Chapter 3

King clung to the staff behind Adora, his eyes wide. “Have you ever flown a staff before!?” He exclaimed, while Adora clung to the staff she was holding – seeing that the capstone of it was a coiled up, tentacular octopus. Adora, for herself, had a single thing going through her head.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhctually this isn’t so bad!

She sat up a bit and felt the staff shift under her weight as her fingers tingled with the touch of magic. She crested the brown trees and swept up behind Catra and Scorpia, the two of them streaking through the air with the wizard Radaghast in tow. She frowned intently, while King clambered up her back and peeked his head over his shoulder.

“You’re a natural, Adora!” he said, cheerfully. “I was sure you’d crash and die instantly.”

“Y-Yeah!” Adora said, laughing softly. “I guess this comes from reading every single Azura book.” She grinned, sheepishly. “And my mom said that it was stupid. And would stunt my growth. And kinda satanic. Also, she once saw the cover where Hectae and Azura teamed up and grilled me if it was gay, and, like, what was I supposed to say? Not tell her that Prince John Glitterding and the King of the Rogues, George, totally hook up! It’s very sub-textual, but it’s there and-”

“Uh, Adora, they’re landing,” King said, his voice flat.

“Oh!” She blinked.

The two were sweeping down towards a thick, old growth part of forest.

“Right!” Adora squared her shoulders and started to bring her borrowed staff down – repressing the guilty twinge in her belly at having stolen it. When she landed, it was behind a tree and some brushes, and when she peeked around the tree, she saw that Scorpia and Catra were both looking around, Catra looking furious.

“Oh my Titan,” Catra groaned. “Where is Entrapta!?”

“Probably distracted,” Scorpia said, clacking her claws.

Catra sighed, then reached into her robes. She yanked out a small ... Adora blinked. It looked like a crow, save that it had tiny holes on the chest, and when the mouth opened, Adora swore she could see a microphone in it. Crow ... Phone? She thought, while Catra spoke into it. “Guard Entrapta, you better have a really, really, really good reason for not being here,” she said.

“I sure do!” Entrapta’s voice came from the phone. “This place is full of illegal schematics and diagrams. This guy’s definitely a demon, probably a puppeteer, and he’s got a bunch of ... ooh, faaaaascinating!”

“Well, okay,” Catra said, seeming mollified. “Record everything and-”

“Log Number One: Puppeteer is capable of simulating entire environments using a kind of psycho-reactive fog emitted from their fog glands!” Entrapta’s voice came from the phone, cutting Catra off.

“You’re using your phone, Entrapta!” Catra snapped.

“Oh! Sorry!”

The phone clicked and the beak swung shut as Catra shook her head and shoved the phone into her robes. She turned, then, to Radhagast. “Wizard, huh?” she asked, then smirked, reaching up. She rubbed the back of her palm against his cheek and a single dark claw snicked out of her fingertip. “This thing you’re leading me too better be really amazing, or else we get to find out how good a puppeteer demon’s fog glands work when they’re attached to an abomination soldier.” She chuckled.

“U-Uh...” Radaghast paled.

Wind picked up around Adora’s feet. She frowned, then looked over her shoulder – she swore she had...

“Did you hear that?” King whispered.

“I almost did too,” she whispered back. She glanced back at Radaghast, who was hastily spilling every detail he could. His voice echoed as she walked towards the sound of the distant voice – and when she brushed aside some hanging leaves, she saw that the trees had grown up and around an ancient looking manor house, the kind of big-as-heck mansion that she had always dreamed about living in, ever since she had read the first Azura book when she was a kid. Course, in the real world, people weren’t just foundling orphan witches who got recruited by sage old mentors.

Yeah. Real world. Like the demon realm? Adora thought.

Distantly, she heard Radaghast: “T-This was once a haven of wild witches, before the Emperor ... ahem...”

She almost stepped on a long white bleached skull, sitting among the leaves. Adora jerked her foot up and froze.

“ ... dealt with them.”

