Fanfic / The Angel of The Owl House

The Angel of The Owl House is an AU of The Owl House, in which Luz is the daughter of the angel Camila and a human, making her a hybrid. After several well-meaning attempts at helping her classmates go awry, causing chaos instead of the order angels try to promote, Luz ends up in the Demon Realm instead of camp, only to find that the place isn’t quite the hellhole the angels believe it is. Now, apprenticing under Eda, Luz is trying to find her place and develop her powers, all while keeping the fact that she’s an Angel from leaking to the Isles as a whole (or more specifically, Belos), which would be a lot easier if she could lie without feeling like her throat is on fire…

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This fanfic provides examples of:

• Abilene Paradox: When Eda and Lilith bet their and their apprentices' futures in a duel (Eda and Luz joining the Emperor's Coven if Amity wins, Lilith and Amity become Wild Witches if Luz wins) with an everlasting oath, it takes a scolding from their irate apprentices for Eda and Lilith both to admit that it was a bad idea. The only problem is that they both think that the other is too stubborn to agree to nullifying the oath before the duel is set to end.
• Abusive Parents:
  • In addition to everything else she's done to Amity in canon, Odalia is confirmed to have slapped her on occasion. After she has Amity start multi-tracking in Oracle magic she gets mad that Amity is only the second-best in the track, despite the fact that the top student in the track, Celine, has been using said kind of magic for years longer. She's also controlled her kid's diets to keep them thin for appearance's sake without compensating for their physical activity, rendering them somewhat underweight for their age.
  • Terra is basically Hanu's adoptive mother, and when the latter fails to win against Willow and makes a mess of her foyer, Terra binds her hands and throws her into an arena with Raine in their cursed form, hoping to see the Bat Beast tear her apart for amusement, saying that she might forgive Hanu if she wins.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • The Light Glyph is discovered during the Conformatorium Heist in the first chapter, instead of during Eda's first curse transformation.
  • The Plant Glyph is discovered during Luz's first trip to Hexside, instead of before Grom.
  • Eda's powered up Owl Beast form, which she briefly entered during "Watching and Dreaming", instead appears during her first transformation, after a botched attempt at curing the curse instead powers her up.
  • Philip's Diary is found during the Wailing Star events at the library, instead of during the Looking Glass Ruins episode. Malphas also appears in this chapter.
  • Ghost appears and bonds with Amity during the events of season 1, when she canonically debuted roughly in the middle of season 2.
  • In canon, Waffles only appears in the epilogue. Here, Hunter and Lucy carve them to be the latter's Palisman in the middle of the equivalent of season two.
• Aborted Arc: The events of "Hooty's Moving Hassle" and "Once Upon a Swap" are set up and then averted in between chapers. Later, the events of "Sense and Insensitivity" are also stated to have been largely averted off-screen.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Luz is shown to be a lot more effected by her lack of friends and her outcast status in the Human World. She struggles with her failed attempts to help people, and briefly breaks down when she believes the same things are happening in the Demon Realm. She is also shown to be more hurt by her mother sending her to camp. When she has an emotional breakdown over being sent to the Detention Track, mortified that she screwed up on her first day at Hexside, Bump briefly considers telling Eda that she needs therapy. Later, we learn that Luz has had episodes like that semi-frequently in the past, requiring that Camila use a calming spell to help her snap out of it.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Luz gains the ability to use light beam attacks after finding and bonding with the Light Glyph at the Conformatorium, and begins learning spells from Eda. She initially struggles with many of them, but is adept at potions, enough so that she briefly outshines Boscha. She also gains powerful healing magic after bonding with the Plant Glyph.
  • Willow's skill with Plant Magic allows her to go toe to toe with Boscha and her gang, defeating all of them, after they attempt to bully her and Luz.
  • Gus is able to create a terrifying illusion to intimidate Mattholomule and mesmerise the Detention Pit
  • King uses glyph magic, after being taught by Luz.
  • Amity gains her Palisman early, allowing her to fly and fight with a staff during a trip to the Bat Queen's Forest.
• Adaptational Explanation:
  • In canon, the phenomena of glowing eyes that seemed to boost a witch's magic was never explained, as plans to explain it were scrapped when the series was cut short. Here, it is explained as a Bile Overload, a result of strong emotions causing a witch's Bile Sac to produce too much bile, making them stronger, but also making it harder to control themselves.
  • In canon we never learned the details of what Galdorstones are. Here, we learn that they're the hearts of witches and demons who were so filled with the Titan's power that their blood became closer to Titan's Blood, and after they died said hearts crystallized.
  • Canon never explains why Eda needs to buy Elixirs from Morton and can't just brew them herself. Here it is explained that it requires a specific rare ingredient that Eda can't get her hands on, as the Plant Coven are the only ones to grow it and have boobytrapped their supply after Eda attempted a robbery in the past, so only licensed potioneers can acquire it. Luz and King later learn to grow the plant with the Plant Glyph, so Eda can finally brew the Elixir herself.
  • We learn more about the Titans and how the Titan Trappers were able to slay them than in canon; grown Titans are able to create smaller Avatars to safely interact with their young despite their vast size differences (or with witches and demons), but if the Avatar is slain, the Titan dies as well, so the Trappers attacked the Avatars. The tower King was found in was made by an angel friend of his father's, who was watching over King's egg until his death.
  • We learn that the reason that Vee is more of a Cute Monster Girl than the other basilisks is that she's a Golden-Eyed Basilisk, whose subspecies has the aforementioned golden eyes, a slightly more humanoid upper torso, a particularly sharp nose when it comes to magic even by basilisk standards, and a more docile temperament. We also learn how Vee and the other two basilisks escaped, the Emperor's Coven was performing tests by forcing them to drain Conformatorium prisoners, but the Greater Basilisk/Zero wasn't satisfied and ended up draining some of the guards, and ended up draining the magical keys to their chains. We also learn that Basilisk sub-species are the result of them adapting as a result of the magic that they feed off of, and that Basilisks are genderless by default but can have gender identities, like how Vee uses feminine pronouns and prefers female forms.
  • We get some actual backstory on the non-Flapjack adopted Palismen in this AU.
  • Hettie Cutburn is the Sole Survivor of a town destroyed by a necromancer who created a horde of Grimwalkers.
