ELENA BOYD

'I believe that sorcery is limitless. In theory, at least. There was an age where there was new magic being discovered everyday, but sorcerers have become lazy, they don't care for invention anymore, for discovering the undiscovered. I refuse to be blind and foolish like them, I refuse to be satisfied with this.

In my tests I've discovered that magical beasts and sorcery are more closely tied than people believe. Nobody has ever thought to look into it, but I have always been curious as to why some rabbits are non magical and why some are. Most sorcerers aren't aware of this, but when they practise sorcery, they release a little bit of raw sorcery into the air as they do so. While animals can touch regular magic from nature and be unaffected, when it touches magic has come from sorcerers, when they touch sorcery magic in particular, that is when they gain their magical attributes.

While some sorcerers might already know this, what no one else has realised is that the beasts are storing sorcery in them, and if a sorcerer was to perform sorcery with a magical beast beside them, the effects of their magic would be twice as strong. The magical beasts make the sorcerers stronger, as the sorcerer makes the beast stronger.

I have been using magical beasts while I practise my sorcery to invent new spells and enchantments. Some magical beasts are different, but they all seem to like my darker sorcery the best. Perhaps the dark sorcery tastes better to them.

Whatever the reason, I make sure there are at least two magical beasts in the room with me while I experiment. Thus far, I have been able to make a myriad of different curses. My biggest accomplishment yet is the curse to strip magic from a place or from people. Other sorcerers might think it blasphemous for me to even try and make a curse like this, but I believe that if it can be made, one should always try to make it.

.....

I've been betrayed. By my family, my fellow sorcerers, my friends. I wish I could say I was above feeling, but in truth I am hurting, and I am angry beyond belief.

I will be using my most powerful curse tonight, and I will strip them of the magic and sorcery that they have tried to kill me with. Perhaps they don't all deserve it, and perhaps I am only dooming Astrum to a premature death, but the anguish in my heart will not be extinguished unless I do this.

Know that while my curse will be irreversible, it is not the case for everybody. The Boyd family have raised me, and though their betrayal has stung more than all of the others, they are still in my heart. So, to my family, I leave you this: a way to break the curse for the Boyd family line, and only the Boyd family line.

For the curse to be broken, a price needs to be paid, a betrayal of blood is needed. If you wish to bring magic back to this family, you must remember what happened that lead to it being taken away in the first place.

As I am the originator of this curse, it will only be broken by Boyd descendants most similar to me. They must be younger than twenty and they must be female. Once she has paid the price and killed a blood family member, the magic will swarm to her body.

Since she would not have been born with it, accessing it and using it will be a different, and somewhat harder process. She must wait until the night of a full moon, where nature is it at its most powerful, and she must go to a big, strong, aged tree and try to connect with it. To connect with nature all she needs to do is cut her palm and press it against the tree. Then it is up to her to try and feel for the connection between her sorcery and the magic of nature. While it will be hard to find, as I will have cursed most of the magic out of Astrum, all nature has innate magic that even I cannot take away. She merely needs to find that thin thread of magic, hold onto it, and accept it into her body.

After she has done this, she will be able to feel the sorcery in her much clearer, and should be able to use it easily.

If you have found this and have broken the curse, all I ask is you make sure to be stronger than everybody, to stand at the top, so that no one can hurt you the way I have been hurt, and no one will betray you the way I have been betrayed.

Make magic proud, make me proud, rule the world with it.'