Annis Doyle

Annis Dee Doyle, also known by her traditional Irish name, Annis Ó Dubhghaill, is one of the world's most infamous witches, the leader of an ancient, mysterious coven that evolved into a higher level of magical being through a gruesome ritual, becoming Cat Sìth. Brutally violent, Annis has survived to the modern day thanks to her cunning, remaining a gristly reminder of the past for the magic community, a legendary mass murderer who lives on in memory and mythology as Black Annis.

Backstory
In Ireland, long ago, during the Early Middle Ages, a young Christian villager gave birth to her only child, whom she named simply Annis, the daughter of a northern invader who had assaulted her nine months earlier. The pregnancy and birth were rough and almost killed Annis’ mother, but she survived, something that she grew to resent as her daughter grew to resemble her father more with every passing day. She and her child were shunned by the rest of their village, regarded as a witch and her demonspawn, and all she could do was take it out on a young Annis, the seeming embodiment of her misery.

Rejected by the community in which she was born and treated poorly by her mother, Annis rapidly grew up to learn how to take care of and protect herself before she was even ten years old. She still had a home, as her mother, for all the awful things she thought of her daughter, still brought herself to provide out of some semblance of love, a genuine, if feeble attempt. Annis was taught, not by her mother, but by everyone else around her, that she was the child of a monster, a cursed beast that almost tore herself from her mother’s womb and that would only bring tragedy.

Left apart and isolated, Annis felt no connection to any of the people around her save for her mother, for whom she felt something, even if it was marred by the knowledge that she was unwanted. Annis grew colder and distant from those around her in response to their malice, something that only heightened suspicions on what she was. Her mother, even, grew to fear her more and more, and eventually, rejected by the rest of her village for the child forced upon her, she lashed out on her daughter. Whatever connection Annis felt between them was severed then, knowing that, had she been able, her mother would’ve never let her birth occur, and with nothing for her in the village, Annis, barely over ten years old, left.

A lonely Annis wandered for only a few weeks before she was able to find what she had sought, beings with her same fur color, those of the same kind that had invaded a decade earlier. Joining them, Annis took on the name of Ó Dubhghaill, rejecting the community that she had been born into just as they rejected her, spitefully acknowledging herself only as the daughter of her father. She never knew his name, so Annis based it off off what they had called him, one of many dark foreigners. She sought him out, the only family she felt she had left - or perhaps the only family she had ever had. But Annis never found him, and was instead left as a child surrounded by those with no care for her once more, even if they had accepted her into their numbers. No matter where she went, this malice followed her, it seemed.

But Annis found a way to escape these thoughts and her own anguish, as she was dragged into combat and slaughter again and again. She took to it gleefully, bathing herself in gore and violence, the only thing that made sense to her in the miserable world she had been born into. The chance to finally feel like the predator, and not the cowering, lurking prey, to step out of the shadows and reap her toll… it made her feel alive, and Annis grew addicted. But it was not enough. She was still the prey, only released onto another field with her hunters at her heels.

Thinking back to the accusations that had been leveled at her years ago, the accusations of witchcraft and evil, and desperate for some out, any out, Annis began to secretly study runic magic, hoping that, by accepting the fate she had apparently been into, she could escape. Raw with emotion and need, Annis discovered she had a knack for magic, finding herself growing more and more powerful as she delved deeper and deeper into the art. It was this power, expressed violently one night as she reduced her fellow raiders to viscera, that attracted the attention of a wandering witch seeking powerful allies to induct into her coven.

This witch, Sebille, tempted Annis with sweet words promising that she could finally have a home and a family, surrounded by those who could understand how she had suffered, because they had gone through similar trials. The words got to her, and though Annis found allies and friends in this coven, she also found that, once again, her suffering followed her. The elders and teachers in the coven, Sebille included, were manipulative and sly, so subtle that Annis only realized because she spent everyday in wait of threats. Another betrayal, this pushed Annis even further off the edge, and, digging her claws into her paws, she swore that she would never allow herself to fall prey again.

Biding her time as she slowly gathered her knowledge and power, Annis pointed out the exploitation and abuse her fellow “students” were subject to, causing a conflict to erupt between the two generations. In this battle, Annis confronted Sebille herself, and their legendarily intense duel ended in the elder witch’s death, with nothing but charred flesh remaining. In a fit of rage, of impulse, of predatory hunger, Annis tore apart her “benefactor” and consumed her ruined corpse, consciously choosing to accept the card she had been dealt. She would be the bloodsoaked demon that she had been expected to be, and she would make sure that tragedy and anguish followed her.

This did little to initiate any real change in the coven, only changing the dynamics. Now, the power was in the hands of many witches much like Annis, young girls who had been abused and mistreated and turned to magic for liberation. They had been taught that manipulation and violence were how one moved up in the world, and Annis took this closer to heart than perhaps any other, save for the more temperamental Morgen. To maintain her position of power, Annis did not hesitate to use every tool at her disposal, manipulating and intimidating her allies into acknowledging, silently or otherwise, that she was the one in charge. She led her coven with cunning, making sure their activities could last as long as possible, even as its members turned their destructive means against each other, stretching its lifespan into the decades.

