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A little evil goes a long, long way
We stand together, no, we're not afraid
We'll live forever, daughters of darkness - "Daughters of Darkness" by Halestorm
They were 15 years old when Griffin first saw them, or at least that was the age they claimed to be when they entered Cloud Tower.
In reality, however, they were still 14 at the beginning of the school year. And therefore not old enough according to the forms, something that the headmistress of Cloud Tower only discovered weeks later.
It was on the day of the entrance exams that she first noticed them. They stood apart from the other witches, behaving as if they didn't want to be there. They were so different that it took a second glance to realize they must be sisters. But despite their differences, which were as stark as night and day, from their hair to their eyes, there were still small features that indicated a family resemblance. Features that made them seem so different, but which reminded Griffin of a former friend. The sharp jawlines, the high cheekbones and the small bump on the middle one's nose. Not to mention the self-assured aura that emanated from all three of them, as if none of those present could harm them. Inevitably, they were their parents' daughters, even if Griffin hadn't seen it so clearly back then.
The blonde stood in the middle, her ice-cold gaze flawless on her perfect features, while her disinterest emanated from her in waves. This was not the case with the brunette and the curly-haired girl, at least not in this way. The brunette, who stood to the left of the ice witch, observed everything around her closely with a curiosity that even her well-played suspicion could not hide. Just like her sisters, the curly-haired girl was skeptical about it all, but despite the distance, the headmistress could feel her magic in the air wild with excitement.
From the day she saw the powers the triplets had been blessed with, she knew that the sisters would one day be great witches. Ice, darkness and storms. A combination she had last seen in this form over a decade ago, bringing back terrible memories.
Back then, a thought took hold, one she didn't want to think through at the time, but one that always lingered in her mind. Because the cold that emanated from Icy when she was the first to step into the middle of the auditorium for her entrance exam reminded her too much of the bone-chilling cold of Belladonna, who cooled a room to sub-zero temperatures just by entering it. Then Darcy, who, like Liliss, deceived her false opponents with illusions in her darkness, did not exactly help her to think of anything else. And Stormy's wild shooting of her lightning bolts was too similar to Tharma's untamed demeanor. But no matter how much she felt transported back to her time with the ancestral witches, she suppressed the memories of the ancient witches. She didn't want to think about suppressed prophecies or what it would mean for these three young witches if she thought the thought through to its conclusion.
It was not until many weeks later that she learned that they were only 14 on the day of registration and the exam.
That the three young witches were indeed just that. Just three innocent young witches. She didn't know which one, and to be honest she didn't really care, but the storm witch had cast a spell in Edeltrude's class that had gone wrong in the worst possible way for the triplets. The spell that went wrong caused the annual animals of many in the room to glow, and while for most it was a rabbit or a dragon, for two witches it was a snake.
This spell then caused Stormy and Darcy to be led by Edeltrude to her office, where the violet-haired woman watched the two sisters closely while Edeltrude made sure that Icy also appeared, which was the case just a few minutes later.
The moment the young blonde entered the office, Griffin saw a wave of relief wash over the two students already present, with Stormy, aware of her mistake, keeping her gaze fixed on Griffin's desk. The older witch nodded to her colleague behind Icy, indicating that she could now leave.
She folded her hands on the desk and began to ask Icy the first questions, as she still had no idea why she and her sisters had been summoned to her. "Icy, do you know what kind of class your sisters had just now?" The ice witch seemed confused by this question at first, but then quickly replied, "Execution of the basics of magic, ma'am." The witch nodded in confirmation and brought the girls' files in front of her, spreading them out so that all three of them could take a close look at their respective files.
A flicker of realization crossed Icy's face before her eyes fixed on the two younger girls for a brief second and then returned to Griffin. "Well, your files say you are triplets born on 5 May 1987. Is that correct?" "Well, that's what it says in the file, isn't it?" asked the blonde witch, as always with a touch too much confidence for her own good, which Griffin immediately made her feel by banging her fist on the table. "I am well aware of what is in your files, but that was not my question!"
When her fist hit the table, she saw the two younger ones flinch slightly and look nervously at the older one next to them. "You know that what's in the file is wrong..." murmured the curly-haired girl, not looking at the older witch but staring grimly at the table between them, which prompted the brunette to elbow her in the ribs and hiss, "Shut up!"
