth she uses the rock to stab into the skin, and carve around the tooth, it took a few tries, but eventually she was able to forcefully able to tear the tooth from the carcass.
As she takes the tooth from the dead animal she looks all around the object, it would absolutely be able to do some damage to something, or someone, she would need it, as plenty of bloodshed would be need for what she had planned.
Walking towards the sea, she looks down at the water, her reflection looking back at her, before she touches the remains of her former right eye.
Backing away from the boiling sea, she sits down, looking off at the setting sun, she was finally free, but she wasn't happy.
For now though, she mentally prepares herself.
There's still a lot more she needs to do...