  • The Wailing Star is the heart of King's mother, cast into space after she was killed by the Archivists and her spirit trapped within, and the reason it brings the books in the library to life is because the building is on top of a Primordial Wellspring, and Cassiopeia regrets not being able to share the oral traditions of the Titans with King.
  • In this universe Belos's condition is explained as a combination of a flawed healing glyph combo (since he used Fire glyphs instead of light ones the effects are Cast from Lifespan) and Palisman essence he absorbed to try and counteract it until Luz showed him the Light glyph and he was able to fix it.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • Edric and Emira start off a bit more mean-spirited, stealing Amity's employee ID for the library and getting her in trouble, on top of trying to steal her diary to post it around the school. They do make up for this later though.
  • Zig-zagged with Mattholomule, who instead of telling on Luz to the Hexside guards, actually tricks her and throws her into the Detention Pit himself to avoid being outed as a fraud. He later works to redeem himself by helping to save her, and accepting his punishment.
• Adaptational Karma: In canon, Mattholomule gets away with lying to the H.A.S and getting Luz thrown in the Detention Pit, and even gets what he wants in the end by becoming the new President of the H.A.S. In Angel of the Owl House, he is instead punished for his actions by having to work to repair the damage his actions caused to the school, and he is forbidden from joining any clubs for the remainder of the school year.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Luz in canon is far from a bad person, but she is still prone to mischief and causing problems without meaning to. Here she is a literal angel and thus a lot more conscientious, notably not lying to Eda to have a Moonlight Conjuring or pretending to be an abomination to go to Hexside. She even hurts herself to cover for Amity's unintentional cheating during their duel at the Covention.
  • Amity also starts out as a much nicer person, not having a lot of her mean-spirited moments from canon like trying to get Luz dissected or crushing King's cupcake.
  • Similarly, Skara becomes a lot nicer after her first appearance, and is implied to only have been a bully due to her friendship with Boscha.
  • While Principal Bump in canon was nicer than the average witch on the Boiling Isles (though that's not saying much), here he decides to let Luz off the hook after he catches Luz mixing magics (using Plant Magic to heal Skara's scarred hands), sending her to the Detention Track for only a day while the Inspector arrives to evaluate the school. Of course this is after she has an emotional breakdown over it, making him realize that sending her to the Detention Track for the whole year was Disproportionate Retribution to something so minor.
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul:
  • Since Luz didn't cause Amity to lose her Top Student badge when she came to Hexside, the two start off on much better terms, with Amity developing her crush before the Covention.
  • Amity becomes Lilith's official apprentice, as opposed to being just one of her students, resulting in them being closer. They remain mentor and apprentice even after the events of the Bat Queen's Forest.
• Adaptational Species Change:
  • Luz in this AU is a human and angel hybrid, rather than a full human, with Camila being her angelic parent.
  • Eberwolf in this AU is a first generation Biped demon born from a witch and a beast demon instead of just a biped demon.
  • Viney goes from a witch to a witch/demon hybrid.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Luz has white hair instead of being a brunette. However her disguises as a human and witch make her hair look brown.
• Albinos Are Freaks: The Silver Sentinel is revealed to be an angel with an uncanny resemblance to Luz, but with white hair and red eyes. Belos claimed these were symptoms of a curse that other angels would shun her for. Since Luz has never heard of such a thing, it's likely that Belos has ulterior motives for keeping her identity hidden, which is later confirmed when it's revealed that she's a Grimwalker of Luz made by Belos from a finger he obtained after Luz went back in time.
• Alchemy Is Magic:
  • Potions magic in general has some aspects of this, but skilled Potions witches can transmute materials on the fly.
  • Angelic Alchemy is similar to transmutation, but requires Angel-specific magic. It's what is used to create things like the Panacea Mirrors and Harmonic Crystals for teleportation circles.
• Alien Blood: Luz's blood is originally red like human blood, but eventually turns golden. This is a sign of her magical growth, according to Rasiel.
• All for Nothing:
  • Eda attempts to make Luz cry by slipping her a potion, so she can use her angel tears in an attempt to cure her curse. This leads to numerous blunders that shakes Luz's confidence and causes her to have a minor breakdown. When Eda confesses her mistakes and explains her actions, Luz tells her that she would have given the tears willingly if Eda had just explained the situation from the beginning, making the whole incident unnecessary. Not that the tears end up helping much.
  • During the Wailing Star incident, Luz goes through a lot of trouble to find books on angels and glyphs, working with Edric and Emira to break into the library and accidentally getting Amity in trouble, only to have to give up the book she'd gone through all that trouble for to fix things and get Amity her job back. Later revealed to be averted, as Edric switched the returned book with a different one disguised by an illusion, and gives the real book to Luz as an apology.
  • Lilith takes her apprentice Amity with her to the Bat Queen's forest to try and get Palismen for the Emperor, and after encountering Eda and Luz, she tries to use Amity to convince Luz to join the Emperor's Coven. This backfires when Amity learns what the Emperor does with Palismen, resulting in her agreeing with Luz and Eda and no longer wanting to join the Coven. Lilith also fails to retrieve the Palismen, despite fighting a Mandragora for that purpose.
  • In "Cauldrons and Creeps", Vitimir tries to get Luz to become his daughter in both body and mind via a potion, hoping to reunite with Cassiel, the angel that was at Hexside over a decade before that he had feelings for and become a family after the Day of Unity and becoming an angel himself. Even assuming that Belos is telling the truth about that, Boscha manages to sabotage the potion so it fails, which not only costs him his chance at his dream family (especially since Luz was willing to help him find Cassiel before she learned about his plans), with his potion unable to be replicated since it needs an ingredient derived from an extinct species, but causes Boscha, her parents, and Morton to defect to the CATTS, making the resistance against Belos more powerful.
  • Kikimora attempts to assassinate Hunter, Lucy, and Osran, while capturing Luz for Belos. Not only does she fail, her actions cause several developments for the heroes and turn her into a fugitive when Belos hears what happened.