"Why? It's true!“ defended the curly-haired girl, now also attracting Icy's attention. "Yes, and why is that?" "Why do you always assume that I'm the one who messed something up? You have another sister, in case you've forgotten!" "But Darcy wouldn't have been so careless and..."
"Quiet! I didn't call you into my office to listen to three young witches arguing, but because I want answers!" she shouted, standing up from behind her desk and walking around it to stand behind the witches. "Now!" This time, all three flinched.
"We fudged our ages so we could be accepted this year," Darcy began, nervously picking at her purple nail polish, while Icy continued, "We didn't think anything of it, it's only a few months, we'll be 15 by the end of this school year. Which means we'll be the right age at the end of the probationary year, just like the other witches." "Most of whom will be 16 at the beginning of the first year," reminded the purple-haired witch, walking back to her table to keep a close eye on the sisters.
"So what?! I mean, we made it this far, didn't we?" Stormy complained but quickly calmed down when she saw the sharp look Griffin gave her. "Just because you made it this far doesn't mean you'll make it any further. There are rules—" "But witches break rules!" Stormy interrupted, which earned her another jab between the ribs from Darcy. "I am well aware of that, Stormea," Griffin said coldly, causing the storm witch to flinch slightly at the use of her full name. "However, there are rules that are higher than such trivial things as coming back after curfew. Rules that even a witch cannot circumvent."
"Does that mean you're kicking us out?!" asked Darcy indignantly, the panic clearly audible to Griffin. Of the three, the brunette was the most prone to panic when things didn't go her way. When all her well-laid plans came to nothing and everything had to be thrown out. It reminded Griffin very much of herself in her younger years.
"You can't do that!" Stormy joined her sister's protests. "Oh no, and why not?" asked Griffin, raising an eyebrow invitingly, but the curly-haired girl didn't know how to answer. Icy did, however. "Because you have no reason to. We are already way ahead of the others, and Darcy is on her way to becoming top of the class, even though we haven't reached the required age yet, which, as already mentioned, we will do in less than six months." It sounded rather defiant, but Griffin could see a hint of uncertainty in her crystal-blue eyes. The girl knew they were at a disadvantage here, yet she tried not to let it show.
"We're closer to 15 than not, and we've proven that more than once, haven't we? Stormy beat every student in dueling last week, Icy managed to finish a potion before Professor Bittersmoke, and I scored almost 98 per cent on Miss Zarathustra's last test, something no one before me has ever done," Darcy continued for the blonde, her tone showing considerably more respect for the headmistress as she looked cautiously at the older witch through her glasses.
"And we would never have passed the aptitude tests if we weren't ready for Cloud Tower, right?" added the youngest of the triplets, lifting her pointed chin defiantly. "What we want to tell you, Lady Griffin, is that we are more than ready for lessons at your school and would be delighted to be taught by such a great witch as you." "Be careful not to choke on youur lies Icy.“ Griffin commented dryly, which made the blonde falter for a moment, but she quickly regained her composure.
"Icy is telling the truth. It is an honor to be taught by you next year. We have read a lot about you and your school... But if you kick us out, we understand that you are obliged to do so." She could tell that the brunette witch was telling the truth, at least part of it, which made her lie seem a lot more credible than her older sister's. However, she could still tell that she didn't want to leave this school. None of them did.
Griffin sat back down in her chair and stared intently at each of the witches in turn. They had made a good impression and there was no denying that they had talent. Each of them individually, but together? Together, they could be capable of great things. Should she really wait another year?
Besides, she had committed herself to them on the day of their admission, to each and every one of the witches who were sitting in the auditorium at the time and were accepted. What would she be if she simply sent the three of them away now? Betraying her own kind? Again?
After several minutes of silence, she finally said, "I will not expel you from school." She saw the tension fall from the shoulders of the girls, her girls, and they breathed a sigh of relief. Even Icy, who until just a moment ago had kept her steely poker face, couldn't hide a small smile.
"One question still remains unanswered, though..." Griffin began, watching as the relief gave way to tension once more. "Which one of you came up with this brilliantly stupid idea?" At first, she suspected it was Icy, because according to her colleagues, she was indirectly the leader of the trio. However, it wasn't far-fetched to think that the plan could have come from Darcy, as something like this required a lot of preparation. But she couldn't completely rule out Stormy either, as the weather witch was more cunning than most people gave her credit for.
