Always by your side

Chapter 6 - Blight not being a blight?

I woke up in the morning, and this time I had an alarm set in order not to oversleep, I knew Amity wouldn't tolerate being late considering her perfectionism. The duel spot is around 30 minutes on foot from the Owl House, so I still have some time to prepare. I go downstairs, greet Eda, and start preparing my breakfast. I still haven't talked to her about the Fluff Bush fight, but I think I will leave it for after the duel. When I'm ready I pack all the paper I have into my new bag, I go to the door and just as I open it, I hear Eda asking me from the sofa.

"Where are you heading Luz?" Oh right, I might have forgotten to mention the duel to her, guess better late than never.

"Remember when I told you that we had some side adventures during our journey for the Fluff Bush? Well, one of those adventures might have resulted in me challenging Amity, Lilith's protegee, to a witch's duel." I say trying not to look stupid. When Eda heard that she almost fell from the sofa.

"You what?! Luz, you can't challenge everyone to duels, honestly, I'm not sure if you can handle her. Do you want me to come with you? As a safety precaution of course."

"No thanks Eda, I promised that I would come alone and I'm planning to keep that promise. Although I suppose if I'm not back by evening you can start to look for a plan on how to break me out of conformatorium." Eda looks at me, I can see that she is pretty dissatisfied with my answer.

"Well, fine, but we will talk about this when you come back. Now go, win this and show the Blight who is a superior protegee."

"I won't disappoint you, I promise." I respond and leave the house. Now I have to win this duel, Eda believes in me, and at the same time, I'm aware that Amity probably has a similar mindset and is probably just as determined to win as I am.

It's a beautiful sunny day outside, with no clouds in the sky, but I can see a huge creature making circles over the city, maybe a griffin is looking for a mating partner. As long as it is not a cloud indicating boiling rain I don't really care. I make my way to Bonesborough and then again into the forest. Luckily this time I didn't get distracted by anything and I should be ready to meet Amity on time. When I get to the agreed spot I can see that Amity is already waiting for me, she is alone but there is no guarantee that there are no guards hidden around, I just gotta trust her this time. I emerge from between the trees and she immediately spots me.

"Surprisingly on time, hu- Luz" I just wave at her but I have to admit, I'm happy that our talk in the library didn't go to waste and she stopped calling me 'the human' all the time. I get to the opposite side of the clearing and prepare my glyphs.

"I'm ready when you are." I say looking confidently at Amity.

"Ok, we fight until someone surrenders or is unable to continue the fight, there is no judge here but I hope the duel will be held on mutual honor and respect. We can start then." Just as she finished her sentence she got her staff and drew a huge spell circle summoning an enormous abomination. I didn't let her get the advantage and immediately threw some plant glyphs to slow down the giant. She wasn't the only one with some tricks up her sleeve. I took another plant glyph and made myself a staff, well it wasn't a palisman but better this than nothing. I put a few ice glyphs on one side, and a few fire glyphs on the other, and now whenever I hit the ground with it the spells will activate. I learned that neat trick during my training fights with Eda and it comes in really handy.

For now, Amity is summoning more and more abominations but I'm aware that she only wants to check what is my strategy for the duel. Soon enough she gets on her staff and starts flying around. I forgot she can do that... She got herself an abomination sword to counter my plant magic. If it wasn't enough she created like 10 illusions of herself. I'm going through my glyphs as fast as I can but I have to admit that I can barely keep up, similarly to our first fight. I use almost only the basic 4 glyphs because I have a lot of them prepared, I leave the combo glyphs for special situations.