With mortality looming as they aged, Annis and the rest of her coven pooled their efforts in pursuit of immortality, playing a vital part in the findings that would allow them to achieve their goals, with each member coming together to design a sinister ritual. This ritual would require a sacrifice of eight souls each, the souls of other felines, which were to be burned over an eight-day period, within a massive wicker statue surrounded by a magic circle. Each of the witch’s rituals were performed all at once, and when the smoke of the final statue faded and they bathed in the ash that remained, each came out immortal. Not only had their aging forever stopped, but they had gained an extra eight lives, stealing the souls of their sacrifices. They named the evolved magical beings they had become Cat Sìth, and now eternal, their activities stretched beyond the reach of age. Decades became centuries.

The escalation of the threat they presented only brought more threats to the coven, however, and many members lost lives in battles with rivals and witch hunters. When one of them discovered that they could reclaim these lost lives by killing another Cat Sìth, the unstable order in the coven began to collapse. The witches, even Annis, turned on each other whenever convenient, taking every chance to replenish a lost life rather than linger closer to death than they would like. Over the course of centuries, many members lost all their lives and were lost to a true, final death. The coven’s numbers dwindled, but Annis, who few had ever dared to fight, still stood tall, becoming infamous under the name Black Annis.

This changed abruptly when Morgen, coming to a sudden moral epiphany on her activities and those of the coven, fled, and Annis, uninterested in losing one of her strongest allies, pursued her. She made it clear that Morgen was to either come back with her or die, but, rather than accept either of her options, Morgen put up a fight. The resulting duel was the most difficult of Annis’ life, a shockingly intense fight that ended in her first real loss, as Morgen claimed more lives than she and fled. Feeling like prey again for the first time in many, many years, an enraged Annis returned empty-handed and brutally took out her rage on Morgen’s former lover, Seife, killing her many times over to regain her authority and reassert the threat she posed.

For years, Annis continued to try to hunt down Morgen, but every attempt yielded no results, and as the cities and the world around her expanded, Annis turned her attention to setting up a foothold in the burgeoning criminal underworld of the island that had once been her home, Ireland. As magic faded into the background and became a secret, Annis returned to the shadows, expanding a criminal empire of thralls and what remained of her coven over much of Europe and beyond, finding herself at the peak of opulence with her enterprises yielding plentiful results.

In the modern era, Annis, now going by the Anglicized name Annis Dee Doyle, is one of the infamous and wanted dark magicians of all time, a legend told to children to keep them from misbehaving in one world, and a very real danger in the other. With no lack of resources and no limit to her ambition and hedonism, Annis continues to hungrily explore magic, seeking more, more, and more… so that she may eventually stand unrivaled.

Appearance
Black Annis holds herself like the predator she is, low to the ground with constant energy waiting in her body to be released, rather than standing at her full, rather middling height. Her build is very stocky and sturdy, with not insignificant amounts of muscle hidden by her thick, dense black fur, a pitch black that is unbroken save for a single patch of white on her chest ruff. Her eyes constantly glow a sharp green, with murderous, predatory intent, constantly alert and fixated on her soon to-be prey. Her ears are large and broad, with tufts at the end and plentiful amounts of fluff. Out from her large, fluffy paws, long claws of iron slide out to reveal themselves, and a large, fluffy tail sways from side to side behind her.

Annis' historical wardrobe of large, dark cloaks and generally all-around heavy clothing contributed greatly to modern perceptions of the "witch" and how they dress. These days, her outfits have changed a bit, and she now often adorns herself with heavy wool cloaks in many colors and patterns, worn mostly for appearances' sake. Scarves are just as common, wrapped snugly around her neck to push out her ruff, over her simple clothing of open blazers and dress shirts underneath. Over her shirt, Annis wears a simple, patterned kilt, and comfortable knee-high socks that leave the space for her paws to breathe.

In her ultimate, draconic transformation, Annis grows to a massive serpentine being the size of multiple city blocks, a quadrupedal monster with massive, piercing green eyes and jaws that slaver with thick, corrosive saliva. A long, forked tongue snakes between her teeth, while wings the size of city blocks snap open, and black fur runs down her spine to the spaded tip of her tail. Her scales are pitch black, and, in place of her fluffy white chest ruff, her snake-like underside is white, running all the way down her tail. Distinctive, curling horns flank her skull, though she can shed these, and any other part of her biology, to transform into other draconian forms of varying size and shape.

Personality
Fearlessly confident and outspoken, Annis speaks her mind at every opportunity and never hesitates to make these openings herself, saying whatever she pleases without caring if it's rude or not. She has a habit of being overly articulate and often rambling on and on, saying far more than is ever necessary and stumbling over and through social niceties just to get them out of the way. Despite this, Annis is boisterous, loud, and confrontational, and is quick to get defensive over small slights and go on to cause fights. Though she may be this talkative, Annis really has little interest in actual social situations and she keeps to herself, spending little of her time actually talking. It's just that once she gets going, she finds it hard to stop.