When the three greeted her with silence, the witch sighed and rubbed her temple in resignation. Of course they wouldn't stab each other in the back. "All right, whatever. You may be off the hook for now, but don't think you'll get special treatment just because you're younger. And you will spend three months in the detention dimension." The last comment caused a quiet murmur until Icy finally said through clenched teeth, "Of course, Lady Griffin," before dismissing the three witches.
After that, she began to do some superficial research. She wanted to find out if there was anything else that she should know about, but there wasn't. She deliberately avoided the pages about their parents.
However, she now understood why the school was so important to the sisters. The three had entered the system four years ago and had spent most of their time in their home. There were a few families who showed interest, but none who wanted all three. There were several attempts to place them individually, but these were unsuccessful. There were also some families that took all three, but in the end things turned out differently. They were expecting children of their own, or the family wasn't as good as they had seemed, and wasn't really a place for three young witches. It was as if bad luck was following them around.
Six months ago, another attempt was made to separate them. Darcy and Stormy were taken in, and Icy was left behind. And, as Griffin would have expected, it didn't go well at all. Icy made life hell for the other children and the home's staff. Stormy had one tantrum after another. According to the files, she even threw crockery. At her foster parents. The deciding factor, however, was that Darcy quietly went on hunger strike amid all the chaos and refused to talk to anyone but Stormy until they were brought back to Icy. After that, the next potential measure was to place them in different homes due to an unhealthy co-dependency.
That day, she discovered that this disinterested attitude was just that: an attitude. She saw genuine fear flash in her students' eyes when she threatened to expel them. Fear because they had nowhere else to go, because the danger of being separated again would be inevitable, because this, Cloud Tower, was their last chance. A chance that Griffin was willing to give them.
When the girls were 16, she saw the great potential that lay dormant within them.
Each of them was powerful, eager to learn, strong, and fully aware of their worth. A worth that sometimes seemed far too high for their age. The teaching staff had already mentioned convergence spells a few times the year before so that the students could prepare for them, but none of the teachers had expected two of the students to be able to use such a spell in their very first lesson, let alone three. But they did it. They achieved something they weren't even supposed to know how to do, which is why Edeltrude immediately suspected them of having visited the forbidden section of the school library and took them straight to Griffin. It had already been a surprise to Griffin that three 16-year-olds could perform this spell, but when she heard that they were only 12 when they first performed convergence...
It only reinforced her assumption from a year ago...
Over time, she tried to suppress the theory, until it became impossible. She saw the three of them perform a convergence in her class so perfectly that she had no choice but to face the truth. She saw it a little more every day when Stormy's turquoise eyes sparkled just like her father's when he hit his target with one of his lightning bolts. She saw it in the way Darcy, just like her mother, sometimes adjusted her glasses in annoyance.
And just like her mother, Icy was determined and always out to get the most profit for herself and her sisters. And in the way each and every one of them strove for perfection in every task, no matter how small. So Griffin did some more research. She looked at the page she had so generously ignored in the past. Only to see what she already knew. Their parents were Vera and Alistair.
An ice and storm witch and a sorcerer of darkness and illusions. Vera, who combined the bloodlines of Belladonna and Tharma through her parents, and Alistair, who was descended from none other than Liliss herself. Together, they brought all three ancient witch lines back to their origins without realizing what they were doing to their daughters until it was too late. This made Icy, Darcy and Stormy direct descendants of the ancestral witches. The blood of Belladonna, Liliss and Tharma flowed through their veins.
Before the war, Vera had been a good friend of hers. But as the sides began to form when the ancestral witches began to gather more and more people around them and after the witch of icy and storms became pregnant, she began to distance herself until she and Griffin, who was already too deeply involved in the circle at that point, only kept in touch by letter until Griffin stopped writing altogether after the Andros incident with Faragonda.
Valtor once told her that he had run into Alistair when he collided with the Company of Light. At the time, she didn't know what had happened, but judging by her partner's mood, something had gone wrong that day. The ancestral witches were in turmoil and took their anger out on Valtor, who in turn took it out on the other followers. After that, as far as she knew, the two went into hiding and neither she nor anyone else heard from them again.