“Eep!” Adora whispered, while King pointed – and she saw that the manor house front doors were blasted inwards, long splintered and left to rot. Adora hastily stepped over the skull, then came to the stairs leading up to the front doors, where she saw that there was a scratched out name above the door – with only the last bit visible under the marks. ... skull. Adora frowned, then started inside of the building. She saw around her every bit of lost grandeur: Scorched, burned up furniture, rotting floorboards, a long dusty chandelier that clung to the ceiling, vines of thick orange leaves growing in through every window. The entire place reeked of dust and mildew ... and death. King waved his paw before his nose.

“Ugh,” he said. “And I thought the Owl House had a distinctive smell.”

“It’s ... not exactly what I expected to see from a wild witch,” she said, shrugging. “I expected more, like. A hut.”

“Emperor Belos calls everyone who doesn’t follow his rules a wild witch,” King said, nodding. “It can include stuffy jerks like whoever lived here, not just cool people like me!” He paused. “Or Eda, I guess.”

Adora clutched the staff between her hands, biting her lip hard. She looked at the stairs that led up to the second story – but no. That didn’t feel right. Her gaze slowly tracked across the room, looking for a basement entrance. She felt the call of ... of something. Her chest ached as she put her hand against her throat, rubbing her fingers there.

Crack.

Adora spun around.

Catra, her robes fluttering around her shoulders, her staff nowhere to be seen, smirked as she leaned against the door frame.

“Hey Adora,” she said, her voice a dangerous purr.

Adora clenched her shoulders and tightened her fists around her, uh, borrowed staff. Catra shook her head slowly. “Titan, I am ... really thinking I should bring up Kikimora’s hiring practices to Lilith, there has to be a way we can get someone who doesn’t let her staff get stolen out from behind her.”

The staff shook and trembled, suddenly. Catra chuckled. “Ah, she finally noticed,” she said, while Adora dug her feet in, straining hard to keep a hold of the staff – but the stick wrenched out of her hands and shot away with so much collected momentum that it shot straight at Catra like a cannonball. Catra took a step half an inch to the side, the smirk not even leaving her features as the staff whistled past her shoulder and made her robes billow dramatically.

“Nice try,” she said.

“I wasn’t trying to hit you, Kat!” Adora said.

“Catra,” Catra said, scowling. “That little girl you used to look down on isn’t here anymore, Adora.”

“I-” Adora took a step backwards, her hands clenching. “What ... happened to you, Kat?”

Catra scowled at her. “What happened? Well, lets see, after you abandoned me to die in the forest so you didn’t get in trouble, I was found by someone who actually cares about me, taught about a real god that actually exists and shown how to use magic.” She smirked. “I’m hot stuff here, Adora, and you’re ... you.” She shook her head. “Still wearing dumb red jackets, still doing your hair like an absolute goofball. It’s kinda sad.”

Adora frowned at her. “You’re working for a tyrant.”

“Yeahhhh, I’m sure the ‘wild mages’ who live in mansions like this were soooooo nice,” Catra said, rolling her eyes and taking another step forward. “Belos has a vision for these islands. And it’s a vision where I’m given what I’ve earned.”

Adora stepped back again, frowning. “And what is that, huh?” she asked. “How many people have you sent to that Conformatorium?”

“Less than you’d think,” Catra said, grinning as her claws snicked out. “A lot of them prefer to fight.”

Adora frowned. “Well, I’m not going to let you just...”

“What? Throw a demon who scams people into deadly traps and eats them into prison?” Catra crossed her arms over her chest and laughed. “Titan, Adora, you really are a rube. Like, you should maybe talk to that Owl Lady of yours about her harmless pranks in the human realm. Or maybe, her c-”

Adora’s foot settled on a plank that snapped in half with a gunshot fierce crack. Adora had a single moment of paralyzing terror, then she fell backwards as a patch of floor the size of a small car opened up under her and she plunged straight down into darkness.

