Storm's Hand (The Owl House AU)

During the last Grudgby match, Amity hurt her leg when she got tackled by Boscha. It was quite the injury, but there was nothing a little bit of rest, a leg cast and some healing glyphs couldn't fix.

Unfortunately, Amity had to miss a few days of school until she could walk again.

One morning, Amity was sound asleep in her bed with her injured leg on a pillow. As the girl gave little snores, the door gently opened, and Sturm walked in, holding a plate of green eggs and ham along with some toast with butter and fire bee honey.

He almost made no sound when he walked in. Upon seeing Amity asleep on the bed, he slammed the door shut behind him with all his might. The sudden noise scared the young Blight out of her sleep.

"AAAH!" Amity shouted as she sat up, but her expression soured when she saw Sturm standing there. "Oh, for Titan's sake!"

"Hahaha. Oh, you should've seen the look on your face!" Sturm said, laughing his head off.

"What are you doing in my room?!"

"Well, your parents and siblings are too busy to take care of you. So your mom told me to bring you breakfast."

"Just put the food on my nightstand and get out," Amity said firmly. Sturm just smirked at her.

"If you say so."

Sturm walked beside Amity's bed before deliberately taking the food off the plate and placing the eggs, ham, and toast upside down on her nightstand. And for the final touch, he pressed the plate on top of the food, making a mess.

"Enjoy."

This gesture of utter disrespect made Amity livid. She tried to come up with an insult, but she was too angry to come up with a clever reply, so she resorted to threats.

"I swear, if I didn't have my leg in a cast, I'd knock your teeth out!"

Sturm responded by giving a small laugh before sitting on the edge of the bed next to Amity.

"That's cute. I love it when you make promises you never keep. And speaking of which, remember the day the school announced a field trip to the Emperor's castle? You were SO excited! But now? You can't even get out of bed. And I'm taking your special seat."

Amity remained silent but kept her gaze on Sturm. She continued to stare at him in tranquil fury as Sturm kept smiling. Sturm took note of her silence and felt that something wasn't right.

"What? No more threats? No witty remarks? No diatribe about how worthless I am?"

"You don't deserve an answer from me."

"Heheh. Well, you just gave me one," Sturm chuckled before holding up a glass of water and showing it with a smile. "Thirsty?"

Amity was surprised at first. She didn't see him carry the glass along with her breakfast. And the truth was that she was indeed thirsty. When she opened her mouth to speak, Sturm cut her off.

"Didn't think so."

Then, he lifted the glass to his lips and drank in one go. Amity was fuming at this point. Before that, she only found Sturm annoying. But now? He was being nasty. When Sturm finished, he put the glass on the upside-down plate.

"Don't be upset- there are, like, five or six drops left. Oh, and I gotta go. Have fun staring at the ceiling."

With that said, Sturm zoomed out of the room, leaving Amity alone. The witch sighed with both relief and melancholy. Relief because she didn't have to talk to Sturm again, and melancholy for everything going wrong for her...and because her breakfast was ruined.

Sturm dressed in his uniform and arrived at Hexside within the hour, which meant he didn't take long, thanks to his speed. The flying carriage serving as a bus would arrive soon, and some students couldn't come. However, he was waiting for a particular person to come, and all he had to do was wait. He sat on the school's steps and pulled out his Illusion Magic 101 book to read.

After a few minutes, he heard footsteps approaching, so he looked up to see Boscha walk up to him. Sturm put the book down and waved.

"Heya, Boschy! How ya doin'?"

"I got what you asked for!" Boscha replied, walking over to Sturm proudly with a few papers. "These are the plans for the layout of the Emperor's castle. Not the 'official' one, but the real deal."

"Ah! Excellent! I knew I could count on you," Sturm said, taking the plans and looking them over to ensure they were legit.

"You're just lucky I knew someone who knew someone else who works at the Emperor's castle."

"Either way, thanks a bunch, Boschy..."

"Don't call me that."

"...and who knows? Maybe I'll let you know the next time I need you for somethin'."

Sturm winked at Boscha, but the three-eyed witch crossed her arms and looked away while blushing.

"Whatever. A deal's a deal, nothing more. Enjoy the trip, I guess."

Boscha then began to walk away, trying her best to pretend that this exchange meant nothing to her. But Sturm was amused because he knew better.

