The Key
“The human world is dangerous.”
That’s what Amity had been told her entire life.
Humans. Weird, horrifying creatures, apparently. With gnashing yellow teeth, weird, tiny ears that were apparently round(!), and gills on either side of their neck. Dangerous, unhinged creatures, that made up for their lack of magic with sheer brutality. The only witches who had a favorable opinion of them were dangerously incompetent, like Willow and Augustus.
And then she found the key to the human world.
But she was getting ahead of herself.
Her name was Amity Blight, and she was a witch. That was her most important identifier. She was a whole witch. Not half a witch, like Willow, or idiotic and incompetent, like Augustus, or a minion to step on, like Skara. She was a witch. And that meant something to Amity.
Her second most important qualifier was Blight.
She was a Blight. That didn’t mean as much to her, though it still meant a lot. It meant she was held to a higher standard, to paraphrase her parents. It meant she couldn’t just be a witch - it meant she had to excel.
She was Amity Blight, the witch. The top student. The ice queen.
She ruled Hexside. She didn’t just run it - she ruled it. Principal Bump saw her as the star pupil - which she was. Every teacher adored her, and every student feared her. She was queen.
And this queen ruled alone.
She walked the halls of Hexside with hands folded primly behind her back, steps deadly precise. Amity Blight did not strut, and Amity Blight did not stumble. Amity Blight walked like every step was calculated.
Her face was an ice-cold mask, devoid of all emotion. If she was surprised, she did not show it. If she was confused, she did not show it. Emotion made one weak - and it was not something a Blight expressed, unless it would aid her somehow. For instance, in talking to a teacher. Letting a bit of diffidence and worship seep into her mask never hurt when asking an adult for something. In the same way, she was allowed to show thoughtfulness and anger, at certain opportune moments, to her minions and schoolmates. She needed to show some emotion, if she wanted to manipulate people. Which she did.
On the day (that’s how she thought of it now - the day), she’d brought Boscha, Skara, Amelia, and Cat back home for a sleepover.
Amelia was a minion, of the highest order. Amity had very little respect for her. She was in the plants track, and was what Amity couldn’t help but think of as a parasite. She latched onto whatever was most popular, and did her best to take some of that clout and popularity for herself. She had every opinion that was popular, until they became otherwise. She leaped onto the biggest, loudest, flashiest bandwagon and clung on for dear life.
Once upon a time, Amity would’ve dismissed Skara as being the same as Amelia. A minion. And, for practical purposes, she was. But Blights were observant. So Amity knew there was just a little more under the idiocy and desperation - though not much.
A little bit of hidden possessiveness here. A bit of courage there. Some smarts in odd places that didn’t really make much sense, and a desperation to hide said smarts. Some quirks that were hard to completely squash out. A bad habit or two. She was… well, she had more personality than Amelia, anyway, which earned her a bit of respect from Amity. And she was very loyal to those she considered her actual friends, like Amelia.
And Cat.
Cat had been the third part of the bandwagoning group, though she didn’t seem anywhere near as interested in appealing herself to Boscha and Amity as Amelia and Skara had been. Cat had her nose buried in a book more often than not, and often scoffed at Boscha’s little outbursts and her friends’ pathetic attempts to placate her at every turn. This earned her more than a bit of respect from Amity, who couldn’t help but smile a little to herself every time Cat made a little sarcastic remark under her breath.
And then there was Boscha. Amity’s war dog.
Whenever Amity felt like she needed to intimidate someone, she sent Boscha to do it. Whenever she made a disparaging remark about someone, Boscha would instantly despise them. Boscha was loyal, fierce, and dangerous. And more than a bit volatile.
Amity wasn’t sure why she had attached herself to the ice queen, but she certainly wasn’t complaining. Boscha was very useful - even if she had to be reigned in more often than not. And Boscha was the only person Amity would even come close to calling a ‘friend.’
Students said that Amity Blight didn’t have a soul.
Amity was very proud of this description of her.
But she’d been talking about the sleepover.
Amity had brought her little cavalcade over to the house, for probably around the third time. Boscha had raided her fridge, and found some orange sodas squirreled away somewhere in the back. She’d come in and tossed one casually to Cat - who lifted a hand and caught it without looking up from her book. She handed one to Skara, who took it gratefully with a wide smile.
She knew better than to offer one to Amity.
There was a chorus of cracking aluminum, and a light fizzling.
“Your place is really big, Amity!” Skara chirped, glancing around.
It was. It was really big. The living room - which they were all lounging in now - often gave Amity a feeling like she was sitting in the middle of a cave. Or a temple. The massive wooden columns along the sides of the room didn’t help. The only pieces of decorum were the chairs, the couch, a massive towering chimney, and a painting nailed on said chimney. It was of one of Amity’s ancestors - a man with high cheekbones and long, green hair tied out of his face. He looked like Father.