• All Part of the Show: When Lilith's "Raven Beast" form starts rampaging in Gravesfield, Luz comes up with the idea of having everyone dress as a Sentai team to fight her, the adults using illusion magic to create special effects and film crew to sell the act that they're filming a show and use humanity's skepticism to magic to sell the lie.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • It's unclear if Belos has undergone an Adaptational Species Change like Luz has. He claims to be an angel (who Cannot Tell a Lie without experiencing extreme pain, though interestingly he seems unaware that angels can lie beyond using Exact Words), and has the wings to go with it, but he uses terminology different from what's used in the Divine Realm, and even claims to have once been a member if a Crest Order that doesn't exist when Luz asks to test him, making it unclear if he's just powering through the pain, believes his own lies, or is human like in canon, but has experimented on himself to make himself more like an angel. Rasiel suggests that his affliction, which isn't something that should normally be able to affect an angel, is the result of self-experimentation gone wrong. Vee's Intermission reveals that he smells of both a human and an angel to her Basilisk senses, but twisted, indicating that he's either a hybrid like Luz or a human that tried to become an angel. It's later confirmed that Philip was indeed a human like in canon, but what exactly happened to give him the wings is unclear besides hints that he might have stolen Rasiel's.
  • In "Oracle of Angels", it's revealed that Lucy — the Silver Sentinel and Hunter's sister (actually cousin) — has a resemblance to Luz (with the exception of having albino features) and cherub wings, meaning that she, like Luz, is an angel of Crest Kindness, and has a similar condition to Luz prior to bonding with the light glyph. Is she an angel, or a grimwalker like Hunter? Repeat mentions of a Kindness angel named Cassiel are brought up, and the timeline could mean that she is either her daughter or a grimwalker made in her likeness. Or are they unrelated? It's eventually revealed that she's a Grimwalker of Luz, made from a finger Philip severed when Luz went back in time.
• And I Must Scream: After Luna is depetrified it's revealed that she was trapped in her own body, unable to move, and assumes that Luz must be a hallucination. Author comments indicate that Belos's petrifying statue deliberately makes the experience as agonizing as possible.
• Artifact of Hope: The Panacea Mirror is a type of Magic Mirror made from angel magic. It can cure any ailment, including unbreakable curses, and gives them the ability to cure that same ailment in others. The only catch is that not only is in hard to make (requiring alchemically made pure-silver and the blood of two angels from two different bloodlines), it can only be used by the angels that made it, it can only be used once and the angels who made it can only ever make one.
• Ascended Demon: While in canon it was implied that the Day of Unity was marketed to the Coven Heads as merging the Demon Realm with the Human Realm, here he claims that it will merge their realm with the Divine Realm, turning everyone into angels free of wild magic and the Coven Heads themselves into Celestial Paragons and Archangels, making the idea of turning the Boiling Isles into a Paradise to be a bit more literal. Considering this is Belos saying this, this most likely isn't true, and Rasiel says that both supposed goals should be impossible, though his missing memories means that he's not 100% certain.
• Ascended Extra: Skara and Boscha have both had expanded roles during Luz's visits to Hexside. Word of God is that they'll be receiving chapters focused on them in the future. Other minor characters such as Capra (the goat-like member of the H.A.S) are also given a bit more prominence.
• Body to Jewel: If a witch or demon takes in enough of the Titan's power, their blood becomes more similar to Titan's blood. After they die, the hearts of these witches and demons crystallizes, forming Galdorstones.
• Born of Heaven and Hell: Nephilim are said to be angel/demon hybrids, though they are considered a myth in the Divine Realm.
• Broken Pedestal: Amity loses all faith in Lilith and the Emperor's Coven once she learns what Belos does with Palismen, and that Lilith knew about it.
• Bully Hunter: The students at Glandus who try and stop others from bullying weaker students usually do so by bullying the bullies.
• Bureaucratically Arranged Marriage: While angels are capable of falling in love, marriage is typically assigned to angels by Crest Chasity in order to control the Divine Realm's population-rate and their offspring are taken to be raised by the state. While none of this is mandatory by law, thousands of years of tradition have made family units non-existent, and those who refuse are often shamed. The whole reason Camilla moved to the Human Realm was so that she could find love and have a family without angel society breathing down her neck, as she was born to fill a specific position in Crest Kindness and didn't want to give birth to a child just so it could take her place while she became a Missionary Angel.
• Cannot Tell a Lie: One of the quirks of being an angel is that they are unable to knowingly lie without it feeling like their throats are burning. The key word here is knowingly, and they can use Exact Words. Also, since it only happens when they verbally lie, they can use illusions just fine, and Luz is able to send texts to Camila that make her think that she's still at camp. Interestingly, Belos, despite claiming to be an angel, is unaware of the details of this.
• Canon Character All Along: It's revealed that Camilla was Cassiel the entire time.
• Can't Live Without You: For some reason Luz's angel side was stunted, leaving her unable to produce her own magic before bonding to the light glyph, with only a lot of healing magic allowing Luz to be born at all. As a result, Camila had to give Luz magic via an angelic blessing once a month to keep her alive.
• Chekhov's Skill: In "Cauldrons and Creeps", Boscha shows off the whistling trick with Bard magic Skara taught her to help her, Barcus, and Morton escape the Potion Coven's cells. Later in the chapter, she uses it to sabotage the potion Vitimir was going to use to make Luz his daughter.
• Complete Immortality: Seraphim are already incapable of dying of natural causes by the time they reach that stage of their power, but if a Seraphim manages to go beyond eight wings to ten, they become true immortals and cannot be killed. One such Seraphim, Rasiel, had to be split into four pieces and sealed away because a mysterious "Divider" couldn't kill them.
• Damsel in Distress: After Luz is thrown in the Detention Pit, it turns feral due to her angel magic and breaks free to attack the school, while Luz is trapped in a pod inside it.
• Deal with the Devil: How Luz initially sees working with Eda in order to get home. She later changes her mind after seeing what witches and demons are really like.
• Death of Personality: Discussed; in "Cauldrons and Creeps", Vitimir, obsessed with Cassiel, tries to force Luz to drink a potion that will not only rewrite her paternal DNA and make him her biological father so he can form a family with her and Cassiel (believing that he'll reunite with her during the Day of Unity), but alter her memories so that she'll believe that she always was his daughter. Although Boscha has already sabotaged it by then, when Luz is threatening to shoot herself in the head with a spell if he doesn't let the three-eyed witch go, she points out that doing so would be effectively murdering her and putting someone new in her body.
