RAVEN:

MISTRESS OF MAGIC

PT 1

A WITCH'S BEGGINING

Written by Maskedhero100

FRANCE: 1780

I have decided to write this journal, because for future generations… they must know what happened here that lead to our future, so they can be prepared to keep it the way it is.

Free of disaster.

My name is Montego Ducard… and all my life, I have been different.

It's not my ethnicity, or skin color that make me so different from other people… but what I can do that makes me different.

For you see… I am a magic user, a wizard.

But this is not my story; I am just explaining things that lead to the beginning of the story.

I am part of a long line of Ducard who were part of the original bunch of people who were granted our mystical abilities during the time of Atlantis and mythology… years ago.

By means lost to time.

When our world was threatened by creatures from a chaotic dimension known as the Netherworld, a parallel reality where all kinds of nightmarish creatures reside, the small bunch of us allied with the atlanteans and a hero from another world called Naemon to fight the monsters… the worst of which was a demon who literally fed off our magic powers… we called the demon the witch feeder.

If not for the hero Naemon, we would have been devoured by the demon… but Naemon managed to defeat him and seal him away hopefully forever.

It was a simpler time back then, but then things got worse.

First off, the other humans in the world besides the atlanteans were war like, savage and beastly.

Constantly waging a war between each other, the other humans seemed determined to conquer the other… and bath in the others blood.

This had started when the first of two Cro-Magnon children, brothers killed his brother… because he was not like his brother… and he didn't care for him either.

The brother was cursed to be a Neanderthal for his crime, and in revenge the murderous brother launched war against his former brothers and sisters.

The war went on for so long that both sides became bloodthirsty savages, the true reason for the start of their war lost to them.

Those that knew the truth fled to parts unknown.

The war had been going on ever since.

The Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals, as much as they hatted each other… they all hatted the "pretty ones" the most.

The "pretty ones" being the evolved races of humans in Atlantis and the magic users… blaming us for their troubles and the monsters.

When honestly none of us really knew why we were different from our "brothers and sisters" or why the monsters had appeared on our world twenty seven years ago… but that didn't stop the others from trying to kill us both… in order to possess our power… that's what they believed they needed to do to obtain our power.

That's what lead them into their war to attack Atlantis… and that's what caused the disaster that caused it to fall to the ocean floor, and changed its populace forever.

While those few hundred Cro-Magnons who survived Atlantis's destruction during the disaster… were soon found to have been changed as well.

The few hundred began showing un-natural and dangerous ability's… that were not magic based in the slightest.

They began slaughtering both Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals… declaring themselves nomads.

Naemon figured out why these Cro-Magnons had been changed, and while visiting the one Cro-Magnon woman who wasn't like her race, but had been changed as well… she could see into the future, and different futures based on one's decisions… naemon went back, and engaged them all in battle.

Immune to their various powers, he beat them all… but didn't kill them.

Naemon in his wisdom knew that these powers were both weapons and gifts… but in the hands of Cro-Magnons they were used to slaughter…because that's all their primitive brains knew to do with power… but through the oracle, naemon had seen the future… and he knew that these changes to the Cro-Magnons were permanent.

So using the source of their changes and his own extraordinary powers, naemon put their powers into dormancy.

He put their various powers to sleep.

A spell that would not release the Cro-Magnons powers for 200,000 million years… when the Cro-Magnons would have descended into Homo sapiens (humans) like the "pretty ones" as well… and have matured minds to use them.

By that time only their descendants would have these powers and many other powers as well… some would be like the Cro-Magnons and use their powers for their own ends and cause much pain and suffering, but there would be some… who would have matured… who would use these powers to do great things, and fight against the forces of darkness.

I had no idea how true Naemon's decision would prove true in the long run.

But I at the time back then didn't care, that was just one dangerous enemy dealt with.

With the gems of Atlantis, Naemon became stronger, and dealt with greater threats… one being the demon from a dark dimension called Doom Dark.

But the worst enemy's that naemon fought were 42 of the most dangerous evil spirits and monsters that had ever escaped from the Netherworld through some disaster that had set them free long ago.

Naemon's and two of his trusted friends ultimately sacrificed themselves to turn themselves into a seal, and in turn… they sealed up the 42 evil spirits and monsters inside them in a seal that could only be broken by a mortals touch.

Our hero died long before the Son of our lord and father arrived on earth and saved all of our lord's children through a sacrifice similar to our friend… but unlike naemon… the son of god…he was meant to be resurrected… I was there when it happened.

We may have been using our powers for good back then.

But it was through Naemon's sacrifice, and the savior's revelation that we few magic users decided to use our powers for the protection of the world… for there were still demons lurking around.

Most of us departed for the continents, while the rest of us stayed to watch over what would be called the new world.

Thousands of years passed… we remained… although a few of the "old ones" had integrated with the descendants of the Cro-Magnons who by now were what would be called "natives" or "Indians", becoming what would be called "shamans".

It continued this way until settlers from what was now called Europe appeared.

It was then that we saw that some of the Cro-Magnon tendencies and paranoia still remained in a few.

While some "settlers" learned to mingle with the natives, some didn't, and wanted their deaths to "cleanse the filthy savages from the new world"

The worse one that we ever witnessed was one called Cortez, who slaughtered the natives… in search for a gold colored metal that meant nothing to us or the natives.