Catra stepped over to the edge, peering down. “Adora?” she called down. “Are you dead?”

Silence.

Catra shook her head. “You dummy.”

She used one of her bare toes to scrawl a rune onto the ground and kicked it with her heel. A vine of glowing green plantlife exploded up and she snatched it up and out of the air, then leaped down the pit – lowering herself inch by inch on the vine.

Scorpia, who stood in the doorway with Radaghast, gulped.

“I gotta find stairs!” she said. “ ... or use this staff!” She held her staff up, waggling it in the air.

Adora sat up, feeling her arm throbbing in a way that she knew meant it was very, very broken. “K-King, are you okay?” she hissed – peering around in the dimness of the basement. There was a very faint blue light coming from somewhere.

“Y-Yeah, I’m okay!” King scampered to her. They were both laying in a pile of rubble, but there was no sign of the hole they had fallen down. She remembered being swept to the left, then the right, tumbling head over heels, not simply shooting straight down. Considering how long she had fallen, that did make sense. She smiled at him sheepishly, taking out her phone. She tapped on the flashlight one handed, holding her arm close to her chest, and King scampered up her back and shoulder again, nosing at her nervously. “Your arm! I heard it crack!”

“I’m fine!” Adora said, smiling shyly. She had tried to shield his body as best as she could. “I always had kinda brittle bones, actually. Doctor said I had a calcium deficiency and everything.” She bit her lip, swinging the phone slowly around – and saw that she was in an enclosed rectangular chamber, with the only exit being a kind of a hatch in the wall, with a leering skull carved on it in a bass relief. She frowned, slightly.

“How did we get here?” she asked.

“I think this house has a house demon in it,” King said, hesitantly. “But if it’s still alive, it’s not very talkative.”

“Right, like ... the tube thing...” Adora whispered.

“Hooty!” King said. “He’s an abomination, but we all tolerate him.”

Adora gulped, then walked to the hatch. She held her phone in her teeth while she touched the wheel with her good hand and found it spun easily. She twirled it around and opened the hatch – and found the blue light had been leaking around the edges of the hatch. It came around the corner, bouncing down from a corridor. She gulped. “Hmphmnk phht eh hey hoot?”

“Huh?” King asked.

She grabbed her phone with her hand. “Think that’s the way out?”

“If it is, then your scary ex is that way,” King said.

“She’s not my-” Adora flushed, hard, and ... and hated how her belly fluttered with butterflies and rainbows at the very idea, despite her broken arm. “She’s not my ex. But ... we can always run back the other way.”

She tried to not imagine what running on a broken arm would be like.

She walked down the corridor, past other chambers, which looked in on rusted swords, spears, axes, and bows. She hesitated at some of those, peering in with her phone, whispering. “What was this place? An armory?” She bit her lip. “M-Maybe Catra was right. Maybe these people were bad – or ... or maybe they were a resistance to Belos?” She liked that idea a bit more.

“Eda did say there were some people, way back when Belos first founded the empire, who fought back,” King said, rubbing his muzzle with his clawed hand. “They were all led by one family, whose name was ... was...” He paused. “I can’t remember!”

“Heh, we can ask her when we get ... back...”

Adora stood before the entrance to the room where the blue light was coming from. Save it wasn’t coming from inside the room. It was coming from a radiant blue wall of pure energy, crackling and buzzing. As Adora watched, the light flickered once or twice – beginning to fade, it looked like. She bit her lip, then whispered. “They made a shield to protect that place. But it’s fading. How long can a spell last?”

“Unno!” King said, shrugging.

“Okay, let me try something.” Adora said. Then she mentally smacked herself. “King, can you hold this?”

“Hold your lightcube? Sure!” King said, taking her phone in his claws and then beginning to shine it around in every direction but where she needed it to be shone. Since the flickering field was providing intermittent blue glow in the corridor, Adora was able to pick up a chunk of rubble from the floor with her good hand. She hefted it and tossed it, trying to time it for when the shield was flickering down. The rock sailed through. She nodded.

