Circe was born shortly after the War of Heaven and Hell and the sudden disappearance of the Dark Majesty in an acropolis.
The dark mystic grew up in one of her mother's citadel where she trained with several powerful witches until she began showing her ability to use dark magic. At this point, the young lady never saw her mother but when news reach the Queen of the witches, she immediately teleported to her old citadel to see for herself.
Before Circe, very few witches were known to be able to use dark magic and at the time Circe started showing signs that she could, there were only four others. There was a huge feast at the citadel as the Queen of the witches arrived, there was singing and dancing and food was distributed across the city, bread and meat especially.
Circe remembers that day like it was yesterday. When she heard that she'd be meeting her mother for the first time, she was both excited and nervous at the same time. Circe had asked her friend, Daria - a dark mage that grew up in the same citadel as her - to be by her side for the meeting.
The Queen of the Witches was wearing a dark green dress and held a slight smile when their eyes meet. The young dark mystic tried to steady her trembling hands but when they wouldn't stop shaking, she hid them behind her back. Hecate leaned towards a woman next to her and whispered something in her ear but Circe still picked it up.
"Which one of them is her?"
"The one with the red hair," the woman replied as quietly as she could.
Hecate took a step forward. "Come closer honey," said the dark-haired woman.
Daria stopped while the young mystic continued until she was just a few feet away from her mother.
Hecate then asked her daughter how she was but Circe froze in front of her Queen and was unable to make up any word. Circe's caretaker dismisses the action - or lack thereof - as a result of jitters.
"She is meeting her Queen after all."
The day after was for demonstration; Hecate wanted to see the girl use dark magic for herself. Circe had stayed up all night practicing as she didn't want to disappoint anyone, especially her mother, she already made a bad first impression and wanted to make a better second.
Circe's insomnia paid off when she showed off her abilities during the demonstration, drawing positive appraisal from everyone present including the Queen herself.
Hecate then ordered that Circe move to Aeaea, an island with a mixture of pasture and dense woodland of oak and beech.
The young dark mystic had one request, that her friend, Daria, be at her side during the training. Hecate agreed and the two friends moved to the secluded island to begin training with Freya, another dark magic witch.
Freya would give Circe laborious work and would always zap or slap the latter with her wand in case of any lack of attention on Circe's part.
The ancient witch lived alone on the huge island, something Daria did not find at all surprising. "She is a malevolent old witch! Who would want to live with her?"
The island had bluffs from which the sea could be seen encircling it in all directions. Freya lived in a stone house located in a dense forest of trees and gave the duo a house not too far from hers. South of their quarters was an old library which the old witch had forbade the duo from ever going near.
"Why don't you just destroy the library?" Circe asked. "Why keep it if you don't want anyone going inside?"
"Because it cannot be destroyed. And neither can the books inside it." Freya replied.
One night when Freya had fallen into a deep sleep, the two fell victim to curiosity and explored the library.
The library itself was no different from any other Circe had been to, but the moment she set foot inside, she could tell it was very different from the others.
The books were also different, most of them authored by followers and admirers of the Dark Majesty - works that were outlawed in the acropolis where she grew up.
It started as inquisitiveness, Circe and Daria would sneak into the library when Freya was asleep to take a book to read up on in their free time but soon, it evolved. Perhaps it was the taboo aspect of it that made them regular visitors to the old library or maybe it was something else.
When they turned eighteen years of age, Circe had finished her training and returned home to the old citadel.
They both had grown into beautiful young women at this time, Daria was shorter than her friend but was equally beautiful. She had dark hair and blue eyes while Circe had light red hair and yellow eyes, the dark mystic did not have bangs at this time.
A feast was thrown in the acropolis to welcome Circe, this time, it was much bigger than the one they had when Hecate arrived. The yellow-eyed girl's view of the world had changed thanks to the countless books she read about the War of Heaven and Hell, the Demonic War, and the Dark Majesty.
The council of mysticism was formed at this time, comprising Hecate, the queen of the witches. Mene, the goddess of the moon, and Sirae, the first vampire. The Queen couldn't be there for her daughter's arrival so she invited the young dark mystic to join her and a few other dark witches she recently found in the witches' capital. Circe turned down the offer. "I want to forge my own path, Mother." She had written in a letter to her mother.
Circe and Daria left the acropolis the very next day. They had one, similar goal: find the darkforge.
The Darkforge, a collection of spells created by the one known as He Who Sleeps. The book which was used by the Dark Majesty during his reign contained powerful spells the two friends wanted to study, desperate to have something in common with their idol.
A year passed, then two, then five, then a decade, and then half a century. Lucky for the duo, time was on their side - they were both mystics meaning the older they get, the slower they age. However, this didn't make their search any less exhausting.
