The Royal Family of Magic

Prelude

I was born years ago. When? That is a question that takes some explaining. Usually when I say that people think about 40 or 50 years ago, but that is not even close to what I mean. I was born over 62,000 years ago. How am I alive is the question that comes to a person’s mind next; the answer requires a bit of explaining.

I have 11 brothers and sisters (Alan, Freya, Rebecah, Ceasar, Julius, Julia, Kyona, Gage, Luther, Malo, and Sage) but we weren’t born human. Our mother was a very powerful and well respected shapeshifter named La Loba. She had the ability to alternate between wolf and jaguar. She gave birth to all 12 of us in wolf form so we were born wolves. My siblings and I were born in what is now Italy. To nobody’s surprise, we were born about a mile away from the Roman Nemeton on the summer solstice. We spent the next two years being hunted.

Freya, my sister, caught wind of the news about how the druids helped Lycaon and his followers turn back and forth between wolf and human after their ordeal with Zeus. We spent the next year searching for the druids who helped the new werewolf. My brother Alan and I finally tracked them down to a nemeton in what is now France. The druids have a special connection with nature, the ability to understand life in all its forms. We told them about our situation, they said they could help, but all magic comes with a price. We told them to tell us after the transformation out of fear that the price would be too high to pay.

After the ritual was over and my siblings and I were all in human form we were excited. We had never experienced this cold, everything wasn’t so loud; sure we couldn’t see as far, but we were human so we didn’t need to, we’d never felt so alive. Then the druids explained the price of what we had done.

The druids explained that since our mother was an extremely powerful shapeshifter and we were born near a nemeton on the solstice, we would be the most powerful supernaturals the world has ever and will ever see. They said we now had powers and our magic would be limited by our imagination; meaning in order to get an ability, we’d just have to think about it. They also said we be immortal and live forever, which was only partially right.

You see, all forms of non-divine immortality has its limits. With us, our limit was that although we couldn’t die, we could be killed with any weapon meant to tear our souls from our bodies; no such weapon had existed before, so it was of no concern of ours. However, after about three centuries of immortality, things became a bit tedious and repetitive. Living forever for most people is a dream come true, for us, it’s a curse. We watched people we grew to love throughout our years die over and over again. Immortality is a never-ending succession of hurt and pain. We’ve lived for 6,279 years. Try to imagine every death, murder, war we have seen and the pain accompanied by it. At this point in our lives now, we try to not attach to anyone outside of us 12. We’ve become emotionally cold. Our’s is a tale of loss, pain, bloodshed, power and struggle.