Chapter Text
Darcy —Prologue: Betrayal ☾
Sometimes the people you can’t trust are the ones that you trust the most. I trusted someone—someone who stabbed me in the back—and now it’s hurt myself and my sisters as a result. Now the only ones we can trust are each other. No one else…
Well, if anyone is to understand this, I should start from the beginning.
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Magix High School: the place where my life started and where it practically ended. Icy, my older sister, dreaded going there almost immediately while Stormy—the optimist out of the three of us—somehow looked forward to the new start. Our parents picked us up from our old school and practically threw us here in hopes of our “issues” improving, thinking that Cloud Tower, the school on the opposite side of Magix City, was a bad influence on us. Cloud Tower is the school for those who, well, use darker mentions to channel their magic.
Oh, right, and we have magic.
Anyway, the planet of Magix has three schools. First of all is Cloud Tower, the school for those who use negative emotions, and for those who are looked down upon for no good reason. Alfea—god, I hate that place—is all about positive emotions for magic all the time, and most of the students there have a very biased opinion about strege; negative energy users. Most of the time, us strege are viewed as the scum of society, whereas the fey—positive energy users—have no issues and are absolutely perfect. For a moment I thought Magix High School would change that.
Magix High School, or MHS, is a school for both fey and strege. Most of the students are accepting of all classes of magic users, and even if it isn’t as nice as Cloud Tower, it worked for a short while. Upon entry, we didn’t even have to show our marks, a thin, tattoo-like band around our wrist every magic user is born with to see what classes we’re allowed to take. It was not nearly as populated as Alfea or Cloud Tower since it was a newer school and was only built two years ago, but still enough students for it to be interesting.
All three of these schools, the planet of Magix, and all other planets in the Magical Dimension, exist just outside what humans call “The Milky Way,” and can only be reached from Earth by a hidden portal or two here for there. There were even a handful of students from Earth at MHS who were born marks.
As I said, my parents sent my sisters and me here because it was preferable to us going to a school just for negative energy users. It took a few weeks before I started to somewhat enjoy myself. I even made a few friends besides Icy and Stormy, though, we’re sisters, so maybe that doesn’t count in most peoples’ books. Then, two months after the three of us started school at MHS, I met someone who made me feel like more than a horrible person like my parents and society would say just because my magic is mind-oriented, apparently making me a manipulative and untrustworthy person.
Riven was sweet in the beginning. We met after I had stayed in the library during lunch hour to finish a project I was behind on, and then it led to us working on the project together that hour. Me trying to get it done, and Riven trying to help even though he knew nothing about Magical Molecular Biology and the relationship between singed ions and illusions. I was laughing, he was too, and for the next few days, we ran into each other before I eventually got his number.
Icy didn’t trust him in the beginning with her fair share of quick-ending relationships with men who didn’t care about her and who typically left her for someone less “fucked-up,” as Valtor put it. Stormy singed him with her lightning not-so-mildly, putting her in detention for three weeks even though the only thing damaged was his hair. But both Icy and Stormy started to like Riven after they saw how kind he seemed to be. Then things changed.
I consider myself to be emotionally aware; of myself and others. My magic helps with that, but even without it—which I figured out when I got my magic revoked for a week after I lashed out at Riven post-breakup—I can read others better than most. One of Riven’s friends, Darkar or whatever, thought it would be an interesting “challenge” to see if he could succeed in manipulating the so-called manipulator, otherwise known as me. Riven didn’t even love me like he said. I was just a game to him.
The bad thing is that it worked. I got caught up in his lies, the pattern of him yelling and snapping horrible things then acting as if I meant the world to him, and even though I tried to leave knowing how toxic it was, I just couldn’t. It was like I was trapped, drowning, and I couldn’t get out. He was done with me when the game was over, ghosting me in person and over text before I found him after his Weaponry and Self-Defense class. He was so pissed for no good reason, and told me that I meant nothing to him and that I was just a bet; a challenge to inflate his ego and his high standing among his friends.
I shut down after that. Riven’s words during our relationship, that I was a horrible person and that he was the only one who could ever love me, made me think that I was horrible. I didn’t trust Icy and Stormy’s reassurance until several months later when I realized it wasn’t my fault. It was just a pitiful abusive relationship cycle that I got caught in. But… I still hardly think I’m a good person. Riven’s words cut deep and combined with my parents’ eerily similar words and the world’s view of me, it makes it hard to believe I’m deserving of anything.
But that wasn’t enough “fun” for Riven and his friends. He told us after Icy almost froze his face off and threatened to tell everything about what he did, that he’d like to see us try. Even though we’d only been at MHS for almost a full semester some people would trust us. A few friends, even one or two teachers—as homework-neglectful Stormy is, she had a good reputation with the faculty in general—would believe us if we told them.
The three of us planned to expose him the following week, and I was… hesitant. But my sisters convinced me, but when we went to school on Monday things changed even more than they had already. Riven has just as much influence as we once did, probably even more, and he used that to spread horrible and twisted rumours about all of us. He didn’t just come for me, he came for my sisters; my family.
Everyone believed him. They believed that we were kicked out of our Cloud Tower after injuring one of the faculty members; that I’d used my powers on one of his friends and almost damaged their mind permanently; that we harassed a magic user in MHS until they left the school. All of the rumours painted us as dangerous and psychotic people, and the lies were so carefully woven and so many people were influenced that even the friends I’d made left without warning. The only people we had left were each other and the entire student body was against us.
That brings things to the current day; the second semester of our sophomore year at MHS.