• Delicate and Sickly: Camilla reveals that not only was Luz born prematurely, but she lacked any natural magic (a condition that was fatal to angels) and had to be continuously be replenished via angelic blessings from Camilla. When she finds out that Luz was away in the Demon Realm and not getting her blessings all those months, she's understandably devastated at the thought that she could have died from it.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Bard magic can be used to cast almost any kind of spell if one knows how to make it work as a song, making skilled Bard witches versatile foes, but it takes both magical and musical skill to achieve.
  • Transmutation is too difficult for all but the most skilled Potions witches to do, but for those that can do it they can create powerful concoctions on the fly, or just use transmuted objects to attack.
• Diverging Evolutionary Phases: Basilisks are unique in many ways, one of which being that they can undergo a physical change that reflects on what type of magic they typical eat. Subject Zero (the basilisk that attacked Hexside) was a Greater Basilisk, a species that comes about from eating various different types of magic throughout its lifetime. Vee winds up becoming a Quetzalcoatl Basilisk after eating enough angelic magic through Luz and Camilla's angelic blessings, allowing her to absorb magic passively through her wings like an angel instead of needing to feed, and even allowing her to cast some basic spells.
• Dominant Species Genes:
  • Half-angels are normally all but indistinguishable from pure-blooded angels save for their magic and wings developing during puberty instead of before it. Luz having the same eye and hair colors as her canon self's before bonding to the light glyph is noted by Rasiel to be highly unusual, and tied to whatever made her Delicate and Sickly as a child. According to author notes, this is because magical genes dominate non-magical genes, when Luz and Amity have kids they'd be more even hybrids, having both angel wings and a witch bile sack.
  • When a witch and Biped demon have children together, the species of the offspring is decided by the species of the one giving birth, though sometimes if the child is a witch a few traits of the demon parent's species will be inherited, like Viney's Little Bit Beastly lower half.
  • Basilisks breeding with other species leads to new variants of Basilisks instead of normal hybrids. For instance, Vee's initial subspecies of Golden-Eyed Basilisks originally came about when some Amphibious Basilisks mated with witches.
• Dungeon Bypass: At the Knee, Luz, King, and Amity visit the Caplacier Temple and decide to undergo the three trials related to Ice magic within, which are admittedly fairly easy because they were made for initiates. For the one King does, he's so short that he doesn't even have to really try to avoid the spikes, while in the one Luz does she simply flies over.
• Either/Or Offspring: When Biped Demons and witches have children together, the species of the child is determined by which member of the couple is giving birth. Witches with features like Boscha's Third Eye are the result of them occasionally picking up a demonic feature or two from their other parent.
• Enfante Terrible: Bump's predecessor Faust had met his end being eaten by the Kindergartners. While Luz thinks the idea is a joke and laughs, the haunting look Bump gives implies that it wasn't.
• Elemental Dragon: It's implied that there are lesser elemental dragons as well, but the main ones we see in the fic are the Supreme Dragons, which come in Fire, Ice, Lightning varieties.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • Lilith presumes that not only is Luz Eda's half-human child, but that she inherited her curse. Since angels are considered mythical creatures on the Boiling Isles and it would put a target on Luz's back if the Emperor's Coven found out, Eda has to play along.
  • Both Zara and Rasiel recognize King as a young Titan, but don't say anything, assuming that he already knows and is simply keeping it a secret. It's not until several chapters later that Rasiel realizes that he's unaware of the truth.
• Exact Words: Since angels can't deliberately lie without extreme pain, this comes up a lot, especially regarding Luz keeping her secret safe. Belos even drops the trope name at one point.
• The Exile: It's implied that Camila is living on Earth out of contempt for the Divine Realm's Fantastic Caste System, particularly Crest Chastity's matchmaking. This is later confirmed, as she wanted to become a Missionary Angel, but since she was born to fill a specific position in Crest Kindness, they wanted her to give birth to a child to eventually take her place first, and she fled to Earth after she refused.
• Fantastic Nuke: In this AU, instead of the magic from the Draining Spell being shot up into space, the plan is that it will link to an Angel who will absorb that magic and release it in a massive explosion that will then wipe out all life in the Demon Realm, getting anyone that the Draining Spell missed.
• "Fawlty Towers" Plot: Chapter 2 has Eda and King try and fail to spike Luz with Tearful Tonic various times throughout the day, thinking that they can use her tears to cure their respective ailments. Instead the tonic ends up hitting various people Luz interacts with, making her think that she is somehow upsetting people. While Luz is understandably crushed that they were trying to emotionally manipulate her, not to mention not wanting to have her bodily fluids monetized, she tells them that they should have told her the real reason why they needed her tears, seeing curing their ailments as a good enough reason.
• Feathered Serpent:
  • Quetzalcoatls are a species of dragon native to the Divine Realm. Angels have apparently learned to tame them and use them as high-speed vehicles similar to human fighter-jets.
  • Quetzalcoatl Basilisks are a subspecies of basilisk from the Boiling Isles that result when a basilisk feeds on enough angel magic. While they look like adolescent quetzalcoatls, it is a purely aesthetic resemblance and they can passively feed on magic through their wings like angels can. Vee winds up metamorphozing into one after being fed enough angel magic via blessings from Camilla (who thought she was Luz at the time) and Luz (who offered it to her freely).
• Fingore: After Rasiel's body was unsealed, his finger was apparently cut off, and he's unable to regenerate it since it still exists.
• Five-Finger Discount: As in canon, Eda frequently steals and pickpockets. Here it is considered a side-effect of her curse, making her a bit of a kleptomaniac, and Luz takes the stolen things to return to their owners, with minimal protest from Eda.
• Freakiness Shame: Being part Snow Leopard Cait Sith, Viney has fur on her legs, paws instead of feet, and a tail. Due to bullying as a child, she covers up these features whenever possible. The only reason Jerbo, Barcus, or Luz found out is because she was so stubborn about it that she overheated herself.
• Fountain of Youth: While it doesn't cure her curse, Luz's healing tears does make for a stronger version of Eda's elixirs, even rejuvenating her enough where she looks closer to her actual age.
