Gizmos and Bulbs and Blots, oh my!

The shop is Morgana Macawber’s pride and joy, her first independent venture outside the sheltered halls of the Eldritch Academy of Enchantment. Years of study, fellowships, and teaching have lent her the skills to manage a private business, not to mention the student loans she’ll spend the next hundred and fifty years paying off. However, she can’t take all the credit for the business model of roving apothecary.

Baba Yaga, an Eldry alum three centuries Morgana’s senior and the originator of the traveling witch’s hut in the most literal sense, gave her the idea over tea about thirty years ago.

Morgana was on track to receive tenure when Yaga made one of her whirlwind visits to the Transylvania campus for the purpose of tormenting the freshmen and exchanging gossip over Morgana’s Lady’s Mantle tea. The latter was a hit among all the faculty and a Macawber family recipe she shared with no one.

“You would do well in the private sector, tsyuplionachik,” Yaga said. The bear noisily swished a mouthful of tea between her cheeks before swallowing, a habit she maintained because it, in her own words, ‘upset Morgana’s delicate sensibilities.’ “Far better than your professors here. They leave their lecterns so rarely, why, they’re practically growing moss.”

Morgana stirred her tea with a spoon, like the civilized witch she was. “It just so happens that I plan on joining their mossy ranks.” She tried not to make her tone overly defensive. For all of her supposed skill, she’d never put any of it to use outside the classroom. It was always easier to tell herself that there was no need.

Picking up on his mistress’ hidden disquiet from his perch on her shoulder, her tarantula Archie reared up on his back legs. Morgana brushed her fingers over her familiar’s pedipalps to calm him, her expression giving nothing away. But Yaga, scarred and silver-furred, and so heavily hunched with age that she scarcely reached Morgana’s waist, gave her a stink-eye powerful enough to make a lesser witch cower.

“Wasting your potential is what you’d be doing. Not to mention missing out on a good chunk of coin. The Normals are not as paranoid as they once were; there is an entire world to explore now.”

“You mean I should be more like you?” Morgana retorted wryly, taking a sip of her tea and pausing a moment to enjoy the sweet beginning and bitter aftertaste of the brew her Aunt Nasty had taught her, so long ago now. “I’m afraid living in a home on legs would give me motion sickness rather quickly.”

Yaga rolled her eyes with all the imperiousness of a witch of seventy. “The Domus Mactibilis is my method of traveling, tsyuplionachik, it needn’t be yours too. My customers live in forests and bogs, but there is an entire untapped market in the cities. You were always good at portal magic, surely you could do something with that.”

Morgana’s placid smile faltered for the first time since Yaga’s arrival, revealing a sliver of the uncertainty that skittered beneath her feathers to settle against her heart.

“Thank you for your wisdom, Yaga, truly. But I…”

She looked about her tiny office of twenty years, the very same she had been given when she was first hired as a teaching assistant. Now on the brink of becoming a full time faculty member, and so little about her or her office had changed.

Her lone desk, littered with quills and parchment shoved aside to make room for her tea service, and the small shelf behind her was overflowing with spell books she had read cover to cover a dozen times over. In the absence of more space, and out of necessity to sate her voracious literary appetite, the rest of her books were stacked in vertical towers throughout the room, each so tall they touched the ceiling. ‘Musty’ was perhaps the best way to describe her office, its worn stone walls betraying a magical history older than the entirety of her family line. There was actual moss growing in the corners of the ceiling where the rain seeped through, lingering above her like a bittersweet omen.

Morgana had been volatile when she was sent to Eldritch Academy and her magic moreso, grieving her mother’s death while also forced to attend her alma mater. Her professors taught her that walling herself off from her emotions would grant her focus and allow her to become a truly great witch in more than name, and that was exactly what she did. But as she improved in her studies, mimicking the serene confidence and composure of her teachers to be granted a place among them, her family increasingly thought her too changed, too cold, and drifted away from her in a way that went beyond the true distance of miles.

She held her teacup close to disguise the trembling of her hands.

“Yaga, dear, I haven’t been outside the academy since I was a witchling. Teaching, potionwork, unlocking ancient grimoires and expounding their cursed magicks, this is what I know. I have job security here. Even if I wanted to go into business for myself, what guarantee do I have that I’ll succeed?”

It wasn’t that Yaga’s proposal wasn’t tempting. Far from it. As deeply as she’d devoted herself to Eldry and its teachings, molding herself into the most powerful witch Clan Macawber had seen in half a millennium, she feared that the long, exhausting process had left her lacking, a sprawling, lush tree that was secretly hollow inside, her strength merely surface level.

Yaga raised a brow, her expression not just unperturbed but openly challenging. “Is Morgana Macawber afraid?”

Morgana started.

Even among the most mercurial of Magickals, Macawbers did not take insults lightly. Moloculo was the last to be challenged, by an upstart vampire back in 1915. Her father walked away without an eye. Count Duckula XVI left without a head.

Yaga wasn’t issuing such a challenge, but it was near enough to one that it jolted Morgana from her insular fog of self-doubt.

The anxieties that prattled traitorously in her ear went silent. She breathed, and felt the loneliness, the unhappiness of decades, yawn cavernous within her. Morgana had students not friends, and superiors rather than peers. Even Yaga herself was a rarity, a lavender bush that bloomed only once every blue moon. Looking over her office with new eyes, she saw it for what it was: a reflection of wasted potential. Insecurity that had paved the way for complacency.

Noisy slurping distracted Morgana from her slow, unhappy realization. She jumped before meeting Yaga’s ruby red eyes, narrowed smugly, and Morgana began to laugh.

And because Morgana Macawber feared nothing, she was already mentally penning her resignation.

Yaga still visits from time to time. Usually to gloat over a cup of tea, taking credit for Morgana’s success. Morgana isn’t particularly inclined to complain, since it is still Morgana’s success she’s lauding, and it’s worth a bit of good-natured ribbing from her oldest friend.

Macawber Mystique is as unlike her dreary old office as she could make it, dark but not dank, with floors carved from trees of the Black Forest and walls of endless bookshelves with slivers of red painted in between. Chandeliers hang overhead, lit by the glow of candles whose flames change color depending on her mood, and her shop smells of petrichor and rosemary, as though one has stepped into a moonlit glen fresh after rain.

It is a greater home than she has known in a century.

The shop is nocturnal, like any self-respecting witch establishment, with hours ranging from sunset to sunup, though her usual clientele tend to make themselves scarce long before sunlight can so much as kiss the horizon. And with as many vampires that flock to her for their blood substitutes, she can hardly blame them.

This evening, the sky hasn’t fully darkened from its amber twilight when Morgana senses her shopfront being summoned. The front door is warded against beings with hostile intent or busybodies too impatient to wait until opening hours, so when it welcomes the visitor without protest, she knows to expect a friend.

Morgana is in her workshop at the back of the store, toiling over a cauldron. It’s inventory day and she’s been running low on invisibility potion. She hopes to have a dozen new batches ready before her first customer of the night, and if her intuition is right about who’s just arrived (which it always is) then she still has plenty of time.

The door to her workshop remains closed when she’s handling volatile ingredients, and her not-customer stops to knock on the other side, brisk and familiar. Morgana doesn’t risk diverting attention from the bubbling blue contents of her cauldron, but she does smile as she calls, “Enter!” over her shoulder.

Dark wastes no time bursting into her workshop, throwing the door open with gusto while also taking care not to let it slam into the opposite wall. Up in the rafters, Eek and Squeak let out twin squeals as they are startled from their naps, the slugabeds.

“Dark, darling!” Morgana says, her early contentment blossoming into true joy. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

“Evening, Morg,” he replies, crossing the room without pause. “I can never show my face in public again.”

He makes this pronouncement in the same tone she’s heard other Normals use to describe the weather, making a beeline for the table beside her where cutting boards are littered with the scraps of Juno’s Tears and Elf Leaf, key ingredients of an invisibility potion. Dark slumps into the nearest chair, the wide, concealing brim of his hat and silken fall of his cape turning him into the purple puddle of a melted hero popsicle.

Morgana tuts sympathetically, if distractedly. “Did you trip on, ah, ‘national television’ again?”

She’s still catching up on the Normals’ recent advances in technology; last time she paid any attention, they were still putting up telegraph wires. Dark has encouraged her to purchase a television to learn what all the fuss is about, though she suspects that his true intentions lie in ridding her of excuses not to watch the superhero drama that he honors with his name.