Sometime later, Circe and Daria searched for Jade, the Dark Majesty's top aide who they had also come to idolize thanks to the stories they read about the War of Heaven and Hell. That too proved fruitless.
Centuries passed and then Daria decided to leave the search in favor of joining the second Gobo-Magi war - a war between the goblins and the mages. The two friends had a big argument the night Daria told Circe of her decision.
"So what? You're just going to abandon the search?"
"I want to protect my people!" Daria claimed.
"You don't even know them!" Circe argued. "You want to abandon a noble cause for some people you don't even know?!"
"This is also a noble cause, Circe! What do you think the War of Heaven and Hell was about?!"
"Don't you dare Daria, don't you dare compare this excuse for bloodshed with such an important war! You want to join the mages solely because you believe your parents could be a part of them! The very same parents that abandoned you in front of a damn witches' citadel!"
"..."
"..."
"You know what? You're right. I'm doing this for personal reasons, I'm doing this because I believe my birth family are mages and I do not want them to be killed. You wouldn't know anything about that because you don't care about anything. Because you have no family or people you can call yours. You are no witch nor a dark witch, you're just an abomination!"
That was the last time they saw each other for centuries. Daria joined the war like she wanted and when it ended, she joined Hecate's rank as part of the mage's sisterhood.
Circe meanwhile continued the search and years later, she came across a human with specter eyes. The yellow-eyed woman killed the man and took the eyes for herself.
More years pass and one day, Circe received a letter from her old master Freya, the opening of which was enough to bring tears to the former's eyes. "Dear Circe ... I feel my soul spiriting away from my body ..."
The light red-haired woman considered Freya the cruelest master ever forced upon her but the old witch held a special place in Circe's heart. It seemed Freya felt the same way for Circe as she left her island for the latter while she "... wondered the world with what little life I have left in me ..."
Circe returned to her island and just two years later, a ship washed up on Aeaea's shore. One of the men on the ship had the Darkforge though he claimed to have no knowledge of its contents and only traveled with it because it brought him good luck.
Circe couldn't believe her luck but was grateful for it nonetheless, finally getting a hold of the book that had eluded her for centuries. The light red-haired woman began reading the book, learning and practicing chaos magic.
Centuries later, Circe left the island after years and years of solitude to meet her mother in person for the second time. Hecate welcomed Circe warmly, showing her around and asking about all the journeys the yellow-eyed woman had been on. Circe indulged her mother but left out any story involving chaos magic, the specter eyes, or the Darkforge.
"Stay here please," Hecate pleaded. "This is your home ... Your place is with witches like you."
Circe only smiled in response but now was not like a millennium ago when all she wanted to was meet and impress her mother, no. The yellow-eyed woman now had a purpose; she wanted to exterminate the weak mystics and establish an empire filled only with unified mystics under one rule.
Her mother was wrong, her place couldn't be with the witches because she wasn't one, she never was. Circe just happened to have the same skillset as witches but she was much more different and powerful and in her eyes, witches were the weakest mystics.
.
.
.
Sophia sat under the giant tree with the pink leave playing with the ring around her finger. She looked at Hunter who was scribbling something down into a small book in his hand. "So I've been talking to Nova ..." She started.
"You're talking to Nova? That's good," Hunter said.
"Yeah, well, not as much as I'd like but I asked her about how sprite powers work," Sophia continued.
"Okay?"
"Yes, you guessed right, I have questions!"
Hunter laughs, setting aside his book. "Shoot."
"Right. So sprites can see ghosts and darklings but I've never seen you get freak out because of an encounter you've had with a ghost. Like, are there no ghosts around here or you just can't be bothered to acknowledge them?"
"It's a little bit of both. Most ghost just mind their business and unless you're trying to claim something they've taken as theirs they don't even care what you do," Hunter explained.
[This is the part where you tell her you're the Skyline exorcist, isn't it?]
'I'm not going to tell everyone about that!'
[I'm just saying. It's become a habit with you recently]
"So ghosts just claim stuff that isn't theirs?" Sophia asks.
"It is mostly things they had an emotional attachment to while they were alive, so much so that they refuse to let it go when they die. Like a house, for example, the ghost would then haunt new owners to spook and make them leave. Apart from that, most ghosts are friendly."
"They are? I could ask them to pull off a heist for me?"
"Not that friendly. I meant friendly enough to not attack you."
[It's coming ...]
Sophia frowns. "Then why do they possess people?"
"Those aren't ghosts, Darklings are the ones that possess people," Hunter stated.
[Coming ...]
'Oh shut up.'
"And Darklings, why do they do what they do?"
"Nothing. They are just a nuisance for no damn reason. This one time back in Skyline, this lady called Jacob and me to --"
[And boom!]
'Crap.'
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