"Heh. I'm starting to like her," Sturm chuckled. He stuffed the plans into his pocket and waited for the rest of the group to come.

When the group arrived, Sturm continued to read the Illusion Magic 101 book while waiting for Principal Bump to call his class. Fortunately, he didn't wait long.

"All aboard, students!"

Sturm tossed the book into the nearby bushes when no one was looking, got up, and headed to the carriage. As soon as he got on board, he took Amity's favorite seat. It would've been more fun if she were here to see her reaction, but Sturm enjoyed disrespecting that girl even if she wasn't there.

The carriage was like a flying bus but with feet and wings. It headed for the Emperor's Castle as the students on board were cheering and making way too much noise for Principal Bump's liking.

"No roughhousing! Do not make me turn this carriage around!"

Sturm shared the exact sentiment as the principal. The students on board with him were too noisy, and he couldn't even hear himself think. He had to cover his already-covered ears to drown out the noise.

"They're so annoying..." Sturm murmured. "I swear if I didn't have a good reason to come, I'd throw myself off this thing."

He tried to focus on what he had read in that book and keep his memory sharp, but the noise was getting to him. Fortunately, he didn't have to wait very long. He looked out the carriage, and right before his eyes was the foreboding square palace in the middle of a pit, surrounded by large white rib bones with a plus-shaped piece of land right in the middle.

The other students noticed it, too.

Soon, the ship landed on the ground, on the other side of a large gap where a bridge was meant to be. On the other side, the towering doors to the castle opened, with a short figure standing in the doorway. It was Kikimora.

Principal Bump stood up in front of his students to address them.

"Now, the Emperor's assistant will be your tour guide today," he said as the students began unloading from the carriage. "Please don't make me regret taking you here."

The other students gathered at the bridge's entrance. From the platform Kikimora was on, a mechanical bridge extended towards them over the dark pit of giant sharp rocks.

Seeing the bridge excited the kids as it connected and allowed them to walk on it. Sturm, on the other hand, had no reaction. Yes, the technology was impressive, but he's seen better. Once the class was on the bridge, it retracted to the castle as Kikimora came to greet them.

"Children of Hexside, Emperor Belos welcomes you to his castle. We're honored by visits from students. You'll soon be a part of a coven. Some lucky few may even find their home here, in the mighty Emperor's Coven!"

This made students excited and chattering. Many witches always dreamed of being part of the strongest coven. Sturm smiled, too, but he did not believe in the coven system. He was only drawn by the prospect of being considered the best, and the Emperor's Coven was the best chance for him to show it.

"You are the future of the Isles! My job is to teach you its past," Kikimora said as she began leading the group inside.

The interior had guards and scouts flanking either side of the hallway, saluting Kikimora and the students as other guards walked on overpasses. The students looked at everything in awe as they passed by walls covered in tapestries, murals, and statues. As they strolled through the halls, Kikimora began to tell the history of the Boiling Isles.

"Today, the Isles are a place of peace and prosperity. But that wasn't always the case," Kikimora said as they came to their first stop: a mural portraying witches dancing around a fire. "Up until 50 years ago, witches and demons practiced wild magic during what we called the Savage Ages. Witches had access to corrupt knowledge. And that dishonored the Titan. That was until our great Emperor ascended to the throne and taught witches how to use magic properly."

She gestured to another mural. This one showed a Belos holding up a beam of light as tiny witches below him looked up as if celebrating his power.

"Our next stop is the Emperor's personal collection of relics."

Sturm stood behind the group, but before he could enact his plan, he had to wait for Luz, Willow, and Gus to leave, too.

"Oh! Luz, you'll like this. It's where-huh?" Willow stopped midsentence when she saw Luz struggling to open a vent grate on the lower side of the wall. However, the human girl stopped when she noticed Willow and Gus looking at her.

"Heh... Uh, love me a properly ventilated castle!" she awkwardly said as she walked ahead of her friends.

Once their backs were turned, Sturm knew that this was it. It was time to put his plan into action. He took a deep breath and held up his index finger.

"Illusion Magic 101, don't fail me now..."