Annis avoids any relationships deeper than casual acquaintances and lackeys due to a cocktail of volatile emotional issues. She's happy to avoid others when they have nothing to offer her, and spends much of her time alone, in simple silence, distracting herself with whatever. Her own abrasive personality and appreciation for solitude leaves Annis often irritated, confused, and discomforted by any attempts to get closer to her or spend more time alongside her. She simply likes being alone best, as it always gives her the opportunity to sort out her emotions and thoughts, which are plentiful due to her energetic, excitable nature.

Ambitious and brutally cunning, Annis has no restraints and never hesitates to involve herself in violence. A life filled with nothing but this stuff has left Annis very acclimated to it, and even the worst extremes of gore and brutality that other lifeforms are capable of does nothing to unsettle her in the least. Rejected by others throughout most of her life, Annis is very used to being alone and doesn't really know how to communicate her own emotions and desires verbally, only physically, mostly through violence. Every relationship that is important to her is something she has experienced through brutal physical extremes, and those she holds dear are just as often those she's been together with in her most unguarded, intimate moments, as they are those that she's matched in brutal violence. Or both, a common occurrence given the instability of her life and every relationship.

Though she is often filled with way more words than anyone needs to hear, Annis disdains these traits in others. She reacts unpleasantly to any attempt to make her truly open up, and her every word is devoid of any true emotional substance. Indeed, she's aware of how talkative she's become, and she despises this in herself. Annis feels as if society has gutted her and made her into some false thing, a semblance of civilization, and she craves the moments she can cut loose and show how she truly feels, what she truly is, through teeth and claws. And what is she? What is Black Annis?

The answer is simple. She is an evil, monstrous thing who exists for the thrill of violence, which excites her like nothing else. She lives to fight, to kill, to brutalize all who oppose her, and there is nothing Annis loves quite like the challenge a truly worthy opponent provides. These moments are the moments when she can be real. When she can communicate to an equal as an equal. Nothing else matters.

Powers and Statistics
Tier: 9-B, at least 8-A with magic, higher with Samhain | At least 7-C, likely higher

Powers and Abilities: Genius Intelligence, Master Martial Artist, Enhanced Senses (She has the heightened senses of a cat, including an exceptional sense of smell and effective night vision), Extrasensory Perception (She can detect magical energy), Clairvoyance, Precognition (Her refined senses and magical awareness clue her in to the presence of magical beings and the casting of spells, potentially even on their nature and danger level through high-speed analysis, allowing her to quickly react appropriately), Flight (She can fly by growing wings), Magic, Air Manipulation, Biological Manipulation, Curse Manipulation, Darkness Manipulation, Death Manipulation, Disease Manipulation, Electricity Manipulation, Energy Manipulation, Illusion Manipulation, Memory Manipulation, Metal Manipulation, Mind Manipulation, Pain Manipulation, Radiation Manipulation, Soul Manipulation (She can damage the souls of others) and Absorption (She can absorb the souls of recently deceased beings to replenish energy, increase her overall power, and strengthen her soul, and the souls of other Cat Sìth can be used to restock her lost lives), Sound Manipulation, Spatial Manipulation (She can lock down space to prevent opponents from teleporting, and inhibiting regular movement), Healing, Intangibility (She can phase through walls and other objects), Invisibility, Necromancy, Petrification, Portal Creation, Power Nullification (She can negate regeneration and counter curses as they're cast or strip them away), Reality Warping (Through Samhain, she can create a liminal space in which unreality and reality blur together and she can manifest her thoughts as reality), Shapeshifting, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Teleportation, Resistance to Curses (Her experience with curses has left her resistant to their effects thanks to exposure, even curses that inflict death, intense pain, and petrification), Mind Manipulation (Her fellow witches cannot control her through spells like Dominus), and Soul Manipulation (She has nine souls, but only one can be targeted at a time and each is abnormally powerful and resistant to spiritual attack), Regeneration (Low-Mid; she can rapidly heal lost limbs and severe organ damage), Resurrection (She has eight extra lives and will automatically resurrect a short while after one of them is expended, giving her nine lives in total), Immortality (Types 1, 3, and 4) | All previous abilities, plus Flight (Her massive wings allow for high-speed, long-distance flight), Acid Manipulation (Her blood and bile are highly corrosive, one of the most acidic substances on Earth, and can rapidly eat through organic and inorganic materials without issue, leaving nothing behind), Disease Manipulation (Her bile and saliva are ridden with countless diseases, including every illness life has ever faced and billions of others, which she can modify and develop on the fly), Fire Manipulation (Her blood and bile are highly flammable and ignite on contact with the air, burning at temperatures hotter than that of the Sun and comparable to a nuclear explosion), Poison Manipulation (Her venom is highly deadly, and can replicate the effects of virtually any other toxic substance, each at its most lethal possible extent, and she can spit out this poison as a mist), Power Nullification (Her bile and blood can rapidly eat through and destroy magical defenses and enchanted items, stripping them of all their special magical properties), Reality Warping (A dragon's presence drags everything around it closer to the supernatural, and a dragon can materialize their thoughts into reality), Resistance to acid (She's impervious to the strongest acids on Earth, such as her own), disease (Other dragons can withstand exposure to her diseased bile and survive its effects, while Annis is naturally unaffected), heat (Her scales are completely impervious to temperatures exceeding the heat of the Sun), magic (Her scales are highly resistant to magic, leaving her effectively impervious to its effects, whether thy are direct magical attacks or indirect spells with no physical components), poison (Other dragons can withstand poisons as strong as her own), and radiation (She would be capable of surviving the intense radiation released by a nuclear explosion, as with other dragons)

