cassidy doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t feel the pull of darkness. when her mother’s light magic, didn’t feel right, or like it was enough. even as a toddler her first spells had been breathed to life by chaos. when she was eight and the brand burned into the flesh of her foot, she didn’t scream and later when she limped through a ring of hellfire she did so without fear. for it was the marston way of life. as far back as her family tree went they sought power by any means necessary, even being so careless as to start the witch trials. and cassidy...well she wanted more.
her mother’s angelic blood had tainted her own magic, and whenever cassidy used a particularly dark spell she could feel her body fighting against her. even shifting into a wolf was especially painful due to the dark nature of the magic that had allowed the marston coven to become the marston pack. it is only when she sees a picture in an old bestiary, one created by her ancestors that everything makes sense.
so at sixteen years old she runs away for a week and kills someone in cold blood, triggering her ability to shift and cementing her place in the world as a marston witch, a dark witch. with hellfire and the blood of an innocent, she builds an altar to this picture with no name and calls on the power of the demon portrayed, pledging her fealty to him. it is only years later that she sees a similar image with a name next to it, and cassidy knows she was right.
over the years she builds altars, practices spells and works on honing her abilities. become more and more adept at understanding dark magic and trying to find a way to purge the light from her blood. no matter what shifting is still painful and the darker the magic the more pain she ends up in. at twenty when a spell nearly kills her, she decides that enough if enough. leaving home to who her family had once believed the be the devil himself, a demon she now knows is called cinis.
with a bag on her back, a significant portion of traveling is done shifted as a wolf, allowing her to travel farther faster. only at night does she perform dark spells, using the light of the moon and the blood of the innocents to continue to track down the great demon from whom she is sure her powers originate. her family’s grimoires are stored in a pocket dimension, ready to offer them all and prove herself to cinis should she need to. the closer she gets to him, the more she feels a pull, every part of her body aching with the need to find him. a feeling or devotion and protecting she can only remember feeling when her baby sisters were first born.
it’s just after a full moon when cassidy feels the pull stop. shifting back, her bones snap and pop loudly and she dresses gently. a warm cloak is pulled around her to protect from the winter night, and as she moves towards a cave, she can feel that this is where she needs to be. suddenly frozen at the power coming from up ahead, she takes a deep breath and tries to not let her voice waver. pulling the image she had found all those years ago from her bag along with a ceremonial knife, she places it gently on the ground within a pool of moon light and slices her palm open.
“to the great demon cinis,” she breathes out, fist clenched as the blood soaks the image of him. “my name is cassidy marston and i have been searching for you for the past year, but truly i felt your power and have been loyal to you since i was a mere child. i am here to pledge my loyalty to you and to offer my life in service. i come from a family of witches and wolves that have long worshipped you and called on you for power. it is because of you and your strength that i am able to use such dark magics and wield hellfire, and for that i thank you.” cassidy takes a soft breath and wordlessly, the blood spilling from her hand shifts into hellfire falling to the ground and burning the blood soaked image as she raises her head to peer into the cave ahead of her.
“i pledge my life and my loyalty to you great demon.” the words leave her mouth and the fire stops, leaving her blood and the image burning on the ground. the words felt weak leaving her, but she isn’t sure of what else to say and prays that her words were enough to appease him.