Chapter Text
The thing that got Marcy most about Amphibia was the seasons. By some cosmic happenstance - which was not due to Amphibia being in the southern hemisphere of an Earth-analog world as she had initially thought - the seasons were opposite to those she’d experienced in both her native Earth and the Demon Realm.
So while her human family and friends were enjoying the autumn weather, and the Boiling Isles were making preparations for the promised brutality of winter; on Amphibia it was the height of spring. The foliage was vibrantly green, among other hues, and the air was heavy with the vapor of building rain.
To her basilisk scales, the heat and humidity were nothing short of heavenly.
The clay of the dirt road kicked up no dust as she traversed it, admiring the grapevines lining the passage as she approached her destination.
For having been planted within the last two years, the trees of the grove had grown surprisingly large--
--Large enough to provide shade to the thirty foot-tall newt resting against the trunk.
When she’d last seen Andrias, he’d been badly injured by Anne’s final strike to his power armor, losing an arm, leg, the tip of his tail, and a massive chunk of his side, revealing the extent of the cybernetics the Core had used to extend his life. Now, while his left sleeve was buttoned to cover his missing arm, his tail had regrown and a large wooden pegleg replaced his prior mechanical prosthesis. The battle-scarred armor he’d worn as King of Newtopia was gone save for a single metal boot, replaced with nature-stained robes and lengths of chain that did nothing to impede his movement. Barrel’s Warhammer rested at his side, and his beard was tangled with leaves much like Anne’s hair had been, his clouded eyes gazing out blankly over the grove.
“Andrias?” Marcy spoke up as she strode through the knee-high grass, getting his attention.
“Marcy?” he blinked in surprise. “Is that you?”
“It’s me, ‘Drias,” Marcy stepped up and patted his hand.
“How did you get back?” he asked.
“That is a long story,” Marcy sighed. “A lot’s happened in the last two years. We all got our Calamity Powers back, and the Core had one last gambit.”
“Are you okay?” his mostly-blind eyes were wide.
“I won’t lie, it was a close call, but things worked out in the end,” she shifted fully into her basilisk form, patting his massive hand with her scaly limb.
“The Core wanted more than just an organic host. It sought to achieve apotheosis through biomechanical synthesis,” Andrias said wearily. “I’m sorry for the part I played so willingly in its plans, and how I hurt you.”
Marcy wrapped a hand around his thumb. “I forgive you.”
She looked up. “And Grime told me how you stood up to your father when it came down to it. You said the exact same thing Anne did when she and Sasha fought.”
“How are Anne and Sasha?” Andrias asked, changing the subject.
Marcy’s scales went red.
“We’re doing pretty well now,” Sasha announced, appearing in a rush of flame at Marcy’s side, to Andrias’ startled shock.
Marcy held the blonde’s hand. “The three of us started dating after we dealt with the Core’s final plot, though actually scheduling a proper date has been…frustrating, since I’ve been living mostly on the Boiling Isles, and things are only now starting to calm down.”
“Sounds like you’ve been busy,” Andrias noted.
“This was the first time we’ve been able to make time to visit Amphibia since we beat the Core,” Marcy shrugged. Luz and her family had left for the mysterious ‘Lone Wing’, and she figured that with her girlfriends on their own Thanksgiving break, it was the best time they’d had in a while to properly visit the world that had done so much to reshape them and their relationships.
“And I have a message to deliver you,” Sasha tapped his wrist. “I had a bit of a brush with death, and while I didn’t see the Axolotl Marcy had a run-in with, I did talk to Barrel and Leif.”
Andrias’ breath caught in his throat.
“They wanted me to let you know that they're waiting for you, but you can take your time. They aren’t exactly going anywhere while they wait,” Sasha relayed.
Andrias blinked slowly, tears gathering at his eyes.
“Thank you, Sasha,” he finally said.
“No problem big guy,” Sasha told him.
“For all our recorded history, we believed that there was nothing waiting for us, that once our bodies died, that was the end. My ancestors were driven by their fear of their mortality, and from that came the Core.”
“What about the ghost stories? Like that Zachariah fella who protects night drivers?” Sasha asked.
“Dismissed as frog superstition,” Andrias chuckled. “My ancestors didn’t trust anything they couldn’t personally quantify, even in their own backyards.”
“You mean control,” Marcy interjected. Andrias gave a somber nod.
“I fear the Core would have been far more dangerous if it had the means to truly exploit such phenomena.”
Marcy winced. “I think the only reason my girls and our friends were able to take down the Core was thanks to how much effort it was using to keep me down.”
Sasha quickly wrapped an arm around her girlfriend’s shivering shoulders. “Hey, it’s alright. You’re still here, and it can’t hurt you anymore. The healers cleared you for any leftover tech from it.”
Marcy leaned into her touch, muttering her thanks.
A soft smile crossed the former monarch’s face at the care and affection between the girls he had once tried to pit against each other.
Atop the horn of the Titan’s Skull, Angella sat, and stared into the stars above. The twinkling points of light had yet to lose their novelty, but she still looked up hoping to see the many moons of Etheria, rather than the severed and decayed skull that made up the satellite of Othrys.
Ignoring the twinge of phantom pain, she focused inward on her magic, the swirling maelstrom within her heart and soul.
