[center][h1][color=cyan]Isolde Morden[/color][/h1][/center]
[sub]Mentions: Kate [@sassy1085], Uaithne [@Tracyarmav], Charlie [@KaijuBaragon], Jean- Luc [@Hitman], Dakota [@Hitman],  and Calypso [@cancan][/sub]

Hearing Kate’s story was quite entertaining, and make Isolde close her book. But now it was time for her to tell one...

[color=cyan]”Well, I suppose it is my time to tell a story, but this will not be one of horror. It will be one of creation. The story of my home.”[/color] Isolde’s voice dropped by half a step as she glanced around the circle of witches.

[color=cyan]”A long time ago, no doubt before the time of our grandparents, there lived a woman high on the mountains to the north of here. She was like us, a witch, hiding from the rest of the world. She was known as Valerica Morden, the first of my people. Valerica was not like most witches, she did not practice charming, she did not practice pyromancy, she did not make potions.”[/color] She paused. [color=cyan]”She shaped lightning. Valerica was unlike any witch of her time, she bent the fury of the sky around her fingers, and twisted lightning to do as she pleased. Every time a storm surrounded her, she simply stood in the open fields, and practically [i]dared[/i] the clouds to strike her down. She knew the lightning would not harm her, she did not know how, only that it would not.”[/color]

[color=cyan]”Very few people - even in the world of witches - knew of Valerica’s existence. Valerica did not belong to a family of witches, like the Stones, she was alone, isolated. We do not know why she did not have anyone to call family, but we know that it gave her plenty of time to contemplate her magic. Overtime, some of the covens surrounding her mountainous home noticed something. The weather was unnaturally violent towards the mountains. Valerica’s magic scarred the peaks of the mountains, scorched the fields of grass, and as a result, magic energy deeper into the earth, changing the way the mountains felt about the world. In every fiber of her magic that changed the land, there was the will to bend the lightning. This is why the storms were so common. The mountains took a part of her and buried it inside themselves. It worried the families of covens that surrounded the mountains. Some tried to travel up to the top, but very few could brave the storms, let alone find their way.”[/color] Isolde paused, looking into the sky for a while before continuing.

[color=cyan]”A long time had passed, and word of Valerica’s storms wouldn’t reach the covens until even later. The few people sent by their respective covens to search for answers never returned. Most were struck down by the storm, but the few who made it found peace. A calm sanctuary, Valerica’s home within the mountains. They, too, never came home. They became her students. Valerica taught them the ways of lightning. She taught them to understand that lightning could never be controlled, only bent. The witches were enraptured by her teachings, never before had anyone imagined harnessing such violent power, but even as Valerica’s students learned to let lightning roll through their fingers, they were afraid. They had spent months in seclusion at Valerica’s side, but in order to find the paradise she grew up in, they first had to brave a storm, the likes of which no living thing should ever see. They watched their friends die to reach this place, and they feared they wouldn’t make it home.”[/color]

Clouds drifted along in the night as Isolde continued.

[color=cyan]”And so, to avoid risking their lives to go home, they stayed. They chose to stay in the mountains, to continue to learn from Valerica. After all, who could say they knew a way to shape lightning in their hands? They built homes, they had children, even Valerica herself took a lover among her students, whose name has been lost to time. It is believed by some that Valerica became a mother to a child that began the Morden family line, while the rest believe Valerica herself was the founder. In either way, Morden Mountain would have never received its name without her. My people owe our home to her. As I said, Valerica’s magic shaped the landscape of the mountains, as did the magic of her students. It was like she put a piece of her very soul into each of them. Mountain Rams grew to the size of horses, the night sky glowed like a star. It’s truly beautiful up there. But the most crucial part of it all, was the wellspring.”

According to the legends, the Morden family came under threat one day, nobody knows what, but it was something so dreadful that Valerica had to sacrifice herself to save her people. I suppose that is why we never knew what she defeated, no one wanted us to think of such a thing. All off the students, all of the children, and the elderly had fled to safety in the farthest corners of the valleys. Everything was silent, even the constant thunder had silenced as if watching Valerica’s final moments. In an instant, from a place on the mountains few can name, the most beautiful, brilliant, and destructive flash of lightning turned night to day. The witches never heard such a noise, Valerica’s cries of pain and rage, the fury of the sky, all in unison to destroy the unknown threat. It was beyond our wildest dreams. The culmination of all of Valerica’s power in one moment...”

Valerica died that day, her faceless enemy disappeared with the thunder. That day, the mountains were silent like the grave, and the only thing that the first witches to find the remains could see, was a faint, blue glow rising from the ground. A tree with white bark, and purple leaves. The Mountain’s Heart. Our wellspring. The resting place of the founder of the Morden family, and the cornerstone of our being. Valerica’s teaching are alive day in the texts we keep, which I brought with me, to learn about myself...”[/color]

Isolde’s story was over. It probably wasn’t what they had expected, but it was something, right?