We used our magic in many ways to defend our homes from the hostile European settlers, but they just came like moths to a flame.

In that time I had found a wife, a soul mate magic user… something that magic users who look for one spend their long lives on earth searching for one.

When magic users find a wife, and they marry… they become "attuned"… a bond is made between them… they share the same breath, the same heart beat… and they cease to be immortal.

It's what we all strive for, to find a lover… live and die with them.

Who wants to really live forever, and outlast all and everyone with a place in a magic user's life?

I had a wonderful ten years with my wife Sabrina, she bore me one child during that time… we named him Maximillian (max) Ducard.

Many years had passed when we were approached by other magic users from the place now known as Europe.

They had come to ask for our help.

Apparently over in Europe, the fear and persecution of anyone with magic ability's had caused them to be ladled as being in league with the devil and marked to be destroyed by the people there.

And as a result, a small group of magic users had embraced the dark side of magic to take revenge on the normal humans… therefore becoming what the humans feared them to be.

They would be from then from our tongues be called the dark mages.

The European Magic users then explained in their overzealous rage, they abandoned the god father and the mother goddess for the darkness… and placed their faith in evil spirits.

The worst of which was a group who had begun worshiping the witch feeder!

The dark mages to my horror had released the Witch feeder from his prison… and those he didn't feed on, still remained loyal to him.

He then began hunting down other magic users who weren't dark mages whose strength he fed off of and gave them power in return… and also began slaughtering humans who didn't have magic… he had been doing this for hundreds of years.

The human renascence artist Leonardo Davinci had seen the Demon, and had been helping the magic users in their war with his inventions and began doing art to chronicle the events so future generations would know what happened if they failed.

But they were losing the war… they couldn't reseal the witch feeder… because they were decedents of the original 34 who had gone over to Europe.

The secret had been lost, so they came to our shores to ask for help.

I still remembered what Naemon had done and over the years I had perfected a magic version of the seal.

The witch Feeder made its way over to what would be called Massachusetts, and with the help of benevolent demons that we called "Gardemons" we managed to reseal the Witch feeder in a stronger seal.

Because this seal could only be broken by the touch of a Ducard.

We then punished the dark mages by imprisoning them in the No-zone… a prison realm where the evil inside them would be negated until it was gone and they were back to what they were before they abandoned good magic for evil magic.

A process that would take a hundred years, but it was more humane than anything else we could punish them with.

But with victory, came casualties.

My wife was one of the fallen in the battle, and with her death… went my mortality.

My son Max was only 12 at the time, he took it the hardest.

It wasn't easy being a single parent, but I did my best.

We both continued to live in Massachusetts, until the area we lived in became a town by the name of "Salem".

More settlers came, and with them came Europe's fear of our kind.

Any show of magic good or bad in their view was in league with the devil, and not part of the father gods plan.

They began hunting us or anyone they dubbed "witches and warlocks" who studied or practiced "witchcraft", most of them innocent humans and magic users and began putting them through trails to prove if they were witches or not… the idea being if they survived, then they were witches.

Due to some of the magic users put through this test having never found wives, they passed… and then were executed by fire.

The only earth element we weren't immune to.

Dark mages then began to appear again, but they were few and scattered.

During that time, I had found love in the most unusual of places… in a human.

Her name was Moira.

She had the bond.

I married her, but in doing so she became an outcast to her village, and her family.

But she loved me so much that her pain was dulled.

The other magic users and I realized that if we didn't act soon we would be hunted down and butchered.

The best option we had to do was to retreat to the small world that the Gardemons came from, not the netherworld… but somewhere neutral from both earth and the netherworld.

We all fled there, although some stayed behind.

I fled and I took my wife and son along with us and left the mortal world behind.

But the damage had already been done by our human brothers and sisters' hatred and fear.

These betrayals had caused some of my fellow brothers to resent humans.

My wife faced much persecution for a while, but her love, and my love for her… as well as my willingness to defend her… made the other magic users keep their opinions to themselves.

Since I was an elder, I had more strength than them.

Unfortunately a good portion of the other elders held persecutionary views to humans as well.

We all of us remained in the Gardemons realm which we would all call, the magic realm.

In there, time did not matter.

One could leave the magic realm and appear anywhere in time on earth, save the very far past or the very far future.

We could leave of course, but we didn't see any reason to… not with the fear of us or the renewed fear of us that would emerge if we returned to earth.

That's why we sent the Gardemons, being extra dimensional creatures they could move between the two worlds at will.

We used them as spies and messengers

And also on the magic realm, we aged normally… while earth in the universe we left behind aged quicker.

Soon human kind had done things that we all observed over the years that we would never have thought possible.

Fighting two wars that covered the earth twice, traveling to the sister moon, splitting the atom… but through all of this we also saw the evil in the world… and until humanity would mature again…we remained here.

But the prejudice among the other magic users had been passed down through their children as well.

Through my wife Moira, I gained another child.

A daughter.

We named her Raven Ducard after my mother.

She has a lot of spirit for a baby, and though Max like most children had trouble accepting her presence in the family, he has come to love her and protect her like any big brother world.

Now Raven has grown into a twelve year old girl, and I have high hopes for her.

Someday she may become a strong witch, and through that… maybe it might be her that will mend the scars of the past.

And hopefully be strong enough, to withhold the family responsibility over… the seal.