"So how are you any better than my uncle when you're doing this?" Hunter asked.
Luz, still riding out the after-effects of absorbing a piece of palistrom, rolled her eyes. "For one, Hunter, this is just raw palistrom wood, not someone's custom-made best friend. Beany and Ghost even gave permission to use their leftover scraps."
Stringbean hissed "That's right!" even though Hunter wouldn't be able to understand her.
"For two... I don't know why Belos eats palismen, but given his track record he's probably lying about being cursed," Luz continued. "I, meanwhile, am doing this to burn out the sigil that one of your buddies forced on me."
"Oh, that guy wasn't one of ours," Hunter replied. "Was an imposter who knocked out one of Lilith's scouts and stole his uniform. He was locked up in the conformatorium but someone busted him out. I do not know how Wrath still has his job," he mused.
Luz blinked. "But... How and why... Why would someone outside of the Emperor's Coven want to give me an... What purpose does... Ug, uh... Brain hurt!" She shouted in frustration as she tried to process that revelation.
"The Emperor was really mad when he found out," Hunter added. "Those things were never meant to be used on humans."
"He's probably mad because humans don't normally have much magic to steal," Luz deadpanned.
The door to the Owl House swung open with Hooty's cry of "Company!"
In stepped Willow, "Luz, I've got good news and bad news," the witchling declared. "The good news is, I got the goods."
"You got the goods?" Luz repeated.
"I got the goods," Willow confirmed with a confident nod. "The bad news is... Terra Snapdragon, the head of the Plant Coven, is in town for the Coven Day parade."
"Ugh, Terra Snapdragon," came Eda's voice as she walked into the room. "That miserable old hag is still alive? And why are we talking about her?"
"She um, noticed me buying several bags of expensive potting soil and fertilizer and got curious," Willow replied. "I told her I was working on a secret project for extra credit at Hexside, and... She recognized me from the news coverage of the riot."
"Ah, beans," Eda replied. "She gives you any trouble? Because if she did we can go take care of it now, bury her in the garden before we put in the new crop of agave." Eda paused for a moment. "Which reminds me, I'm doubling your cut of sale this month, Willow. That should more than pay back the cost of the goods."
"What are we talking about, now?" Hunter asked.
"Moonshining and bootlegging," Luz replied.
"That was you!?" The runaway shouted. "I was up all night three weeks ago trying to figure out where the black market liquor was coming from!"
"Kid, no one's been buying my potions since I lost my magic," Eda justified, "and someone broke-slash-stole the portal key so I can't sell human treasures either. Gotta do something to keep the water running."
Hunter had the decency to look ashamed.
"No, Ms. Snapdragon just said... to please tell my friend the human that the Emperor is looking forward to meeting her."
Luz blinked. "But... I've already met him. And beat him up. Did I hit him so hard he got short-term memory loss?"
"Who knows," Eda said with a shrug. "Probably just trying to psych you out. So, Willow, you got the goods?"
"I got the goods," Willow confirmed once more.
Stepping outside, Willow led the group to a wagon filled with three forty-pound bags of soil labeled "Terra's Choice" and two similarly large bags of fertilizer named "Snapdragon's Best."
"Wow, egocentric much?" Luz observed.
"I need an extra large cauldron," Willow declared.
"Hooty?" Eda called out.
"Ma'am!" the bird-tube replied before ramming his head directly into the ground. After thirty seconds of undulating he burst back up through another part of the yard tied up in a tight bunch before unfolding and depositing a cauldron big enough to boil a missionary in on the ground. "Found it in the sub-basement, hoot hoot."
"We have a subbasement?" Luz asked.
"Forget you heard that!" Hooty shouted with shifty eyes before retracting back to the door.
After the cauldron was thoroughly scrubbed and then rinsed off, the soil and fertilizer were dumped into the cauldron which was then set over a fire as Willow started stirring it with a large, oar-like staff. Clover had initially sat on Willow's shoulder but after a few moments buzzed off to play with Stirngbean.