• Gender Flip: In this AU Eberwolf is female, both biologically and in terms of gender identity, but uses male pronouns in public due to her father's pack, as he was a Direwolve, a type of Beast demon, and she would have been killed for being so small and a half-breed if her witch mother hadn't claimed that she was a boy.
• Gone Horribly Right: A number of Luz's previous attempts to help people fall into this territory. For instance, using her powers to make realistic props to help the drama club after a budget cut, but going too far and causing very realistic blood and gore effects, resulting in an ambulance being called because the parents thought that a kid was actually stabbed.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Luz is a half-human, half-angel girl, her mother Camila being an angel while her father was a human.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Healing magic, while useful, has limitations that make it harder to treat certain conditions. It certainly doesn't help that because of Belos's restrictions on mixing magic, a lot of potential methods either require workarounds or are impossible under the Coven system. Even Angels, whose magic is naturally aligned with healing and regeneration, find it harder to heal things like missing limbs on others than on themselves, and because of the way scars work repairing scarred tissues requires cutting off the part of the body with the scar and regrowing it from scratch.
• Hereditary Curse: Lilith and the guards at the Conformatorium believe Luz has inherited Eda's curse, due to her white hair and feathers, as they can't believe an angel would be working with Eda.
• Hero of Another Story: The last time Bump had met an angel (Cassiel) was when she had helped stage an uprising among Hexside's student-body, ending with Bump being made Principle and his tyrannical predecessor Faust being fed to the Kindergartners.
  Bump: That's what happens when you turn a non-violent protest into a fight... and also ban the Kindergarteners' snack time...
• Heroic BSoD: Luz experiences this after mistaking Eda's mishaps with the Tearful Tonic to be her fault, making her think she made a child, a teen, and King cry.
• Hulking Out:
  • When Belos injects Titan Bile into Luz's blood-stream, she undergoes a transformation into what can best be described as canon-Luz's Hybrid-form with leathery bat wings and an insatiable desire to destroy everyone and everything around her.
  • Due to her Cait Sith blood, Viney can use a spell that transforms her into a humanoid feline, increasing her strength and physical abilities, at the cost of making it harder to cast spells.
• I'm Having Soul Pains: It's specified that the pain angels feel when they lie, while excruciating, has no physical presence on their bodies, implying that the pain is itself entirely magical in nature. While Luz helps herself to ice water and healing pollen after lying for Amity's sake, it's more to take the edge off than to actually heal any damage.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Luz still makes an enemy by outshining someone at Hexside: Boscha, instead of Amity.
  • Despite being friends with Amity, Luz still ends up in a duel with her at the Covention.
  • Amity still almost loses her job at the Library, even though she wasn't the one to help Luz get into the Forbidden Stacks.
  • Even though Luz isn't banned from Hexside, she still ends up thrown in the Detention Pit.
  • Despite not stealing Owlbert or getting him hurt, Luz still ends up visiting the Bat Queen's lair and discovering she is a Palisman.
  • While Luz manages to find an excuse not to go to the Emperor's Palace during a Hexside field trip, she still winds up taken there by Lilith and Kikimora on Belos' orders.
  • Lilith still blurts out that she cursed Eda in a duel.
  • Luz still comes across Vee in her shape in her room on Earth.
• Internal Reveal:
  • Amity discovers Luz is an angel after seeing her fight the Owl Beast out in the rain.
  • Principal Bump reveals to Luz that she isn't the first angel to come to Hexside.
  • Willow and Gus learn Luz's secret after saving her from the rampaging Detention Pit.
  • Luz, Amity, Eda, and Lilith all learn that the Bat Queen is a Palisman. Luz even temporarily bonds with her and uses her as a staff against the Mandragora attacking her forest.
  • In Chapter 26 Masha learns that Vee isn't the original Luz, that Luz is an angel, and that Vee is a Basilisk.
  • In Chapter 32, the fact that King is a young Titan is revealed to Belos and the CAT Ts.
• It Only Works Once: A Panacea Mirror can only be used to cure a single magical affliction or curse, after which it bonds with the angel who uses it. While that angel can now cure that same affliction by themselves in the future, it's still limited to that specific one.
• Legend Fades to Myth: By the time the Boiling Isles properly formed, the true nature of their slayers had been forgotten due to time, with the Archivists being conflated with angels that came to the Demon Realm much later.
• Like Parent, Like Child: Besides Camila secretly being a nerd like Luz, if for science fiction rather than fantasy, Eda notes that both mother and daughter have a tendency to blame themselves for things beyond their control
• Little Bit Beastly: While her upper half looks like an ordinary witch, Viney's Cait Sith blood means that she has furry legs, a tail, and paws instead of feet.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Vitimir knew Cassiel during her time in the Isles, and was (and is), deeply in love with her, though it's unclear if she loved him that way back. Regardless, after she left, he became so obsessed with her that he tried to use a potion to rewrite Luz's memories and paternal DNA so that she'd be his daughter in the hopes that he, Luz, and Cassiel could be a family when Belos underwent his "Day of Unity" plan to supposedly cause a Merged Reality and make all the demons of witches of the Isles into Angels.
• Magic Music: Angels have their own equivalent of Bard magic called Choir magic, the main difference being that while witches tend to primarily use instruments in Bard magic, angels tend to prefer their voices, and they can harmonize with each other to make it more effective. It's also the basis of all their teleportaion and portal magic.
• Manipulative Bitch: Odalia. Case in point, she manipulated Alador and her in-laws into assuming that each had disowned the other, intercepting any mail that one would send the other, like when Alador tried to send then news about the birth of the kids.
• Man of Kryptonite: Luz, and by extension all angels, are immune to Oracle Magic. It's explained that it's because angels are capable of exorcising spirits and the summoning of spirits are an integral aspect of Oracle Magic.
• Mark of the Supernatural: Every time Luz learns a new glyph, it's marked in her mind and they manifest as tattoos that appear on her body. While Power Tattoos are a thing in the Divine Realm, Luz has no idea why this is happening.
• Mayfly–December Romance: While witches of good health can live over 100 years, angels can live for much longer, Luz's ascension into a High Angel meaning she'll live for 3,000 years at least, so part of Luz's apprehension in dating Amity comes from this.