Sturm drew a spell circle, and in a puff of light blue smoke, a perfect clone of himself appeared before his eyes. There was nothing dissimilar to the original. Sturm sighed in relief upon seeing the illusion and then pointed at his group. They were about to go around the corner into the relics room.

"You know what to do."

The illusion nodded and ran at the group to catch up. Once the coast was clear, Sturm knelt beside the vent grate Luz tried to open earlier and knelt down. He held up his index finger again, and an electric cluster started to sparkle at his fingertip like a welding torch. Sturm traced his finger on the edges of the grate and began melting the metal until the grate came loose and allowed an opening.

He pulled out the grate, entered the vent, put it back, and hoped it would stay straight. He crawled through the vent and hoped to not make any noise. Once he got far enough from the entrance, he pulled out the plans Boscha had given him earlier and started to make his own route.

"Alright, let's see here..." he said quietly, pointing at his current location on the map before tracing his finger on the paper. "I am currently right here...and if I take a turn here...I should be above the laundry room, and I can get a guard's uniform. I can easily obtain the uniform by knocking out an actual guard, but... I can't risk anyone to suspect that there is an intruder..."

He followed the route he set traced on the plans and crawled through the vents quietly. Thankfully, the vents were spacious enough for him to move freely and not hit the metal side walls.

After a while, he'd reached the vent grate to the laundry chamber. He was just above mountains upon mountains of washed and unwashed uniforms. Upon being sure the coast was clear, Sturm pulled out the vent grate and landed on the tallest pile of uniforms.

For the next few minutes, Sturm searched for the cleanest uniform that fit him. Or, at the very least, the least filthy. It wasn't easy, but eventually, he found the perfect cloak, uniform, boots, and mask. He now looked no different from the other coven scouts.

"Hmph. Like a glove."

Now fully clothed, he leaped over the piles again and returned to the vent, but not before putting the grate back before entering. He took out the plans and continued to follow the way he'd planned.

After a few minutes, he was getting close to an intersection. He had to go further. However, he stopped upon hearing some other sounds. After a few seconds, he realized that he was actually hearing the sounds of someone crawling into the vents with him. So he stopped and remained as still as possible.

Once the source of the noise got close enough, he could see someone crossing his path. It was not one, not two, but three familiar faces.

"Let's go forward - we're almost to the relic room," said a familiar girl's voice. Once she crawled forward, she let herself become visible. It was Luz, and behind her were Willow and Gus, following the human girl in a straight line.

Thankfully, they didn't look left and didn't see Sturm. Once they were out of sight, Sturm breathed a sigh of relief and looked at the plans again. The route those kids were taking seemed to lead them close to the relic room that Sturm didn't get to see.

He chuckled, knowing exactly how little value those relics in the room really had. Yes, they had power, but they were far weaker than what the rumors say. The Emperor's Coven was always good at making false advertisements. Or, at the very least, good enough for the dumb to fall for them.

"What idiots..." he laughed to himself before resuming crawling.

After a few more minutes, Sturm reached the castle's least patrolled and most isolated wing. He reached the end of the vent and removed the grate. He looked around, and once he made sure the coast was clear, he exited the vent and dusted himself off.

He took out the plans again to see where he was. He was close to his goal, just a few feet away. He cast an illusion spell to conjure a guard's spear to blend in better. He turned a corner and saw a dead end. It appeared to be a giant vault door, and in front of it was a guard.

He casually approached the guard and cleared his throat before speaking in a completely different voice. It had a different, raspy tone and a German accent (for some reason).

"Hello, zere. Zis is zee Emperor's perzonal vault, correct?"

"Yes, this vault contains valuable items and artifacts that only the Emperor himself can access. Not even the coven heads know what the vault contains."

"Interesting..."

"Anyway, who are you, and what's your business here, soldier?"

"Mein name is... uh... Doug. Zee zergeant has new orders for you, so he zent me here to take your place in guarding zee vault."

"The sergeant? Ah, that old fart is totally picking on me!" the guard groaned. "Okay, I'm off. Guard the vault with your life, understand?"

"I kot it."

"Good."

The guard walked off, leaving Sturm in front of the vault. Alone. When he was sure the coast was clear, he made his illusion spear disappear and looked at the vault door. He could try and open it, but he did not want to risk triggering any alarms or realize that he could not close it back up.