Attack Potency: Wall level (Annis can easily shear through metal with her iron claws and shatter wood or stone with her bare hands and without difficulty, or effortlessly tear apart opponents, ripping away limbs and crushing skulls), at least Multi-City Block level with magic (She was once a peer of Iris in her prime, but she's grown even stronger than she was in the past, and can create full-sized tornadoes, and cave in or level portions of a town with other spells, such as her Orb of Destruction), higher with Samhain (Under Samhain's effects, her magical power is greatly enhanced). Many of her spells can ignore conventional durability. | At least Town level, likely higher (A dragon is a living disaster, the impact of which can be compared to a nuclear bomb, in both sheer force and long-term effects, with other dragons having the power to cause severe earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and massive explosions comparable to a nuclear event). Her many forms of attack can ignore conventional durability.

Speed: Subsonic (Her movements are blindingly fast, much faster than a human could perceive, and she can deflect bullets with slashes of her claws. She's faster than Iris was in her prime thanks to her rejuvenation) | Subsonic (In this form, Annis can easily track and keep up with mages like Iris, and those who are even faster than her) with Supersonic+ flight speed (She can easily surpass Mach 3 even in short distance flights with minimal time for acceleration).

Lifting Strength: Class 5 (She can lift and throw cars without much issue) | At least Class 100, likely higher (In her draconic form, she can easily lift and toss tanks through the air with a single claw).

Striking Strength: Wall Class (She can easily crush a skull in her hand or with a punch) | At least Town Class, likely higher (A whip of her tail can cause seismic activity that can be felt across a city and cause many portions to collapse).

Durability: Wall level (Iris cannot injure her in close quarters combat and she can easily handle the backlash of her own strength), at least Multi-City Block level with defensive spells, higher with Samhain | At least Town level, likely higher (A dragon such as herself has magical and physical power on the level of a nuclear explosion, capable of withstanding widespread destruction and the most powerful magical attacks. Only another dragon or specialized dragon-slaying weapons can pierce her armor of scales).

Stamina: High. Annis' extensive experience in combat has left her with plentiful endurance, enough energy to expend over the course of long-term fights, fighting through both physical and magical means and pushing herself to her limits over the course of battles that can last for hours, even as these take their toll on her body and soul and even shave off a life or few. It is truly in battle where Annis shines, continuing to fight and push through the worst of her wounds, as she regenerates and fights harder and harder. In her true, draconic form, Annis' stamina is even greater, seemingly without limit.

Range: Standard melee range, tens to hundreds of meters with magic | Hundreds of meters (She's the size of multiple city blocks, though she can grow to smaller sizes), Kilometers with magic (Her most powerful magical attacks can cause devastation on the scale of a nuclear explosion and spread through a city).

Standard Equipment: Her wand / ritual knife.

Intelligence: It is for very good reason that Black Annis is feared as one of the world's most powerful and dangerous witches. Gifted with a ruthless cunning and with no lack in patience, Annis makes for an exceptional planner and improviser, a brilliant and manipulative leader for whom controlling others is almost second nature, through intimidation and sheer, audacious charisma. In combat, Annis is a terrifying thing to behold, incredibly skilled in both close quarters combat and duels of magic, both of which she has no lack of experience in, with her power and ability being so great that for many, many years, there were none who defeated her in fair combat - to be fair, few were foolish enough to attempt such a thing. Her focus on her own physicality has left Annis with particularly extensive knowledge on biological systems, as reflected by her brilliant forays into the field of biological modification magic, particularly in the transformative arena, as ultimately displayed by her greatest spell, which does the impossible to duplicate the birth of a dragon, a feat considered by many to be impossible.

Weaknesses: Annis' regenerative abilities are dependent on her brain, and can thus fail if her brain ceases to function, whether through direct injuries or by cutting off the flow of air enough to cause severe brain damage. Many of her spells require some sort of incantation or ritual, or even a blood sacrifice, with Samhain needing a particularly lengthy ritual. After losing all eight of her extra lives, Annis will be left with her original, mortal soul, which will begin to age at an accelerated rate, leaving her with around thirty years of her life left. Only the souls of other Cat Sìth can be used to replenish her lost lives. | To transform into this state, Annis must undergo a ritual and the sacrifice of one of her lives during Samhain. If she's left on her final, mortal soul, Annis will return to her base form. Her magic resistance can be circumvented if she's injured and her scales punctured by a powerful enough attack.