Since the Titanomachy, Asteria had taken some time to tell the former queen of Brightmoon what it meant to be part Titan as she was. She’d become more adept with the glyphs she could conjure, from stumbling in the dark like a novice sorcerer to at least matching the spellcasting of one of the Titans’ Champions in repertoire, though her raw power remained in a league of its own. Now, she focused on one of the more esoteric abilities that came with her artificial heritage, coupled with the coaching in the other source of her magic from Varo. Forcing Titan Magic and Archivist Magic together was like pressing two magnets against each other, making it a taxing endeavor to perform what she sought.
She cast her mind into the void, following an invisible thread through the cosmos, as though her mind was being shoved through a far-too-narrow tube of iron, the stars and planets whisking past in slices of color, until she found the other end of the line.
“Glimmer?”
A pair of shimmering dusky-pink eyes snapped open, their owner gasping at the gentle caress to her soul.
“Mom!” Queen Glimmer exclaimed, looking around desperately, before shaking her head at what she thought was a dream.
“Weh!” A weight slammed into her stomach, and Glimmer’s attention was directed to the newest resident of Palace of the Moonstone, who was now perched on her stomach and staring at her with those bluebell eyes. He still wore the blanket Glimmer had conjured for him as a sparkly cape.
“Another dream?” Marrow asked, his bushy tail wagging gently.
Glimmer patted his skull with a nod. “I heard mom calling my name.”
“What was your mom like?” the young Titan asked, tilting his head.
Glimmer sighed. “We fought a lot, mostly about how to fight the Horde. I wanted to charge in fists blazing, she didn’t want to see me get hurt. Dad says I got my stubbornness from her, and I can see it. I wanted her respect, she wanted to keep her family safe, and she gave her life to save us all.”
Marrow headbutted her chin in sympathy.
“So why do I feel like she’s still out there somewhere?” Glimmer muttered. “Adora said whoever closed the portal would be stuck on the other side, in an imploding world. I know she was immortal, but how could anyone survive that?” Marrow hopped off her stomach as she shifted to sit up fully.
“Maybe it wasn’t a dream?” Marrow suggested.
Glimmer scoffed. “When is a dream not a dream? The only other time I saw mom in my mind’s eye was when her memory gave me a second wind.”
Marrow looked thoughtful, while Glimmer slipped out of bed to begin her morning.
Dealing with her bedhead, Glimmer sighed as she took stock of the changes she’d undergone in the last month, since the rescue of Marrow from the Archives. The magic released in their battle with the entity known as Keeper and the presence of the young Titan had introduced what Entrapta had called an unexpected variable to the Best Friend Squad, and it was only the cyborg princess’ thorough examinations that kept her and Adore from freaking out entirely. Framing the queen’s skull were a pair of gilded horns, almost flush with the sides of her head until they curved outward at their points. Her crown had been reshaped to accommodate the new additions. Her hands, meanwhile, were covered with her gloves, as she silently lamented how she could no longer wear fingerless gloves, as her skin had peeled away to reveal segmented claws of gold-tinted bone sharp enough to score metal, coupled with a thick layer of velvety plum-colored fur that almost reached her elbows.
Her father Micah had told her that her mother had the same condition, which she had hidden with her silken opera gloves that she had only ever removed on a scant few private occasions - or in battles where no one had lived to tell the tale.
Glimmer had accused her mother of cowardice in dealing with the Horde. But the more she learned about the history of Brightmoon, of Etheria, the more she realized she wasn’t scared of the Horde - she was scared of what taking the fight to the Horde may have unleashed…
…the horrors that Glimmer herself had nearly brought about with her reckless abandon in the year following her coronation.
The Queen of Brightmoon was still working on forgiving herself for all those burned bridges; how she had treated her closest friends as weapons to be wielded against the Horde at any cost; how she had nearly destroyed everything she loved out in the arrogant belief she could control the world-destroying weapon of which she had been a component of, and in doing so brought Horde Prime to her doorstep.
It was nothing short of a miracle that Adora and Bow had forgiven her; had welcomed her back with open arms, and rescued her enemy-turned-confidante from the clutches of Horde Prime.
In the end, the Horde had finally been defeated, the magic sealed by the First Ones released to restore much of the damage done by and in its absence, and the Best Friend Squad reunited and expanded. Somehow, they had gotten through with the only casualties being Horde Prime himself - exorcised and erased by the light of She-Ra, and Shadow Weaver - who had taken out the Heart’s Guardian Beast in one moment of decency in putting others before herself.
Though that particular sacrifice had felt hollow after the depths of her manipulations had come to light.
The image of what Adora had done to Light Spinner’s statue in Mystacor still sent a shudder down her spine. Space was not supposed to warp like that.
But Shadow Weaver was gone, and looking back held more sorrow than looking at the present and what lay ahead.
A flick of her wrist replaced her nightgown with her day tunic and leggings, a snap of her fingers summoning her gloves, the white silk sleeves joined to the same plum as her fur by golden bands, coordinating with her belt. Her tunic was a pale rosy hue, contrasted to the bold aqua of the kama and trim and the cool slate of her leggings. A spun circle in the air clasped her cloak around her shoulders, the mantle in the crisp lines of peacetime as opposed to the scalloped feathers of strife. Stepping into her boots, she gave herself a smile in the mirror, fangs smiling back.
Yet another unusual change. She’d heard of more powerful sorcerers developing fangs, but few so prominently.
