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  "Ignis Pila!"

  "Centum Tormenti!"

  "Flamma Serpentis!"

  "Ventus Compressio!"

  "Inferno Advocans!"

  Following each order shouted, a massive burst of energy accompanied by an elemental invocation ravaged the trees of Starlight Forest. Flaming snakes crashed into blades of wind, further boosting the potency of the spells to the point of vaporizing entire swaths of the surrounding woods. In the middle of the chaos, a slightly exhausted brunette leaned on her knees as she sought to regain her breath. Around her stood two women, one platinum blonde and dark skinned, while the other had beautiful straight coal black hair and a fair complexion. 

  "Remarkable," Elena muttered as she surveyed the destruction around them in some awe. "All those high level spells yet she's barely winded."

  Whitney on the other hand merely eyed the area with a modicum of disinterest. "That still isn't enough. You and I could do the same with half the effort in half the time."

  Elena simply rolled her eyes at her friend's attempt at being difficult. "Oh let it go Whitney. She's barely at half the level we are yet she can do all of this already."

  "So how did I do?" Mia asked once she had regained her voice.

  Both older witches began approaching her, with Elena being careful to avoid the smoldering patches of earth while Whitney just strode through them with nary a care. "Your power is acceptable," Whitney commented, bringing a bright smile to Mia's face. "However, your casting speed and accuracy are barely just above garbage. No one will wait for you to create two individual spells before merging them together to attack. You need to be able to be able to chain your spells to compliment themselves without blowing yourself to kingdom come—"

  "What she means is," Elena cut after covering her friend's mouth with her hand. Winking at Whitney's furious glare, she smiled at Mia. "You did great Mia. Though you could use some work, you're already far above everyone else in your class. Be proud of that okay?"

  Looking quite pleased at the compliment, Mia took a look at the surrounding devastated area and felt a sense of déjà vu. "Looks like Michael was right. I'm all power and no control."

  Whitney shrugged Elena's hand away and scoffed loudly. "As if that brute would know anything about control after cutting through a mountain like that. He's not even a witch, there's no way he's qualified to give anyone descriptions."

  "Well, he has lived a lot longer than even our teachers Whitney," Elena singsonged teasingly. "So he might not be so much in the dark as you think."

  "That's true," Mia nodded and turned to summon all the flames in the area together. "Besides he's a Variant just like me and he's far more experienced."

  Stunned by her words, both older witches momentarily froze and exchanged a wary glance with each other before looking back at Mia. "Did he tell you that?" Elena asked.

  "That I'm a Variant?" Mia said to which the other girl nodded. "Yeah. He told me some really cool things about Variant magic too."

  "He told you what a Variant is?"  Elena asked again.

  Mia nodded and raised an eyebrow at her mentor's disbelieving tone. "Is anything wrong? Didn't you guys already know that? Although I can't figure out why no one told me that back at home."

  "Alright I can't take this anymore," Whitney declared in annoyance. "Mia, quench this fires."

  The younger girl looked a little confused at the sudden request but acquiesced without any complaint. Raising her hand, she muttered "Water's Breath" and blew softly. Instead of air however, a steady stream of clear water shot out of her mouth to thoroughly put out the remaining flames that scorched the ground around them.

 Having completed her task, Mia turned to face her mentors, both of which were watching her with varied expressions. "What's wrong? Was my spell not correct?"

  "That's just the thing," Elena said. "Your spellcasting was excellent."

  "Then I don't understa—"

  "What's the most defining trait of a Variant?" Whitney asked suddenly with an exasperated sigh.

  "Well that's easy. They can't... use any other magic.... except their Variant abilities," Mia answered, slowing down at the end as the realization caught up to her. "Then how did I—"

  "You're not a Variant Delgado," Whitney exclaimed. "That's why no one ever said anything about it to you."

  "But Michael said my magic was—"

  "Unusually strong?" Elena interrupted quietly. "Yeah, the Elders thought the same too."

  With the mood of the training session successfully derailed, the three of them moved to sit down on a large displaced boulder nearby. Elena was biting her lip in quiet contemplation while Whitney was watching a completely confused Mia intently.

  "When you first began to display an unforeseen amount of magic density in your spells, the Elders had in fact thought you were a initially a Variant," Elena explained slowly, as if to avoid giving Mia the wrong impression.

  "Remember that test you went through at the end of your first month with the Arcane Circle?" Whitney questioned. 

  Mia blinked twice to jog her memory of the aforementioned date before nodding a bit shakily. "Y-yeah, I think so. That's the one where I had to beat a animated Elder Treant with my powers sealed."

  "At the moment then, you were told that it was a test to determine your creativity and resourcefulness," Elena continued. "But that wasn't everything. You passed that test Mia, but you did so by using a near impossible Wind and Fire combination spell to incinerate the Treant."

  "So? What was the big deal about it? You all seemed pleased when I finished," Mia pointed out, seemingly confused by the weirdness her teachers were displaying at the moment.

  Elena and Whitney exchanged strange looks once again with each other before Elena turned to Mia again. "Mia, you were a seventeen year old fledgling witch at that time. Yet you shattered a sealing spell placed on you by an Elder with sheer brute force and proceeded to vaporize a giant tree monster with a spell none of us could do at the time."

  Hearing it now from an external source, it definitely sounded beyond strange. It was like a junior Air force Academy student suddenly knowing how to operate and fly a B-29 jet and proceed to do barrel rolls with it, all without formal training. Going back to the day of the test, Mia remembered being utterly terrified as she faced that massive monster without a single drop of magic to call upon. Her memory seemed to blur around that point but she faintly recalled hearing a unfamiliar and strangely formal voice at the back of her head speaking to her. Next thing she knew, she had been standing over the charred corpse of the Treant without a single recollection of how she beat the thing.