Beside her, Dark releases a pained wheeze from beneath his hat, where his long beak sticks out. “Worse.”

Ah. A matter of the heart, then. As ridiculous as her dear friend can be, Morgana will have to tread lightly with her teasing.

The invisibility potion in her cauldron is glowing a promising pale turquoise now, and she lowers the intensity of the flames beneath it with a flick of her fingers. From the alchemy set beside her she plucks a pipette and siphons less than a tablespoon’s worth from within the cauldron. A test is required before the potion can be bottled and placed on her shelves, and as luck would have it there’s a perfectly oblivious test subject right beside her.

“What terribly thoughtful act has your Mr. McQuack committed now, Dark?” Morgana asks as she squeezes a drop of invisibility potion onto the border of his hat.

He bolts upright with a squawk, nearly falling backward out of his chair, alarmed by her words or his hat abruptly vanishing off his head or perhaps a combination of the two. “Dangit, Morg, I’m not your guinea pig! And he’s not-he’s not my anything.” Without the protection of his hat there’s nothing to hide the blush that darkens his rose-colored feathers or the furrow in his brow beneath the mask.

“I turn you into a yak one time and you lose all faith in me,” Morgana says with a tragic sigh, because Dark can’t always claim the title of drama warlock between the two of them.

He rolls his eyes, as familiar with her antics as she is with his. “I have faith in you because you changed me back from a yak.” He paws at the space where his hat used to be, and still is, judging by his perturbed expression as he clutches at what to the naked eye looks like empty air. “Some kinda invisibility potion?”

Morgana nods, pleased by his quick conclusion. “A new batch. I’m giving it a few minutes to make sure nothing spontaneously combusts.” She chuckles when Dark immediately drops his invisible hat, which hits the floor with a small rush of displaced air.

“If we don’t explode, would you mind—”

“I can synthesize them for your smoke pellets, yes,” Morgana interrupts, amused by the predictability of his request. She knows they’re a boon to his dramatic entrances, so long as he gets the timing right. “And you’re changing the subject, dear.”

“What subject would that be?” Dark says as lightly as he’s able, but he cannot disguise the strain in his voice any more than he can the tension around his eyes without the hat to hide it.

As though realizing his face is exposed, Dark ducks his head to greet Archie as the tarantula climbs onto the table. Morgana allows herself a brief moment of fondness at the sight; not three months ago, every shadow in her shop had sent Dark jumping and Archie’s friendly skitter against his fingers nearly resulted in her dear familiar being thrown across the room.

“Come now,” Morgana wheedles, more gently than their friendship usually calls for. “Only Mr. McQuack ever leaves you in such a tizzy.”

An emotional man, this friend of hers, and a paradoxical one to boot. Clothed in smoke and shadow and his heart stitched onto his sleeve, he is capable of remarkable brutality and awe-inspiring kindness in turn. But this feels markedly different from the blushes and stuttering of his schoolboy crush on the partner she has never met in person. Nor is it the blinding, all consuming terror and rage of a father concerned for the safety of his child, a daughter Morgana only knows by name and reputation.

Teasing Dark about his infatuation is usually the safest territory, but today his shoulders bunch near his ears, and without his hat to hide behind his expression is stilted. His voice rises and falls as though it’s scaling mountainous peaks. “When...when did I say Launchpad had anything to do with it?”

“You are many things, my dear. Subtle is not one of them.”

It’s a joke, or at least intended to be one. But Archie skitters away just in time for Dark to drop his head into his hands. His silence disconcerts her; far more often, it’s a challenge to counter the way his mouth and mind move a hundred leagues per minute. Friendship is tricky for Morgana, especially friendship with Normals, who feel so intensely for such short bursts of time, nothing like the grudges and trysts that take supernatural beings eons to form and even longer to act on.

Uncertainty has her looking away, searching her mind for what to say. Morgana doesn’t enjoy feeling useless, but this is not something that can be resolved by magical skill. “Dark, I’m sure whatever’s troubling you can’t be as bad as all that.”

“Jury’s out.” Dark sounds acutely miserable, and Morgana’s heart gives a sympathetic pang.

“Well, don’t leave me in suspense,” she chides. Her roving gaze lands on the floor, where Dark’s hat rests, still invisible. Deciding that her potion is probably stable, she reverses the enchantment with a thought. As she floats the hat into her grasp, visible once more, Dark’s voice warbles out from behind his hands.

“I kissed him, Morg.”

She nearly drops his hat. “You what?” she gasps, the rings on her fingers clicking as her hand flutters over her chest. “Why, Dark, darling, that’s wonderful news! You’ve been half in love with the man since I met you, so it’s about time, really.”

Dark shakes his head before she finishes speaking. “No, no, Morgana, it’s—it’s not wonderful.” When he drops his hands the eyes behind his mask are frantic.

“I didn’t...I wasn’t thinking! I just, I haven’t seen him in a week, not since he went to the center of the Earth with the McDucks, and I was bringing Gos over for a sleepover with the kids and I was just…” Despite his usual fastidiousness, Dark scrubs a hand through his hat-flattened hair, making it stick up every which way. “Geez, I was just so happy to see him, I didn’t even think. We were hugging, we hug all the time, but the next thing I know…”

In the great span of her life, Morgana has never wanted for friendship the way others might, and she’s not just referring to Normals. Solitude comes naturally to her as a High Witch, Eldritch Academy’s most grueling field of study and Morgana’s chosen major. Raised outside the coven system, her magic comes not from the strength of others but the fortitude of her own being. She learned that because her magic didn’t need anyone else to flourish, neither did she.

But more recently, she’s found her solitude broken up by the quiet companionship of her familiars, the brief but comforting conversation of her customers, and the studious silence and confident presence, respectively, of her apprentices. Dark is unlike any Normal she’s ever known, devoted and willful and odd, but he has nothing to offer her in a practical sense.

And yet Morgana invites him into her shop and her life, and when Dark darkens her doorway with one of his emotional plights she will usually be torn between amusement and sympathy as his anxieties lead him on a merry chase. His doubts have always been louder than his ego, but she has confidence that he won’t let them consume him (not since their first meeting at least).

Even now, as his words come fast and his breath shortens, her faith in him is unshaken.

“What if I’ve ruined everything?” Dark asks no one, himself, her. His gaze is far away, features ashen, as every worst case scenario plays out in his mind’s eye.

Morgana reclaims his attention with a hand on his shoulder.

“I may not know your Launchpad as well as I would like,” she demures, not drawing attention to the way Dark flinches guiltily.

The need for secrecy is one she understands intimately, even as the concept of a so-called “civilian life” confuses her. It was a month into their friendship that Dark confessed his track record of trusting too easily, how he doubted his own judgement after two separate occasions nearly cost him the lives of his partner and daughter. “One more strike and I’m out,” he’d said, beak twisted up wryly though the expression didn’t meet his eyes. While Morgana isn’t privy to the Normal reference, she does understand the fear, however irrational, that lingers like the drag of icy fingers across the back of one’s neck and vanishing when you turn to look. Paranoia, misled or otherwise, that comes from experience.

While Dark is remarkably candid about himself, his successes and his foibles, it’s his other identity that he keeps closely guarded: Drake Mallard, the actor, father, and resident of St. Canard.

Morgana hasn’t told Dark that she knows. Ever since she placed a tracking spell on him after their second meeting that wasn’t instigated by a wicked sorceress or sentient pizzas armed with anchovy teeth and a hunger for living flesh. After all, a stranger is still a stranger and Morgana isn’t any quicker to trust than he is. Witch hunters may not be so common in this century but the Phantom Blot’s resurgence has put much of the magical community on edge, and Morgana is no exception.

She knows now that Dark is a bigger threat to himself than he will ever be to her, but he has no such guarantee from her other than her word. For that reason if nothing else she will allow him to keep his silence until he trusts her the same way.

“I may not know your Launchpad as well as you do,” Morgana amends, taking a seat beside him. “But I know that he’s your friend, Dark, before anything else. Your best friend, if I remember correctly. One misstep wouldn’t change that. If that’s what you want to call it.” She nudges Dark, unused to the physicality of camaraderie no matter how right it feels, and playfully raises a delicate eyebrow. It gets the desired effect of Dark ducking his head in flustered embarrassment and Morgana allows herself a moment to feel smug when he doesn’t deny it.

A smile, small and uncertain, curls his beak. “Alright, Morg, since you seem to know everything. What do you think I should do?”