And what the Keeper had said during their battle still haunted her; the way he had called her an Entrapta “aberrations”. The Queen of Dryl had told her her theories about the First Ones tampering with Etherian genetics to create the Princesses, both the Runestone Princesses intended to act as components for the Heart, and the princesses like Netossa and Entrapta herself, whose bore unique expressions of magic on a level above what sorcerers could achieve - Netossa’s nets were extremely versatile in practice, and stronger than the shields many sorcerers could conjure personally, and Entrapta’s prehensile hair was a talent that would take a sorcerer of Micah’s calibre years to master (not to mention how long it would take to grow out one’s hair to that length, which seemed to be another aspect of Entrapta’s power).
Sweeping out of her room, Marrow scampering in tow, a few teleports brought them to the dining hall. It was still mind-boggling how much of an appetite the young Titan had, and she was thankful that between the alliance with Plumeria and the freed magic, the harvests had been consistently bountiful enough that no one was going hungry - and without resorting to reconstituted protein and roughage of Horde ration bars.
While she ate, Glimmer browsed the day’s paperwork, which was thankfully light, between the day-to-day issues being delineated to the council to where they only needed her stamp and it simply being a quiet day for Brightmoon.
Which meant Glimmer was left alone with her thoughts, which lead to her thinking about the dreams she had been having lately.
Weaving an illusion, she crafted a diorama of what she had seen in her dream, the bones rising from the sea. Marrow’s eyes widened.
“Weh? Dad?” he stared at the bones. The disruption caused Glimmer’s concentration to falter, and the shimmering construct dissolved like a spiderweb in rough water.
“Those were my dad’s horns!” Marrow told her.
“So I’m dreaming of your father?” Glimmer questioned. “But why would I be dreaming of mom’s voice and your dad?”
Glimmer shook her head to get her thoughts in order.
“Maybe they’re in the same place?” Marrow offered.
Sighing, Glimmer hopped down from her throne.
“Looks like a visit to an old enemy is in order, kid.”
The Citadel of Dryl still wasn’t Glimmer’s favorite place on Etheria, even if her friendship with Entrapta had improved. The shifting maze of the fortress was still the bane of her teleportation magic. It was little wonder that most of Dryl’s citizens lived underground, in the tunnels carved out within the mountains. The newest addition looked to have been largely made from materials salvaged from the Fright Zone, an observatory tower attached to the main castle.
Entrapta buzzed her in, and she promptly teleported to the top of the stairs leading to the observatory, patting Marrow on his skull where he sat perched on her shoulder.
The observatory reminded her of some of what she had seen of Hordak’s lab in the Fright Zone, though with more of Entrapta’s touches and a more hospitable air. A shudder ran down Glimmer’s spine at the sight of a familiar circular structure off in one corner. Entrapta had salvaged what she could of Light Hope’s systems, trying to reverse-engineer her portal systems with very limited success, and hadn’t been able to get even a spark within the last few months.
In another corner sat a small tank filled with glowing blue-green fluid, a small form floating within as Entrapta adjusted some of the equipment connected to it.
“Ah, Glimmer!” Entrapta spun around. “What brings you here today? I was just checking that Runak’s gestation was going smoothly.”
“I was hoping we could go through the data you and Hordak have been mining from the Archives,” Glimmer gestured to herself and Marrow. “It might have a lead on where Mom might be.”
“No problem!” Entrapta cheered, guiding Glimmer through the lab.
Hordak was studying a three-dimensional map projected over a table, hundred, thousands of nodes wireframed together into something that she couldn’t quite discern the shape of, only that some nodes were glowing brighter than others, and that some regions were dimmed. Hordak himself had changed since the final defeat of Horde Prime. His hair had been dyed raven-black once more, and allowed to grow to chin length, while his eyes and mouth were once more the red that Etheria had known from him, rather than the toxic green of Prime; his face further distinguished by the set of claw marks across one cheek. His armor too had changed, the exoskeleton designed by Entrapta even sleeker and subtler than the suit of powered armor that he had worn in Glimmer’s first year as Queen, more of a padded bodysuit on which select pieces of armor were affixed around a pocket-laden canvas robe, the sort of thing she’d never have pictured a planet-conquering warlord wearing.
“Queen Glimmer,” Hordak greeted, still formal as ever.
“Hordak,” Glimmer acknowledged. “Any progress on deciphering the Archives?”
“The Archivists were among the few beings who Horde Prime treated with anything approaching hesitation, content to allow them to pick through what remained of his conquests. From my own experience, I suspect his intention for the Heart of Etheria was to turn it against them,” Hordak paced around the display table. “But like Prime himself, the Archivists underestimate you and your friends, and I have been combing through the data that Entrapta’s probe has been transmitting. We have roughly two percent of the total data stored in the archives, and already it’s beyond all I’d known of Horde Prime’s conquests. If not for the nature of First Ones data crystals, we would not have the means to store half of what we’ve recovered. As it is, we’ve deciphered data relating to hundreds of nearby star systems.”
“Any that might have something like this?” Glimmer conjured the topographic illusion, which Hordak studied intently, before inputting a couple dozen parameters into the display. Over a hundred nodes in the nebulous display flared, which reduced to a couple dozen, which the display focused on, projecting images of planetary systems, and snapshots of topography depicting giant skeletons like the one from her dreams.
“Weh! That one!” Marrow exclaimed, pointing at one frame in particular. Focusing on the planet, the display zoomed in on a star system with a single yellow-orange star, orbited by ten planets and several asteroid belts. The second planet from the sun had a single moon and a surface that was largely covered in slightly purple oceans, with a couple of joined continents with red foliage.
