110 Chapter 110: Cursed Existence

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Thousands of years before our time, before the rise of Ancient Greece, in the Caucasus Region, a young teenager girl was humming in a happy mood.

Despite her young age, the girl was of an incredible beauty, and seemed to charm everything around her as the birds danced to her tune. Her fiery red hair seemed to shine under the sun, and her light grey robe, although not revealing, still showed her beauty.

"Circe!"

The young girl, Circe, immediately stopped humming as she heard a familiar voice, and her eyes widened in panic as she turned around. She saw her mother racing toward her, and without any hesitation slap her across the face.

Holding her painful cheek, Circe looked at her mother with tears in her eyes, but the older woman spat out, "You little witch, how many times have I forbidden you from doing magic!"

Circe looked down, doing her best to hold her tears as she replied, "I apologize, mother."

Her apology didn't seem to calm her mother down though, and instead angered her even more as she couldn't help but remember her most tragic memory.

She had met the most handsome man of all, and together they laid, eventually resulting in her bearing Circe. However, not long after she was born, with an expression similar to his daughter, her child's father apologized before abandoning her.

The God of the Sun, Helios, could not stay with a mortal like her. For a woman who had nothing in life, falling in love with a god was a life changer, and so the shock of him leaving was even worse.

Over the years, she had poured her anger onto her daughter, Circe, daughter of the Sun. How couldn't she, when she looked so much like him? Her fiery red hair, her perfect appearance… she even found herself being jealous of her daughter's beauty sometimes.

Then, Circe started doing unnatural things, like talking to animals. As the years passed her treatment of her daughter only got worse, until one day, she got someone's eye. Circe's beauty had spread around as the years passed, and the prince of the kingdom of Colchis took an interest into her.

Circe, as a naive young girl who knew nothing about the world, was immediately charmed by the handsome prince, falling into his lap like a gentle leaf.

The period right before her marriage was the best of her life. Her fiance treated her like a queen, offering her precious jewels and did everything to look like the Prince charming. She was also filled with hope for the future, thinking she could finally let go of her dark childhood.

Unfortunately, on their wedding night, her husband the prince finally showed his true colours, and ravaged her. From then on, gone was the kind and caring prince, and in was the monster.

This went on for four years, four years of absolute hell for her as the prince took her whenever he wanted, and seemed to like to make her suffer in all kinds of ways.

Until one day, she had enough. The Prince's sadism had only gotten worse with the years, and he seemed to have taken a particular interest into children, one he desperately wanted to show to his princess. To this day, Circe still wasn't sure whether he really was interested in the children, or simply in a new reaction from her.

The point was, she did show a different reaction. For most people, when faced with extreme despair, they react in two ways: they freeze, or they snap. Obviously, she snapped.

All the rodents in the palace attacked the prince, and ate him slowly and painfully. After the deed was done, she fled from the palace, although she had nowhere to go, she didn't want to die.

She eventually managed to find an inhabited island, the road was harsh and filled with problems, but she finally managed to get away from humans. Humans couldn't be trusted, the animals were the only ones who always stayed true to themselves…

Circe named the island after her mother, Aeaea, which wasn't to honour her, but rather to sever the past, and show she was free from it.

And life turned around for her, for some time. Unfortunately, what she didn't know at the time was that while she was blessed with a beauty that would shine on every man like the sun, she would also be unable to escape from their sight for long.

Men arrived on her island, and after several months at sea seeing no one else than their crewmates… She was a lone woman on a small island.

She tried to fight back, but there weren't as many animals on this island, and they weren't enough to endanger the armed men. She prayed to all the gods for help, but none of the Olympians, or even her father, deigned to help her.

However, as she finally started breaking, a goddess finally appeared. Hecate, Goddess of Magic and the Moon. Magic filled the now young woman, and all the men were turned into a bunch of animals, grovelling before her.

Circe did not get to enjoy her new powers right away though, as she was still not out of trouble. Hecate hadn't just helped her out of the goodness of her heart, but had a motive.

Because of her father, Circe was capable of holding much more magic than any mortal, and so Hecate decided to turn her into her weapon to get her revenge against the Olympians, who had chased her out.

Blessing the young woman with the power of the moon too, Circe was turned from a demi goddess into a full pledged Immortal Goddess, but like everything, there was a cost.

A minor change was her physical appearance, as although still beautiful, she lost the charm that made her the most beautiful. More importantly though, her mind was corroded by the will of Hecate, and the previously peaceful young woman who only ever harmed another being to save another, she was filled with hatred toward the Olympians, and anything they created.

Her mind now filled with hatred, Circe remained on her island as she learned to use her magical powers, while dealing with every man who approached the island. At first she simply killed them all, but after some years she began transforming them into animal slaves, to attend to her needs.