She rolls her eyes melodramatically, a terrible habit she’s picked up from Dark and that he in turn blames his daughter for. “Do what you do best, Dark dear.” Morgana places his hat back on his head, tilting it just so. He looks more like himself with it on. “Talk. To him, preferably. And in complete sentences, if possible.”

Predictably, Dark works himself into an amusing and affronted lather. “Complete sentences—I am perfectly capable—I don’t just talk!”

“Uh-huh.”

At her pointed look, he deflates sheepishly. “Do you ever get tired of being right all the time?”

“Not yet,” she says dryly.

Dark nods once, commiserating. He pushes off from the table with a sharp sigh through his nose.

Morgana watches him, surprised. “Leaving already?”

He chuckles, but the sound is a weary one. His admission must have cost him more than she realized. “I’d talk your ear off some more, but I really should start my patrol. We’ve been hearing reports of De Spell sightings near the old McDuck lab.” Dark thumbed at the edge of his hat, a nervous tell that he’s been unable to break. “You see Lena more than I do, so can you tell her to keep an eye out? She never answers my texts.”

“She doesn’t like to be mothered,” Morgana says lightly.

Dark sputters. “I don’t mother. It’s called looking out for the youngest member of your superhero team!”

Morgana reaches out to pat him on the arm, only slightly patronizing. “It’s sweet, considering she can blast you through a wall. But I’ll tell her, for all the good it’ll do. My student can be very stubborn, you know.”

He sighs a long-suffering sigh, making her giggle. “Don’t I know it.” Dark’s quick to sober and he covers her hand with his own. “I’ll drop by later for the smoke bombs, okay?”

“Okay,” she echoes. He makes for the doorway, shoulders bowed under his cape, and the sight of him standing alone strikes Morgana as terribly wrong in that moment. She’s not often one for the magic of foresight, but the niggling dread circling the knobs of her spine is hard to ignore.

“Darkwing.” He pauses at the sound of his name or perhaps the thread of tension in her voice. “Talk to Launchpad. Please, my friend.”

When he locks eyes with her over his shoulder, he looks frightened behind his mask. But it is a fear Morgana is confident he can, and will, overcome.

“I’ll keep you posted,” he says.

II.

She first meets Darkwing Duck in the Shadow Realm.

It’s rare that Morgana makes the crossing. She’s too skilled to get herself trapped as many over-eager witches have done in the past, unprepared for the intensity of its barriers once they’ve entered. However, no matter how learned she might be, she can never shake the sense of wrongness that comes from stepping into the Land Between.

This plane is a sliver of existence, an eponymous shadow of the prime realm where matter lacks definition and color has been sapped out in favor of oblique darkness. Reality goes on around her as though she isn’t there, and in the eyes of the rest of the world she isn’t. Cars, people, anything tangible in the prime realm is rendered intangible to her and vice versa. Nothing inhabits this place because nothing here is living, at least not for long.

Normals and skilled witches alike who find themselves trapped here never last more than a few days. While the Shadow Realm is not explicitly deadly, its instability and inherent Darkness drives most sentient beings to madness. And after the mind goes the body follows, eventually consumed in Shadow.

Naturally, it’s the shadows that she’s come for.

Tulpas are a rare and powerful magical ingredient, raw emotion made manifest in the form of ectoplasmic entities. Morgana uses them for one of many protection spells keeping Macawber Mystique untethered from any particular time or place. Of course, due to their narrow availability (i.e., only existing in the Shadow Realm) tulpas are also incredibly difficult to harvest. Morgana fluctuates between fascination and revulsion whenever she makes the journey, documenting her experience extensively between several hot valerian baths to rid the lingering chill of Darkness in her bones.

Between her two students, Morgana is almost more inclined to worry about Violet. The sabrewing pores over Morgana’s notes on the Shadow Realm with poorly-composed zeal and her questions are endless (How was the Shadow Realm created? How long can a Normal survive in it? What are the exact magical properties of a tulpa?), and while Morgana would never begrudge the curiosity of any student of hers, she’s half-convinced that Violet will take her answers and attempt the hazardous crossing ritual on her own.

It’s only through Lena’s ability to head off the worst of her sister’s impulsiveness that Morgana feels any measure of peace. But even that comes at a cost, as any discussion of the Shadow Realm has the tendency to turn Lena peaky and glassy-eyed as she distances herself from everyone, but especially Morgana. She may not know the full story, and Violet is too loyal to divulge any details, but Morgana has always recognized the imprint of Shadow on Lena’s soul and the Dark hand of Magica De Spell as its source. The sorceress’ connection to the teen has long since been severed, leaving a scar that will fade but doubtfully vanish completely.

In any event, neither of Morgana’s students will be accompanying her into the Shadow Realm any time soon.

The evening Morgana is to make the crossing, she cuts the girls’ lesson short and sends them home with instructions to practice their keen smell spells—beginner level casting, it’s true, but she isn’t working with natural born witchlings who’ve been inundated by practical magic all their lives. Violet accepts her assignment with aplomb, as eager to do her homework well as Morgana used to be as an apprentice, but Lena lags behind.

“You’ll be careful, right?” With her expression so flinty, it almost comes across as an order.

Morgana hasn’t told them of her plans, and she’s briefly impressed by Lena’s deductive skill. To reassure Lena, she doesn’t rattle off statistics as she might for her sister or remind the teen of how often she’s made the crossing without injury. While factual, it would ring false to Lena whose greatest strength is her emotional core.

“I’ll try,” is all Morgana says, more truthful than a promise.

Once her students have gone, she calls upon the magicks surrounding Macawber Mystique and has the shop transported to St. Canard from Duckburg. If what she’s heard about the neighboring city is to be believed, it becomes increasingly rife with criminal activity as the sunlight fades, which means plenty of heightened emotion and a potential wealth of tulpas for Morgana’s use.

Morgana carries little with her, as her journey will have to be made by foot and she would rather move unburdened. Traditional magic often misbehaves in the Land Between, so she can’t travel by broom or teleportation as she might normally. Other than a cloak to ward off the ever-present chill of Darkness, Morgana only brings a shepherd’s crook to collect the tulpas with. They can’t be netted like pixies or jarred like vervain—tulpas must be drawn out of Shadow with a steady hand and contained by a witch’s will. A crook is one of many tools to accomplish such a task.

In the end, it’s a small matter of summoning the doorway. With the incantation in her mind, Morgana watches the edges of the door form before her eyes, a ripple in the veil of reality. Once she is allowed entrance without disruption to the natural order, she steps into the Shadow Realm.

Thanks to the shop’s tulpa-made protection spell, it is a null space in the Land Between, inaccessible even to the likes of her until she returns to the prime realm. As such, the doorway drops her on the sidewalk just outside. The goings-ons of downtown St. Canard do not flinch at her appearance, trundling along in the distant gray haze of parallel realms. It’s slow going as she travels through the city on foot, paying attention to nothing but the ebb and flow of tulpas in the area. It’s fortunate that nothing in the prime realm can harm her, be it vehicles or Normals, as her focus is wholly dedicated to the melody of Shadows.

Tulpas are echoes of emotion, amplified by the deep Dark Magicks that make up the Shadow Realm. Rage, jealousy, and grief are emotions that sing here, filling the air with discordant, buzzing melodies that grow in volume as the Normals’ emotions in the prime realm grow in intensity, thus increasing the tulpas’ potency. In truth, it sounds about as pleasant as a screeching violin and as much as Morgana would like to stop up her ears, she must listen if she is to track her quarry.

With the prime realm muted and veiled, the voices of the Normals she passes and the roar of their infernal contraptions become easy to ignore. Morgana lets the pursuit of tulpas guide her, under bridges and around street corners, cutting diagonally across busy roads. As only the most volatile of tulpas put up a fight, she's able to let her mind wander through the slow collection process, following the shrill buzz in her ears. It wouldn’t do to overwhelm the crook’s enchantment, so all she has to do is keep track of how many she’s caught.

She’s considering what to make for dinner (and whether she has any garter snake left in the fridge for a nice stew) when the tulpas around her begin to change.

Regular tulpas are rather small, curling like wispy tendrils of smoke, but no less impressive, tricky as it is to generate emotions strong enough to cross the barrier and manifest in the Land Between. But not only do these new tulpas billow like smoke from a house fire, many also take on distinct animal shapes: thrashing alligators, slinking coyotes, crows circling overhead, and each of them with eyes gleaming red, a rare spot of color.