Shortly afterward, Gus flew in. He was still getting the hang of flying on his staff but he was getting better, even if his means of flying was more surfing than riding.
He landed. "Hey, Luz, hey Willow, hey... What's your name again?" he said to Hunter.
Hunter sighed. "Hunter. My name is Hunter."
"So, Willow," Eda started as she put her scroll away, having taken it out and sent a message off as Gus arrived, "could you walk me through what exactly you're doing? I've gotta admit, I wasn't able to spy on all that many plant classes before I dropped out."
"One of the more moderate level applications of plant magic is a simple ritual where the interaction between a few plants produces a hybrid vine that extracts impurities from a sample of soul," Willow lectured happily. "And then produces those impurities in concentrated form for testing or study. This is actually how most potting soil on the Isles is made in the first place. What I am doing is scaling up the ritual and modifying it so that instead of impurities..."
"It'll draw out the Titan Earth," Eda finished. "Good thinking, Kid."
"So we're doing this today?" Gus asked.
"If Luz is feeling up to doing it today," Willow confirmed. She then hummed to herself, "Snakeroot," while throwing a root into the cauldron.
"I should be able to handle it," Luz replied. "I mean, I already took in my palistrom for today but it was just a small piece, I'm fine."
Hunter seemed startled by the implications "Wait, you're going to—"
Suddenly Amity came flying in on her staff, shouting "Luz! I have a. prob.. Oh, are we doing this?"
"We're doing this," Luz confirmed.
"Wanna help?" Willow asked as she added some mustard seeds and a bulbous buttercup.
"No," Amity answered. "You're much better at plant magic than I'll ever be."
"Suit yourself," Willow replied while adding what looked like holly leaves and houndstounge.
"You're... Going to... Absorb Titan Earth?" Hunter asked incredulously. "The very flesh of the Titan mixed with that of the first plants and fungi to grow from it and the minerals of the boiling sea? That's... That's... Gotta be some kind of sacrilege."
"You literally use it as fertilizer," Luz quipped.
"Yes, respectfully, to give new life from the Titan's death as the Titan itself has been for millennia," Hunter replied while Willow added dogtooth violet, poppyseed, ivy, and garlic to the cauldron. "Not, not... Just.."
"I need to absorb magic to burn out the sigil," Luz replied. "And I can't afford to be picky. Besides, The Titan is okay with it."
"You can't know that!" Hunter countered.
"Yes I can, he said so in the dream where he contacted me," Luz replied. "And Doctor Strange's lecture on sorcery the other day confirmed some of the information that the Titan told me that I didn't know before that dream so that was probably real."
Everything got really quiet for a moment.
"Luz," Amity began slowly. "This is... The kind of thing that you tell us as soon as it happens instead of... We are bad at keeping each other in the loop."
"Um... It's done," Willow said awkwardly. "I just need to... Clover?"
As she called her palisman, the large bee flew from where she and Stingbean, since having been joined by Ghost and Emmeline, and transformed into a staff that fell in Willow's waiting hand.
Planting the base of the staff firmly on the ground, Willow conjured a large green spell circle as her eyes glowed to match and a massive vine slowly curled out of the cauldron and slithered and stretched toward Luz before a giant meaty-looking flower budded off the tip before blooming, containing a pile of a coarse, dark-reddish brown almost black looking substance.
"Poke it," Willow said, "if I did it right, it should be spongey, like peat."
Luz obliged, and it was spongey. "So it's supposed to be a dark browish-read almost black, right?"
Hunter walked around Luz to get a good look at it. "Yeah, that's Titan Earth... Oh, Holy Prophet of the Titan."
"Never call me that again," Luz replied. "In fact, if you're going to get weird about it forget I said any of that."
She then let the symbiote goo engulf her hands and carefully scooped up the Titan Earth. Just as she let the goo start absorbing it she heard Eda shout, "Luz, wait for Tiny!"
Huh. She had thought that she was forgetting something.
"Oops."
Titan Earth hurt a lot more than the palistrom did, but less than Titan Breath did. She managed to avoid screaming as the sensation of something clawing through her veins that she'd come to be familiar with occurred but she did end up stumbling and landing on Hunter.