Key: Base | Maleficent

Abilities
Annis is a Witch, a practitioner of the Left-Hand Path who uses her magic in the name of self-empowerment and gain, breaking taboos and rejecting authority in favor of elevating herself and exercising her agency. Unlike other sects of witchcraft, Annis’ coven and its practices are godless and focus entirely on the self, rather than relying on the invocation of spirits or the reverence of any gods.

This remains Annis’ primary magic of choice, though she often dips her toes in other forms in search of knowledge, demonstrated by an extensive array of varied spells at her disposal, from all sorts of sects - in the end, it all comes back down to the specific brand of the Old Craft, though she also has knowledge in a variety of Runic forms as well. While Annis may lack the animistic leanings of other, more modern witches, her magic's more internal focus has granted her a greater knowledge on the soul.

Thanks to this knowledge, many, many, many years ago, Annis helped in the development of a special ritual that elevated herself and the rest of her coven to a higher level of existence as the immortal Cat Sìth. This has granted her an extra eight lives and suspended her aging, giving her an eternal lifespan that will never corrode. This once kept her at her age at the time she gained this immortality, but Annis has since developed an even more gruesome method to maintain her youth, so now, she is perpetually at the prime of her youth.
 * Resurrection: Whenever Annis is dealt a fatal wound and dies because of it, she will, after a delay ranging from five to thirty minutes in length, depending on the severity of the injury, return to life in a nearby safe location through teleportation, with all previous injuries healed to the point that they are no longer severe, though they will still likely require additional medical attention. Even killing blows as destructive as decapitation, incineration, or the death of the soul cannot stop her from returning to life, and anti-restorative curses will only complicate the healing process. There are no known means by which multiple of a Cat Sìth's lives can be taken at once; even spells that should target multiple souls fail. Annis has a total of eight of these extra lives, giving her nine lives all together; but when all eight are expended, she is left with her original mortal soul and her body will begin aging once more, at an accelerated rate, not so quickly that she would die within even the year, but enough that she would only have around thirty years of her life left.
 * Soultheft: Annis can absorb the souls of any recently deceased beings in her vicinity to replenish her energy, increase her stock of power, and further strengthen her soul. No amount of regular souls gathered in this way can regain a lost life, only one of the nine souls of other Cat Sìth, making such a thing a commodity, one that is hunted down by others in pursuit of prolonging their lifespans even further. To prevent a battle with another of her own kind from dragging on forever, however, Annis has developed a method to prevent an opponent from claiming any of her lost souls.

Over the years, Annis’ experiences have granted her a number of other abilities, those of the sort that would be gained by anyone over the course of a long lifespan with many years spent fighting and handling magic, ranging from the completely natural combat skills anyone who regularly fights would want to develop, to more supernatural abilities that could only arise from exposure to magic.
 * Cursebreaking: Annis’ knowledge of curses - which she boasts to be among the greatest in the world - allows her to analyze and remove them from other objects and people. She can even redirect and negate curses right as they’re cast, having lived through many battles between witches of the Left-Hand Path, which invariably became exchanges of deadly curses. The ability to detect and shoot down curses in high-speed combat is a necessity to survive such a battle.
 * Feline Senses: Annis' natural senses are, in many regards, superior to those of humans by default, providing her with such things as an exceptional sense of smell that can identify individuals, root out substances, and even be used for tracking across short distances, and effective night vision. This awareness is assisted by her whiskers, which act as touch-based sensory organs and can detect vibrations in the air. Her sight is slightly worse in regular daylight conditions, however, and her sense of hearing unremarkable save for its higher registers. All of these senses have been refined by centuries of experience.
 * Sixth Sense: These heightened senses - along with Annis' plentiful experience, particularly in the area of magic and fighting other spellcasters - have granted Annis a sort of "sixth sense", an ability that alerts her to danger whenever it detects potential threats in her surroundings, accomplished by a combination of all of her traditional senses and her magical awareness of her surroundings. It is most effective when magic is involved, notifying her when other magical beings are around and when other magic users are preparing spells; under optimal conditions, she can even identify a spell's potential effects and gauge the threat it presents through a minute, high-speed analysis of the magical energy being put into it, allowing her to respond appropriately. This increases in effectiveness the more dangerous the phenomena in question, with anything that presents an immediate and lethal threat sending a shock-like sensation through Annis’ body, forcing her into action as quickly as possible and accelerating her thought processes to best comprehend what she's dealing with. Though certainly effective, Annis’ magical senses are not as honed as those of her once peer, Morgen - they are, however, better against purely natural phenomena, as Annis’ experience allows her to react quickly by taking note of small, involuntary muscle movements and changes in the air.
 * Close Quarters Combat: Rather unlike the common idea of a magician, Annis has mastered martial arts through years of training and experience, much more than the knowledge that any would gain through normal trials and tribulations, the skills that would gain through truer devotion. Combining this lethal competency with her exceptional strength and speed, lashing out at opponents with claws of cold iron and brutally powerful strikes. Annis’ vicious style belies her incredible skill, making her an extremely dangerous opponent.

