The Dark Kingdom

Chapter 1

Much like the witches. Daughters of Moon Women, they are called, Children of the Stars.

They do not ride on broomsticks, they do not have warts, their skin is not green. They are actually very beautiful, but of course, not the perfect flawlessness the vampryes have. They live around one thousand years. Witches are descended from Drita's only daughter she was able to have. Drita's daughter was named Moon Astra, or just Astra for short, which means, 'Star-like love.' It was the kind of thing Drita would name her child.

Witches do have powers-- they specialize in something when they turn sixteen, which is the sacred number to the witches. It was the age Drita and Lila were when Lila had just been turned into a vamprye and when Drita had Moon Astra.

Witches can specialize in a lot of things. Gems, chanting, animals, plants, water, fire, Earth, communicating with Spirits of the Other Side, healing, prophecy, visions of the past, present, and future, and many others. They have ceremonies at times of death, sickness, happiness, the Summer Solstice, the Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, and Fall Equinox. They also celebrate the day Drita had Astra, which they call 'Narozeni Jedne' which in Czech means, 'The Birth of the One'. It is Czech because that was the language Drita and Lila spoke. This day falls on a day that used to be celebrated by humans. Halloween, or Olde Hallow's Eve. Men witches are not wizards. They are witches, and that is all there is to it.

Sirens are the most intriguing species, to me. In Greek mythology, they are beautiful women with the wings of a great bird. Some legends said they are women with bird legs. In some cases they were even said to have the head of a bird and the body of a women. They are really the first legend—beautiful women with the wings of a great bird. Like angels, which is very likely where people got the idea of angels in the first place. Sirens lived on an island that had a rocky coast and beautiful flowers and animals and meadows. This island was called Sirenum Scopuli.

They have the voices of, for lack of a better word, angels. Back a long time ago, when humans roamed freely about the Earth, they would lure sailors to them with their beautiful singing. It is said that even women were drawn to the beautiful music and singing, and often became slaves.

Sirens were very seductive. Of course, they were nearly always naked when they sang and played music. When the sailor came swimming to them, they would either make love to the sailors then kill them, the sailor would never reach them and drowned, or they would make love to the sailor and keep him until he died of starvation because he refused to leave the siren's side. Originally, there were two sirens, then one of them had a baby who was also gifted with the siren's 'talents' (if you could call it that). That is how the siren race began. Sirens have long since moved away from Sirenum Scopuli, and are now scattered everywhere. But the two immortal sirens, (their names are Airlia, which means ethereal, and Harmony, which means beautiful blending) have stayed at Sirenum Scopuli, and are limited to wooing only fifty sailors a year each. Which is far less than they are used to.

Another piece of interesting trivia about the sirens is that they can't have sons. It just doesn't happen. When a siren has a baby, it isn't part human or vamprye or witch or whichever species the father is. The siren blood dominates completely, so it is whole Siren, with no Witch or Vamprye traits. There are no half-bloods or quarter-bloods or anything like that. You are either a siren or not a siren. It is as simple as that, nothing overly confusing about it. Sirens live about one thousand years, just like witches, except the only way to kill a siren is unknown, like vampires.

These species lived in secret under their Royals peacefully for many years. Back a very long time ago, when the humans reined over the Earth, vampryes, sirens, and witches stayed quiet about their existence.

Then the rebellion started. It was the year 2417. It began with the vampryes wanting to feed on whomever they chose to feed on. They wanted to be free in this aspect. Sirens, also, wanted to be able to do what they wanted, and not have such a small limit (which was at that time, fifteen men or women a year). Witches wished to be able to do spells whenever they wanted, not only at a specific time or place.