Know or do not. Will they recognize, do actions with honor still count as lies?
Luz could hardly see anything. Where was Hunter? Everything was blurry from the walls to the ceiling to the ground. She couldn’t see Hunter. Her throat was dry and she could barely speak. She was failing. “Can’t fail” she croaked.
She almost smiled. At least she could remind herself of her objective. “Have to get” she coughed and decided that was close enough to what she meant to say. “Can’t stay here.” "Need to be there-” This time she didn’t finish on purpose.
Saying need to be there for Hunter felt undeserved. She had failed in being there for him so far. If her vision just cleared a little and her ears stopped the ringing they just started she’d be good to go. She’d be fine if she got to Hunter before the loopiness started and convinced him to stay long enough. It would be okay!
She dragged herself across the floor. If she got to the door things she could get herself through it then down the stairs and out the front door. Getting more awake all the while. It would be okay! “Need to go.” She was slipping but she needed to find Hunter! “No” she croaked before the blurry light went out.
Hunter
Hunter had heard Luz wake up and start panicking. She was sick as he found when he felt her forehead. It seemed to be the common mold so Hunter left the room at optimal patient conditions with the common mold. Then he headed to the spot where he hid the illusion spell that made him look like her.
Hunter had this in the bag. He really did. He just had to think like Luz. And act like her all day. And fool everyone and not get caught or Luz would get hurt.
Still, he totally had this he had seen her mannerisms for years he had even practiced mimicking them just in case he ever had to pretend to be her so she could escape but there was a difference between tricking a few coven guards who didn’t know Luz (and were probably less than bright. Hunter was fairly sure they were trying to recruit not smart individuals.
Who didn’t know about the basic theory behind why illusions didn’t trick illusionists and did trick everyone else? Or who hadn’t researched about why bard music could go through stone but not through something blocking the ears? (he was pretty sure it was a mix of a proper seal and intent though he could be wrong it had not been fully conclusive) these were things they should know!
Knowing that 1/9 of the population had a minor advantage meant you could counter it and what use was knowing things worked if you didn’t know why?
How could you improvise if you didn’t know why things worked and in that what else would work?
Anyway, he was going to be fine. He calmed himself down. Very few people were particularly good at noticing things and even if people noticed (one part of his brain screamed everyone would) if anyone could get away with acting weird for a day it was Luz(or him pretending to be her)
He unfolded her schedule; she had given it to him for “if he ever needed to find her” back when she was nine and then she had proceeded to renew it every year since.
He had a hard time recalling it but he was fairly certain he had it right. If he needed to he could ask her teachers he couldn’t be sure it would work but the reward outweighed the risk.
He remembered her saying a couple of years ago that everyone often knew what class she had been in most recently because she’d walk in displaying a core feature of the class: claw marks, or abomination goo, or mud, or completely fine so they knew she was just in healing. (he was fairly sure that the last one was a joke but he wasn’t sure)
He knew Luz was competent with her schedule and he didn’t want to discredit her by mixing it up but hopefully, if he did mix it up he could blame it on a previous class.
If anyone could inform a teacher they possibly had a concussion ask the teacher what class they had next and get out quick enough the teacher didn’t call anyone it was Luz, and he didn’t imagine he’d be too shabby at it either.
He peeked out from the tree he was hiding behind. He really wished Flapjack was here. He missed him already. When he got back to his Uncle’s castle he would see him again. He might be a tad grumpy but he would make sure to make it up to him and as a bonus, he could send Flapjack’s grumpy pics to the captain (she thought they were funny) and Flap usually stopped sulking after that as he usually decided he had been acting childish.
(Hunter had once asked him if he meant hatchling-ish or something similar and Flapjack gave him an hour-long lecture on how that was not the case based on palisman development patterns and the fact he was never a hatchling. Hunter had wanted to re-ignite the topic so he avoided it.)
He would be back soon, after just a school day which was 7 hours (give or take), and then back to tell Luz off. He could then go back no he decided first he would have to find something that would make up for his extended absence and then he could go back and take whatever punishment was necessary.
He hoped he wouldn’t have to come close to mentioning Luz to the emperor. It would make things harder. He dealt with much bigger things than this every day. He looked up at the school and forced himself out from behind the tree. He had this in the bag. The school teachers, students, and owl lady wouldn’t know a thing.
EDA
The Owl Lady sighed she had just checked Luz's temperature and it was high. Not terribly high but high enough she wasn’t going to school. Eda knew something was wrong when she woke up.
Well, not quite but Luz was usually up on Mondays and getting ready for school the fact no loud sounds came was a large warning. Sometimes Luz simply wasn’t up and that was okay but just checking her room confirmed Eda’s suspicion.