Nightmare tulpa—potent and fleeting, they are the products of pure fear and adrenaline from many beings at one time. While smaller, formless tulpas linger as well, the animals warn Morgana that something has transpired outside of the Shadow Realm, something clearly, well. Bad.

The Normals around her are running, fleeing from some danger that she cannot see or sense from the trans-dimensional distance of the Shadow Realm. Their fear is evident on their faces and in the tulpas that burst into existence at their heels like jets of white-hot flame, trailing after their unaware begetters. Curiosity and a fair amount of concern that might not have existed had Morgana not met her dear students draws her in the direction the Normals are fleeing from, collecting tulpas as she goes.

At this rate, she has enough to cast her protection charm three times over. She can return home at the moment of her choosing.

Morgana presses onward.

Even from within this monochromatic reality, she recognizes the evidence of destruction, of an attack. There are gouges torn out of the road and nearby buildings, vehicles flipped over and in flames. She wonders if this is the work of one of the supervillains she was warned about.

Whatever battle transpired here, it seems to be over now. There are no further sounds of destruction, only the distraught cries of Normals picking their way through the rubble, calling for each other.

“DW!”

“Darkwing? Can you hear us?”

An uneasiness that Morgana cannot place settles over her like a dousing of Jotunheim rain. The feathers rise on the back of her neck, along the sides of her arms and down her spine as she searches the battlefield for its source. Her grip around the shepherd’s crook tightens as the sense of wrongness refuses to fade; she hasn’t felt this unsettled since a boggart found its way into the shop and gave her nightmares so awful she didn’t sleep for a week.

A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, and Morgana turns just as the tulpa forms, so large it practically looms over her, taller than any she has seen yet. But it’s not a nightmare. This tulpa is bipedal, a duck judging by the bill, with a wide brimmed hat and narrowed blood red eyes.

I failed them.

Morgana startles, more than she’d ever admit, at the voice that emerges from the tulpa. It hisses, grief-stricken and furious, but it’s not the words that trigger an immediate panic within her.

Tulpas may be direct products of the prime realm but there are countless barriers between them and the Shadow Realm. When those barriers are intact, even the most volatile tulpa can’t do more than grow too big to be caught. But when those barriers are breached, tulpas can lash out with the full breadth of the emotions that created them, physically and vocally. But who or what could have breached the Shadow Realm? Such an act would require immense magical skill, or alternatively, immense magical ineptitude.

Morgana raises her shepherd's crook, prepared for attack from this tulpa. Which is why her bewilderment is prolonged as the tulpa immediately turns away from her, drawn away with all the force of a loadstone.

That’s when Morgana notices him.

A man, a Normal man, sits hunched on the ground with his back against a car. He wears a purple cloak so dark it’s nearly black, but in a realm without substance or light, he stands out brighter than the hoard of tulpas surrounding him. Like the one that appeared before her, they all resemble the duck because they are created from him, from his emotions, and none of them seem to be good ones.

Morgana approaches warily, searching for the breach that stranded the Normal here as she does so. It will need to be sealed before either of them can leave; their world has already dealt with the invasion of one shadow army and she’s not interested in shepherding in another. The duck has no magical aura to speak of, which is something of a relief. At the moment she’s ill-equipped to do battle with another magic user, but the mystery remains of who was powerful enough to tear reality and throw this particular Normal through the veil.

His tulpas, made powerful by the prime realm trickling in, continue to speak as they encroach on him, wild dogs stalking their wounded prey. If Morgan had to guess, she’d say they were voicing his worst fears. Fear is the most common emotion of those who find themselves trapped here.

I abandoned them.

Failure.

Selfish.

Morgana stops only a few feet from the duck, though he doesn’t look up at her. She doubts he’s even aware of her presence. He’s shivering fiercely, and his arms are wrapped around him to fend off the chill of Shadow filling his bones. With his hat on the ground beside him, his face is bare and she is an uninterrupted witness to his expression, haunted and hollow in equal measure. The Shadow Realm is taking hold of him and with that many tulpas around him it isn’t a surprise.

They’re better off without me.

Don’t get back up.

Don’t even try.

In the prime realm, the Normals are still calling out for their missing member.

Behind the duck, Morgana finally locates the breach that must have trapped him here. Unlike the carefully crafted doorways necessary to safely enter and exit the Shadow Realm, this is a tear in the fabric of reality, jagged and dangerously unstable. It floats a meter above the duck’s head, had he the wherewithal to turn it. If left unchecked, the breach could grow to disastrous proportions, even leading to the realms bleeding into one another.

A wash of uneasiness settles over her as she wonders who this duck could have angered enough to resort to such lengths. Morgana herself is one of few on such a list.

She brushes the distraction aside. With careful hands raised palm to palm, her ring fingers extended between them, she sets to sewing the breach shut. Having learned the incantation by rote over a decade ago, it’s the work of less than a minute but no less taxing for its brevity. Morgana is out of breath by the end of it.

Still, she watches in satisfaction as the breach seals and vanishes as if it were never there to begin with. Without access to the prime realm, the tulpas around the man go silent though they don’t fade or shrink. His fears are too great for that.

But he must sense the closing of the breach, the immediate sense of relief even in this freezing, stifling place, as he flinches like a cat doused in ice water. Then, before Morgana can divine some way of introducing herself without alarming him further, the duck looks straight at her. The eyes behind his slim purple mask go so wide she can see the ring of white feathers around them.

“Oh no,” he croaks, aghast. His breath clouds in the frigid air. “Am I dead?”

“What?”

Morgana has a moment to feel confused before she recalls the dark hooded cloak she’s wearing and the shepherd’s crook in her hand. To a mind addled by Shadow, these two put together might appear more sinister than they really are.

She dusts off her laugh, perhaps stilted from disuse, in the hopes of putting the duck at ease. Quickly, in case her laughter had the opposite effect, she pulls back her hood, revealing her raven beak and freeing her cloud of black hair. After so many years it’s naturally threaded through with silver, and only Yaga’s encouragement has kept her from dying her hair to its original, inky black.

“I’m not Death and this isn’t the afterlife,” she says, reassuringly she hopes. “My name is Morgana Macawber. You and I are in the Shadow Realm.”

He shivers so hard his beak chatters. “Sh-Shadow?” he repeats, brow furrowing. She isn’t sure if he’s never heard of the Land Between before, or if his exposure to it has already disoriented his mind to the point of memory loss.

“You were trapped here,” Morgana explains hesitantly, throwing a glance over her shoulder at the destruction on the street around them that is no less harrowing for being confined to the prime realm. “By a very powerful and a very angry magic-wielder, if I had to guess. Do you remember…”

He growls, startling her with its intensity. “De Spell.”

“Magica De Spell?” At this dreaded confirmation, the apprehension weighing down her chest grows into a heavy stone. The Sorceress of Shadow, hated and feared by much of the magical community, banished for fifteen years and then almost immediately deprived of her magic on the eve of her return. Of course there’d been rumors of her powers being restored, that she had been spotted with feathers of poisonous malachite once more, evidence of her corruption by Dark Magic. Morgana hadn’t wanted to believe it, for Lena’s sake if nothing else.

The duck’s many tulpas reach out to him, threatening corruption of a different kind, and Morgana puts her worries aside, for now. Lena can take care of herself and this duck needs to be freed from the Shadow Realm before it consumes him.

“Who are you to draw the ire of Magica De Spell?” she asks, part curiosity and part necessity. She’s only heard tales of those lost to the emotional mire of the Shadow Realm and she refuses to let this Normal share the same fate as those who purposely, recklessly attempted the crossing. As she begins the process of summoning a doorway, she hopes that keeping him talking will prevent him from slipping away.

The duck scoffs, chest puffing up with pride as he uncurls from his frightened, shivering position. “Darkwing Duck, at your service,” he pronounces with such strength that his tulpas briefly recoil. Morgana is not surprised when she recognizes the duck’s name as the one the Normals have been calling out in search of. There’s no malice in his arrogance, a simple truth to his conviction that has Morgana wondering if she’s witnessing a glimpse of the real man beneath what the pall of the Shadow Realm has reduced him to.

“What an unusual name,” she observes, smiling in spite of the concentration the summoning requires of her. “But then you appear to be very unusual.” She may not know much about Normals but she knows that, on average, they don’t make a habit of facing off against the Sorceress of the Shadows and coming out alive (or not transfigured into farm animals).