It was only weeks later that she learned from Valtor what had upset him so much that day. They got into a fight with some members of the Company of Light, and in the heat of battle, Allistair was hit by a spell. He didn't say which one, only that he could have prevented it. And that Allistair didn't trust him to have his back, let alone Vera's. At the time, she thought he had drawn the wrath of the ancestors upon himself because he hadn't done enough to convince Allistair, but now she knew better.
After she defected, Faragonda told her what else had happened that day. Marion, Oritel, Saladin and herself had come to them in the hope of convincing them to help them against the Ancestral Witches, but they had politely declined. They couldn't afford to appear aggressively negative on the Ancestral Witches' radar. They had more important things to think about. The girls must have already been in the world at that point. Back then, she couldn't understand why Vera and Allistair, of all people, wanted to stay out of it. She didn't yet see the risk they would be taking by joining the circle, as she had realized the true machinations of the Ancestors far too late. And what it meant for Vera and Allistair. And for the girls. The blood of their blood. Sisters. Triplets. With the powers of ice, darkness and storms. The vessels the ancastral witches had searched for so long. They were the vessels for them.
On the same day, Valtor was also leading a mission on the planet, which led to a confrontation between their groups. And because Allistair had never been known to shy away from a good fight, he couldn't resist that day. "One last time," he had grinned at the time. That attitude always reminded her too much of Stormy. Always ready for a fight, regardless of potential losses. She had even inherited his curls. Griffin could only hope that she never lost her sense of self-preservation. Despite her combativeness, the girl always seemed to know which fights she could win and which she couldn't. It could only be her mother's instincts.
Officially, a small group led by Mantagora was causing some trouble. And if it had only been this small group, Griffin was sure that the Company of Light could have overwhelmed a witch or a wizard or two. But they weren't expecting Valtor. Valtor, who had used the Exitium Auto against Allistair that day. A curse that caused the victims to slowly be consumed by their own magic. A spell that could last for years, but always ended the same way. With death.
She had heard of a music fairy who had gradually heard less and less and then nothing at all before she heard too much again. They had found her with a fork in her head. She had rammed the piece of metal into her ear in the hope of finding silence. A plant witch had hanged herself with her own powers because she could no longer bear the cries of nature.
Faragonda told her that they had gone into hiding that same day. Just like Griffin, the fairy had heard nothing more from them since. For 16 years, they had no idea what had happened to them or to the girls.
She didn't even want to imagine what this spell had done to Alistair. A sorcerer who drew his powers from darkness and illusions. Pure madness. And mind mages already had a harder time than others... But he must have held out for a long time. The girls came to the home at the age of 10, and if her calculations were correct, they must have been almost two at the time Allistair was cursed. Almost eight years... Vera must have done a good job of containing the curse as far as she could. Until she couldn't do it anymore. But she couldn't explain why, any more than she could explain what had happened to her friend at the time. Only that the girls had been on their own for years, and that was exactly what the ancestors needed to attack them.
She took her findings to Faragonda. The witch didn't know what to make of the new information, nor what to expect from this conversation, but she certainly didn't expect Faragonda to suggest another school for the three of them. In her opinion, it wasn't safe to have them there. Especially not when Princess Stella had also come to Alfea this year. The two headmistresses argued for hours before Griffin ended it and said that she would not send the girls away, which did not sit well with the Alfea headmistress at all.
From that day on, the purple-haired witch kept a closer eye on the three and watched their every move. However, they did nothing that would suggest they were power-hungry, destructive evil witches. They only got up to the usual amount of mischief expected of witches, but they were caught less often than their classmates. In addition, all three were among the best in their class in every subject. Even Stormy, whom many would not expect at first glance.
Three extremely talented witches, nothing more. That's what you would think. However, Griffin was reminded again and again that they were not just that. When Cloud Tower was even colder on some days due to Icy's powers and Griffin's strongest warming spells sometimes couldn't counteract it, when Stormy accidentally short-circuited the entire castle due to a slight loss of control, or when Darcy couldn't leave her room for days due to inexplicable migraine attacks. But they were able to deal with it.
And all in all, the young witches reminded Griffin of herself when she was their age. She could be just as brutal as Stormy when she didn't like something, was just as inquisitive as Darcy, and always knew how to get what she wanted, like Icy.