And zooming in closer, the land and oceans were dotted with island-sized skeletons. Most were in pieces, save for a single intact humanoid figure sprawled prone in the planet’s northern hemisphere, on the edge of the continental shelf.
Several flags were sent up by the display.
“It would seem this world, Othrys, was of particular interest to the Archivists.”
“They couldn’t collect us for their Archives other creatures,” Marrow piped up. “Even as babies, their collecting spells don’t work on us. We’re too tough for that. And our shouts and glyphs make their magic fizzle out.”
“And just like Prime, what they couldn’t control, they destroyed,” Glimmer’s expression turned stony.
“Collie wasn’t like that!” Marrow countered. “They just wanted to play with us, but that mean Huntsman used them to trick us!”
From another console, a small ding rang out to break the silence that followed Marrow’s declaration, Entrapta reading the results from whatever the machine had been doing.
“Oh, the genetic sequencing on the sample I got from Marrow is done!” Entrapta exclaimed. “And the results are fascinating.”
“How so?” Hordak turned to his lab partner.
“You mean beyond the same quad-helix structure that I’ve only found in two other individuals?” Entrapta used her prehensile hair to approximate the shape of the QNA. “The system also flagged a genetic match!”
Glimmer noticed the way Entrapta was staring at her.
“Wait, what?”
“Accounting for generational drift and your Etherian DNA, Marrow’s closest genetic relative is you, Your Majesty.”
“What.”
Marrow hugged her tighter.
After processing that revelation, Glimmer called a meeting of the Best Friend Squad.
Bow was looking rather rugged, having just gotten back from helping his dads at a dig site, the jacket he’d worn for excavating so close to the Crimson Waste slung over one shoulder.
Adora, meanwhile, was swearing under her breath as she struggled getting her own jacket on around her own new additions, the two prismatic wings that had started growing from her back after their battle with the Keeper. They weren’t the same avian shape as her mother’s, more bat-like or draconic in structure, but still feathered, and Glimmer could feel the jealously radiating from Marrow at the sight of them.
“Gah, how does anyone with wings manage these things,” Adora muttered, to Catra’s bemusement. The magicat princess had also changed since the Archives, though more subtly, a distinct curve to her midsection.
Glimmer had also taken to casting her most powerful sound-damping spells on all the bedrooms in the castle.
Finally getting her wings through the slits she had cut in the back of her jacket, Adora joined them at the table, Melog setting their head on her lap.
“You know, there are enchantments that can be woven into clothes to let wings phase through them,” Micah advised.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Adora groused, looking like she hadn’t gotten the best sleep. Glimmer could remember how much trouble she had when her own wings started growing, part of why the beds in the Palace of the Moonstone were so soft and cloud-like - which did not play well with Adora’s own ingrained preference for stiff cots.
“Thank you for being able to make it on such short notice,” Glimmer announced, getting their attention.
“We have a lead on where my mom might be.”
The room fell silent.
“Wha--How!?” Catra exclaimed.
“Ever since we fought the Keeper, I’ve been having these dreams…I guess they were visions; but what matters is that Entrapta and Hordak were able to trace the location from them.”
Glimmer set a data crystal on a slot in the table, causing it to project the same image she had seen in Hordak’s observatory.
“The system is in a nebula just beyond Horde Prime’s former territory. The properties of the nebula seem to have made Horde Prime leave it alone, but the Archives recorded it as being an unusually high concentration of magic.”
“So the portal just spat her out there?” Adora questioned.
“Either that, or someone else made a portal that pulled her through,” Micah offered, the hope and longing clear in his eyes.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Catra asked, gripping the table hard enough for her claws to dig into the stone. Glimmer could tell without words what was running through the magicat’s head. Catra had been the one to activate the portal in the first place, so to make amends for the worst of her actions…
Well, Catra had given her life once to save Glimmer from Horde Prime, and since then had been invaluable in her contributions as part of the Best Friend Squad.
While Glimmer was lost in thought, the others were still talking.
“The council can handle things here for the time being. Juliet reports that bandit raids have been down since Lonnie, Catra, and Melog took down Octavia,” Micah told them.
“That was a good day,” Catra smiled wistfully, knocked from her own potentially spiralling thoughts by the reminder of her latest victory. Learning that her and Adora’s former squadmate was the daughter of Brightmoon’s Major General had been a revelation, one only matched by Kyle turning out to be a distant cousin to none other than Princess Perfuma; though it hindsight it wasn’t that unreasonable, given the Horde’s strategy of kidnapping and indoctrination. Glimmer had not realized that was why so many of the older generations in the kingdoms were so hesitant to fight the Horde - because they would be fighting familiar faces. A fair amount of Hordak’s own reparations had been seeing to it that many of the families he’d broken were reunited.
Glimmer had never thought she’d ever see the stalwart General Juliet shed tears like she did the day her daughter returned.
But that was the past, for now, they had another voyage into space to get to.
Micah was doing pretty well for his first time in space.
“Just like sailing, but without the waves or the seasickness,” he commented.
“You get seasick?” Catra questioned.
“Casta never let me hear the end of it, and neither did Azur,” he chuckled. “You know, you remind me a bit of them.”
“Of who?” Catra’s ears perked up.
“Azur,” he repeated. “They were my fellow apprentice at Mystacor, and a very dear friend.”
“You were both Shadow Weaver’s students,” Catra pointed out.
