Prologue
It didn’t take a seer to know what was coming, but Beata warned her sisters all the same. The fires of the Spanish Inquisition were coming for them, and all their kind:
Mages. Wielders of magic.
The mundanes, those who didn’t have magic and shunned the practitioners of enchantments, wanted magic banished from the world. Some mages wanted to stay and fight, but others sought the strongest of their kind in the hopes of finding a better solution. The Ardea sisters, Amata, Donata and Beata, agreed. They proposed La Repoblación, the resettlement. A new world where magic would be welcome had to be found. From the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean, the sisters raised an atoll and shrouded it from the mundane world. They named it Pélago.
Each sister was given a domain to govern as she saw fit. Traditional and disciplined Amata, the eldest and a Martial mage, took Mythos and the title of Arbiter. Mercurial Donata, a Custodial mage, called herself the Matriarch and governed Faery. Beata was the youngest—a rebel Abstract mage—and thought a new home meant a new way and ruled Canto as its queen.
For a time, The Enchanted Isles, as they were called collectively, were indeed enchanted—full of magical innovation and cooperation. Safety gave rise to new ideas both accepted… and dangerous.
No longer burdened with the worries of the mundane world, differences of opinion were brought to light. The sisters were no longer united in their belief of what came next for mages. And there were whispers of creating a Ternion, a magical being composed of mingled magic, both powerful and perilous. The Feud Wars tore through the Enchanted Isles like a scythe, taking any and all that stood in their path. When the fighting ended, one sister, Amata, won the day and exacted a high price for the destruction her sisters had wrought. Only mages from her domain of Mythos could retain their magic and the rest of the inhabitants of the Enchanted Isles would be stripped of their innate abilities. But even a powerful mage doesn’t have complete control over magic. Or the damaging effects cutting the domains off from each other would have on the Isles.
Centuries later it didn’t take a seer to know what was coming…