Perhaps that was why she hadn't kicked the three of them out, despite Faragonda's insistence. She herself had been given a second chance after her work with the ancestors, despite the things she had done for them, the things she had done for him. So shouldn't the three of them at least get a first chance? Despite their ancestors, they were just children, girls who had not yet done anything unforgivable. They did not necessarily have to follow the same path as their ancestors, the path that Griffin almost took.
So Griffin discreetly took them under her wing. She gave them the support they needed to bring out the best in them as witches. And she did that even though they were already striving for perfection on their own. They became the examples in her lessons when something was demonstrated, often volunteered when Griffin had a task to complete, and earned private lessons. She hated that part of her did it to keep a closer eye on their abilities, but it did not lessen the pride she felt during those lessons. Darcy became not only the best in her class but also the best in her year; when it came to dueling, no one could hold a candle to Stormy, and Icy ruled the other witches with an iron fist, while she and her sisters were the first to volunteer for any mischief. Even when the ice witch was still in her probationary year, the blonde had already earned the respect of the older students. No one could touch them. Griffin could proudly claim that she had not taught witches who had realized their potential as fully as these three for a long time.
And, of course, she rewarded the sisters accordingly by making their punishments less severe than those of the others when she caught them doing something wrong, which was rarely the case, or by extending their curfew by half an hour. After all, bad deeds sometimes had to be rewarded.
When they were 17, they showed again and again what a strong unit they were together.
They complemented each other perfectly, had each other's backs when necessary and didn't get in each other's way when they fought. There was tension, but nothing unusual for sisters. Until suddenly it was no longer like that, and they no longer balanced each other out. Not that Griffin really noticed, but the sisters were no longer suffering among themselves as usual because of their differences; instead, they were letting their classmates in on it, which she only noticed when she walked past a corridor where the three were arguing and from which two first-year students ran out in panic into the headmistress.
With other witches, she would probably have dismissed it and tidied up the mess in the corridor before giving them detention. But not with the witches of ice, darkness and storms. They always cleaned up their own mess, so there was no reason for detention. Most of the time, anyway. And usually, she didn't pay much attention to such drama. However, the witches arguing were not just anyone.
So Griffin watched them a little more closely than usual through her crystal ball and her magical eye, and it didn't take her long to figure out what the constant discord between the sisters was all about. To her surprise, it wasn't as power-hungry or dimension-dominating as she had first feared. It was just normal teenage drama. The witch of darkness and illusions had a boyfriend.
The fact that one of them had apparently fallen in love surprised her. But the fact that it was Darcy, of all people, surprised her less. The witch of darkness had always been a little... softer than the other two.
And she realized that whatever it was between her witch of darkness and Saladin's student seemed to be real. She saw it in the way she returned to school alone after curfew or tried to smuggle the boy out at night again. The young witch even asked to postpone the checks of the magical inventory for the practical exams of the other classes, which she took over twice a month with Griffin. Darcy was never someone who revealed much about herself; none of the triplets did, but she didn't have to. Over the months, her aura said more than any words ever could. But wasn´t the only one. The storm witch began skipping her private lessons, and her aura radiated just as much as Icy's restlessness and anger.
She hadn't intended to concern herself with it further, as she assumed the sisters would manage to sort it out among themselves. However, that wasn't the case this time. Each of the three was suffering, and that only led to them making the other students suffer as well. Stormy seemed angrier than usual, and Icy was much more willing to follow through on her threats. They lacked the calm that Darcy usually exuded. So she had to intervene. Discreetly, of course. And luckily for her, the next big argument was not far off, because shortly afterwards she saw the witch of storms and the witch of ice walking alone through the halls of Cloud Tower, and this went on for almost three days. And the picture seemed wrong. It wasn't that the three were always together. But with the facts she already had and the fact that the two looked as indignant as she had last seen them when Faragonda's fairies invaded Cloud Tower, she couldn't leave it at that.
Her decision was only reinforced when she saw the brunette pacing nervously a few days later, one floor away from her room. The older witch knew that what she was seeing did not even begin to reflect the turmoil inside her. She was the most cautious of them all. She always thought before she acted, always considered everything. And she hated it when something was beyond her control. She knew these things always came along with being a mind witch.