Beyond these abilities, Annis has amassed an impressive arsenal of spells over her long lifespan. Many of these spells require incantations, symbols, or some other ritual to be used at their full power, but Annis has the experience and knowledge needed to circumvent these things and cast weaker - though still potent - variations. Often, due to her basis in witchcraft, her spells require a blood sacrifice, something that is a bit harder to circumvent.

Though one is not necessary at this level, Annis wields a short black rod, a nameless wand that she uses to focus her immense magical power into something that she can control a little bit easier. This rod is made of iron, not wood, and can be used as a knife in close quarters, giving it many of the qualities of an athame, a ritual knife; Annis uses it for both functions.
 * Lævateinn: Annis burns a series of runes into her wand, causing it to take on its “true” form, extending the stick into a large, blade-like staff that can be used both as an instrument of magic and as a sword.

As a witch, Annis is very well-versed in curses, the basis of offensive magic, spells meant to bring harm and misfortune to others. Curses can be used through a variety of vectors, from as little as a single sentence spelling out the curse’s aim to a more complex ritual that may use an effigy or a part of the target’s body to afflict them from a distance. Curses are empowered by the malice their user feels, both in general and for their target, and Annis is not lacking when it comes to the negative emotions curses thrive on. Many curses are improvised when a situation presents itself, and Annis has the skill to transmit them through more subtle and quick means.
 * Evil Eye: One of most effective ways to transmit a curse, the Evil Eye is simply a particularly malefic glare backed up by magic power. This glare can afflict a target with virtually any of Annis’ curses, acting through eye contact, or, when used against an unaware target, by encoding the curse into their shadow. These curses can be the more common, minor inconveniences that Annis likes to use for petty reasons, but can be powerful enough to cause serious injury, illness, and misfortune, potentially even inducing death when used with enough malice and force.
 * Flay:' Annis’ signature spell and her favorite, a curse that grabs onto an opponent with invisible, intangible claws, sinking them into their skin regardless of distance. These claws violently rip every layer of skin from Annis’ target’s body with a single, brutal tearing motion, leaving nothing but raw, bleeding musculature. This spell can be triggered with a single Evil Eye, or a simple, deadly touch, but Annis can force her opponents to live in this state through her advanced understanding of biological magic.