Micah nodded solemnly. “Back when she was still Light Spinner. Azur was the one to call her Shadow Weaver, even before the botched Spell of Obtainment. Those two had a tense relationship, and there was a lot of resentment on both sides. Azur was one of the few survivors of the Fall of Halfmoon, and they picked up my sister and I on their way to Mystacor, just a bunch of orphaned kids trying to survive with our few gifts. When we did finally make it to Mystacor, the Archmage gave us over to Light Spinner to teach us how to ‘properly’ harness our magic. I was a prodigy, but I had nothing on Azur. The breadth and depth of their arcane knowledge made me look like a complete novice. But something changed between them and Light Spinner. They got secretive, and started exploring the restricted and forbidden areas of Mystacor, the First Ones’ archives. Then one day I found them unconscious in their quarters, scars running up their arm and their face, and when they woke up, they were laughing. A week later they vanished, and Light Spinner turned her attention to me in modifying the Spell of Obtainment. And the rest, as they say, is history.”
Micah turned back to her. “But above everything else, Azur was a survivor, one who was guarded around people, but loved deeply and with their whole heart once they found someone to let their guard down with. A lot like you and Adora.”
Catra blushed at the reminder, resting a hand over her midsection.
“We’re entering the nebula,” Adora announced from the captain’s chair. A brief bout of turbulence rattled the ship.
“Hmm, the outer edge of the nebula seems to behave as a sort of barrier. No wonder Horde Prime left the region alone. The sensor data we’re picking up now is incredible!” Entrapta cheered from her console. “I’m detecting three additional star systems within the nebula, and the composition is unlike anything I’ve encountered in our study of the Archives…Oh.”
“What? What is it?” Glimmer asked.
“The main component of the nebula isn’t the typical stellar gases,” Entrapta informed hesitantly.
“It’s blood,” Marrow spoke up. “From the Titans and Archivists.”
“I’m also picking up scattered shards of some kind of semi-organic crystalline structure that don’t match either of those. Fascinating,” Entraptra read off, before looking up through the canopy to the clouds of space dust. “And also quite disconcerting.”
A moment of silence settled over the bridge, Marrow huddling in Glimmer’s arms as they crossed the cosmic heath.
The somber quiet was broken by the ding of the captain’s console.
“We’re crossing the heliosphere. Brace for turbulence,” Adora announced, as the deckplates rattled briefly before acclimating to the shift in the stellar medium, the ship’s engines dropping them to a lower factor of speed.
They passed a gas giant with a dozen moons, like a larger version of Etheria’s own complex system.
They passed over an asteroid belt, the remains of what was once a rocky planet, shattered in some long-ago cosmic cataclysm.
Finally, a pale purple dot grew in their view. A singular moon orbited the planet, a distinctly skull-like topography on the side facing the primary.
As they crossed the orbital arc of the moon, Marrow and Glimmer both gave a start, a soft thrum in the back of their heads ascending in presence, their eyes locking on a specific point on the planet’s surface.
“There,” they both pointed.
The navigational display projected a globe of the planet, several overlapping dots lighting up.
“I’m picking up several high-intensity magical signatures - Titan, Archivist, and...Eternian,” Entrapta announced.
Adora’s eyes went wide.
“Take us in Darla, full speed ahead!” Adora ordered. The vessel she had inherited from her predecessor as She-Ra lurched as they shot into the gravity well of the planet, atmosphere igniting around the shields as they tore through with a streak of ionized plasma in their wake.
Passing beneath the clouds, the land unfolded below them, a great ocean around a truly massive skeletal corpse, one that had been claimed over by nature and new life with forests and cities.
And near the chest of the massive carcass, the bright flashes of an arcane battle were visible.
Determination shone in Adora’s eyes as she transferred manual control of the vessel to Entrapta, standing from the captain’s seat.
“Entrapta, you have the helm, take us in close for a drop-off,” she commanded with the authority of experience.
“Catra, you and Marrow stay up here and keep her from doing anything too risky,” she turned to her love. “The rest of you, with me.”
Catra took the captain’s chair, bringing up the controls for the ship’s weapons, limited though they were as an Eterian scout vessel. Marrow hopped onto the console, pressing a paw to the crystal of the canopy.
The tree at the center of the island dwarfed the Heart Blossom of Plumeria, while a stone platform was being torn up by the fight below.
The monster had appeared in a ball of fire from above, crashing down in the water to the left of the Isles, rising from the sea in a single-minded march towards the Heartwood.
For an entire day and night, the Owl Family had done battle with it, only able to slow it down as it kept adapting to their strategies. The fifty-foot colossus of metallic tendrils in a warped humanoid shape was proving more indomitable than the Fused Colossus of the Titan Trappers. Whatever it was made of was tougher than Titan bone, and far more flexible. No matter how much magic they threw at it, it just kept powering through. Even the obvious weak points of the mechanical eyes and the glowing orb making up its midsection were tougher than they thought, absorbing the energy directed against it and throwing it back at them in the form of lasers that hit like a truck, which had also taken the Calamity Girls out of the fight by sending their powers haywire.
Luz was getting sick of being punted through trees - either the tree would shatter into splinters that got caught in her fur, or she’d have to spend minutes retrieving and reattaching her limbs, often both.
Then she heard the whine of something aerodynamic carving through the air, and the monster’s eyes shifted in target as a blinding flare of plasma enveloped it.
The new arrival was a starship. Sleek, sharp angles of a fuselage shaped with prisms and a pair of engine nacelles like elongated icosahedrons. The hull was a dark metallic blue, with a magenta canopy over what was presumably the bridge.