And this whole situation right now? By the dragons, she didn't want to imagine what was going through her student's mind right now. You couldn't have a plan for something like this. Feelings always caught you off guard. And that was what bothered the brunette the most in the end. The helplessness. She spoke from experience. She used to be similar. But where Griffin lost herself in plans, Darcy lost herself in her thoughts. Where Griffin gave in to anger when someone rejected her plans, Darcy panicked. Where Valtor was there to remind her of all her other plans, Darcy had her sisters to ground her. And yet she was familiar with Darcy's situation.
The choice between the man you have feelings for and the people you love? Yes, very familiar indeed.
But she had made the wrong decision two decades ago. She had chosen him, followed her heart and turned her back on Faragonda and the others. She did what she thought was right and was so wrong. How painful it was to turn her back on Faragonda, but it was less painful with him by her side. It took a few years, but she finally found her way back on the right path. It was no less painful to leave him behind, but it was the right thing to do. Nothing she wanted to do, but something that was necessary. And it was time, because the destruction she and he had caused together back then could no longer be justified.
But that wasn't what it was about for the brunette witch, not like it was for Griffin back then, not about good and evil. The young witch was caught between two stools. The boy she loved and the sisters who didn't like whatever was going on there. Her coven.
A situation that the headmistress of Cloud Tower knew all too well, yes. So she decided to save Darcy from making the mistake she herself had made back then. What she couldn´t avoid. Having to make a decision. But maybe Darcy was luckier than she was. From what she heard from Saladin Riven wasn´t that kind of bad boy. And the sisters care deeply for eachother. Maybe she can have both.
So she talked to her. She told her how important the people who you knew would always be by your side were. And that some things just needed time. And how true those words were. Faragonda saved her back then when she fled from the ancestral witches. When she turned away from him. When her whole world was crumbled beneath her feets and everything she believed in was falling apart. It was only thanks to the fairy alone and her kind words that she wasn't sent straight to Omega afterwards.
And she knew that Darcy had exactly this support system in her sisters. Because she had seen it. From day one, she saw how the sisters defended, strengthened and supported each other despite their quarrels. Not that the former was often necessary, as after the first week hardly anyone messed with one of them. Let alone all three. And that despite the fact that a witch should rely on no one but herself. But the bond between the three was different, it was real. They balanced each other out. What one lacked, the others willingly provided twice over. As long as they were together, no one could harm them. Icy was the everlasting consistency, Darcy the necessary calm and Stormy the fierce defence. A circle. They were a unit. And they were strong, which became clear once again that year in a different way.
Because that year, they pushed themselves far beyond their limits. It started with the break-ins at the fairy school and the theft of the Princess of Solaria's ring. Not that she resented them the first time, after all, Griffin herself sent them there at the beginning of the school year. But it didn't stop at that one time. Which wouldn't have been a problem for her, every witch needed her fun and the girls had theirs by ruining the fairies' celebrations.
And now, well, the "fight" in the alley, as the headmistress of Alfea liked to call it, had gotten a little out of hand, but Griffin really couldn't blame her girls for that. After all, it had been a fairy who started the whole thing. A witch had only cast the first spell. It wasn't always witches who were the instigators of something. Sometimes it could just as easily be a fairy, even if most people didn't want to admit it, because fairy didn't necessarily mean good and witch didn't necessarily mean evil. Of course, the magical dimension strove to make people believe exactly that. And that was precisely why witches were often outcasts. But this time it wasn't a witch, it was a fairy.
The phone call took place that same evening, just half an hour after she had received the letter from the headmistress of Alfea. And so that she could also state the facts, she called Icy, Darcy and Stormy to her, despite the late hour, as the letter said that they had led the coup. What a coincidence.
Surprisingly, only two of the three witches trudged into her office. However, when she found out the reason why, it would further emphasize her position with Faragonda. The witch of darkness was suffering from a terrible migraine due to a fall caused by one of the Alfea fairies. Great. Let a witch whose specialty is mind games fall on her head, and only the dragons knew how badly it would end. And judging by the unrest emanating from Stormy and the anger that still seemed to boil Icy's blue ice crystals, it was bad. Stormy's nervous aura and the tension that seemed to never leave Icy's shoulders throughout the entire explanation were enough for Griffin to defend her students to the death against Faragonda.
