I have always been here.

From the beginning I, one of the elder goddesses have walked the earth. Magic is my domain, and woman is the portal from which that magic enters this realm. Great powers are unleashed through sex. greater still, blood magic, is released by an act of defloration.

When man first came to this land I hid myself and my secrets in the form of this willow tree. Eventually, a girl dressed in the skins of animals found me and knew me for who I was. She kneeled down to worship me and I became aware that she was beautiful and untouched, still a maiden. I took her into my embrace; claimed her innocence, and gloried in the magic released. I taught her great themes of magic and it's uses. I instructed her much on the mysteries of womanhood, and of spirits, and the world. To the end of her days she worshiped me, and to the end of her days I kept her companionship and love. We worked great magic together and I told her much of the deep secrets of the universe as I took her body.

Over the eons that followed, the daughters of men would find their way, or be brought, to my grove. They would offer their maidenheads to me in sacrifice and I would teach them of magic and mystery and of the ways of the world.

Then one day my followers in their animal skins stopped coming. I reached out my thought and found that their people had left, been driven out by a new people from across the sea. I stood alone for a few years until the daughters of these new men found me. These women, who were fair of skin, wore strange clothes. They danced in festival around me, not knowing that I watched. Incantations they used, their magic was weak but familiar, they knew of other old ones such as myself. I reveled myself and claimed my own sacrifices of them.

For nearly a century they came unto me and learned from me and gave themselves in sacrifice. Then one day only a few came, and they were frightened. Men of another god had found them out and were persecuting them and slaying them. The men came to my clearing and tried to take my children but were met by my fury. Very few I allowed to return home alive. My surviving children I scattered to the winds to safety, telling them that one day their descendants would return to me.

I slept. For nearly three hundred years I slept and the sons and daughters of men stayed away, fearing the nameless terror that lived here. Occasionally a young, brave and curious girl would come to see if the legends were true. Hungry, I would take her into my embrace and claim her, but the time was not right. Invariably, I would send her away with only the memory that something terrifying yet wonderful had happened, but no idea what.

Then she came, walking boldly into my clearing. Her presence over time woke me. She loved to climb into my branches seeking solitude, or wade in the stream by my roots. I touched her mind and found her name, Erica, and learned that she was descended of the women that I had sent into hiding so long ago. I stretched out my thought and found them, all of them. As I had fortold, they had returned.

I awoke fully and began to plan. There were five who could be most easily taught. The five points of the star, Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit; they were there, one maiden for each. They would be the foundation of my new coven. It was time for me to claim my own sacrifices again.

These are their stories...