“RENEGADE ADMINISTRATOR DETECTED”
The monster’s voice was a harsh, electronic buzz of overlapping voices, as a glowing figure plummeted from the back of the starship. A pair of prismatic wings unfurled behind her, a sword slicing down. The monster raised its arm to block the strike, which severed the limb entirely and threw the colossus to the ground.
The severed arm twitched, and Luz wasted no time conjuring her thorniest vines to restrain it.
The glow around the newcomer faded enough to make out her features, bright blue eyes and golden hair held back by a sharply sleek gold crown. Her raiment was a shining white and gold, the lining of her skirt-cape a royal red.
But what stood out most was her magic. Beyond the visible light radiating from her, her arcane presence was a beacon, the song of her magic resonating with her own, like a heartbeat thrumming to the roar of the solar wind.
The figure noticed her, and gave her a smile and a nod of acknowledgement, before turning her attention to the recovering colossus. Trunk-like legs regained purchase on the torn-up masonry, only for a pair of glowing lassos to catch around its shoulders and drag it to its knees.
Two more newcomers, who seemed familiar to the shining valkyrie, completed a triangle around the colossus. One looked perfectly human, save the shine of magic in his eyes. The other made Luz do a double-take at the sight of another Titan Hybrid.
More than that, the young woman’s aura was quite familiar to her.
The colossus struggled, gaining enough leverage to swing the ones holding it down into the third, and the fight was on once more, as Luz bolted into action, aiming her spells at the stump of the arm that had been sheared off. The technological terror gave an electronic scream that forced Luz to back off, covering her ears. Several arrows peppered it, a couple of them piercing and unleashing some sort of digital virus that staggered it.
And then her own cavalry arrived, bruised and scorched, but rearing for a rematch as a pale dragon slammed the colossus front-first into the ground, while a bolt of twilight magic tore through the kaiju’s knee, followed by a dozen needle-like crystal spikes that slipped through the gaps between the tendrils.
The valkyrie stepped up, and drove her sword into the central eye, her gaze as cold as a blizzard and hard as diamond. Cracks of white light raced across the colossus from the point of impalement, and that blinding glow returned for a moment in rainbow hues as the entire monstrosity vanished in a welling cloud of smoke.
She spat on the scorch mark ringing the crater.
“Those things are just the worst,” she shook her head, gingerly tapping her side.
“Hello Adora,” Mara greeted from Amity’s side.
The now-identified Adora looked up, and froze.
“Mara?”
The Guardian Spirit stepped up, cupping the woman’s cheek. “It’s nice to finally meet you in the flesh--well, metaphorically in my case.”
“Wha- How!?” she exclaimed, a flare of light shrinking her to a less imposing height, her blonde hair done up in a ponytail with a pompadour-esque poof up front. Though Luz still felt she looked slightly familiar.
“It’s a long story,” Mara told her. “And I’m not the only one here from Etheria.
“Adora? Glimmer?” Angella stepped out from the tree line, her eyes wide before locking on the third of the newcomers, her hand covering her mouth in shock.
“Micah?”
“Angie?” The human mage’s eyes lit up.
“Mom!” the hybrid exclaimed, vanishing in a cloud of sparkles and reappearing to tackle her mother in a hug, followed by Micah, who ended up knocking them all to the floor.
Then the ship landed, and the other people on board disembarked as Asteria and Camila appeared via a shadow portal, while King and Varo’s shooting star hovered to a stop.
“What happened!?” Glimmer exclaimed, noticing the cinched-short sleeve of Angella’s right arm.
“Against the Huntsman, losing an arm was a small price to pay for making sure he met his end,” she told her family, before cupping her daughter’s cheek with her remaining hand. “Oh my daughter, you’ve grown so much.”
The tears were flowing freely as Glimmer nestled into the embrace.
Then Luz noticed the people who had emerged from the ship, and froze as her eyes locked on the smallest of them, Asteria, King, and Varo doing the same.
“Marrow?” Varo’s eyes were wide as he whispered.
“Son?” Asteria muttered.
The coal-gray Titan scampered across the former battlefield, glittering blanket-cape whipping behind him.
“Dad? Collie!?” he squeaked.
Asteria rushed and caught him mid-leap, tears streaming from her good eye.
“You’re alive!” she cried, holding him tight.
“And you’re still here!” Marrow cried back, clinging to her mane.
With the rest of the Etherians, Bow was also tearing up.
“Heartfelt reunions get me everytime,” he rubbed the tears from his eyes as Catra patted his shoulder.
Then she noticed movement within the smoke.
“Look out!” the magicat roared, dragging Bow and Entrapta out of the path of the laser that struck their ship, sending arcs of crackling electricity across the hull as the anti-grav keeping it hovering failed. From the smoke, a spindly, skeletal version of the colossus strode out, a single glowing eye like a spotlight, tendril-like ribs clutching around the sun-like core now within its chest. Another laser shot from the eye, exploding upon the hastily-cast shields of the defenders.
Bow unleashed another virus arrow, which struck directly in the eye. The colossus whipped around, blinded. The more cable-like tendrils lashed out wildly, sending the defenders scattering.
“Where the fuck did the Eternians get their hands on a Conflict Engine!?” The eldest Titan shouted, unleashing a barrage of silver-hued missiles.
“A what?” Adora yelled back as her sword off a tendril she deflected, barely leaving a scratch on the scorched material as she shifted once more into She-Ra.