The witch of darkness and illusions had been unable to leave her bed for almost a week, and Griffin had used up almost her entire supply of herbs to make tea for her migraines. At the end of the day, they were still her students, and she was responsible for each and every one of them.
But that didn't stop the older witch from punishing her and her sisters for their actions afterwards.
The three became more careless and were caught more often. She didn't know what it was, but something made her three best students become more careless, almost rebellious. It was one thing when they caused trouble in a shop or at insignificant events. And rivalries between the two sister schools were normal. However, they were seen more and more often within the walls of the fairy school, which led to Griffin receiving more and more calls from Faragonda, who did not call to exchange pleasantries.
And then came the day when Griselda rang her out of bed in the middle of the night. The fairy actually lectured her about the behavior of her students. A fairy was judging a witch. Her witches. Before Griffin could defend herself, Faragonda sent the lower-ranking fairy out so they could discuss what had happened. And she hated the end of the conversation. Hated that she had no choice but to agree with Faragonda.
Icy, Darcy and Stormy had broken into Alfea and unleashed a nightmare monster on the fairies, and Griffin couldn't turn a blind eye to that, and she knew it. She should have taken tougher action back then, after she found out that the three had stolen more than just a simple ring from the Princess of Solaria, but she didn't. Instead, she dismissed it as mere witchcraft, which it was not. They had stolen a valuable artefact from Solaria, from the princess herself. Something the witch should not have simply overlooked. But she did. Because what was this minor mistake compared to hers?
But she couldn't ignore this one. No matter how much she wanted to. These were no longer trivial witchcraft pranks. Faragonda was right, they had to be reprimanded before they did something unforgivable. Before they followed in the footsteps of their ancestors. So she had to keep them away from the school's resources, had to deny them the opportunity to reach their full potential. She had to expel them.
What a loss for Cloud Tower, what a waste of talent. But some things had to be done, and this was one of them. She didn't like expelling her best students, quite the contrary. But it was necessary. So she tried to look past the faces marked by betrayal as she threw the three girls out of the only home they had had for almost four years. Anger, confusion and betrayal. It was necessary, she told herself again and again as she watched her three best students trudge away in the rain. It was necessary. It was safer when they could no longer access cloud towers' resources. Both for Magix and for the three witches themselves.
If only she had known that she was already far too late and had only set the ball rolling...
Because barely a month later, they stormed Cloud Tower. If only that had been the least of her problems, she might still have been able to stop the sisters, but it wasn't. They had acquired the powers of another fairy, but not just any powers, the dragon flame. Of course, the dragon flame made it easier for the sisters to defeat Griffin, especially since the older witch was not prepared to ever face such power again.
She could hardly believe it when she felt the energy of the dragon flame so close to her for the first time in 16 years. The last time had been on Domino, on the day Belladonna punished the planet with her eternal ice, shortly before she and her sisters were banished to Obsidian forever. Because of the dragon flame, they had feared and wanted to destroy. And that was precisely the crucial difference. The ancestral witches wanted to destroy it out of fear.
Their descendants wanted the opposite. They wanted to control it.
It had been shocking when she felt an all too familiar and yet so foreign flame near her for the first time in 16 years. Because that's exactly what she did. She felt it even before she saw them, and before she could really process it, it was too late and she found herself facing Icy and her sisters. But for a moment, it wasn't her former students sitting on the thrones in front of her. It wasn't Stormy, who sometimes could barely suppress her laughter in the back row when another student messed up a spell, but Tharma, whose crazy laughter echoed angrily off the walls. It wasn't Darcy, who looked at her with fascination and some way of admiration when she introduced a new topic in magical history to the brunette, but Liliss, who revealed and scalped her mind and soul with a single glance. And it wasn't Icy, whose hand was often one of the first to shoot up to volunteer herself and her sisters for a task, but Belladonna, whose icy fingers dug into her flesh after a failed mission. The ancestral witches who had probably never stopped laying claim to them. Perhaps they had never been safe.
A blink of an eye later and they were gone again.
And then she saw it. It flickered only for a brief moment in her sapphire blue eyes, but it was long enough, especially since she herself was so familiar with this fire. She had seen it in both forms. Evil, wild, untamed, yet firmly under control in him, and just as calm and tamed as a force for good in her friend Marion. As different as the two were as people, they could control it because they had been chosen to do so. Only they alone, and later Marion's children, would be able to master the dragon flame.