“Okay,” Adora said. “Hold on.”

“Why wou-weh!” King yelped as Adora leaped.

She felt a tingling buzz...

Then she was through, skidding to a stop inside of the chamber the shield was protecting. “Yes!” she hissed, clenching her teeth as the landing sent jarring, shooting bolts of pain along her arm. She gasped softly – then blinked as she noticed the strobing pulse was offline. She turned back and saw the shield was just gone now. “Oh come on!” She grumbled. “If I waited five seconds, I could have just walked through!?”

“Thems the breaks!” King said, swinging the phone around wildly, plunging Adora’s view into darkness, then light, then darkness again.

She grabbed the phone back with her good hand.

“Weh!”

Adora slowly tilted her view around and saw that she stood in a room that looked as if it had once been a planning center. It was empty, the chairs long since knocked over, the table in the middle having a dusty carving of what looked like a supine, skull faced corpse sprawled on it, with the knee jutting up into the air, the palms spread wide as it lay back in death. Adora walked towards it, her voice soft. “What is that?”

“Uh, a map?” King said, sounding annoyed.

“A map of what!?” Adora gasped.

“The ... The Boiling Isles!”

“That’s the Boiling Isles!?” Adora spluttered, looking at him with shock.

“Yeah!” King said. “We’re all living on the body of a vast decaying Titan, the god we worship! Neat, huh?”

Adora gulped.

Then she lifted her gaze up to the head of the table and realized she was mere inches away from a decaying skeleton, clutching a long, deadly looking sword. Adora screamed and jumped backwards, then screamed again as her broken arm was jarred. She dropped her phone, and the light shone upwards, casting terrifying shadows as the skeleton slowly leaned forward, breathing out a misty pall, a sigh like the end of the world. Adora scrabbled backwards and the skeleton fell forward onto the ground with a crash, bones flying apart, and a long desiccated chunk of flesh tumbling away from the ribcage. The sword rang with a musical note as it crashed to the ground – trembling and buzzing, while King clung to Adora’s shoulder.

“It’s okay! It’s okay!” he said. “it’s just a dead guy, not a monster or anything.”

“ ... r-right...” Adora whispered, trying to control her thundering heart.

Then she heard, distantly.

“There you are!”

She snapped her head back to the door – and then looked back at the sword.

“K-King, are there any other exits?” She asked, grabbing onto the sword, hissing as she stood. The sword was sleek and perfectly balanced. The metal of the blade was obsidian black, the hilt bone white. There was a bright, gleaming orange eye in the center of the crossguard – a hardened gemstone that glittered and flashed. The sword itself felt spectacularly fitted to her hand, as if her whole life, she had been waiting to hold it. King, scrambling down to her phone, swung it around.

“No! We’re trapped!” he said.

“Looks like we’re gonna have to fight then,” Adora said. She bit her lip, looking down at the sword.

And for a moment, reflected in the light of the phone, were ... glowing letters. Glyphs. She swore they were akin to the things she had seen being scrawled by Catra to cast her magic. Her brow furrowed and she swore ... she swore...

“Adora, if you really wanted to get a tour of bad ideas, you could have let me take you to Lilith’s book club,” Catra said, walking in through the door, surrounded by a nimbus of glowing pale white balls of shimmering light – they danced around her like fireflies.

Adora tried to lift her gaze.

But she couldn’t.

Her mind was consumed with one question.

“ ... Adora?” Catra asked. “What is that?”

“It’s a sword,” Scorpia whispered, sotto voce, as she walked up behind Catra.

“I know it’s-”

Adora muttered, softly. “By the honor...”

“What?” Catra asked, frowning.

But Adora was sure now.

She held the sword above her head, following an instinct that sang bright and true inside of her. Something throbbed in her heart – like a golden heat, like the beginning of a dawn. It was fierce, and it scared her – but what scared her more was how eager she was to feel it burn all the brighter. The words came from her mouth then, a bellow that shook the room.