“A civilization-ending living weapon, for a given definition of ‘living’,” the Titan explained as a dozen balls of red-hot lava materialized and fell upon the skeletal horror, flash-cooling into glittering obsidian that bound its movement for a moment before being shattered with a flex of artificial muscles. “I thought we got rid of them all when we dealt with the Star Worms that spawned them.”
“You must have missed one, then!” Adora growled, dodging another tendril. “And the First Ones didn’t meet a power source they didn’t try to exploit.”
Leaping above another lash, Adora flared her wings, and drove her sword down into the tendril, piercing it through and pinning it to the ground. The stone, however, had already been compromised, allowing the Conflict Engine to whip her back into the air, too quickly for her wings to catch purchase before she crashed down on the nearby beach in a tumble that ended when she hit something like a large, leathery boulder back-first.
The boulder groaned, and Adora turned around to see several massive eyes looking down at her. She quickly realized that it was not a boulder, but a massive turtle-like being. She also noticed the still-healing scars on the majestic creature’s side.
Something that She-Ra could help with.
“That looks like it hurts,” Adora gestured to the wound. “Let me help.”
The turtle made a sound that sounded like ‘okay’.
Clambering up a massive fin to the side of the wound, Adora placed both hands on the thick hide, closing her eyes as she focused on the restorative powers of Etheria’s arcane avatar. Even with her eyes closed, the white light filled her vision as her patient’s pain eased.
Then the turtle like creature rose from the beach into the air, Adora barely keeping her balance as she met her now shining gaze. A wing-assisted jump got her atop the sky-whale’s head, now looking down on the battlefield.
Power thrummed as the sky-whale opened her jaws, a bolt of crackling lightning in all the colors of the rainbow lancing down upon the Conflict Engine, stunning it.
“I’ve got this!” Varo shouted, a pair of golden bands flying from his wrists to expand into glowing discs above and below it.
“Shield your eyes!” Someone bellowed, as several clouds of abyssal-black darkness welled up to obscure the stunned Conflict Engine.
For a moment, there was nothing but light and heat, even through the barrier of eclipsing darkness.
Then the Conflict Engine screamed, an ear-bleeding wail that just as quickly tapered into dead silence beneath the roar of solar wind, which itself cut off with a faint snap as the portals collapsed on each other, leaving only an empty crater in what was once a ritual platform.
Down on the ground, King stared at his friend, still enveloped in the auroral glow of their own magic, a bubble protecting the young Titan from the backlash.
Most days, Varo was just King’s friend, powerful in magic, but still a kid like him.
But then there were the moments where they reminded him that they were a being of phenomenal cosmic power only bound by their own choice to show restraint. Varo had moved the moon to cut the solar eclipse short, and only strained from the chains around them and the Huntsman’s power acting in opposition.
Varo looked over their shoulder. “You okay, King?”
The young Titan nodded, and the bubble popped.
King piloted the shooting star the short distance to them, and patted Varo on the shoulder. The Archivist fell back, plopping down on their transport with a sigh.
Marrow leapt from his dad’s arms, landing on Varo’s stomach and earning an “oof” at the impact.
“Collie?” the blue-eyed Titan asked, tail wagging.
“It’s Varo now,” they replied.
Marrow hugged them, cheerfully exclaiming their chosen name as they embraced.
King felt a twinge in his chest, one that he didn’t much like the implications of, especially in such a moment that he should be reveling in.
With the monster erased from the face of the Demon Realm, the Owl Family gave the Etherians a proper welcome, as Angella caught her family up with all that had happened since they had been separated - how Luz had braved the depths of the In-Between to rescue her, and how she had come into her heritage as a Titan Hybrid. Luz found herself on the receiving end of a bone-creaking bear hug as Queen Glimmer thanked her profusely. Luz in turn thanked her for rescuing the brother she didn’t know she had, and joyfully welcomed her to the family - much to the snickering of the Calamity Quartet, who had returned from their impromptu vault through space and dimensions.
Luz did narrow her eyes when she saw Sasha and Adora standing side by side, that sense of familiarity spiking. Luz wasn’t the only one to notice, as Marcy was giving them the same scrutinous look.
Though the questions about the blondes were nothing compared to the reaction of Camila recognizing Micah like an old friend, the sordid tale of Azur’s fate being retold to one who they had been close to, a conversation that had roped Catra in as the only other magicat present, who had known of the blue-furred sorcerer.
The magicat Princess had been brought to tears meeting one who carried the memories of her fallen kingdom and long-dead birth family, though Catra had tried to save face claiming it was her hormones being out of whack from the cub she was carrying. Camila saw right through her, but simply patted her on the back assuringly.
Princess Entrapta, on the other hand, had dragged Bow off to assess the damage to their ship.
“Alright, so the main computer is fine, but the power systems are shot,” Entrapta surmised. “As are the self-repair nanites.”
Camila tapped her chin in thought. “I may know some people who can help.”
“You think Grunkle Ford can fix a spaceship?” Luz questioned.
“Well he scavenged one, didn’t he?” Camila countered. “If nothing else, he might be able to jury-rig something.”
Luz nodded, acknowledging the point. “As long as they get back in time for the party.”
“You and Marcy will be in charge of transport then, mija ,” she told her. “And don’t worry, we will make sure your quinceañera goes off without a hitch. And how many kids can say they got family from several different worlds all together for their birthday?”
Luz gave her mother a smile, before noticing King and Marrow’s own sibling reunion getting fairly rambunctious, and stepping in to intervene.
“Siblings, am I right?” Bow shook his head fondly as he introduced himself to Camila.