Usually, it would be fine if Luz was sick. Eda hadn’t been too worried in years about Luz being sick since Eda had learned all the boiling isle’s main sickness simply switched up Luz’s symptoms. This particular week though it was very bad news on the forgetting about worries count. If she was up all day with her worries it would not be good. Eda had to hope Luz wasn’t lucid enough to worry about life problems.
She’d hoped this sickness was along the lines of the common mold. Still, Eda would be very angry if Luz had the common mold now. It might be the season but she had the mold a week ago! Luz did need to take better care of herself but Eda also needed to step up her game.
King walked into the room clutching Francois.
“What”….? He asked before seeing Luz's sleeping form. “She’s sick again”. King said, looking at Luz in confusion. “How is she sick again”? He looked at Eda this time as if she’d had the answer to the question. Guilt curdled in her stomach. She should. Eda was going to get to the bottom of this.
“I don’t know but you should get out of her room, you might get sick too.”
“I don’t know” King considered “Luz got cool fungi hair last time.” He looked like he was weighing the risks and benefits.
Eda interceded he looked like was going to come to the decision that he would stay.
“Sorry bud but Luz needs her sleep”(true) “and she can’t sleep with you in here” (not untrue) “Also we can’t be sure you would even react the same way”(not super true as everyone who she had ever met had gotten something fungi related but who knew if King would get a fungi-hat?
She sat him down with a sketchbook and all the craft utensils he would need. “Go crazy.” She really hoped he didn’t do what he did last time she said that in a similar situation but he’s not 7 anymore he’s 8 now. He was probably grown up enough. It would be fine.
After she walked away she peered back at him from the doorway he was drawing circles, glyphs circles. Ones she had never seen before. Before as more piled up she realized none she had seen before. He was trying to make more glyph combos.
Eda smiled moments like this made Eda almost agree with her kid on King’s level of sweetness. She hadn’t screwed up too badly in raising him. She’d even say she did pretty well, but she still had a decent amount of years to fuck things up.
She walked to Luz's bedroom. Everything was messy and she couldn’t clean too much. She was terrible at it and even if she had been excellent she couldn’t have moved too much since Luz wouldn’t know where things were anymore but she cleared a sufficient area.
There was still a large eyesore in the form of a covered object. She thought it was an old blackboard she still had and she knew it hadn’t been in Luz's room a few days ago. She had said she wouldn’t snoop but sometimes she had to make sure Luz wasn’t doing things like planning to overthrow the emperor, without her.
She pulled the sheet off and she could not comprehend what she was seeing. Words like stay and because and why jumped out at her. A moment or two later she walked over to the papers Luz had and looked at them then at some notecards all of it was in the same vein. She knew what Luz’s plan was now and she did not like it at all. Eda groaned.
Hunter
Hunter’s day surprisingly had not blown up in his face. And he was halfway through! It was surprisingly going well. Beast keeping nearly blew up in his face as his animal had (Obviously) recognized he was not Luz. He (Hunter thought he heard the teacher refer to him as he but he could have misheard.) tried to attack Hunter.
He got him a little before he got away but no serious damage. Hunter remembered a calming technique just in time. The animal was kind of adorable so copying Luz's reaction to a cute animal wasn’t too hard.
All the animals were interesting. He had risked checking out the other animals after he finished early. Luckily he didn’t have to talk to anyone as most of Luz's classmates were having trouble with their animals.
One student asked Luz for help (he almost forgot to respond to her name) and he nearly freaked out but it ended up being something he had enough knowledge on to help.
There was bard class he had done pretty terribly. He felt horrible but luckily the teacher didn’t mark him up (therefore marking Luz up) when he said he was having an off day.
He had been lucky enough to pass a classroom where a teacher handed him some homework like she did it regularly. In healing class he managed to pull off the healing mixture Luz was meant to make based on the theory he knew of it, but he wished he had done better. It was chunky! It wasn't supposed to be chunky! On top of that, it was several shades away from the shade it was meant to be!
The teacher had tried to calm him down and another student had been comforting but he really wasn’t acting like Luz was in the moment. Luz got quiet and slumped her shoulders when she was disappointed with herself. He managed to do that eventually but it was after a couple minutes.
He noted the interaction to report to Luz.
He had managed to act close enough to Luz. At least he hadn’t acted particularly unlike her. She might have wandered around checking out the other animals after she was done. He managed to act positively on his poor instrument performance which Luz would likely do.
He only had the minor freak out over the healing class mix up and when he DIYed healing patches ( that’s what a classmate had called it like it was an inside joke. He was guessing it was likely Luz who started calling it DIY) his work was very precise.