 * Anti-Restoration: Curses that reject the healing of wounds, both through natural and magical means, inhibiting even advanced processes such as regeneration. These curses can be imprinted into specific wounds to prevent them from recovering properly, but this effect can be broken by destroying the curse itself or when Annis decides to cancel its effects.
 * Contagion: A family of curses, those that afflict their victim with illness through a variety of pathogens. These diseases can be as minor as the common cold or as devastating as the likes of malaria, the bubonic plague, and smallpox, bypassing regular precautions through sheer magical force and malicious intent. Annis can also create entirely new pathogens with new traits if she so desires, but this takes more time and effort.
 * Dominus: An incredibly advanced and dangerous curse that allows for the complete control of others, body and mind, on a scale far greater than ordinary hypnosis. A victim can be directed through silent, mental commands, which they follow to the letter and to the best of their ability. Multiple targets can be controlled at once with this curse, which Annis uses liberally to pursue her goals, with hundreds of thralls under her absolute control.
 * Malmutate: Irradiates Annis’ target with significant amounts of magical radiation, causing unpleasant, often detrimental, if not lethal, mutations and failures in their biological systems. Annis’ biological specialities allow her to use this curse with surgical precision.
 * Rust: A curse that causes metal to rapidly corrode and fall apart, rendering armor and weaponry useless as it clatters to the ground as a rusted wreck.
 * Torment: An especially horrific curse that causes unspeakable pain, so intense that a victim can be driven insane or catatonic by the agony, if the shock it causes doesn’t kill them before this. This is one of Annis’ favorite curses, and she uses it whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Besides these curses, Annis knows a number of other spells with less inherently malicious intents behind them, with a particular speciality of hers lying in the manipulation of biological systems. Though she is a witch of the Left-Hand Path first and foremost, Annis is competent enough in magic of the Right-Hand Path, proving especially competent when it comes to healing magic, thanks to her biological knowledge. Healing: Spells that focus on healing and restoring harm… or otherwise directly affecting biology. Mental: Spells that focus on mental effects, such as telepathic and telekinetic effects. Offense: Spells made for combat and offensive purposes, but that are not curses. Utility: Spells focusing on giving simple but useful effects with high utility.
 * -|Healing=
 * Regeneration: Annis rapidly accelerates and amplifies her own natural healing, leaving her capable of quickly recovering from wounds such as the loss of a limb or severe organ damage. As it is based on her own brain, this regeneration can only be circumvented and a fatal wound inflicted by inflicting severe damage to her brain, whether directly or by cutting off enough air.
 * Suspended Animation: Annis forces her target to remain alive through fatal injuries by suspending and/or rerouting their vital functions, making it so that her victims live through even the worst damage she has to offer, while she can live through otherwise injuries through an extended healing period.
 * Vivisect: Manifesting intangible, invisible claws within her target, Annis uses them to perform miniscule, internal alterations to their biology and body structure with surgical precision… for better or worse. She can enhance an ally’s biology with redundant organs and strengthened muscle fibers, or lobotomize a victim and reduce them to a motionless ball of powerless flesh.
 * -|Mental=
 * Blank: This mind-affecting spell temporarily blanks the minds of all targets within Annis’ surroundings, preventing them from properly processing or remembering anything they see and causing them to stop in place, waiting for their minds to start again, or move out of the location. With greater power and focus, the spell can be used with razor precision to remove and rewrite the memories of several individuals at a time.
 * Brain Feed: This spell saps the brainpower of a target, leeching it away for Annis’ own use, increasing her computing power and processing speed. When used for long periods of time, this can cause brain damage in Annis’ target.
 * Hypnosis: The most basic level of mind control, which can be triggered in others through eye contact, catching Annis’ targets’ attention and making them more susceptible to suggestion. With this in effect, commands can be given and carried out until the effect wears off, which generally takes about an hour.
 * Illusions: Through a variety of distinct spells, Annis can create incredibly lifelike illusions of many sorts, often effectively controlling what her victims see with mirages that can fool every sense.
 * Mind Probe: Allows Annis to invade the minds of others, breaking past their defenses with carefully focused magical energy to sift through their thoughts and memories.
 * Telekinesis: Also known as Poltergeist, this spell can be used to manipulate, lift, and strike objects from a distance. Annis’ skill in telekinesis allows her to use it offensively with greater ease, throwing opponents around, targeting their vulnerable points with precise telekinetic pressure, creating crushing force, and fashioning her telekinesis into a fine, sharp point to use as a scalpel.
 * Telepathy: A spell that Annis can use to transmit her thoughts to others within a fairly sizeable distance, allowing her to communicate across a great range and do so wordlessly.
 * -|Offensive=
 * Dis: A composite spell that envelops a broad variety of earth and metal-basd magics, which Annis is particularly skilled in, allowing her to materialize earth and all sorts of metals for use in combat. She can conjure weapons, armor, shields, and brutally sharp spikes with which to impale opponents. Annis’ iron claws were fashioned through this magic, and she can transmute other parts of her body as well, such as rendering her fur into razor wool or barbed wire.
 * Lightning Bolt: Annis energizes her paw and blasts her target with a bolt of high-power electricity, which can arc to other targets and explode with punishing force.
 * Orb of Destruction: An extremely powerful destructive spell that conjures a sphere of pure energy, which Annis can then set upon an opponent. When used normally, the orb simply drifts towards its target, and can be easily avoided, but when launched, it soars through the air at high speeds, detonating on contact with the first thing it touches.
 * Whirlwind: Annis whips a small torrent of intense winds around her, a small, localized tornado that can deflect projectiles, causing them to veer off course, and slash apart victims. At her full power, she can actually create full-sized tornadoes capable of tearing apart buildings.
 * -|Utility=
 * Samhain: After an extensive ritual, requiring the ritualistic shedding of blood and a number of materials, Annis can alter the liminality of her surroundings, warping reality to break the boundary between the real and unreal. Within this space, Annis can manifest her thoughts as reality, and the effectiveness of all supernatural phenomena is greatly enhanced, bringing her magic to its peak.


 * Alarm: Wards an area or object so that when another being enters or touches the subject, Annis is alerted by a silent, mental alarm, or a more audible ringing sound.
 * Animate Dead: This fundamental necromantic spell can be used to raise the dead as undead beings, typically zombies or skeletons, which Annis has control over, using them as support. Annis can control a fairly large number of undead at a time.
 * Blink: The most basic form of teleportation, which instantly transports Annis a short distance. Usually, this spell is imprecise, but with greater concentration, Annis can greatly increase its accuracy.
 * Cloak: An invisibility spell that hides Annis’ presence, preventing her from being seen. When used with greater power and focus, its effects are greatly enhanced, hiding Annis’ magical signature, scent, footprints, and any small sounds she makes, such as breathing or her footsteps.
 * Door: By drawing an opening - such as a door or window - onto a surface, Annis can then move through this gateway to appear at a visualized destination, one that she’s been to before. Regardless of the distance, the journey is instant.
 * Mute: Annis “mutes” her surroundings, greatly dimming sounds and preventing them from carrying over greater distances. When focus on a specific opponent, Annis can prevent her target from speaking, forcing them to cast spells without incantations.
 * Obscure: Annis floods her surrounding with a thick, misty darkness that can be used to inhibit a victim’s senses, while she is unaffected.
 * Passwall: Annis can alter her body structure to allow herself to pass through walls and other inanimate obstructions as if they were not there at all.
 * Scry: Annis can use any reflective or glass surface to view a desired location from a great distance, so long as she is capable of visualizing it accurately or has some sort of trinket from the original location to aid in the ritual. This can be used to spy on individuals if Annis has an object associated with them or a part of their body in her possession.
 * Shapeshift: Using her mastery of biological modification, Annis alters her own body to transform into whatever form she desires. She can take the form of other beings and animals, with one of her favorite transformations being into that of a large, quadrupedal panther. Annis can gain the abilities of her various transformations without fully shapeshifting, such as growing extra limbs, wings for flight, and stinging tails.
 * Spatial Anchor: Locks down space around Annis’ target to prevent them from escaping through teleportation of any kind, trapping them. The abnormal space this creates makes moving normally difficult as well.

