Untold Legends: The Moon Coven’s Yule

* Thirteen years ago * The village of Theropos was wide, with hills rolling over waving rivers under the stormy blue sky. A normal scene I saw in this busy village. The men, women, and children that filled the streets were content with their lives in the beauty of the Greek hillside we lived on. I heard my mother and father arguing in the kitchen again while my sister and I were left in the bedroom so we wouldn’t hear anything. To their disbelief, we could listen to most of what they were saying. Money was always the argument; this time, my father was tasked to speak to the village archon to find work. Against better judgment, I decided to come out of the room and into the kitchen. My father sat in a wooden table chair. His strong elbows planted into the table, and his large hands pressed against his forehead. His grey robe stretched tight across his large back as he sat slouched against the table. My mother stood tall at the end of the kitchen near the cooking area with her arms folded over her chest. Her hair, intricately braided and pinned to her head like always, framed the attention to her stormy blue-grey eyes that glared at my father in an ensuing rage. My mother saw me walk into the room out of the corner of her eye and said, “While you go, take Zander with you so he can learn not to be an embarrassment like his father.” My mother fell open in disbelief. Had she said that about my father right in front of me? She was cruel, but never to me, not like this. Tears began to swell in my eyes, unsure of what to say or do in the moment. My father heard my quiet stifles of tears falling to the floor from behind him and quickly turned around, “Let’s go, Zander, you don’t need to hear this.” He grabbed my arm, and we walked out of the small two-roomed home. I looked back at it, longing for my little sister to come with us, but I knew that there was no way a woman would be allowed to see the archon, especially without her husband present. As an eleven-year-old, I can only see the travesty in withholding readable knowledge that the women of the village naturally have. We rounded our small dirt road to head north up the stone path to the archon’s house. This house was much larger than any other in the village, containing five separate rooms and an additional building where the archon normally stayed. The second building was naturally off-limits to the villagers, so the archon would have a place to escape his work. Regardless of the situation, my father was incessant in speaking with him. My parents were more known to the outcasts. Mages of any kind would normally fall under this lower class caste, but my parents were the outcasts of the lower class. People who would use fire magic spread fear into the hearts of all, and my parents were no exception. After years of trying to find their place in the village, they always seemed to fall short of their wants and desires. Leaving their paths uncertain and left to ruin. Anger for how my mother was treating my father after they had both been treated so terribly by the village resonated deep within me. My hands began to tremble in anger as my feelings slowly manifested themselves. I grew uncomfortably hot in my skin as beads of sweat fell from my forehead. The confusion of the heat didn’t help my anger as it swallowed my every thought. Then, suddenly, sparks of ember began crackling at my fingertips. Upon hearing the familiar sound, my father turned around to me immediately. He seemed unfazed at the sight of my hands shooting sparks from nothing. This made immediate sense to me, considering he likely found out he could similarly control flames. However, his calm demeanor seemed to only aggravate my anger even more. “It’s okay, Zander,” he began saying, “This kind of magic is beautiful and strange, but it can also be dangerous.” “It is just another reason for the Village to hate us,” I responded, knowing where he was going with his spiel. “The village just doesn’t understand us,” he said, “Let’s go show them who we are.” He reached his hand out for me to hold. Unsure if I wanted to go through the tribulations with the village again, I hesitantly grabbed his hand. We finished walking the tall hill of the village to the archons house. He let go of my hand with a wink of pride in his eyes. We waited in suspense for many minutes after knocking, but there was no response. Finally, after waiting for a long time at the entrance, my father gave up. He turned around and sat on a nearby step in defeat. We sat there, not saying a word for what felt like hours, waiting. Finally, an older man came walking up the steps to the house. His robe was tattered and covered with dirt, and his hair and beard were unkempt. He was very obviously homeless. “How dare a fire user as yourself sit so high above the rest of us,” he jested, “Have you any nerve? Don’t you see the gods are angry with your existence?” As the man walked away, the skies began to rumble with thunder and lightning. Cracking open the floodgates of a storm the village hadn’t seen in years. The wind blew branches off a tree that landed on the roof of the house. Rain pelted my skin like I was standing under a falling waterfall. My soaked robe pooled the water under my shivering legs. “I am tired of being walked on by everyone,” my father said with his eyes focused on the ground in front of him, “Told that I am the scum of the earth because I can control fire - something I didn’t choose at birth.” “It will be okay,” I tried to console him, “I am sure Mom will have guidance on what we should do next.” He ignored me and started standing in the rain with a very apparent anger filling the shadows of his face. His arms began to shake with rage, forming large sparks bouncing off his body. Steam formed off his head, leaving his face dry, even though the wind was still blowing the rain onto him. “Your mother doesn’t know what to do or say. That is why we’re here in the first place,” he finally responded. Reading his body language, I attempted to talk him down, “We can try another day let’s just go home.” “If the villagers want to try to bring me down by saying the gods aren’t on our side, too,” he said while raising his flaring arms, “I will show them I’m not someone they can step on! Pyr deni!” A funnel of excruciating fire shot from his outreached hands. Slowly spiraling in the air, causing a roaring swoosh sound to fly with the vortex. Soon after he started this, a flat spiraling flame formed just above the village. I stood beside him, amazed, as the rain had stopped immediately, scorched by the hot flames he controlled. A few moments passed, and he seemed perfectly in control, spinning his hands perfectly in sync with the flaming spiral above him. Then, I noticed beads of sweat falling down the back of his neck. His movements were slowing down, but the fire was speeding up. “Son!” He grimaced in pain, “I can’t hold it much longer!” In his final moment of control, he pushed the vortex south, away from us, and collapsed in pain and exhaustion. An immediate fear pounded with the beat of my heart as I realized the fire was headed from such we came. The rain started to fall on us again as I watched the vortex dance in horror. The flames continued to spiral out of control as they fell to the ground, incinerating everything they touched. For a moment, screams were heard over the roaring fire, but were m silenced quicker than they had started. In a matter of moments, three-quarters of Theropos were decimated in a cloud of ash. My father lay unmoving and panting for a while as the flames dispersed. After regaining some strength, my father immediately wanted to go home and make sure my mother and sister were okay. While trying to support him through the roads, the memory of my former village was burned from existence, and in its place, I found ruins of my home. There were buildings charred from the fire, completely burnt to ash, and filled with death. Half of a skeleton was spread across the small dirt road near my home; the other half was turned to ash in contact with the fire. We made it to where the house should have been, but there was nothing there. The entire building, as well as the neighboring ones, were all vaporized in the instance of contact. My father wailed in agony, but it took me several moments before realizing why. My mother and sister, as well as a majority of the village, were killed by the fire my father started. Tears swelled in my eyes as I looked at my father in disgust, “You truly are helpless, like she said, aren’t you? I refuse to ever use this power you used to burn our family to ash.”