Darkwing laughs weakly, a short, sharp rasp of sound. Whatever energy he regained already seems to be fading. “H-hey, superhero over here. What’s your excuse, Miss Reaper? Not that I d-don’t love the cloak.”

Superhero. It’s a term Morgana’s students use when they show her videos of a Normal in a suit of armor putting out fires and Storkules, God of Heroes, catching buildings. It’s a term Violet has called Lena, just this side of teasing.

“I’m the witch who will be getting us out of here,” Morgana says, and something in her prickles at the thought of the duck returning so quickly to apathy. In a brazen display the likes of which she hadn’t bothered with since she was a witchling, she lets a cascade of crimson sparks fly from where she works on the summoning. She is no conjurer of cheap tricks, but she is determined not to allow this man, sudden and strange, to be lost to her so soon.

To her relief, Darkwing looks startled but not frightened by her overt display of magic. “I...thank....” What words he manages peter out when one of his tulpas draws worryingly near. Earlier Morgana believed that they all resembled him in appearance but this one has changed. It’s cape, flapping in a nonexistent wind, is frayed at the edges. The feathers on its cheeks turn ragged and long. It grows larger than the rest, looming over Darkwing in silent menace.

“N-no,” he grits out, pained and scowling. He shakes his head, a fierce side to side motion, fighting alone against a force which Morgana has no control over. The Shadow Realm is already deep in the process of turning his emotions mercurial, unpredictable, and dangerous. “I don’t need your help.”

“Unless you’re secretly a master of eldritch magic too, I beg to differ,” Morgana jokes though her smile is a weak one. Worry is a foreign and uncomfortable sensation that flutters beneath her heart like dragonfly wings; she’s unsure how much of a grasp Darkwing still has on his surroundings, on himself.

There’s a grunt of pain behind her, but she knows it came from the prime realm so she ignores it. Already drained from sealing the breach in reality, Morgana must put all her concentration into the incantation that will secure their escape. But Darkwing turns toward the sound with startling speed, convincing Morgana to at least glance over her shoulder.

One of the Normals, a young girl if she had to guess, had tripped over some of the rubble in the street. She seems unhurt, judging by the way she pushes herself to her feet with a few hissed swears in another language, Spanish perhaps. The deeper, masculine voice of the other Normal searching for Darkwing drifts over from several cars away.

“Gosalyn! You okay?”

The girl wipes roughly at her cheek, near enough to her eye that Morgana believes she might be dashing away tears. “I’m fine, Launchpad!” she shouts back, her voice distorted and distant through the veil. “Keep looking!” The girl, Gosalyn, scoures the clearing with flinty eyes. A crossbow dangles from her trembling grip. “Darkwing!” she cries, cupping her hand around her beak. “Darkwing, can you hear me?”

Darkwing gasps like he’s been dealt a body blow. He doesn’t tear his eyes off the girl, watching her like she’s savior and damnation combined as she takes a step forward that does nothing to reduce the distance between them. The two share no resemblance, save their naked grief, but Morgana’s intuition is never wrong. She knows that she’s looking at Darkwing’s daughter.

The girl stops less than a meter away, oblivious to their presence. “Da-Darkwing!” Her voice breaks and she scowls, kicking at a stray piece of rubble. “Where are you?” she mutters.

Darkwing reaches out to her before Morgana can warn him against the action. “Gos. I-I’m here, Gos.”

His hand passes through her as if it were made of mist and the girl turns away, having found nothing in her search. Darkwing makes a choked sound, back bowing, and his cape slips around him like black water, threatening to drag him under. The largest, strangest tulpa rises above him with ill intent, a shark that has scented blood. In its ectoplasmic hands a chainsaw takes form, threatening to cut Darkwing down and make him one with the Shadow Realm once and for all.

“Darkwing,” Morgana snaps, her magic broiling in the air with an intensity that would fry anything that came too close. The incantation is nearly complete. They’re so close to being free. “Darkwing, you need to focus. We’ll be out of here soon but you must not lose yourself.”

“I failed her.” Darkwing tries to stand but his legs give out beneath him. He doesn’t look away from where the girl stood, though she’s long since disappeared from view. “I failed him. Why did I ever think I could do this? I’m no hero.”

Morgana isn’t prepared for this. She’s so tired, but all she needs is a little more time. Just a few more minutes.

The tulpa above Darkwing, what can only be the manifestation of his most powerful fears, raises its chainsaw over its head.

“Gosalyn!” she blurts.

The tulpa freezes in the middle of its swing. Beneath it, Darkwing tears his head up. He meets her eyes with a clouded and confused expression. “W-what?”

A seam is forming in the fabric of the Shadow Realm, the edge of the doorway finally coming into view. Almost there.

“Tell me about Gosalyn,” Morgana asks more sedately. It takes an iron will, but she wrangles her strumming nerves into a semblance of calm. “She’s your daughter?”

“I…” The chainsaw wielding tulpa bears down on him but Darkwing clenches his eyes shut, features straining as he fights its thrall. “Y-yes. Gos, she-she’s...everything. To me.”

Morgana means to smile encouragingly, but she receives an unpleasant surprise in the form of a wellspring of century-old grief bubbling beneath her sternum. It brings a sheen of tears to her eyes.

“Does she know?” The words are conjured of their own volition, born of a pain she had thought long buried. “Does your daughter know you love her?”

Darkwing blinks. Something in his expression sharpens, breaking through the glassy fear of Shadow. “Y-yeah,” he says, raising a hand to his forehead. He blinks hard, looking confused. “Of course she does.”

“Good. That's good. Daughters should always know that their father’s love them.”

Morgana does not waver, she does not stutter, and the doorway is half open with blessed freedom barely a hair's breadth away. But she is arrested by memory and old grief: shrinking away from Moloculo’s baleful red eye, weathering the coldness of his criticisms, entering the halls of Eldritch Academy alone and remaining that way ever since.

Morgana doesn’t know if it was her resemblance to her mother that garnered her father’s distaste so long ago. After the witch hunter torched her mother’s ashes, Moloculo had gone on to set fire to every painting and portrait of Mistress Macawber in his misery, and now Morgana remembers her mother only for the midnight sheen of her feathers and the chime of golden beads in her locked hair. She doesn’t know if it was his despair or his disappointment in her that led her father deeper into his fascination with Dark Magic, delving so deep that his feathers took on a new, sickly viridian hue.

The doorway Morgana summoned is fully formed but she is unable to look at it, much less step through it, as Shadow creeps unerringly into her soul. It was nothing short of hubris to believe she could remain in the Land Between for so long without consequence, and the realm latches onto her now with storkulean strength, dredging up old fears and half-remembered hurts with the intent of drowning her in them.

She does not need to turn around to know that an iridescent shadow is rising at her back, does not need to look at it to know that it vacillates between shapelessness and the gaunt form of her father, only his lone, luminous red eye remaining unchanged. There is one tulpa but soon there will be more as all hope and light fade from her consciousness, dooming herself and Darkwing both.

She barely hears his shout over the dull roar in her ears.

“What the—behind you!”

Morgana doesn’t look up, and as such doesn’t see Darkwing until he’s right in front of her, tackling her through the open doorway she herself had summoned but lost the wherewithal to enter.

They crash into the brightness and chaos of the real world with a literal crash.

The Shadow Realm spits them out into an alleyway full of aluminum garbage cans, most of them empty, thank the Fates, but they end up in an unseemly sprawl nonetheless. Behind them, Morgana is aware of the doorway they crossed through closing on its own, winking out of existence in a way the breach Magica purposely created could not.

Back in the prime realm, Morgana’s senses are assaulted by a cacophony of life: the ozone and licorice tang of lingering Dark magic, acrid smoke from the recent battle, wailing car alarms, the humid balm of a summer’s evening. After the oppressive silence, the cold, and the darkness of the Shadow Realm, she welcomes the overload to her senses after they were stifled for so long.

Morgana sits up on the pavement, as unbecoming a position for a High Witch as can be achieved. In the absence of the old, buried grief her tulpa had imposed on her, a mad sort of laughter bubbles in her chest.

She’d set out to collect tulpas from the Shadow Realm with all the carelessness of a Normal picking berries off bushes and it nearly cost her her very existence. Morgana’s never taken such a risk before, with her life or anyone else's, and she knows that if any student of hers ever attempted anything half as outrageous she’d have them transcribing Ancient Sumerian grimoires for a month as punishment. Of course, not even she could’ve predicted the chaos that is Magica De Spell, nor could she let a tear in the veil and a trapped soul go ignored.