Until they could no longer do so. Because he was locked away forever in the eternal ice of Omega for the safety of the Magical Dimension and Marion and Oritel lost their lives in the final battle against the Ancestors, leaving their planet without survivors.
No survivors.
Marion and Oritel paid with their lives, and their daughters were as if swallowed up by the earth while their people were frozen. They, Faragonda and the rest of the Company of Light turned over every stone twice in search of the girls, but Daphne and Bloom were nowhere to be found, so they could only assume the worst.
Death. And the dragon fire with them.
And yet, her three former students sat proudly before her, presenting it as their own after storming Cloud Tower all by themselves. The dragon flame in the hands of an ice witch... She didn't even want to imagine what Icy was now capable of if she was even remotely as ruthless as Belladonna. Not to mention Stormy, whose destructive urge was even greater than that of Tharma, which the violet-haired witch didn't even knew was possible. And a shiver of horror ran down her spine as she thought of the terrible illusions and tricks Liliss had shown her after her betrayal. She knew that if Darcy was even remotely as crazy as the ancient witch of darkness and illusions, the sisters would be able to bring their enemies to their knees with a simple illusion before they could even blink. Griffin knew from her own experience how real even the simplest spell of this kind could seem, how much horror it could make one see.
And everything she had thought of at that moment was nothing compared to what awaited her when she and her witches were freed from the dungeons of Cloud Tower. The city and the school of specialists were almost completely destroyed, and the fairy school stood as the last line of defense, but Griffin was sure that even that would not last much longer. Not when Icy, Darcy and Stormy had the dragon flame, the army of decay and their own magic and that of their ancestors on their side.
At least, that's what she thought until Bloom stood up to Icy and her sisters a few days later.
Bloom. The fairy who had come to Alfea this year and had never known about her powers before. Who was always somehow involved in every battle with the Trix and... was a fire fairy. How could she have been so blind? How could she and Faragonda not see it, but her former students did? Red hair just like her mother, ready to defend her friends to the death like her father, and then there were those powers... Such power could not simply emanate from an ordinary earth fairy. No, Bloom was Oritel and Marion's daughter, the last survivor of Domino and Princess of Nothing, because of the mistakes Griffin had made two decades ago and which somehow managed to drag on until today.
And yet her three best witches had no chance against the young fairy. None of them, not even Icy with her dragon flame fueled by her raging fury, managed to bring the fire fairy to her knees. And the sisters lost just like their ancestors did back then. And just like back then, Griffin was too blind and only realized too late what had happened right before her eyes.
They would be 18 when they set foot outside Lightrock fortress again.
Griffin had made sure of that, hoping that someday they would once again be the three innocent witches they had been when they enrolled at Cloud Tower. Perhaps they just needed a second chance, like Griffin had been given back then.
And when she saw her three best witches being led through a portal to Lightrock by two guards amid protests, she wondered how it had come to this. How the three supposedly 15-year-old young witches, who had placed their greatest hope in Cloud Tower, could grow up to be such power-hungry witches who, even before they came of age, were almost responsible for the end of all of Magix. And under her own supervision, too. She had wanted to keep the three at her school precisely to prevent all that. To keep an eye on them. To make sure they made something of themselves without falling too deeply into dark magic.
But maybe Faragonda had been right a year earlier. Maybe Belladonna, Lilith and Tharma had already wrapped their bony fingers around their descendants before anyone could do anything about it, maybe they had never had a chance.
Or had she done something wrong at some point? Should she have been more careful?
When was the moment when she missed something she shouldn't have missed? Stormy's euphoria when she sometimes listened to nothing more than a gentle breeze? Mantagora had always told her that she could sometimes hear Tharma whispering in the wind. Had she really been so careless? What about Darcy's migraines? Should she have been more careful? Perhaps it was Liliss trying to contact her descendant. And when had Icy's determination given way to a hunger for power? Were there signs of this before the Ring of Solaria? Belladonna and her sisters loved to wander through dreams when they couldn't reach her, Mantagora or Zatura any other way. Perhaps they had found a way to do so from Obsidian. Griffin would never know, because things now were as they were, and her former students were no longer the three innocent little witches they had been when she took them in.
If they ever were, that is, and if they had not been pursued by their ancestors from the beginning of their existence and led astray.