• Mistaken for Own Murderer: When Luna Miphari is depetrified she doesn't recognize her own son Talis/Mason, since it's been 30 years and she's still mentally recovering from the ordeal and doesn't believe him when he tries to tell her the truth. Then Hooty's poorly-phrased attempts to help make Luna think that Mason actually murdered Talis and her husband, forcing her son, Lilith, Matt, and Luz to fend her off from killing them to "avenge" her family.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: In "Cauldrons and Creeps", both Luz and Boscha find the attention that Vitimir shows Luz a little concerning, but he reacts in genuine disgust at the idea of being interested in her romantically. He's actually trying to make Luz his daughter in the hopes of being a "family" with Cassiel after the Day of Unity.
• Moth Menace: The Goliath Ash Moth, considered the apex Bug-type Demon (enough that they apparently like to play on dragons) and has potent Playing with Fire abilities. One exists on the Titan's right palm, and has created a volcano which it resides in (and others of its species are responsible for all volcanos on Titan landmasses), causing the region to be inaccessible by flight during the day, as they'd just draw its attention. The Boiling Isles one is has its attention drawn by the fight between Hunter and the Silver Sentinel vs Luz, Gus, and the Bat Queen over the Palismen the latter is carrying in "Saving Palismen" despite it being night, scattering the group and forcing them to work together to survive as they avoid its numerous spawn.
• Mutagenic Goo: According to Eda, Bug and Beast-type Demons were originally just wild animals and parasites living in the Titan. After it had died, its five-humors would mix in Primordial Pools that mutated anything that didn't have its own reserve of magic, begating Demonkind. Biped Demons are the result of those demons then mating with Witches, making them second-generation mutants.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: When Luz is setting off to save the selkidomus with Eberwolf, Darius tells her he'll stay and deal with the grown-ups and Eda.
• No Biological Sex: Basilisks are biologically genderless, though most do have a preferred gender identity, like Vee preferring feminine forms and pronouns for instance.
• Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid:
  • Vee's subspecies of Basilisk originally came about when some Amphibious Basilisks mated with witches.
  • In this AU Eberwolf's father was a Direwolf and their mother a witch.
  • Viney has a witch parent and a Biped demon called a Cait Sith for her other parent. This results in her having snow leopard-like fur on her lower body, paws, and a tail.
  • In this AU Mason has a father who is a part-Gnome Witch and a mother that's a Merrow, a species of aquatic Biped Demon.
• No Ontological Inertia: Once Luz manages to destroy Cassiopeia's heart and free her spirit, save for her glyphs most of her magic fades... including the curse she put on the Archivists.
• Oblivious to Love: Luz tends to mistake Amity's Crush Blush for her getting red with anger.
• Order vs. Chaos: Angels in general are big on promoting order, with part of the reason for Luz being sent to camp in this AU being that her attempts to help people, while well-meaning, tend to end up inadvertently causing chaos.
• Our Angels Are Different: Angels in this AU originate from a realm called the Divine Realm, separate from Earth and the Demon Realm and basked in near constant-light (so angels in the Divine Realm wear just enough to preserve their modest), which are capable of interbreeding with humans to produce hybrids like Luz, though said hybrids are usually almost completely indistinguishable from pure-blooded angels.
  • Angel society is focused on being orderly (on a related note, angels cannot knowingly speak a lie without it feeling like their throats are on fire), with angels divided into seven Crest Orders based on the Seven Heavenly Virtues, determining their roles, with angels from each Crest tending to resemble each other strongly (it specifically being compared to a Strong Family Resemblance, with switching being rare but possible), each Crest headed by a Seraphim.
  • Angels start as Cherubs with useless wings and limited powers, with pure-blooded angels usually growing full wings and coming into their powers around puberty, with more powerful angels gaining more wings up until Seraphim, who have eight. This is connected because Angel wings passively absorb energy from ambient sources to fuel their magical abilities, and their feathers have potent mystical properties, along with their tears, especially in regards to healing. Their power and number of wings is also tied to their lifespans, regular Angels have a lifespan of around 1000 years, High Angels about 3000 with their four wings, Arch-Angels 10,000 with their six, and Seraphim are The Ageless. Some Seraphim can rarely go beyond eight wings to ten, upon which they gain Complete Immortality, though there's apparently an upper limit on how many can exist, and they cannot regenerate any body parts that still exist.
  • Finally, something about them freaks out the spirits used in Oracle magic to the point that they're too scared to even acknowledge that they exist (apparently due to a fear that the angels will exorcise them), which means that while angels cannot use Oracle magic, it can't be used on them either. They instead use a different type of magic using celestial bodies called Divination, which can accomplish many of the same feats, save for necromancy. Their equivalent of Bard magic, Choir magic, also focuses more on their singing than instruments like witches tend to prefer.
• Perfect Pacifist People: In spite of their tremendous magical power, physical excursions are forbidden in the Divine Realm outside of self-defense or defending others. Instead, angels will "duel" through heated debate before a panel of judges.
• Phlebotinum Overload: Bile Overload is when a witch's magic bile-sac produces more magic than their bodies can process, causing Power Incontinence and temporary emotional instability. While it's common for children still learning how to use magic, some can have Bile Overload under intense emotional stress, Willow going berserk and turning Hexside into a jungle when Luz gets hurt defending her. An overdose of angel tears have a similar effect, turning Eda's Owl Beast form into more of an Animalistic Abomination temporarily when Luz adds too much of her tears into her elixir.
• Plant Person: Arboriel is the last member of a species of sapient plant demons called Mandragoras, who are skilled plant magic users and use witch DNA to create new Mandragoras. Once trapped under Hexside, she's now escaped and is planning to seize power herself, and ends up making a deal with Terra for revenge against their mutual foes in Eda, Luz, Raine and company, including making Terra and the Plant Coven Mandragoras as well.
• Point of Divergence:
  • Luz frees ALL the prisoners at the Conformatorium instead of just the three she talks to, sparking a full battle between the guards and escapees.
  • Luz learns the Light Glyph after being blinded by a flash at the Conformatorium, and immediately bonds with it and unlocks her light magic to defeat Warden Wrath and save King and Eda.
  • Luz being used to magic and being more empathetic results in her having an easier time selling potions in Bonesborough, making a lot of snails for Eda.
  • Luz isn't tricked by Adegast, instead seeing through his illusions and trying to leave.
