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While most people think this story starts in the back alleys of Brooklyn, they would be wrong. Brooklyn with a skinny boy willing to go to war isn’t the beginning, it’s just the middle. The beginning is back when the world is young and magic is common, when gods and heroes walked the earth. Back when dragons flew through the sky and the plants would talk to you if you started the right conversation. Which sounds idyllic and perfect, but it wasn’t. There was still war and illness and suffering but there was also more wonder. This was where everything began. It started with a young goddess, the oldest of three sisters who were just starting to test out their magic. They knew they were powerful, but weren’t sure how powerful or what they were actually capable of. Which is rather common in young adults who are just first starting to test their limits. And they probably wouldn't have learned just what they were capable of if the invasion hadn’t happened. This was the first invasion, the one that changed everything. Because it wasn’t a typical invasion where one country tried to invade another. No. This was an invasion that came from beyond the stars. Headed by a man who called himself Titan, who sneered at the wide display of life spread out on their planet before him and tried to take it for his own. The first lands that fell just...disappeared and no one would ever find out what happened to them. The other lands tried to flee and ended up losing half of their people, horrific loss that they struggled to move past could never really manage to. There was a reason why their descendants were still so absolutely terrified of death. The survivors managed to stumble to the few lands that did not fall and warned them of what was coming. Some hid, rather understandably. When a threat that terrifying and threatening came towards you, you protected what was yours. The gods of Japan did their best to disappear from the surge of death but didn’t quite manage. Bast created a barrier that hid her people away from the prying eyes of the invader and shut it tight, determined to fight to the death if necessary but hoping for the best. The invader though, turned to easier lands planning to save Bast and her siblings for last. He swept across the land until he reached an emerald isle where the young goddess Badb had come into her own. With her sisters Macha and Morrigan behind her, they stood resolute before the invader because if they could not stand before him than their home would fall. So the three sisters threw themselves into battle. They clashed with the invader on the oceans, staining the ground red with blood as they stabbed, clawed, and struggled their way to victory. It ended when Badb pinned the invaded to the ground with her swords through his spine while Macha’s magic pulled his gauntlet from his hand. Morrigan’s dominion over death broke the gauntlet into ash before she stole the stones that gave the invader away, followed by her sisters. They gathered in a stone circle, hands clasped as they prepared a spell that scattered the stones to the very edge of the cosmos. The three sisters knew that would not stop the invader from returning, but it would give them time to prepare for the greatest and most terrible war of all time.And time moved on. New gods rose, old gods died. New heroes came into the world, some mortal and some not. Old friends become enemies, old enemies become friends, and the All Father and his men tried to invade but Badb sent them running back to the realm eternal. She could not touch the Vikings, but she could fight the Asgardians with her blood sisters and her shield sisters, Eiru and Fotia. One day, Badb came across a mortal man. Just a simple farmer, one who did not gape at the goddess but just smiled and offered her flowers from his field and friendship. And Badb fell in love, hard and fast. She courted him fiercely and he gladly married her. They had children, a whole clan. Clan Catha her family teased, a whole clan that would fight the good fight where Badb could not due to her divine powers. And for a while, they were right. Her family was large and powerful, her children and grandchildren standing side by side to defend their home. But they were only mortal, and they slowly died out. Some fro old age, some from childbirth, some from war and violence. But as they died, so did the magic around them. The world was losing its wonder as rationality and science took over. Gods were disappearing. Magical creatures still existed, but teetered on the verge of extinction. Something, the sisters whispered, had to be done to preserve magic. It was Morrigan who reminded them that the most powerful forms of magic came from death. It was Macha who found a spell powered by human sacrifice that would hide the remaining magic away in the blood, onky activating a little bit until the magic recovered and could be unleashed. It was not Badb, the only one with living descendants, who volunteered one of her grandchild for the spell. It was Badb’s many times great granddaughter who volunteered and let Macha slit her throat to power the spell.And magic disappeared. Not forever, but until the next person of Badb’s line was sacrificed to break the spell. It would take centuries where Clan Catha slowly whittled away to nothing except one family branch that was settled across the sea in New York. Sarah, last of her line, gave birth to Steven. Steven had the clan’s magic in his veins. He went to war, made allies with the remaining magical creatures for the fights to come. He fell in love with another person who had magic just like him, a boy with grey eyes from Romania. And when Steve sacrificed himself in the Arctic? Well, it would weaken the spell enough for magic to start returning. It would be Steven who would stand before the invader when he returned to earth. And through it all Badb would be by his side, watching over her grandson. Excise while he did not start this story, he would end it.