Amity raised an eyebrow at Skara. “You’ve been here before. Twice.”
“I know! But it just seems bigger and bigger every time, you know?”
“No. I don’t,” Amity said, looking right through her.
Skara wilted.
Cat glanced up from her book. “Blight.”
Amity turned to Cat - and didn’t let her surprise show. Cat rarely, if ever, addressed her directly.
“Maybe you could lay off?” she said, softly. “It’s a sleepover. Relax a little.”
Instantly, it felt like the temperature of the room dropped ten degrees.
Cat didn’t seem to realize her mistake.
“...Relax,” Amity repeated - voice deadly blank.
Cat nodded.
“...Do you like that chair, Cat?” Amity said. Her voice had gone from blank, to very soft in an instant.
Cat blinked. “...I suppose so. It’s very comfortable.”
“Good.” Amity smiled coldly at her. “I’m glad you like it.”
There was a moment of heavy silence.
“Did you know, Cat,” Amity said, smile still frozen on her face, “that these chairs were specially enchanted by my ancestors?”
Cat paled a shade.
“...No. I didn’t.”
“Well,” Amity said, smiling a little wider, “they were. Enchanted to eat anyone who was against the family.”
Cat went as white as a sheet.
“Of course,” Amity went on - and the smile dripped off her face like tar. “You aren’t an enemy of the family. Yet. But a simple keyphrase, and the house would decide that you are. And those chairs, after so many years without food, are very - very - hungry.”
“...Oh,” Cat breathed. “Well - of course, you would never have to use that keyphrase, Blight.”
Amity gave her another icy smile. “I would hope not.”
A heavy silence fell over the room.
Amity Blight had never been lonely. Not because she always had friends - but because that part of her just didn’t work properly. She didn’t crave social interaction. She didn’t need anyone. She didn’t know what it even could be like to be lonely.
A monarch couldn’t be lonely. The throne was only for one, after all.
She stood up.
“I’m going to the attic,” she said, folding her hands behind her back automatically. “If anyone needs me, differ to Boscha. She’ll do what I normally would.”
Boscha offered her a proud, viscous smile. Amity walked away, and up the stairs.
Her hand gently ran along the barrister as she did.
This wasn’t quite calculated. Her parents had never told her to do it. But she’d done it anyway, and they’d never told her not to, either.
It was tiny things like this that she clung to, whenever she felt like she really didn’t have a soul. Like she was a vessel for her parents’ desires. Tiny ticks, that her parents hadn’t taken the time to breed out of her.
And reading. Whether it be Azura books, or reading aloud to the children. She clung to both of them.
She let her mind go mostly blank as she went up to the attic.
If anyone had asked her, why she went up to the attic that day, she would’ve told them a vague lie about there being something she wanted or needed up there.
The real reason was that she liked being alone.
She never felt lonely, but she did feel… accompanied, from time to time. Like she had spent too much time with people. A monarch needed their time alone on the throne. To think. To sift through the wastelands - the hours upon hours of social interaction. To make decisions. To stew.
Amity needed this time, too.
She could never understand how people like Skara and Amelia functioned. Always accompanied by someone, or multiple someones. Never alone.
Was sleeping their alone time? They couldn’t function without any, surely, and that seemed the only likely candidate.
Who knew. Not Amity, surely.
...Sometimes Amity didn’t feel like she knew anything.
Her hand closed around the doorhandle to the attic. It was ice cold beneath her fingers.
It was as dusty as usual. Every surface was draped with dust, or cobwebs, or both. No spiders managed to survive for long up here, though - hence why they were all dead and on the ground. Amity had to sweep one or two spider corpses to the side as she walked. Blights did not step on bugs, after all. It would dirty their shoes.
She needed her time alone.
And she needed to make her diary entries.
She ran her hand along the wall - and pulled out the loose brick she had found all those years ago. When she was fourteen, she had hidden her diary at the school - but then Emira and Edric had found it, so. That option was off the table.
They wouldn’t look up here, though. They had deemed the attic ‘boring’ a long time ago. Which, she supposed, it was. Hence why it was such a perfect hiding spot.
Her hand closed around her diary, and flipped it open.
Dear diary,
I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while. Things have been hectic at Hexside recently. After I fought Grom last year, everyone scrambled to be my date this time around. Nobody was dumb enough to ask me before, but I suppose they’ve gathered some confidence.
My schoolwork is as stellar as usual, of course, and all the teachers seem to find everyone pursuing me absolutely adorable. It’s the tiniest bit frustrating, not that I’d let anyone but you know that.