Morgana flexes her hands to return feeling to her numb fingers and summons the shepherd’s crook back into her grip, grateful not to have lost it on the journey through the doorway and putting all her hard work to waste. She uses it to push herself back to her feet, disconcerted by the ache that throbs through every one of her muscles. The pain, she knows, is a parting gift from her prolonged exposure to Shadow and a small price to pay for making it out of the Land Between. With a little help, as it turns out.

Beside her, Darkwing groans from where he landed headfirst in an overturned garbage can, the sound echoing off the metal.

Morgana watches him for a beat, quietly considering and grudgingly impressed. It’s not often that trained witches can fight the Shadow Realm’s thrall once it’s gotten into their heads, and Morgana was no exception. This Normal was practically lost to Shadow, his tulpas numerous and devouring, but somehow he still managed to break free and save both their lives. Unusual he may be, that shouldn't have been possible. The sheer amount of willpower it would require is...humbling, if not astounding.

Darkwing tries to sit up and smacks his head on the interior of the garbage can for his efforts.

If Morgana weren’t more exhausted than an undead she’d laugh. A superhero, huh?

He’s muttering to himself as she limps over to him and she recognizes some of the Spanish swears his daughter used only a few moments ago. With half a thought and a flick of her fingers Morgana lifts the garbage can off of him, a misuse of magic she would’ve chastised her students for but right now she lacks the energy to even entertain flexing one more muscle than she needs to.

Still lying on his back, Darkwing squints blearily in the sulphurous glow of the street lamp above them. There’s an empty takeout box on his head in place of his hat, lost to the Shadow Realm.

Morgana smiles when he seems otherwise unhurt. “Well,” she says lightly, “that was a close one.”

Darkwing sits up slowly, still looking vaguely bowled over. “What just...you...you saved me.” The takeout container slides off his head, leaving behind a few noodles and a piece of lettuce in his hair.

“We saved each other, I’d say,” Morgana corrects him, though she’s unable to temper her lingering surprise and knows it reflects in her voice. She hastens to introduce herself properly, though as Shadow shaken as he is, he’s unlikely to recognize the slight.

“Darkwing Duck, wasn’t it? Morgana Macawber of Macawber Mystique, the traveling boutique: if it’s hexes, potions, or eldritch magicks you seek.” She hesitates briefly before materializing her black business card between two fingers, the clever little rhyme Lena created embossed across the front. It’s made of thick black cardstock, the expensive kind, and only partly because they’ve all got a Summoning charm placed on them. “Or a cup of tea and some friendly conversation.” Morgana doesn’t make a habit of interacting with Normals outside of business hours but this Normal has proven unusual enough to make her want to know more.

Darkwing takes her card without looking at it. “I’m more of a coffee guy,” he blurts.

Morgana laughs, the depth of her relief turning it into something of a cackle.

She hears running footsteps from outside the mouth of the alley, and the sound of familiar voices crying Darkwing’s name. He hears them as well, if the way he jerks toward their call is any indication. He looks back at Morgana with obvious difficulty, drawn to their voices even if he still lacks the energy to stand and meet them.

“So…magic obviously isn’t my forte, and I’m still not sure what all that stuff was with the shadows, but...thank you, Morgana, for saving my life,” he says with a sincerity that stuns. His bumbling fades away in the face of it, and the strength that broke him free of the soul-sucking pull of the Shadow Realm is reflected in his iron weight gaze. Unconsciously, Morgana feels her spine straighten out of its tired slouch.

Superhero, indeed.

As is only right, she returns his honesty with her own. “Well in that case, thank you for saving mine, Darkwing.”

He ducks his head, abashed, raising a hand to fiddle with the brim of a hat that isn’t there, and Morgana smiles as her starstruck feeling fades. “If you’re planning on facing Magica De Spell again, it’s probably best if you learn a thing or two about magic.” She taps her business card, still held aloft in Darkwing’s hand. “My shop’s only a thought away if you ever want some advice. I look forward to meeting you again, Darkwing.”

If Morgana weren’t so drained, magically and physically, she might have stayed to chat. If Darkwing’s family weren’t twenty yards away and closing fast she might have invited him to her shop right then to treat him properly for the Shadow Shakes he must be suffering more intensely than her. But she is and they are, and in the seconds before Morgana magicks herself to the opposite end of the block and hails a cab, she watches Gosalyn pelt down the alley and tackle Darkwing in a hug that knocks him onto his back all over again.

At the mouth of the alley is the owner of the second voice calling Darkwing’s name, a tall, barrel-chested Normal with red hair and eyes tearful and wide. He takes in Darkwing, hale and whole, and then meets Morgana’s gaze with utter bafflement.

In a blink, the alley disappears around her and Morgana steps onto a quiet street far enough from the chaos of Darkwing’s battle to be rid of the cloying scent of Dark Magic. She could summon her front door now and be done with any more meaningless travel, but she flags down the first cab she sees instead. Exhausted though she may be, Morgana wants to clear her head in the way only being a passenger can provide.

The cab driver doesn’t bat an eye at her black cloak or shepherd’s crook, only asks her destination and closes the divider once she’s in the backseat. Even after all this, St. Canard might be growing on her.

Leaning back, Morgana closes her eyes with a sigh and casts a small cleaning charm to rid the seat cushions of their vaguely mustard smell. She will have to warn Lena about Magica being back in town, not to mention her own magical customers. When the Sorceress of the Shadow causes trouble, the Phantom Blot is rarely far behind and the magic-users in the nearest vicinity are often among the first to suffer the consequences.

So Morgana plans, and wonders idly if Darkwing Duck will take her up on her offer. Or if she’ll ever see the unusual Normal again.

III.

Thirty years after she opens her shop, one year after she began officially teaching Violet and Lena the ins and outs of eldritch magicks, and six months after she came upon Dark in a forlorn corner of the Shadow Realm, Morgana Macawber takes a “me” day.

She closes the shop just shy of sunrise rather than waiting for any stragglers, and feels quite daring as she does so. Hidden in the rafters Eek and Squeak chitter their approval, eager for that much more interrupted slumber. From where Archie has made a temporary nest in her braided bun he grumbles and putters at their laziness. For her part, Morgana has a glass (or several) of a lovely 11th century Pinot Grigio, a long soak in the tub, and the entire 3rd season of Darkwing Duck to binge all waiting for her.

Of course, before she can even move into her upstairs apartments, she feels the floorboards shiver beneath her feet as the shop is summoned by an eager patron. The moment the shift is complete, there’s a rapid pounding at her front door.

Morgana scowls from where she was doing last minute inventory, closing her safe with a dangerous snap. She glides over to the source of the ruckus, annoyance simmering under her feathers like writhing worms. Flipping the closed sign is meant to nullify the summoning charm except in the case of dire circumstances, but the damned thing must have worn out its use. No matter; the disgruntled customer who’s run out of Ram's Head can very well suffer a day of insomnia and come back at a proper hour tomorrow night to make their purchases.

Armed with the knowledge that this busybody is the only thing keeping her from a morning of relaxation, Morgana grips the door handle and thrusts it open with a little extra magical force, finally putting an end to the incessant knocking.

“Alright! What on earth could be so—”

Important, she never says. Her demand goes unfinished as comes face to face with a man she has only seen once before in a dingy ill-lit alley. Launchpad, Dark’s Launchpad, stands on her doorstep with Gosalyn at his elbow and Dark himself bundled in his arms, gray and unmoving and silent.

“Y-you’re Morgana, right?” Launchpad looks terrified but his voice is hard, and though it threatens to break he doesn’t let it. In one clenched fist, she sees the corner of a purple business card she created to give unrestricted access to her shop, of which there are only three: one for Lena, another for Violet and, as of three months ago, the last for Dark.

Launchpad’s throat works, but no more words come. Perhaps not without them all breaking. He clutches Dark even more tightly against his chest.

Gosalyn steps forward, keeping one hand on Dark’s shoulder. “Can you help my dad?” she demands.

Morgana doesn’t think twice. Why would she?

“Bring him inside.” She moves aside to allow them egress. “Now!”

She can feel the Dark Magic emanating off of Dark from where she stands, noxious as toxic fumes, and her gut lurches at the intensity. What has the fool gotten himself into now?