"I'm okay," she said afterward.
"You're heavier than you look," Hunter grunted as he summoned his staff to use as a sort of lever to push them both up into a standing position.
"Why did you do that instead of just getting up the normal way?" Luz asked as she regained her balance.
"Don't question my methods," Hunter replied, stern-faced, as Flapjack animated and flew off to join the growing convocation of palismen, which Clover had returned to once Willow had no further need of her aid.
Eda gave a long-suffering sigh. "You are so lucky that I don't have it in me to ground you right now. You sure you're okay?"
"Yeah," Luz confirmed.
"You don't need a pain potion?" Eda asked.
"No, I don't need a pain potion," Luz denied.
"You sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure. If I need a pain potion I'll tell you I need a pain potion," Luz would have rolled her eyes if she didn't know they were just concerned... Or how bad the Titan Blood and Bone had hurt to absorb.
Amity walked over and took Luz's hand. "You know you don't need to put on a strong face for us, right?"
"I'm fine, Hermosa," Luz replied. "Honest. I'm... I'm getting better at handling this and it only hurts a little bit more than the magic from palistrom does."
"I don't like that you're getting used to pain," Amity said with a sadly scrunched face.
"It is what it is," Luz replied. "and that's four humor's down. Titan Bile's the only one left. Anyway, you said you had a problem when you got here. What's wrong?"
Oh, uh, it's nothing important," Amity tried to deflect. "I'll figure something out."
"You sure? You were acting like you needed help," Luz answered. "If you need help all you have to do is ask."
Amity looked like she ate a lemon, then sighed and started. "Blight Industries has a float in the Coven Day parade this year. They're going to show off the new generation of Abomitons," Amity muttered something in disgust. "When I got home from school today my mother sprung on me that she expected the whole family to be present and I lied and said that we had made plans to watch the parade together and, well, since she's still under that Everlasting Oath not to interfere in my relationships she had to let me off the hook but... If we're not seen together watching the parade I could get into a lot of trouble later."
Off to the side, Eda pulled out her scroll again as she got a message, but Luz focused on Amity. "Okay, so we go to the parade together."
"You sure you're feeling up to it?" Amity asked
"Amity, I'm fine," Luz insisted again. "And unless parades in the demon realm involve the audience fighting something even if I wasn't I think I can handle sitting next to my girlfriend for a couple of hours."
"Well," Eda announced, "I just got a message from Rainestorm. They got pressured into doing a performance for the parade and Terror Snapcase is acting creepy. They could really use some support and their students are still laying low, so... I guess we're all going... Except for Blondie."
There had been no sign that the Golden Guard was missing or was being looked for, but it couldn't be ruled out that this was just to avoid the public asking questions. So Hunter didn't make many trips into town, especially in places where running into members of the Emperor's Coven was likely, and wouldn't until they could come up with a good cover story and disguise for him. A Holiday and parade celebrating the emperor and the coven system? Likely to be crawling with scouts working security.
"You gonna be okay here alone for a few hours, kid?" Eda asked Hunter.
"I'll be fine," Hunter dismissed. "I've gone days without interacting with anyone before." That did very little to reassure anyone.
"I could stay with him?" Willow offered. "My family doesn't really do anything for Coven Day."
"I can stay, too," Gus added. "My Dad's usually busy on Coven Day."
"Okay, it's settled," Eda declared. "Goops and Willow will keep an eye on Blondie and make sure he doesn't burn my house down while the rest of us are at the parade. We'll head out... As soon as Tiny gets here and checks over Luz to make sure she's not downplaying anything."
"No trust," Luz quipped. "No respect or regard, either."
"Luz, we both know that if I didn't trust you I never would have let you enroll at Hexside," Eda replied. "I don't have time to sit next to you in all your classes to make sure you don't get brainwashed."
"Fair enough!" Luz declared.
Then she heard Stringbean hiss, and she could have sworn that the palisman had said "Then it's settled. We attack the fairy nest at midnight."