Luckily, he had more than one plan to get inside. To his right, Sturm saw another vent grate near the vault's door.

Like last time, Sturm removed the grate and crawled through the air duct, knowing it would lead inside the vault. After a few minutes, Sturm finally reached another grate. And it was right ahead of him. He removed the grate and carefully crawled out from the vents as usual.

Once inside the vault, Sturm realized that the relic room was nothing compared to this place. The vault was filled with gorgeous artifacts, jewels, magical weapons, and enchanted armor. For a second, Sturm thought he'd died and gone to whatever afterlife the Demon Realm had, and he soon grinned, and his eyes were full of greed.

"Hee hee. The Serenity Statue. The Infernal Ring. The Bracelet of Enigmas. Aaah, so many things I wanna take... So much power I can exploit." His grin faltered, and he sighed sadly as his red eyes fell to the floor. "But I can't take them... I can't risk anyone discovering a major artifact is missing."

Sturm's expression remained melancholic until his grin reappeared.

"But I didn't come here for any artifacts... I came here for something more... subtle."

He walked to the corner of the vault and saw a chest on the floor. It looked like a wooden treasure chest, but the metal parts were trimmed with gold, and a padlock kept the lid shut.

"Here we go..."

Sturm knelt before the chest and took a closer look at the padlock. He drew a small spell circle and, on his fingertip, appeared a tiny bit of abomination goo shaped like a key.

He inserted his makeshift key into the padlock's hole and turned his finger. After a few seconds, the key turned, and the padlock opened. Finally, Sturm grabbed the lid and heaved it open.

"Yes!"

Sturm looked inside and grinned. He found no crystals, no stones, no weapons, or any trinkets of any kind. Instead, the boy found... papers? With another glance, he saw that those were no ordinary sheets of paper. Those were maps. And there was one that caught his eye. He took it out of the box to get a better look.

The map depicted a landscape with a trail marked in red. The trail went through what appeared to be a gate fit for a graveyard, and the destination was marked with an X beside what seemed to be a statue holding a blue orb, which was right below a dragon-like beast.

"Oh-ho, yeah... Soon, I'll have my hands on the Galdorstones..." he chuckled, rolling the map and hiding it beneath his cloak. "Now to leave this place."

With that said, he closed the chest, locked the padlock back up, and reentered the vent where he came from after putting the grate back. He crawled outside the vault and returned to the grate he had used to get into this wing.

Once he entered and got far enough, he pulled out the plans and began to trace his finger across the paper.

"Okay. There should be a vent that leads directly outside. But if I go this way, it should be the least guarded area. And once I make it outside, I must book it immediately."

Sturm knew he couldn't return to the group. The class had already left the castle, so he had no choice but to go through with the plan as soon as he got outside. Otherwise, he'd be stuck in the vents forever, or someone would eventually find him.

After what felt like an hour of crawling and following the exact path he'd planned, Sturm was finally greeted with the sunlight shining through a grate.

"Almost there... Just a little further..."

Eventually, Sturm reached the grate but took the time to check what was on the other side. He could see the cliff a few hundred in front of him. Sturm looked down and saw the gaping pit with enormous, sharp rock formations at the bottom. When he looked up, he could see the cliff's top; as expected, it was the least guarded section of the exterior.

Sturm knew he couldn't avoid getting spotted, but it was a risk he was willing to take. When the guards would inevitably see him, all he had to do was run like hell and lose them.

"It's now or never..."

He drew a spell circle with each hand and summoned some abomination slime to cover his forearms and feet. With one movement, he turned the slime on his right arm into tendrils and tore the grate into pieces. After that, he used the abomination slime on his feet to launch himself out of the vent with great force.

He practically flew across the deadly pit. It took a lot of effort, but his natural strength and the potency of his abomination magic allowed him to leap hundreds of feet across the gap.

Sturm started to lose momentum, and by the time he got to the pit's wall, he melted the abomination slime off his feet and turned the goo on his arms into sharp scythes. When he got close to the wall, he stabbed his makeshift weapons into the stone and briefly slid down before stopping entirely.

Once Sturm had stopped, he quickly looked skyward, stepped backward to make the abomination slime stretch, and after getting far enough, he used it as a sling to launch himself upwards. He flew at an incredible speed, for a moment, at least. As he began to lose momentum again, he touched the wall with his feet, steeled himself, and mustered enough strength and speed to scale the wall by running vertically.