  • Instead of disguising herself as an abomination to help Willow and sneak into Hexside, Luz helps Willow improve her abomination and gives her the seed from the Trash Slug to further improve it, then attends the school herself as a welcome guest.
  • Willow's improved abomination earns a pass, but doesn't surpass Amity's, so Amity remains the top student and isn't hostile to Luz. Instead, Luz outshining Boscha in potions class makes Boscha hostile instead.
  • Luz isn't banned from Hexside, and is instead welcomed to come back by Principal Bump, on the condition she helps clean up the mess she helped make.
  • Luz's attempts to use her tears to help Eda make a cure for her curse results in Eda's Owl Beast becoming stronger and attacking Bonesborough.
  • Luz does much better in her duel with Amity, and actually manages to win without cheating, albeit through Amity forfeiting.
  • Philip's diary is found far earlier, during the Wailing Star event, while Luz is looking for books on angels and glyphs.
  • As Luz isn't banned from Hexside, Gus doesn't have to sneak her in on the second visit, and Luz gets to enjoy another trial day there, attending classes like normal.
  • Because of the troubles caused by the Detention Pit, the Grudgby game with Glandus is cancelled, and Luz does not steal Owlbert or anger the Bat Queen by injuring him.
  • Thanks to Rasiel and Hooty being present, Tibbles gets eaten by the latter at the carnival when the former recognizes his Shrinking potion for what it is.
  • Luz is absent from the field trip, and doesn't try to take the Healing Hat.
  • Raine splits the curse alongside Lilith, which lets the three of them still use a little magic on their own without Luz's Divine Blessing.
  • When Luz destroys Cassiopeia's heart to free her spirit, the Archivists are freed from her curse, and turn their attention back to the Demon Realm.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Belos constantly misgenders Raine, referring to them as "he," which infuriates Luz. He also seems to regard Luz having a girlfriend with disgust.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Neither Rasiel or Zara say anything about King being a Titan because they assume that he's simply keeping it a secret. It's not until several chapters later that Rasiel realizes that he really has no idea what he is.
  • Camila never told Luz about her Can't Live Without You issues, disguising their days when she'd top off her magic with an angelic blessing as simple mother-daughter bonding days, because she didn't want to make Luz feel worse about things. As a result, Luz could have died if she hadn't bonded with the light glyph, since Camila was blessing Vee instead while Luz was in the Demon Realm.
  • After Luz reverses the petrification on Mason's mother Luna, she's still a bit disoriented, and doesn't recognize her son due to the decades it's been since she was flesh and blood. Hooty's attempts to help inadvertently make her think that Mason murdered her son and husband instead because he phrases things badly and she misinterprets it, so she tries to kill her own son to "avenge" him.
  • When Hettie realizes that Lucy is a Grimwalker, she immediately tries to poison the girl due to her hatred of necromancy, refusing to explain herself to Luz and Lucy after the former stops her, because she (rightfully) thinks that Luz would side with Lucy regardless. As a result, she's captured and later mostly petrified by Belos to keep her from spilling the beans.
• Power Gives You Wings: The power of an Angel is directly connected to their wings, which absorb ambient energy and convert it into magic, so as Luz grows in power her wings first grow in size before she gets a second pair. She gains a third, ascending to the level of an Arch-Angel, after bonding to the fire glyph.
• Power Nullifier: In "Cauldrons and Creep", it's revealed that the Potions Coven has created a Bile Inhibitor potion to keep a witch from being able to use magic temporarily. Luckily the aerosol version isn't very long-lasting because their test subjects were rescued a few chapters earlier.
• Power Tattoo: When Luz makes a connection with one of the glyphs, it appears on her skin and her abilities with magic related to that glyph's element gain a significant boost. Ancient witches had similar markings, but those were actual tattoos, while Luz's are by all accounts magically-granted blessings from the Titan himself.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Kikimora and Osran, whose species of Biped Demon is called Claw Oni and divided unto Red and Blue clans. As expected, they don't get along when forced to work together.
• Restraining Bolt: After Luz is captured by Belos, he has her immediately branded, which allows him to restrain her using the sigil when she goes berserk.
• Satanic Archetype: The Divider is a Sephiroth (the Divine Realm's equivalent of a Titan) who wished to use his power to remake the Demon Realm into a world of "gentle order" devoid of all the evils of the world, only to be divided himself and imprisoned across the Boiling Isles to protect the universe from his plans. This brings to mind the angel Lucifer, a Fallen Angel who's Pride led to him believing himself wiser than God and being imprisoned in Hell for his troubles.
• Sealed Good in a Can: Rasiel was a seraphim from Crest Humility who somehow found himself imprisoned by Savage-Age witches 100,000 years in the past. Luz and Amity find the first piece — a Crystal Ball kept in a puzzle-box, itself in an ancient, booby-trapped temple on the Knee — and they agree to find the rest of him in exchange for his help in curing Eda's curse when they free him.
  • The spirit of "Cassiopeia", AKA King's mother, was sealed inside her crystallized heart by the Archivists as she died, said heart launched into space to form the Wailing Star.
• Seven Heavenly Virtues: The Divine Realm is divided into a Fantastic Caste System in the form of "Crests"; Crest Kindness (the crest Camilla and Luz belong to) are medical professionals, Crest Chastity rear children and play matchmaker for adults, Crest Charity runs the economy, Crest Diligence are law enforcement and the military, Crest Temperance are food production, Crest Patience are the courts and Crest Humility are administrators and organizers.
• Sickly Child Grew Up Strong: With the reveal that Luz was born prematurely and was dangerously stunted developmentally (according to angelic anatomy, anyway), her metamorphosing into an archangel in just under three months certainly qualifies.
• The Speechless: The Silver Sentinel, while capable of making sounds like giggles, seemingly cannot speak, using sign language to communicate instead. Interestingly, it's American sign language, so Luz is familiar with it, and pretends otherwise in her fight with the Silver Sentinel and Hunter so that she can know what they're planning.
• Spotting the Thread: Belos tries convincing Luz that he's a Seraphim and that prolonged time in the Demon Realm is the reason for his poor health, but it comes to Luz's attention when he uses terminology that doesn't match Luz's own knowledge. She baits him by asking him if he comes from Crest Redemption, and he falls for it by claiming that he was. There is no Crest Redemption and that, (along with the fact that his claims of what he intends for Eda are inconsistent) proves that either he had been lying to her the whole time (something angels, as a rule, avoid doing due to the intense pain it causes in their throats, though interestingly he seems to believe that angels Cannot Tell a Lie at all outside of Exact Words), or he thinks he's telling the truth.
