Claws of Truth

Prying Eyes

"Yeah, sure." He drew up a quick spell circle and summoned a lucent cyan table in front of Willow. With another flick of his wrist he made two similar colored gloves appear around Willow's hands. "You want some pieces too?"

"Sure! One for each of us if you don't mind." Willow answered as she opened and closed her hands, admiring her new temporary gloves as Gus conjured up some small figurines.

"Oh! Can you put me in an Azura costume?" Luz asked with sparkles in her eyes and hands clasped together.

"And I want to be fifty feet tall!" King chimed in, now fully immersed, hopping onto Gus' shoulder. He side eyed the small demon a glance, but King just pleaded more for the height boost.

"Yeah, you'll all just look like you do now." Gus deadpanned before popping everyone else up.

Luz spit out a raspberry at Gus, who could only chuckle back at her. He learned over towards Willow, "you can make walls and simple stuff with those gloves too. My mom loves using them when she gets into fights with out neighbors. Says it's the pettiest things, like erecting a giant fake wall, which brings her joy in such times."

Willow giggled at him. She knew his mother quite well, especially over the past few years when her, Luz and Amity would go over to hang out some days after school. She and his mother had found similar interests in plant life, and even though she was an oracle, she had quite the knowledge of vegetation.

They would exchange information on the most up to date ways of caring for houseplants to the point where every few days Willow would get a message on her scroll from Gus' mother asking for her thoughts on some green additions to the house, different soil types, or even asking for some help in growing and maneuvering her current greenery layout. She was almost like the mother Willow never had; something she rarely ever considered with both of her amazing dads vigilantly there for her.

"So what's the play, Willow? I'm all ears." Eda broke Willow out of her train of thought. The young witch cleared her throat.

"Right. Well, I've done some research and I found this enchantment that may be powerful enough to defeat the Emperor. However, every source I found kept denying its existence, saying that it's only a myth and that something that powerful isn't just lying around in some temple or something waiting to be found..." She said dejectedly.

Lilith muttered something to herself, unaware that in doing so she had drawn the attention of all the others. Her eyes darted around the ground for a moment before she looked up and came to the stark realization that she was being watched. "Um... Why are you all staring at me?" She smoothed a hand over her already perfectly seamless dress.

"Because you're being weird and mumbling to yourself. Probably about something that Speckles was just referring to." Eda jabbed a thumb towards Willow.

Lilith cleared her throat and shifted her weight from one foot to another, barely enough for anyone to take notice. "Well, she is right about one thing," questioning glances were all directed towards her. "It is real. However, getting it will not be so easy."

All eyes were on her, and Lilith continued to stay silent. Before long, Eda had enough of her extensive cryptic pause and pressed her on.

She huffed. "Okay, I'll bite. Why won't this be easy, Lily?"

Lilith began twirling a strand of her hair around her index finger. "As you may have assumed, the Emperor's Coven is well aware of this enchantment. So much so that for a while, I was assigned to locate and destroy it. Emperor Belos would not heed such a threat to his authority; he wanted it eliminated, with all traces of its very existence wiped from all knowledge bases. Even if the enchantment itself were to be destroyed, having confirmation that such power to dethrone the emperor existed could easily be the tinder used to spark a fire of revolution." She dropped her hair and twirled her thumbs together, her eyes fixated on the ground.