M.Y.T.H.-ing Witch (A M.Y.T.H. prequel)

I can say it, I messed up. But it wasn’t all my fault. I trusted the wrong person.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My name is Sabrina, and I’m a witch.

Nope, don’t have a broomstick. Although I guess I could, if I really wanted to make one.

Witches are actually a subset of the race known as the Magi. There are three main subsets - Witches, Warlocks, and Wizards.

Before you ask, no, not all witches are girls, and not all Warlocks or Wizards are guys. It's about what you focus on, not about your gender. See, Witches focus mostly on living things - plants and animals. Warlocks, on the other hand, focus mainly on non-living nature - rocks, waterfalls, even the moon and sun. And Wizards are all about knowledge and creating magical objects. You need a magic ring, or a scroll, a Wizard is your best bet.

Not that these categories are exclusive. In practice, most Magi have at least some skill in all three disciplines. You just tend to be called one or another, depending on your strengths.

Because our world has become less hospitable to magic of all kinds, many if not all magi prefer to use magic rarely. Magic is like a kind of energy and it's never wise to run your reserves dry, as it can take quite some time to refuel, so to speak.

We also tend to keep to ourselves, and do not mingle much with regular people. We might be centuries removed from the time when scared peasants would try to set some mage on fire, but we are encouraged to use caution regardless.

Which means I have few friends.

Which is why I was willing to hang around Klarion and made the mistake of trusting him.

I honestly don’t know how much of our friendship was real, and how much was him playing me. Maybe at first it was as good for him to have another of his kind to talk to. He told me he had been raised by a golem, a being made of earth brought to life by magic. For reasons Klarion never explained, and maybe he didn’t even know, the golem was made to resemble a famous mage, Morgan Le Fay.

In any case every once in awhile, he’d escape his golem “babysitter” and have a little fun - by using his magic to create chaos.

Then a little while ago he had used his magic to make the food at a school cafeteria come to life and start fighting. I confess, when he told me what he had done, I laughed, and thought his idea of a “food fight” was pretty funny.
Then he told me he had learned something doing this spell. It should have been draining for him to make even two food creatures, but he found himself tapping into a well of magical power - or manna, as it’s called, that was far greater than anything he had heard of before.

So once the “food fight” was over, he started some experiments, and came to believe that while we had always been taught that mana had been in decline for the last couple of thousand years, suddenly there was more than there had been since the great days of magic.

To find out for sure, he wanted me to help him testing this, by creating a familiar. Usually a witch will take a family pet for a familiar, but he wanted to try to do something outrageous.

He had learned there was a family of werecats near who had three children, and he wanted me to bind them to serve me.

I promise, normally I would have said no way to such an idea. It’s one thing to use a pet, but to take kids, even were- kids, well, that’s wrong.

But I found myself agreeing.

Now, here is the thing I did wrong. “Protect yourself at all times” is one of the first lessons of being a mage. But I had a bit of a crush on him, and let my guard down, allowing him to use a suggestion spell.

It probably helped that he kept saying they wouldn’t be hurt, they would just be like my best friends as well as familiars, and that he’d arrange everything.

All I had to do was sneak out at the proper time, take a potion he had prepared for me that would “open” my power up even further, and wait.

But what he actually arranged was me to get caught and blamed for all of it.

The were-family was warned, and sent the children to safety while they tracked me down, and found me in the woods behind my house acting like I had been drinking, giggling to myself and cooing over having were-kittens for friends.

When I sobered up, I had to face the music. My parents had been scared when they realized I was missing, then worried I had become some kind of maniac willing to kidnap were-kids. Then they were upset at me for letting myself get into this mess.

I honestly half expected to end up being put in a magic-proof cel until I died.

But they brought in a truthsayer, and realized I had been taken advantage of.

As for Klarion, nobody knows where he went. They figure that had been his idea from the beginning - to use me as a distraction which would allow him to find a place where even the best magic couldn’t find him, so he would have the time to figure a way to take advantage of the return of magic.

And me? I’ve been given a chance to redeem myself.

I’m being sent to a brand new school for magical creatures of all kinds. Apparently the revival of magic is a big enough deal that a group representing a bunch of different magical species got together, and decided what was needed was for all of us to learn from each other as we learned about our powers.

I’ve promised to use this second chance wisely, and I will.

But I am hoping that once I’m strong enough, I’ll have an opportunity to have a little talk with a certain witch boy ...

End.