Annis’ extensive knowledge of biological magic and extreme power are expressed in full force by her ultimate spell and transformation, known only as Maleficent. This spell can only be performed during Samhain, at the height of the world’s liminality, as part of a ritual that requires Annis to surround herself in a circle of her own blood and rip out her heart, sacrificing one of her nine lives to produce the energy needed. Her disembodied, still beating heart throbs harder and harder as it grows, suddenly exploding into rapidly growing flesh that takes the form of an immense, writhing serpentine beast - a living cataclysm, the essence of disaster. A dragon, a péist.

Dragons are magical beings of pure destruction, the embodiments of ruin; when a dragon manifests, the world changes. Lives are lost en masse in an event that has the impact of a nuclear explosion, wreaking such havoc and leaving serious long-term consequences even after they’ve been slain. To transform into this state is perhaps the greatest feat in all of modern magic, and for Annis to retain all her reasoning and magic makes it even more impressive. She can even reverse the transformation at will, though, if she is left on her final, mortal soul, she’ll return to normal, as her limited mortal lifespan cannot withstand such a level of energy.
 * Boundary Breaker: The immense magical power of a dragon breaks reality, skewing all of its surroundings closer and closer to the supernatural, bringing Samhain’s effects everywhere it goes and greatly strengthening magic. This allows Annis to simply make her thoughts reality.
 * Dragonsblood: Like the blood of many a dragon, Annis’ blood in this form is highly poisonous and corrosive, so much so that any weapon that actually pierces her scales will be destroyed in a matter of seconds, even enchanted ones, stripping them of their magical properties. It carries much the same properties, diseased and toxic, as her bile and venom.
 * Dragonscale: The densely packed, thick scales of any dragon are highly resistant to all forms of attack, repelling all but the most powerful spells and possessing temperature resistance so great that the heat of the sun is nothing more than a warm breeze. Even spells with no physical or spiritual component are rejected. However, these resistances stem from the scales, and if one has the power to gouge into a dragon’s scales, the resulting opening can be exploited with magic.
 * Pestilent Breath: The dark serpent Annis has become is a dragon born from the disaster of plague and outbreak. Her jaws constantly slaver with thick, corrosive green saliva and bile that rises up in her throat without prompting, each drop running with disease; every disease life has ever faced, and a billion more. These pathogens are nurtured deep within her belly, and Annis’ knowledge allows her to modify and develop more on the fly, adapting to every opponent with new strains, each deadlier and more resilient than the last. With a retching motion, Annis can vomit up a stream of this highly flammable bile, causing it to burst into flame, with the substance sticking to a victim like napalm, corroding and burning them down into bubbling flesh while exposing them to countless illnesses. The heat of this foul, boiling fluid can, at its hottest, surpass the temperature of the sun, like the center of a nuclear explosion. Thanks to its heat, acidity, and magical properties, the bile can quickly eat away at anything it touches, stripping away enchantments to leave magical items useless and magic users defenseless. This breath weapon doesn’t need to strike a target to be fatal, as the bacteria and viruses it leaves in its wake are ridiculously tough, reproduce rapidly, and are incredibly dangerous. Even a single stream can render its surroundings uninhabitable for years, but repeated uses over the course of a battle, with diseases spread by the beating of Annis’ wings? The long-term damage to life and ecosystems would be comparable to that of a nuclear explosion, and could be felt worldwide.
 * Venomous Worm: Thanks to her draconic form and its nature, Annis has developed a highly deadly venom, stored in large glands that pump it into her mouth, leaving it to bubble and drip out from between her teeth with her saliva and bile. Like her vomit, it is highly flammable, but, rather than be ridden with disease, it is simply the most toxic substance on the planet, with a single drop proving fatal for virtually anything, let alone the quantities that would be injected through a bite. The venoms’ effects vary depending on each and every drop, but they can duplicate the effects of any earthly venom, on top of countless other payloads, which trigger at random or at Annis’ own discretion, each brought to its most fatal form. Rather than just rely on biting and spitting, Annis can spray the venom as a mist that dissipates throughout her surroundings, seeping into the air and the earth, and she can transform her tail into a stinger to inject it from a distance as well.

Trivia

 * Annis intentionally chose Ó for her family name, rather than the traditional female Ní.