  "At first the Elders were terrified," Whitney said.

  Mia's head snapped towards her so fast that she thought she would give herself whiplash. "Terrified? Of what?"

  "You," Whitney stated when she noticed Elena was not willing to talk on such a sensitive subject. "Or at least what your existence represented."

  "My existence?"

  "They were afraid of a power beyond their scope. They feared what you could become were you to successfully learn how to harness your true potential, something not even they could see the limits of."

  "Then how did I end up like this?"

  Whitney flashed her a rare smile, one that greatly settled her uneasy heart. "You have my teacher to thank for that. As one of the Elders herself, Penelope was able to convince the other Elders not to fear your power, but instead to think of it as a new beginning for the Circle."

  "At that time, we had just discovered the powerhouse that was Sam," Elena finally spoke, Whitney's face souring slightly at the mention of the name. "The appearance of someone with abilities like yours meant a lot at that time. Penelope sold the Elders the idea of training you to further empower the next generation so that they, we would be able to adapt and withstand the singular most prominent threat to our kind's existence."

  "Three guesses to who that is," Whitney added with a disapproving click of her tongue. "The first two don't count."

  "The Hunters," Mia gasped, he hand rising to cover her mouth in realized shock and horror.

  "And one in particular. Did you never find it strange how you were never given an explanation as to why you, a brand new witch with such amazing potential, had suddenly been thrown right into the arms of our greatest enemy since the Great Persecution in the Dark Ages?" 

  It felt like a grenade had just gone off in Mia's mind, and had shattered her worldview. The whole thing finally began to make sense to her little by little the more she thought about it. How barely anyone but her had even gone as far as to interact with the Hunters. The unexplained hostility Whitney seemed to harbor towards Michael. Not to mention that despite her obvious dislike of the man, she had been willing to let Mia be around and befriend him albeit reluctantly.

  "They were using me," Mia muttered slowly as she stood up from the rock and began to step away from the other two, much to their consternation. 

  "Mia, wait—" Elena called out but Mia's betrayal-filled voice shut her up quickly.

  "No!" She yelled as she rounded to face them, allowing Whitney and Elena to see the tears at the corners of her eyes. "I spent over a decade and a half of my life feeling like I was that one person who never fit in anywhere. Always searching for someone, anyone that would take me for who I am. And finally, finally I thought I had found that with you guys. But it looks like I was wrong after all."

  Elena got to her feet slowly, her voice lowered to a pleading whisper. "Mia, calm down. You have to understand the situation the Circle was facing and still is facing in fact. Our numbers were depleting slowly but steadily, both from deserters and the actions of the Hunters. Something had to be done."

  Mia stared at her in pure disbelief. "And so you guys organized this whole... sham! Just so you could what?! Throw me into the arms of someone who could erase me from existence with a wave of his hand so that I could learn his secrets and weaknesses? You used me to spy on Michael!"

  "Enough!" 

  Both brown and sable haired girls turned to Whitney who look extremely fed up with their argument. Her forehead was tightened in a frown and her amber eyes glowed with an intensity neither girls usually saw in the platinum blonde witch. 

  "First of all, Mia, we did nothing to you. We were simply following orders to do what was best for our society."

  Mia gave her a humorless smile. "By organizing the biggest scam of century? By potentially risking dozens of lives in a stupid attempt at espionage? Did you ever stop to consider what the Hunters would do to everyone here if they ever discovered this?"

  "Which is exactly why you are going to keep your mouth shut," Whitney ordered fiercely. The air around her clenched fists had already began to heat up to the point of warping. "Elena and I are the only ones aware of this. If you take this information to the Hunters, you would be dooming all those lives you just talked about."

  Unable to believe what she was hearing, Mia forced herself to back away from the two witches that had been tasked with watching over her. A single tear rolled down her cheek as she stared blankly at the girl she had considered the nearest thing she had to a sister. 

  "Mia, this Program was not merely an attempt to sabotage the Hunters," Elena tried to quell the younger girl's fears. "The Elders really meant to propose the truce. What happened with you, was simply a contingency plan."

  "A contingency plan?" Mia repeated slowly before letting out a low laugh that was utterly devoid of mirth. "That's all I'm worth to you people. You know the funniest thing is, I honestly can't say I wasn't expecting something like this. I guess deep down, I always knew it was too good to be true."

  Before either girl could say another word, Mia Delgado turned around and  disappeared into the forest in a haste. Elena heaved a weary sigh and moved to sit back down in the rock.

  "She definitely hates us now."

  "I highly doubt that," Whitney disagreed. Her eyes remained fixed on the part Mia had left through the whole time. "This is Mia we're talking about. She doesn't have a single hateful bone in her body."

  "You never know with the quiet ones," Elena remarked softly. "What if she tells them?"

  "She won't." Whitney's voice was filled with confidence as she spoke. "If there's one thing Mia's better than anyone else at, it's putting others before herself."

  "God, this whole thing is such a mess," Elena groaned in exasperation.

  The other girl simply frowned and turned away to glare at nothing in particular. "I knew this would eventually happened. She's probably taking this better than I would if I were in her situation."

  "Then it's a good thing you're not isn't it?" Elena smiled at her friend who returned it with a small sigh that removed some of the tension on her shoulders.

  "I just wished it didn't have to be this way. Subterfuge and deceit were not the things I wanted to do with my life."

  "Well if the Hunters realize we lied to them then none of us would have a life for very long, so let's just focus on doing damage control," Elena said sympathetically. "We'll give Mia some space to cool off but we'll have to track her to make sure she doesn't go to Michael directly any time soon. Agreed?"

  The white haired girl sighed again and looked up to her friend with a small sad smile. "Yeah, let's do that."