The Forbidden Drink III: Titanic Problems

Ch. 17: Bad Blood

In the Human realm, Luz was in the woods, punching trees... like one does.

Punching and destroying them, taking out whole chunks with each punch.

None of them fell over as Luz's plant magic repaired them as quick as she destroyed them.

She was mad, she was FURIOUS! Not just at herself but at the gal of her second mother! How could Eda do this to them?!

The more she thought about it, the more enraged she got.

"RAAAH!" Luz screamed as she slammed her head against the tree, fulling knocking it over.

She was breathing heavily when someone walked up next to her.

"You done?" Tracey asked, spinning her staff and lifted the tree back up with plant magic to heal it.

"Huh! Huh! Maybe! Huh! Huh! What's your point?" Luz asked, breathing heavily from her rampage.

"This does nothing but kill innocent trees. Evens if you do heal them a bit, the pain remains." Tracey said, scolding Luz.

"If you're here to give me a lecture, you can head home." Luz said, rolling her eyes.

"Not a lecture, but a bit of an insight." Tracey said, "Yeah, you're mad, but this won't solve anything. You've done this with fuck all before, now you have some unlimited amount of Titan's Blood and suddenly it's impossible?"

"You don't get it, it's not just that, it's the betrayal I feel!" Luz said, stomping and making a small tremor. "Someone I considered family just threw me to the side to what? Protect me? What about the world I care about!?"

"You don't think they care about that world too or I don't!? No, they do and I do, but that works was only possible thanks to the blood running through your body and the bodies of your friends." Tracey said, pointing at Luz with her staff. "What do you think would happen to that world if someone sinister got their hands on that blood?"

Luz tried to speak but Tracey pushed the staff against her chin to shut her up.

"It would be disastrous." Tracey said, "Remember what you told me about the Collector? You're lucky he was a kid, otherwise there may not be a Boiling Isles. Imagine what happens if the archivist show up, do you think you could stop them?"

Luz growled as she pushed the goose staff away.

"Like you understand what's going on." Luz said, "You don't know what it's like being away from the home you love."

"Look at me." Tracey pointed at her face, her scars, "I had my entire life planned, but when this happened, my life was over, no one wanted to see a cheerleader that looks like she lost a fight to an out of control blender. I loved what I did, I love cheerleading, but that ended because of being possessed. So yeah, I do know what it's like to be away from the place I love... but I found another place, other people, people that didn't need care about who I was before, who didn't care that I was a bully, that didn't care about my status... I have real friends now, I have my family again. So are you going to be hung up on a place you'll get back to, or are you going to accept that you have a place here as well."

"Maybe you forgot, but people here don't believe in us." Luz said, motioning between the two of them, "They don't believe in magic, in witches, they sure as hell don't believe in Titans."

"You'd be surprised." Tracey said, "People still talk about what happened that one day at school, people are far more open to it now... guess you've been so busy enjoying your magical life, you forgot what it's like to be human... it can be nice to not have expectations... you're not a god here, you're just Luz Noceda, local weirdo... and boy do I miss that."