Chapter 1

 

After the open assembly meeting, Lara could not help but feel fear and concern, emotions she was sure were shared by all who had been present at the emergency gathering.

Not a sound had been made as everyone looked up at the hilltop stage, listening carefully as the village leaders gave their solemn announcement. After almost one hundred years of unity and peace between all witches of the land, a new faction had been formed, a faction that were no longer satisfied to go along with the established witch code. They wanted to break away from the old authority, seeing themselves as stronger and all others as weak and growing weaker still by the minute, keeping hold of old, outdated traditions.

And at the heart of the tradition and witch code that they wanted to discard was the current relationship between witches and human beings. The new faction claimed they were tired of watching their fellow witches dying at the hands of ignorant, fear-driven men, as they sat back and did nothing. This sentiment was shared by others, which helped them recruit many witches to their cause. Had they only been fighting for the rights of witches and freedom, Lara might have been tempted to join herself, but this faction demanded more. They wanted to enslave and punish the humans for their past and current sins against their kind, and ensure that in the future they would never dare to repeat such evil actions again - for they would take it upon themselves to teach them who their masters were and who was the weaker race.