This action defied several laws of physics and biomechanics, but none of that mattered to Sturm. Every second, he took short breaths to maintain enough momentum to fuel his ascension, or at least enough to reach the top.

And he chanted one word in his mind.

"Move. Move. Move. Move. Move. Move. Move."

As expected, some guards spotted Sturm from the top of a battlement. Upon seeing that the figure was wearing a coven scout's uniform, they immediately assumed they were being betrayed by one of their own. A guard turned to his superior.

"Sir! We got a deserter scaling the east wall, and he's escaping!"

"What?!"

The superior looked at the spot his subordinate mentioned to see for himself. His anger boiled when he saw the supposed 'traitor,' so he looked at the guard handling a weapon resembling a portable cannon and pointed at Sturm.

"Blast 'em!"

Without wasting a second, the guard aimed the cannon at Sturm, who was reaching the top. The guard fired the weapon, and a magical projectile flew toward Sturm.

Sturm finally made it to the top and stopped to catch his breath. One second. He only stopped for one second. And it was just enough for him to be hindered.

The projectile hit the very top of the cliff, just behind Sturm. Upon impact, the projectile exploded and sent Sturm flying into the nearby woods. Sturm screamed as the blast launched him. Once he hit the ground, he rolled for a moment and groaned in pain.

Meanwhile, the guard who fired the cannon looked at his superior.

"Direct hit, sir!"

"Good. Have a search party arrest the traitor if he's still alive!"

Sturm quickly recovered from what had just happened. He took off his mask and gasped for air before coughing. His body ached from the impact, and he could smell something burning. Sturm sat up and checked his cape, only to see it burnt from the blast. He figured that the back of the uniform looked like this. On the other hand, he was glad that he was alive and didn't suffer any severe injuries.

He checked the uniform until he noticed something: the plans were still with him, but the map he worked hard to get...?

"Wait... The map! No, NO!"

He got up and zoomed around the area, looking for the map. He checked every rock, tree, and bush he saw, but he didn't dare to go out in the open for fear of being spotted by the guards.

"No, no, no. Where is it? Where is it, where is it, where is it?"

He was getting desperate at that point. He didn't want to go home empty-handed, but he was starting to lose hope. He had worked hard and spent a lot of time planning, but all his efforts were for nothing.

Before he could continue his search, Sturm noticed strange sounds. He looked to one side and heard the sounds of multiple people approaching his position. That's when Sturm realized that he had no choice but to flee.

But first, he had to throw off the guards.

Using his blinding speed, Sturm returned to the spot where he'd landed, ripped off the uniform from his body, and strewn it across the area to make it seem that the target got torn to pieces by the explosion. When he was done, he zoomed away from the area.

The search party consisting of a handful of coven scouts had reached the scene of the explosion. A sizable chunk of the ledge was missing. They were surprised by how much damage the projectile had inflicted on the area. They didn't get to use weapons like those these days.

The scout in charge walked ahead of the others and gave orders.

"Spread out and look for the traitor. He couldn't have gotten very far."

Immediately, the other scouts began searching the area for clues, and it didn't take long for them to find the 'remains' of the target.

"I see the torn uniform, but I don't see a body."

"We never used that weapon before on another living thing, so maybe only the deserter's body was disintegrated."

"How do you know?"

"I once saw another weapon in action. It erased one guy from existence, but his clothes were left behind. Maybe something similar happened here."

"Maybe..."

There was a short pause.

"So...what now?"

"We report to the corporal. The target has been eliminated."

"Yeah. We are about to get our day off soon anyway."

The scouts turned around and began walking back the way they came. However, the scout who walked behind the group stopped when he saw something unusual beneath a bush. It was easy to miss, but the scout had caught sight of it.

It was a rolled-up paper. The scout looked at it closely, and when his comrades weren't looking, the scout unrolled it and saw that it was a map. He didn't recognize where it led to, but it looked interesting. He tended to keep it as a souvenir and show it to his family the day he'd go home.

He rolled the paper back up and hid it in his cloak before he heard someone call him.

"Hey, Steve! Are you coming?"

"Um, yeah. Sorry. Wait up."