The moment they cross her threshold, Morgana closes the door behind them and yanks down the open/closed sign. With a thought and a hastily drawn sigil, she temporarily untethers the shop from space and time. There’s no telling what sort of danger Dark might have brought to her door, so she might as well nip any possibility of it catching up to them in the bud.

“Lay him down here.” Morgana bustles forward, leading them into her workshop. Her devotion to clearing her workstation of debris or ingredients between uses is a holdover from when she was a teaching assistant for half of Eldry’s upper-level potions classes. She’s just grateful for the lack of additional hassle now.

Launchpad places Dark on the nearest table with utmost care before struggling out of his jacket. Before, Morgana hadn’t noticed the long blackened burn that splits the leather over his shoulder. Without that barrier, she doesn’t doubt that he might’ve lost an arm. Launchpad balls up his jacket and places it under Dark’s head as a makeshift pillow. Dark, for his part, does not move an inch—or at all.

His stillness isn’t a result of unconsciousness. Not unlike a marble statue, Dark does not stray from the pose he has been carved into. He’s been somehow frozen in place, one of his knees bent, his body contorted as though guarding some hidden hurt. His left hand is held taunt in a fist at his side and his right arm is curled over his chest, clutching at his heart. Even while masked, his expression is exposed without the concealing shadow of his hat, knit in petrified pain.

“What happened?” Morgana summons her spellbook, her hands shaking in spite of herself.

“He was fighting Magica,” Gosalyn says in a rush. Whereas Launchpad stands sentinel by Dark’s head, his hands are splayed on either side but no longer quite daring to touch, she clutches at Dark’s frozen fist. Hanging limp in her other hand is Dark’s hat.

“Of course he was,” Morgana mutters. She valiantly resists the urge to roll her eyes, a nervous tell if anyone ever saw one. All thanks to the infuriating, dear man lying before her. With a glance at her spellbook floating beside her and a brief recitation, she runs an exploratory healing incantation over Dark’s body.

“She did something…” the child’s voice shakes, drawing Morgana’s attention at once. Dark has described his daughter as too grown up for her age, too jaded, independent to a fault. As Gosalyn refuses to look away from Dark’s frozen grimace, fighting a losing battle against the sheen of tears in her wide eyes, she looks every one of her young, thirteen years. “Dad was...he was winning. He was using this invisibility spell...thing to sneak up on her. But she caught him and it was like-like their shadows came to life and she wrapped it around him, like in a bubble, and Dad he-he screamed—”

Morgana swears, colorfully, in every language she knows. It takes almost thirty seconds, during which she tosses her spellbook aside and lays her hands directly over Dark’s chest, a few centimeters from touching. It shivers almost imperceptibly beneath her hands, the only indication that he is still breathing, still living.

“Has he not moved since then?” she asks tersely as she clenches her eyes shut, scouring the darkness she finds brimming under her fingertips for any glimpse of light.

“No.” It’s Launchpad who answers. “Not since...he was able to tell us. He told us how to find you.”

She blows out a breath, honored by Dark’s implicit faith in her while also cursing him for putting her in the position of saving his life.

“Alright. It seems Magica has poisoned him, for lack of a better word, with her Shadow magic. When used against Normals, it spreads throughout the body and-and consumes it,” she explains haltingly, her teacher’s cadence having abandoned her. “It’s an incredibly difficult enchantment to perform, even for the likes of her. Dark really must have made her mad.”

Gosalyn laughs unsteadily, following the movement of Morgana’s hands intently. “Yeah, he’s good at that.”

Launchpad ends his self-imposed isolation, sweeping Dark’s lank hair back from his pain-furrowed brow. “Can you help him?” He’s insistent, eyes dark and fraught where they meet hers over Dark’s too-still body.

‘A lovable goofball’ is one of many ways Dark had described his crush. It leaves her wholly unprepared for this Launchpad, a Normal among Normals, striding fearlessly into a witch’s den all for the sake of one man. She wonders what, if anything, Dark has told him about her.

“I can,” she says, and hopes Dark won’t make a liar out of her. “But it won’t be pleasant. I need to extract the Shadow from his soul. It’s not meant to be tangible in the prime realm and will likely be extremely unstable. Under no circumstances can you touch him once I’ve begun.”

Gosalyn makes a sound of discontent, as though she intends to argue the point. But Launchpad steps back from the head of the table after pressing a rough kiss to Dark’s temple. He kneels at Gosalyn’s side, tugging her away from Dark with gentle words.

“C’mon, kiddo, we gotta give her room to work. DW’s gonna be just fine, you’ll see.”

She struggles against his grip, but he’s bracketed her in well. “You don’t know that!”

Launchpad locks eyes with Morgana. He nods.

There is no incantation to utter this time, no spell to make the process smoother, not that Morgana would dare allow a word of Black Magick to cross her beak anyway. Thanks to Magica’s recklessness, it’s a matter of willpower and of magic to usher out the Shadow lurking deceptively beneath her friend’s pale pastel feathers. It’s actually Lena to whom Morgana owes this knowledge. Through hushed conversations over countless nights and shared cups of tea, she entrusted Morgana with the details of her possession by Magica, how the sorceress’ Shadow choked her like vicious ink, blinding and binding her to its will.

It is only Morgana’s confidence in the strength of Dark’s resolve that allows her to press forward, to corral the Shadow she finds subsuming his very being into something malleable.

With one hand she forces the Shadow upward, further away from his soul, and with the other she opens a very, very small (mouse-sized, really) doorway to the Shadow Realm through which she must dispel it.

Below her, Dark begins to twitch, the first movement he’s made aside from his increasingly shallow breaths. It’s just his fingers, then his arms, and then his spine arches as he convulses, his body attempting to follow the long line of Shadow drowning him as Morgana steadily leads it up his throat and out of his mouth.

She draws the last of Magica’s poison as one would from a wound, not daring to hope even as the solid Shadow trails out of Dark at her beckoning. In the prime realm it appears pearlescent like oil but as insubstantial as smoke. It’s a terrible sight, though once it’s begun it’s over with quickly.

Morgana gets it out, all of it, and her heart clenches in painful relief.

Below her, Dark inhales one piercing, drawn-out breath, a sound more beautiful than any siren’s enchanted song. His chest expands to what must be the point of pain, before he collapses back onto the table with a gasp. He blinks hard, wild-eyed.

“Anybody get the number of that truck?” he rasps.

Launchpad and Gosalyn cry out in wordless relief. The former tugs Dark up and into his arms, grip as careful as it is fierce. Gosalyn climbs up onto the workstation to join them, climbing into Dark’s lap and burying her face in his chest.

Morgana blurts a laugh that nearly scrapes her throat raw. But her attention hasn’t strayed from the matter at hand—the Shadow she keeps suspended in her grasp. With quick movements, she finally ushers Magica’s poison through the small slit she carved into the Shadow Realm. She closes the miniature doorway at once, and the instant the danger is done she drops her arms, shoulders bowing under the weight of her relief. She briefly supports herself by gripping the edge of her workstation.

“Morg. Morgana.”

Her head whips up, reacting at once to the urgency in Dark’s voice. “What-what is it?”

His eyes are hooded with exhaustion, and his mask threatens to slip off his face. “Are you okay?” he asks, smiling crookedly, but the concern in his voice is real.

Morgana covers her face with one hand. She jerks her opposite wrist and one of her plush high back chairs hops across the room to catch her as she falls backward, snorting helplessly.

“Dark, dear, I’m beginning to regret ever having met you.”

Dark barks a laugh, endearingly familiar, before clutching his side with a groan of pain (that, too, is familiar). Morgana will have to remember to throw some restorative charms his way. “Sorry I can’t say the same.” His head lolls into the crook of Launchpad’s neck, and his free hand comes up to cradle the back of Gosalyn’s head. He slurs as he speaks, what little energy he’s regained dwindling fast. “Hey, this is your guys’ first time meeting, right? LP, Morg. Morg, this is LP. Gos, this Morg—”

“Dad,” Gosalyn grunts, mercifully silencing him. “Stop. Talking. Don’t make the cool witch lady regret saving you.” She glances at Morgana over her shoulder, cheeks tearstained but expression no less fierce. “Thanks by the way,” she says, sniffling wetly.

Dark murmurs something in response, but he’s already more than halfway to Morpheus’ realm. Launchpad’s embrace, already infinitely gentle, becomes more so as he adjusts Dark in his arms. He goes to lay Dark’s head back on the makeshift pillow of his jacket before Morgana stops him with a raised hand. There’s no sense in all three of them being uncomfortable.

