CAIN’S STORY: SECTION FOUR

About twenty years ago, the great witching coven, the House Marwellic, faced many troubles. Where once there had been the patter of small feet upon the planks of the corridors of the Main House, there was then a painful silence that crept up almost as if from the home’s foundation, and screamed of its desolation and bareness. Of course, lack of children was not the only problem; there was also a blight that spread throughout the families of the Matriarchs, which killed many potentially powerful young witches. The disease even reached the home of the High Priestess, Angelique. It first took her grand daughters; then her sisters and daughters; then, one night in her bed, it her.

Naturally, this left a seat of power open, not just in the House, but also on the Council of the Races of the Darkbreed, called Dark Council for short. While this position of authority was well coveted and prestigious among the non-human races, few could rise to the challenge because as tradition dictated, only a member of the House Marwellic could take the seat on the Council, and with so many of their witches gone, that seemed an impossibility. For almost a year, new high priestesses came and went, each one weaker and more foolish than the last, until finally a witch of amazing strength, who had not been affected by the sickness blazed into control like an inferno: first wiping away the illness, then bringing new life to the dwindling House by way of once thought lost fertility rituals, and finally cementing her position on the Council be supporting the blood mages in a scuffle that almost tore the Council apart.

Unfortunately for the new High Priestess, Marrianne, many doubted that she came to her seat of power as innocently as she proclaimed. In fact, many began to blame her for the ailment, infertility, and some even went so far as to blame her for the problems with the Council. Of course she had no hand in any of these events, but as is the potency of greed and wrath; she was soon asked to leave the House if she could not prove her blamelessness. In a frantic struggle to prove herself, she tried something that had never been done before, she tried to summon the spirits of the House’s originators, it’s first Patriarchs.

Marrianne knew that if she could bring back the ones who had made the House Marwellic what it was, that she would be safe from anyone or anything, some would even worship her as a goddess made flesh. Thus she set out to do just that. She started by researching old House records to find the very first. She back tracked as far as the Medieval times before she ran into some blocks, but with some work both magical and mental, she was able to move on. Eventually, she found them, the two first members of the House. The two were a set of twin brother. One of the m was called only, the Beast. The other was named Vorden.

After doing some more research, Marrianne found that the two brothers had been born of a coupling between a powerful Drow male and Elvin priestess. Unfortunately, it had not been a…happy coupling. The fact the that twins were the product of rape, combined with the enmity between their two parent races, and the fact that their mother died in birth lead to a very isolated life for them. The twins practically raised themselves in the forest between the Elvish and Drow lands, not accepted by either culture. Then suddenly, the younger of the two brothers, Vorden, appeared on the Elvish family rosters as if he had always been there. The Beast though continued to remain alone.

With that little information, the High Priestess began to prepare for the summoning rituals that would lead to her supremacy of the entire House. She started by gathering all of the materials she thought she needed though the spell was very old and had not been used nearly five generations, so most of it was guess work. After she had prepared, she set a date when the moon was full, and waited.

When time came for the ritual to take place, everything went the way that it was supposed to, but the two spirits never appeared. Marrianne tried the ceremony again and again, finally giving up near dawn of the next day. She went back to her tomes of power to see what she could have done wrong. She looked and looked, and then found something that sent a chill down her spine.