“So I heard you were the one to put down the Keeper,” Camila noted.
“The others softened him up, but I did put a couple arrows through his core<” Bow acknowledged humbly.
“Welcome to the club then, of humans who have slain would-be gods for messing with their family,” Camila shook his hand.
“That’s a thing?” Bow questioned.
“It’s a rather exclusive club,” Camila told him. “Until now it’s just been myself and my father.”
“And here I thought the stuff my friends and I got up to was wild,” Bow replied. “I mean, Glimmer and Catra are Princesses - well, Queens, Entrapta’s gone full cyborg, Adora is She-Ra, and I’m just a guy with a bow,” he brought out the weapon he shared a name with for emphasis.
“And that ‘guy was a bow’ took down a being of phenomenal cosmic power,” the human sorceress pointed out. “Magic and technology are one thing, but heart and determination is a power all its own.”
Camila then gestured to the Princesses. “And people with that much power need people who can keep them grounded, from losing perspective.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Bow told her gratefully.
While the Etherians waited on word regarding repairs to their ship, Luz suggested an alternative means of establishing travel between Othrys and Etheria, one which had the Etherians wary.
“A portal?” Entrapta repeated. “The last portal we built was far too unstable. It nearly destroyed Etheria and cost us Queen Angella!”
“That’s because Despondos is a Prison Void - opening a portal from the inside is supposed to be impossible,” Asteria explained. “It was created that way with the help of Gimmi to trap and starve out some of the Star Worms, and we originally intended to banish the Beast With Just One Eye there before the Archivists derailed those plans.”
“And portals are something of a speciality for us,” Luz piped in, twirling her staff.
“Though we will need a couple blood samples to create a beacon for navigating the In-Between,” Marcy added.
Catra promptly leaped into her lover’s arms like a cat faced with the vet, which King chuckled in solidarity at.
After many reassurances and Camila bringing up her own medical experience and the techniques she had been taught for handling difficult patients - along with Ulvana and Tinella - they eventually got a blood sample from each of the Etherians, which Eda and Marcy retreated to the former’s lab to create the beacon.
To pass the time, they told stories of their respective adventures, and Adora and Sasha engaged in an arm-wrestling competition - the Princess of Power versus the Calamity of Strength, as their friends and lovers cheered them on.
Sasha was the first to tap into her magic, the cerise glow filling her pupils as she strained to move her opponent’s arm, which slowly began to angle down.
“For the Honor of Grayskull!” Adora growled, and the sudden shift to the eight-foot-tall living goddess quickly turned the table - and in a quite literal sense, as the table they were leaning over toppled with Sasha.
Shifting back, Adora helped her fellow blonde up while shaking out her other hand. “I’ll admit, you are definitely much stronger than you look.”
“Seriously, what are those muscles made of? Iron?” Sasha shook her head as she got back on her feet.
“Adora’s Eternian biology does give her forty-two percent denser muscles compared to most Etherians,” Entrapta commented. “Though I have yet to identify the source of her non-Eternian half, even accounting for the Titan and Archivist essence from being the vessel for She-Ra.”
As Adora thought on that, Marcy and Eda entered the room, holding up a crimson pearl fashioned into an amulet.
“We’ve got the beacon!” Marcy announced, before slumping onto Anne’s lap on the couch.
“Then why do you look like you’re about to cry?” Anne asked gently.
“Because I let my curiosity get the best of me again, and got a whole new headache,” Marcy shifted into basilisk form to better coil around her girlfriend, while holding up a potion vial that glowed a faint green hue.
“Is that a…?” Luz trailed off.
“Yep!” Marcy chirped, a manic gleam in her eye. “I ran a bloodline test on Adora, and it turned up a match for one of the humans in this very room!”
“What.” Sasha’s voice and expression were flat with shock. Then she looked up in thought. “No, wait, wait - my great aunt on my mom’s side went missing back in the eighties.”
Luz sat up, remembering her own great uncle. “Uh, how many clandestine portal experiments went down that decade?” Then she let out a groan. “And that’s another knot I’m going to have to add to the Family Yggdrasil.”
“No idea, but probably more than any of us are comfortable knowing,” Anne replied, brushing Marcy’s hair with her fingers to calm her down.
“That still doesn’t explain the chronothaums I was picking up from Adora’s cells,” Marcy added.
“Time magic?” Luz questioned, getting a feel for the amulet with her own magic as she sketched up a design for the archway.
Marcy nodded.
Entrapta groaned.
“Temporal mechanics give me a headache. They’re interesting, don’t get me wrong, but I have trouble keeping track of linear time even with a digital chronometer!"
“Oh, you too huh?” Marcy shot up with familiarity.
“Nice to know there’s more of us,” Luz commiserated. “And when you’re feeling up for it, I could use some extra hands for the portal.”
“You got it, girl!” Sasha accepted, conjuring her earth glyph for emphasis.
“And can you tell us more about these glyphs?” Entrapta asked, eyes shining with bared intrigue.
“Alright,” Luz nodded. “Though first, we need to find the right place to raise the portal arch….”
As they talked, Marcy pulled out her own journal, refining the blueprints she had been working on since completing her work on the music box.
The Leviathan Dynasty had used the power of the Calamity Box to conquer and pillage other worlds.
But that same power could be used to bring people together, even across the otherwise impassable vastness of space.
And the blueprints to reconfigure the box into something that would be harder to misuse were starting to truly take shape.
If it worked, it could unite them all from across the stars.