With a thought, she converts the workstation Dark lays on into a low cot and summons a pillow from her guest bedroom to appear beneath his head. Launchpad’s jacket she magicks to cover him like a blanket. She conjures two more high back chairs and a table laden with fare from her pantry, catered to Normal sensibilities: dragon chips, sliced wolfsbane sausage, and cubes of chupacabra cheese. For herself and Launchpad she summons her beloved Pinot Grigio and two glasses. They certainly deserve it, after the evening they’d had.

For Gosalyn, she summons one of the Pep cans she buys for Lena and Violet.

Rather than joining her, Launchpad and Gosalyn stare agog at her display of magic.

While Morgana would never feel ashamed of her inborn skill, uneasiness twinges through her at the reminder that magic, true magic, is strange and frightening for most Normals. Perhaps especially these Normals, who just watched their father and partner respectively be tormented by its most malicious wielder.

But Gosalyn breaks the spell (damn you, Dark, and your ridiculous puns/love of puns) as she slides off the side of Dark’s cot. “So cool,” she breathes. With the lack of reservation only a child can achieve, she throws herself into the nearest armchair and grabs a handful of grapes.

Launchpad lingers at Dark’s side, hesitation written into every line of his body. In the hopes of reassuring him, Morgana glances down to pour their wine.

“Dark will be fine now, but he shouldn’t be moved for a few more hours. You can all rest here as my guests, but if you’d like to take him home right—”

“No!” Launchpad blurts, startling her into silence. “Uh, no. Sorry, I’m, uh…” He clears his throat, rubs the back of his neck. She’s relieved when he drops into the available armchair, and half the tension sloughs of his shoulders. “Thank you. For helping DW, for-for this. I’m sorry, there wasn’t time to explain or introduce ourselves or anything...”

It’s amusing that once the threat has passed, Dark’s beloved even has the capacity for embarrassment. Still, Morgana waves his apologies away flippantly and presses his wine glass into his hand. Endearingly, he holds it delicately by the stem, dwarfed by his large hand.

“I know who you are, Mr. McQuack.” Her tone is light, just shy of teasing, because as much as she’s heard of Launchpad he is still a stranger to her. She wants to make a good impression. “You’re very important to Dark. Darkwing,” she corrects belatedly. Gods, she’s been referring to him by her nickname this entire time, hasn’t she?

Launchpad smiles, transparent even in his kindness. “So are you. DW talks about you all the time.”

Morgana’s mind empties, every nervous nicety and rehearsed word vanishing under the weight of such a simple reassurance. Her heart gives a pang. “Oh,” she says into her wine glass, taking a slow, fortifying sip. “Well he is a...very dear friend.” Perhaps even her best friend, and wasn’t that a frightening discovery?

“Are you sure you’re friends with Dad?” Gosalyn asks skeptically around a mouthful of grapes and chips. It’s disgusting, if not mildly fascinating, to watch her still manage to speak so clearly. “You’re a little out of his league.”

“Well, your father is a...very unusual Normal.” Morgana swirls the wine in her glass, wondering how to put to words the lightness and simple joy Dark has brought to her life through virtue of simply being an equal, not a mentor or a student like Yaga or the Sabrewing girls.

Gosalyn snorts, clumsily covering her beak with the back of her hand. “You can say that again.”

Beside them, Launchpad takes his first sip of wine and immediately scrunches his face in disgust. He drinks again and makes the same face.

Bemused, Morgana watches him repeat the strange ritual for a third time. “Ah, Launchpad? If you don’t like it you don’t have to drink it.”

“Oh thank goodness,” he says in a rush, slumping in his chair with all the relief of a criminal who has been granted a stay of execution. Gosalyn giggles, a sound so comforting in its youthful sincerity that it dissolves the tensions lingering in the air.

She hands Launchpad her can of Pep. “Here, Launchdad, you can have mine.”

Launchpad smiles, tweaking the end of her messy ponytail. “Thanks, kiddo.”

At Morgana’s beckoning he passes his wine glass to her. She tops off her own drink before vanishing the empty glass and conjuring another Pep from her pantry. The latter she gives to Gosalyn.

Once more, the child goggles at the simple display of magic. “How’d you meet Dad again?”

Morgana blinks over the rim of her glass. “You don’t know?”

Gosalyn shrugs, taking an experimental bite of wolfsbane sausage. “Dad likes to…” she exchanges a conspiratorial glance with Launchpad. “Exaggerate,” she decides. Launchpad chuckles deeply, throwing a fond look over his shoulder at where Dark slumbers, peacefully, if Morgana’s dream charms have anything to say on the matter.

“That’s certainly true.” Whatever embellished tale he relayed to Gosalyn, it is almost certainly a tamer retelling of events than what actually transpired. She can’t imagine Dark willingly telling his daughter about the first time he was nearly consumed by Shadow.

After a moment of hesitation, Morgana decides to make a small allowance. “He saved my life. Did he tell you that?”

Neither of them look surprised by her admission, but it’s Launchpad who answers. “Nah. But he’s good at that.”

Morgana leans forward to pluck a few grapes, humming thoughtfully to distract from the strange prickling behind her eyes. It’s still disarming being among the company of other beings who hold Dark in such high regard, and who matter so deeply to him in turn. She still can’t quite believe that Dark trusted her with this. With them.

“What about you?” Gosalyn asks eagerly. Morgana wonders if she ever tires.

“What about me?”

“What do you do? You’re training Lena and Violet, right? To do magic! Like, real magic, with spellbooks and junk, right?”

Amusement tugs at the corner of Morgana’s beak. “And junk, yes.”

“So cool,” Gosalyn repeats insistently, tosses her head against the back of her chair and slumping, loose-limbed and unselfconscious. “How does it work?”

“How does what work?”

Gosalyn laughs. “Magic!”

Morgana blinks, taken aback. She glances over at Launchpad, wary as to what his response might be. But she needn’t have worried; he’s leaning forward in his seat, looking as curious as Gosalyn.

It’s more difficult than she would admit to turn her gaze back to the child. “Why do you want to learn about magic?”

Gosalyn huffs, fiddling with the tab on her Pep can. “Lotsa reasons. It’s super cool, like I said. Probably really good for pulling pranks. And…it seems like it’s always the bad guys that have magic. And Dad...he’s just...he’s a hero, but against someone who can fly or shoot spiders out of their hands…”

Morgana’s chest constricts watching Gosalyn duck her head, her long bangs hiding her expression from view. Launchpad reaches out, clasping her shoulder and rubbing her arm, eyes troubled above his reassuring smile.

The desire to protect is a relatively new one for Morgana. Long decades ensconced in the safety of the academy also served to isolate her, from her cold and grieving family, her peers scattered across dimensions from the moment of graduation, and the revolving door of students she would teach. She has known few beings long enough to begin caring about them.

First were her two witches-in-training, foolish and brilliant at every turn. Then Dark, so incredibly good, so incredibly Normal and the complete opposite at the same time, picking fights that he shouldn’t be able to win. He led Morgana into a world larger, stranger, and more dangerous than she would have discovered on her own. A world in which there are people to care about, more than she’s ever had.

It’s such a hassle, this caring, but she can’t bring herself to regret following him.

Morgana clears her throat, a sharp sound she had spent half a century perfecting. It can quiet a classroom of witchlings in seconds and is more than enough to secure Gosalyn and Launchpad’s attention once more. The former is stubbornly scrubbing at reddened eyes.

“This won’t be a short conversation,” she warns lightly, setting down her wine glass.

“Magic is more than a clever party trick or an instrument for evil. For many, for me, it’s a way of life.” Morgana conjures the Milky Way galaxy around their heads, millions of dimensions and worlds pulsing with unique heartbeats. She allows herself a moment to admire it as her companions gasp in awe. “In other words, it won’t be easy to learn. Especially because you’re a Normal.” With a thought, her display bursts into a shower of sparks, dissipating in freefall.

“Whoa,” Launchpad murmurs. He raises a chip with cheese up to his beak, crunching noisily.

The fading glow of falling stars reflect brightly in Gosalyn’s eyes. “I don’t care. I want to try.”

Morgana reclines in her seat, plucking her wine glass off the table. She already feels oddly proud. “Very well. On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

She rolls her eyes, willingly breaking the mystical air she’d been cultivating. “When Dark wakes up, please remind him that I’m not joining his silly superhero team. I’m a businesswoman first.”