Samara

Samara was charged with protection of the sacred forest. Since early childhood, she had been trained by the Coven in the ancient ways of her peoples' magic. The Dozen Mothers took turns guiding her through the dark woods, each imparting her own share of esoteric knowledge, gradually imbuing her with the power required to hear the breathing of the trees, to communicate in birdsong, to summon lightning from the clouds. Eventually, she began to feel the forest as an extension of herself, or rather, that she herself was an extension of the forest. Thus, even though the nature of her guardianship kept her largely isolated from the rest of her people, she felt at peace, and rarely ever alone.

Until one day, when her peace was suddenly eclipsed by a great pain, as if an immense wolf had sunk its teeth into her side and stolen her very flesh. But nothing had attacked her. Something was eating away at the forest. She made her way through the trees, toward the source of the anguish, and was stunned to find a chunk of the forest was simply… gone. In its place, only a thin gray mist, a mere wisp of the missing matter once occupying a sizable sphere of seemingly primordial emptiness. Despite the extensive nature of her training, this was unlike anything the witches had prepared her for. She could detect no threats in the vicinity. Whatever had attacked had retreated just as suddenly, leaving no apparent trace of its passage. She would need to do some conjuring, to draw upon the immense store of magic within the forest to see beyond the boundaries of the woods, of the world. And this she would do, for weeks to come, peering across distances greater than she had previously had cause to comprehend. Peeking into world upon world, seeking the signature scent of the stolen magic, hoping to at least learn the nature of her foe before it decided to attack again.

For many days, the search proved fruitless. She saw many things, from the unremarkable to the highly improbable, but nothing connected her to any answers, until finally, she recognized what had to be another victim of the same attacker. A place from which a large, spherical section had also been… removed, leaving nothing but a thin mist behind. This place was not quite a forest, but a field of metallic branching antennae of varying heights, all sprouting from a paneled grid. Mechanical, yet clearly also somehow magical, and also tended to by its own guardian, who noticed immediately that she was being observed by Samara. This woman had apparently also been engaged in her own wide-ranging search for the threat, but must have started well before Samara had, as she had already found what appeared to be a highly improbable answer, which she showed to Samara, imaged on the surface of a small pool of silvery liquid: a black ring.