Many more years passed as the now immortal goddess learned to use her powers better and better, while making the acquaintance of a few legendary figures. Only those brave heroes had ever managed to escape from her clutch.

Finally, Circe left her island when she felt she mastered her powers well enough. She did many things, all great in effect but a little less so morally for most of them. Her hatred only grew with the years spent on the island, and she unleashed it onto the world.

For thousands of years, Circe fought against the Sorcerers of Kamar-Taj and the Amazons of Themyscira, while manipulating the realm of men to do her biding. This continued until the arrival of one particularly annoying Amazon. Not only was she an Amazon, she was also the daughter of Zeus, the most hated of the Olympians by Hecate.

Hecate's influence made Circe hate the Amazon, Diana, with all of her soul, and she became her sole anchor in life. Everything revolved around Diana, she was the focus of every bit of her hatred, and all of her actions were done so she could pour her hatred onto her.

But after years of conflict with Diana, and many defeats and victories, she finally faced a wall she couldn't pass. The man, who was nothing but a weakling relying on Diana, had grown so strong that even escape was impossible.

She had already been put in bad situations before, it wasn't her first time being captured, but this man had sealed all of her power with such ease that she felt it was impossible for her to escape. Even her charms seemed to be useless despite his young age.

Edward, the subject of her most recent injuries, retreated from her mind as he had just read Circe's entire life from her memories.

Circe looked a little confused for a second, as a result of her mind having been forcefully read, and only as she understood what happened did she react. She looked at Edward in anger, in hatred and looked ready to rip him apart for a second, but… it disappeared.

As if by magic, her immense anger towards him quickly disappeared, or rather than disappeared, it was transferred, making Edward sighed.

After seeing her entire life through her memories, Edward understood much more about the immortal witch, and for the first time, felt pity for her.

She was truly a nice girl, especially for one born at her time, but her father had made her life terrible, and Hecate only made it worse. Hecate's influence on her was so strong that Circe could not even have her own feelings, her hatred for Edward's actions of basically raping her mind had completely been transferred to her hatred for the Olympians.

Reading someone's memories was already something Edward really didn't like doing, he had recently learned it after memorizing the entirety of the libraries of Kamar-Taj and Freya, and it was the first time he used it on someone, and hopefully the last.

But if he found what he did bothering, what Hecate did was simply against nature, it was the worse that could be done to someone. Edward would rather die than suffer this.

Originally, Edward intended to kill Circe after learning what he wanted from her, but he now felt pity for the girl. After knocking her unconscious, Edward began his work.

While memorizing all the spell books from Kamar-Taj and Freya's library did not instantly make him as strong as the Ancient One or Freya, it did give Edward a very large arsenal of spells, and he could now be considered a master of pretty much all magics.

Now, to pave the way forward, he would have to make his own spells, and understand more about the elements he wanted to change.

Anyway, one of those magics was mind magic, and another was soul magic. Those two were rather closely linked to one another, the soul was the centremost part of the Spirit after all.

Using his knowledge of the two magics, Edward began altering Circe from her very core. Once again, this would normally be something he would never do, but Edward believed Circe deserved a shot at life.

Soon, Edward found Hecate's mark on Circe, a part of her soul. It was the base of Circe's power, it acted as a pseudo divinity. However, it was as strong as a normal divinity thanks to thousands of years of nurturing.

The energy of the Freezing Crystal covered the goddess' soul, and although it struggled, Hecate's soul was quickly completely frozen. The soul energy released from the destruction of the soul was powerful, and would be enough to let Circe keep a major part of her power.

The soul was split in two though, there was the outer part that was cultivated by Circe after her years of magic, but the core of the pseudo divinity was still Hecate's life, and was what was influencing Circe.

To avoid any incident, the energy released from that part of the pseudo divinity, Edward did not give it back to Circe, but completely crushed it and fed it to his Freezing Crystal, making it quite stronger.

Although Hecate's soul was destroyed, Circe couldn't be said to be free from her influence. Her own mind had been filled with hatred and Hecate's thoughts for thousand of years, she was doomed to go back to her usual ways if left as she was.

So Edward took a drastic decision, and began carefully manipulating Circe's Spirit and Soul. Before long, thousands of years of memories were completely erased, everything that Circe had learned, everything she experienced, everything she suffered… disappeared.

Author's Note: As an author, this is one of the best chapters I have written I believe, not for Circe's backstory which is pretty standard, bad stuff happened to her, not much on that. However, I think I was able to use this story to go in depth into Edward's mind and boundaries after all the events of the LOTR Arc and Save Diana mini-Arc. So that's why I think it's a great chapter.

PS: BTW, I'll go on a vacation next week, will tell you more later.