Skara, Amelia, Cat and Boscha are over for a sleepover. Cat made a stupid remark for the first time since I met her. It was almost interesting, in a grotesque kind of way.
Was she trying to reach out? Be my friend? Get me to ‘relax,’ in her words, so that we could all get… what? Buddy-buddy? Did she want to ask me to the dance? I’m not sure. Whatever the reason was, it was stupid of her.
I don’t relax. Blights don’t relax. Relaxation is not in my blood.
It’s Autumn, which means less rain. Which is good. No more shield spells just to walk into school.
With that, Amity closed the diary. She didn’t need to write much to feel fulfilled. She just needed that little slice of time to herself.
Even monarchs needed some time for themselves.
She put the small book back in its hideaway, and secured the brick in place again.
One of her hands wrapped around her wrist, and gently twisted it. A nervous tick that she had picked up just this year.
Her last year at Hexside.
Even though the year had just started, she was already beginning to stress out, just a little. Because if she didn’t get into the Emperor's Coven, Mother and Father would be very disappointed.
Her foot shifted a little - and hit a pile of junk.
It shifted.
She glanced towards it, startled - just in time for a small object to clatter to the floor next to her.
She blinked.
Her hand reached down to scoop it up automatically, and her thumb swiped across the surface.
It was a key.
A very dusty, very old, very weird key.
It was made of what looked like wood - though the texture was almost closer to leather, or some kind of thick skin. The end of it that would go into a hypothetical lock widened a bit, which made it look more like a handle - if not for the bit of geometry sticking out of the side, which looked like a lopsided circle made of squares. That was missing a side. The top of it might have been the weirdest of all, though. It was shaped very oddly - like an upside-down hairdo, with two spirals on either end and an odd shape on top that almost reminded Amity of a hair clip. It was mostly a dark brown colours, though thin highlights of a lighter brown were drawn - or maybe carved - into the top part of the key. And, in the middle of that top, was a single bright yellow eye, with a deep, black slit of a pupil right in the middle.
She stared.
The key stared back.
Her thumb came up, and touched the eye curiously.
She had expected it to be hard plastic, or maybe ceramic - which is why the almost fleshy texture of it caught her off-guard.
She lifted her thumb again.
The key stared through her.
A shiver dripped down her spine - and, in a moment of pure, raw spite (an emotion that Amity rarely, if ever, experienced), she jabbed her thumb right into the slitted pupil of the eye.
And it pressed down.
There was a sudden chorus of clattering noises from the pile to her side.
She startled, body shifting instinctually away from the pile as it began to shift violently.
And something seemed to… unfold, for lack of a better way to phrase it, from the top of the pile.
Then the shifting stopped, rather suddenly.
Amity blinked.
Slowly, and very, very cautiously, she began to walk towards the pile. When nothing jumped out and attacked her, she mustered up her courage, and began to shove junk out of the way.
Until she encountered a door.
Now, Amity knew what doors looked like. She had grown up with them, after all, and lived with them for sixteen years. And they were pretty much all the same - with handles off to one side that turned, allowing the door to open. Simple, easy-to-understand technology.
This door was staring at her, though. Which wasn’t normal.
It looked very similar to the key. But bigger. Much bigger - bigger than Amity, by at least a few feet. A single, massive eye peered right through her from the top of the door - with that same black slit pupil. And the doorknob was at about the level of Amity’s waist - which was lower than was normal, considering how big the door was. Where most doors have their knobs around the midway point - maybe a little lower - this door had its handle at around a third of the way up. Oddest of all, the handle, despite being a simple circle, was along the center line of the door, instead of off to one side.
Intricate patters were traced into the door, in a way that gave Amity a headache when she looked at them too long. And all the lines, eventually - led to that massive, yellow, staring eye.
Amity stared.
People liked to think that Amity didn’t have a soul. That Amity just did what others wanted of her. She fulfilled her parents wishes, to be good and obedient enough to get into the Emperor’s Coven. She fulfilled the teacher’s wishes by getting great grades. She followed the wishes of any authority figures, without fail - which made those authority figures think of her more as a… kind puppet, than an actual child. With wishes, and wants, and most of all - failings.
Amity got great grades because she was clever - and, more importantly, because she was inquisitive. She wasn’t obvious about it, but curiosity gnawed at her stomach whenever she saw something she didn’t understand. Whenever a question wasn’t answered. Her parents biggest issue with her, when she was young, was that she never shut up - that she never stopped asking questions. Any time they asked Amity to do something, Amity would say, why? It drove her parents, and her twins, up the wall.
Amity was a curious soul.
So - instead of going to her parents about this obviously dangerous and strange doorway - Amity simply stared at it for a long, long moment.
Her hand closed gently around the handle. It was oddly warm.
Her stomach stewed with nerves and curiosity.
She twisted.