He had only stayed after for 3 minutes or so to finish and the teacher only complained once about ’just finishing it already’. It looked good. Luz probably would have run off to lunch but she cared about her work so staying wasn’t unlikely. Hunter had found an empty classroom to eat in with sufficient dust that he thought no one had been in there for a while.
He had finished her construction homework. It was just basic math. Advanced trig and some early calculus. Medium level stuff. He wasn’t sure he should have finished it but Luz would have to get back to school tomorrow so finishing it would give her extra recovery time.
Luckily he didn’t have any serious homework one of Luz's teachers had said to, ‘Think about the question’ she had ‘asked last time’. He would just have to hope Luz would know what it was and that she had thought about it.
“There you are,” Hunter looked up. A witch stood in the doorway. She had blue-ish gray hair with a streak of green in it right above her left ear. She was wearing a plant track uniform. She was smiling at him in a way that said she knew Luz well. This was not good.
The witch stuck her head back out the door “Gus, I found her” a voice called back something he couldn’t make out and Hunter was very worried now. The witch started towards him and he shot up from his sitting position. The witch looked at him strangely but then shrugged it off.
"Luz why weren’t you in the cafeteria"
“I had homework.”
The witch furrowed her brow.”You usually do it with us."
That was bad but at least he knew what to say to that.
He shrugged “It was a little loud in there.” Luz had talked about how sometimes she had to work somewhere quiet and when she needed quiet was unpredictable.
“I yelled over to you that I was finding somewhere else to work” he hated to lie to Luz's friend (if that was who this witch was) but honestly did it matter? He would never see this witch again in his life.
“I guess it was too loud for you to hear me yell that. How much of your lunch break did you waste trying to find me?”
The witch laughed; it was a nice laugh, not a mean one like he often heard. “None of it” he looked at her quizzically. She explained “You aren't a waste of time, you were the one who declared that to us. It figures you would forget that.” That definitely sounded like something Luz would say and then promptly forget.
It was kind of nice this witch took what Luz said to heart like that. She seemed to care about Luz.
A smaller boy poked his head into the classroom. He was fairly short with mid-tone brown skin and hair fluffy on the top and shaved at the sides. He wore an illusion track uniform; he seemed younger than both Hunter and the other witch by a decent portion. He walked up to Hunter.
“There you are, Luz. Why are you in this weirdly dusty classroom?"
“It’s kind of depressing.” He drew a circle and all the dust disappeared revealing bright color. Hunter jumped and looked around before realizing the young witch had illusioned the entire room.
The other witch looked at him strangely. “It’s better than staring at this abundance of dust,” Gus explained.
“Yeah,” Hunter said. "It's pretty" he tacked on that sounded like something Luz would say.
“So why are you in here,” Gus asked
the other witch turned to Gus “It was too loud in the cafeteria”.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Hunter jumped in like Luz would. “I did tell you, well sort of” he made a so-so gesture. He hedged and tried for a remorseful expression. “I yelled over to you. I guess you didn’t hear me because of the volume level,” he shrugged. “Sorry, I ditched you guys.” He smiled a very Luz-ish smile.
Gus cut in smiling again “Guess what”?
Hunter had not planned for this eventuality. He hated having to guess what. People had too many variables to properly guess as the boy had said ‘what’.
He hoped his best Luz answer would suffice. Luz once told him that when someone asked you to guess what they usually just wanted to tell you not to have you guess. (she was obviously wrong it didn't work that way in the coven but it might work on her classmates.)
“What”? He beamed and tried jumping up and down a little to convey excitement.
Gus opened his mouth but the other witch held out a hand. “No” she turned to Hunter “Luz you’ll never guess it. Try and guess”.
Hunter froze this was not good. He could never guess it if they thought there was a decent chance Luz wouldn’t guess it. Did it have something to do with the illusion track? They were in school so it was likely but if they were good enough friends they might be talking about something else.
Did Luz know anything about this thing? Was it a surprise Luz was supposed to be here for? Was he ruining everything? He would ask if it was something about an illusion project. He couldn’t go wrong there but what if there was a huge reason to not talk about illusions?
Or a project that Luz should know about? No, if it was something he’d never guess it would probably not have anything to do with illusions! He had to open his mouth he had been quiet too long the plant witch was looking at him with worry and Gus’s eyes were narrowing.
He had to say something, anything might be better than nothing. Maybe he could make a joke and they’d tell him? No, he had to bite the bullet and tell them he had no idea. What if they were disappointed in him and because of that disappointed in Luz?
What if he was ruining her life? He needed an out he needed- ahhhhhhhhhhh the bell screamed.
Hunter relaxed, “Sorry I got to get to my next class. You can tell me allllllll” he dragged out the word like Luz might “about it tomorrow. Bye guys” he ran out waving over his shoulder. Close call then he cursed he had plant class next, and the odds had tilted out of his favor today.