• Springtime for Hitler: In Chapter 35, the Hexside students at HECK are warned against trying to win the most Blue Ribbons, though the fact that the winners of the event will be Press-Ganged into the Emperor's Coven isn't known to them. During the tie-breaker duel, while intending to throw the match, Willow gets so into her fight with Hunter (he and Lucy joined in, one for each team) that she actually beats him, forgetting that he's the last one of their foes left.
• Super-Empowering: After the fight with Belos, Luz develops the ability to grant angelic blessings, which has her donate some of her magic (which regenerates) to someone else. This grants a boost to that other person's natural magic, and can even give magic to someone that doesn't have magic of their own. The only catch is while the angel naturally regenerates the magic they've gifted, the person who's been gifted the magic doesn't have that benefit, so they'll need to go back to the angel if they want a recharge.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: When a guard first sees Luz and her wings, he assumes that she's Eda's kid who inherited her curse. Not wanting anyone to freak out that there's an angel on the Isles, Eda goes with it. She does the same later when Lilith makes the same assumption.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: While Eberwolf is female (both at birth and by identity), she lets everyone think she's a male because Direwolf demons are a patriarchal society. She gets enough flack for being a Biped demon and she's worked harder than she should have to earn the respect of her pack due to both that and being a runt, so them finding out that she's female would be The Last Straw, her mother having lied when she was born and got away with it because Eberwolf's hybrid status meant that they couldn't tell her true gender. Before Luz figured it out, Darius was the only one who knew after her mother died (there were two others, but they're gone from the Isles).
• Taking a Third Option: Luz and Amity manage to worm their way out of the duel their mentors pushed them into by making their fight not a Wizard Duel, but a game of rock-paper-scissors. The first person who makes 100 consecutive wins is declared the winner. The point of course wasn't to best each other, but to annoy Eda and Lilith into agreeing to undo their unbreakable vow.
  Amity: You're pretty good at helping people in unconventional ways.
• Teasing from Behind the Language Barrier: Since the Silver Sentinel cannot speak, she uses sign language to communicate. While disguised as her to sabotage the Abomaton demonstration, Luz uses the fact that Odalia cannot understand her to get in an insult or two.
• Time Abyss: Rasiel was sealed over 100,000 years before the present day of the story.
• Truce Zone: After Eda's failed petrification, things end up happening, and Bonesborough (along with Hexside) is declared a neutral zone, independent from either Belos and the rebels.
• True-Breeding Hybrid: Biped demons are said to have been descended from the hybrid children of Witches and the other two types of demons, hence their humanoid physiques and ability to use magic.
  • Basilisks breeding with Witches apparently just results in new breeds of basilisk.
• Unequal Rites: At Glandus the Bard, Illusion, Healing, Oracle, and Potions tracks are looked down upon by the rest of the school.
• Villain Team-Up: At the end of Chapter 28, Terra and the Mandragora make an alliance to get revenge on Eda, Luz, and company, promising to make Terra and the other Coven members Mandragoras as well.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Rasiel doesn't wear a shirt, which is explained as a consequence of the Divine Realm's environment leaning towards hot due to the fact that it's closer to its sun than Earth or the Demon Realm is, so the angels trend towards wearing as little as possible while still maintaining decency.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Rasiel — or more accurately, The Divider — intends on using his god-like power to separate everyone in the Demon Realm (and beyond) of their flaws, creating a "gentle order" different from that of any realm free of war and conflict. The Hexsquad rightfully see this as just a more twisted alternative to Belos' genocidal tyranny.
• Were Dragon: Supreme Dragons are reportedly witches and demons that consumed some of the five humours from a Titan, along with the heart of a normal dragon, transforming them to serve that Titan eternally, which Zara proves after she returns to her witch form after the heroes stop her.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 37. Luz and company travel to the heart of King's mother, which is in space as the Wailing Star, Luz bonds to the Earth glyph and learns the Lightning glyph, we learn that part of why Angels were often feared and hated in the Boiling Isles pre-Belos is that they were wrongly blamed for killing the Titan and his mate Cassiopeia because the Archivists somehow used Angel magic to get around how their natural magic was useless against Titans, the Black Tomb in the temple has six glyph markings like Luz's instead of his wings or memories, they learn that the last Black Tomb is in the In-Between Realm, and while Luz destroys the heart and frees her spirit, this has the side-effect of breaking the curse she placed on the Archivists, who have returned their attention to the Demon Realm...
  • Chapter 39. While Belos being Philip, who stole Rasiel's wings, isn't an unexpected reveal by this point, the same for Lucy being a Grimwalker of Luz, the fact that the Draining Spell in this AU is a Fantastic Nuke designed to use an Angel as the focus to wipe out the entire Demon Realm and not just the Isles, is, as is the fact that Belos claims that the Angel who was in the Isles previously, Cassiel, is Luz's mother Camila (Belos even knowing her and Manny's names despite previous evidence that Camila had never been to the Demon Realm before), with Luz herself seemingly having been conceived in the realm, are a different story.
  • Fittingly, the season 2 finale. Lucy ascends into a full Angel and renames herself Lyra, it's revealed that Angels were the ones that made the Draining Spell originally, Rasiel turns out to be the Divider, and wishes to create Paradise by forcibly separating everyone's negative traits from them, pushing the Hexsquad into the Human Realm when they reject his plans.
• White Magic: Angels are able to wield magic like Witches and Bipedal Demons and there is a lot of overlap between disciplines, but they're still distinct enough where Luz can't do everything Witches can do.
• Wings Do Nothing: As Luz is still a young angel whose powers have yet to fully awaken, at the start of the story her wings are small and effectively useless. Later subverted after Luz bonds with the Plant Glyph, completing her maturation into a full angel and allowing her to fly.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: Cassiopeia's final curse on the Archivists was so their wounds from the battle wouldn't heal, in order to protect the Demon Realm from them going forward. Unfortunately, once her spirit is freed, they can heal again...

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