Beneath the Blood Moon

Chapter One: The Fall

-Two Weeks-

These ceremonies were a load of shit.

Everyone standing in the dark, expressionless golden masks on their faces. All ominous and trash with their holier than thou attitudes righteously draped over their shoulders in gold, orange, red, and black stoles. Each indicating class and aptitude, a public display of how wonderful they all were.

The entire coven collected in the fields to the West of the central citadel. An ancient spot with invaluable magik properties.

It just looked like an old oak stump to Nnandi.

But there it stood and there they stood. Close to three hundred witch kind staring up at a stump and the platform behind it. A platform lined with newly christened, seventeen-year-old younglings. Nine in total, each on display until the moment they would present themselves before the group and prove their worth to the coven.

Each would step onto the stump, recite some old and tiresome incantation, drink from the mystical goblet of "ambrosia"t, and present their inner flame for the world and midnight sky to see.

Approaching the stump, the last one for the evening. A girl, taller than all the others with sharp eyes and a plume of sandy brown hair haloed around her round face in clusters of curls. She had the confidence of a Sentinel guard, the stance of one as well. All power and authority, she knew what she was doing.

Her deep voice lifted into the air with perfect articulation. She knew her stuff, it was a no brainer that she would conclude the ceremony on a good note.

As Nnandi turned to break from the crowd, a gasp rippled through the initiates on the platform.

It was not a glorious flame that engulfed the girl's body. It didn't lick at the moonless sky with intense fury, burning bright like a beacon in the night. And that was the problem. As the dim flares that arced from within the teen girl subsided and she stood on the pillar, horror marred her youthful features. Her honey beige face paled, eyes wide in shock. Disbelief.

That was the same look Nnandi had on her face the night she stood on that stump, read her incantation with the same unwavering confidence, and watched as the fire inside her flickered and dimmed well before it had the chance to soar. Like she knew it should have.

They locked eyes for an eternal second, connected. Then, the girl stumbled off the stoop and fell to the ground. Her friends, her family, they did not rush to her. They wouldn't, even as she searched around the area for them. She was marked now. There would be no help for the rest of her life. All two weeks of it.

A pair of guards appeared out the crowd and marched up to her, gripping gently under the arms and carrying her to the side with the two others who failed their test that night. The guard placed her between the two boys, neither looking at the new arrival, their sunken faces resigned and wrought with pain. Each looked confused, lost, hurt. It should have stirred some feeling of sympathy, nurturing intuition. Something.

This girl, those boys, these children were marked to be sacrificed. Torn from life in an archaic ritual of domination and depletion.

A tepid, summer wind gusted through the crowd of people, the first wave of humidity beckoning in another July. The last she and the others would see. Ten years living in a limbo of a single certainty. Ten years of knowing when, where, and how her throat would be slit.

And all she could feel was bothered by the heat. She seemed to be the only one. Heat and fire didn't bother "her" people. Nor did the cold or threat of frostbite in the biting winters. There was no need to wrap up in layers of clothing or expose every bit of skin in the hot night air. Not for those born into the House That Aries Built. A house of flames and old blood magic. Magik that kept them strong, eternal. Magik that stripped life from the weak and fed it to the strong.