Daughter of Hekate, and Magus Extraordinaire
Tanith is a slim lass, 5'5 and 112 pounds. Silver-blonde hair lazily lays down to her breast, a messy fringe occasionally getting in her face, and looking to obscure her unnatural cherry red eyes. Her skin is colored a pale white, barely touched by the rays of the sun. (It's usually rainy where she's from, okay? Not like she gets out much anymore, either, but still.)
An off-kilter style pervades Tanith's wardrobe. Clear signs of wear and (very literal) tear are on almost all of her clothes, leading her to often wearing two layers at a time. One of her favorite black blouses hardly even covers her chest anymore, rips having created stripes of shredded fabric near the collar. She loses parts of her sleeves frequently, as well, leaving them tattered and pulled overly-wide. The only thing that keeps her slender hands unexposed is a pair of leather gloves with pitch-black plates on the back.
A perceptive girl who can see the world and people as they are, Tanith has a tendency to stand out, and not always in a good way. A contemplative enigma at best, and a weird, unapproachable stranger at worst, she chooses her words carefully, if she uses any at all. Her lack of reservation and preference for wearing torn and ripped clothes don't help.
That said, she doesn't exactly choose her words for the sake of those around her; rather, she selects the ones that will get her point across, a no-frills honesty in her seldom speech that makes her only more difficult to understand below the surface. Likewise, Tanith is very cool and calm, unperturbed by monstrosities or horrors, and she finds some enjoyment in putting her ideas into action. Sometimes, though, it's like she's just off in her own little world, concentrating on something only she can see.
Daughter of personal trainer Keane Cross and the goddess Hekate, Tanith was raised in Bristol, England, and from the day she was brought home, eyes opened for the first time, they just didn't seem to work like normal. She'd find herself in the company of monsters and other inhuman things. Dogs, people, the birds in the sky. Everything was usually just...
off. People were way too big, there were faces in the wind and water, rabid dogs were more like hyenas, and some of the birds had human bodies. Something about Keane always kept them away when they got near her, and if she really tried, she could see why everyone was so confused by her descriptions. Given, her descriptions weren't exactly good as a child, but it was like her father knew more than he was letting on. Eventually, she just got used to their presence.
At first, it was just interactivity. Tanith didn't talk to others much; and when she did, she used few words to do it. Being called a schizo isn't funny, according to Keane. She gravitated away from people, being someone who listened more often than not, and generally only looked like she was participating when she didn't have to talk, like during P.E. or recess. She got into reading, and liked to spend lunch time in the library. Fantasy novels, and books about world religions. Some of the creatures described in the books fell in line with the things Tanith had seen for years, like one of her teachers who had goat legs, but unfortunately she was still learning some of the words.
For Science class on a rainy day, the class was in the middle of reading aloud from their textbook, and the pages of then-seven year old Tanith's book set themselves ablaze shortly after her turn came to pass. It didn't take long to put out the small fire, but the teacher couldn't help questioning her and what happened. Her father and the satyr managed to get the attention off of her when they were called in—a fault of the book, though Tanith didn't understand the explanation. At least she wasn't the only one who saw weird things for once.
Of course, that left a weird taste in her mouth, but she wasn't old enough to be getting answers. She started exploring it on her own time, and took quickly to setting objects on fire, like leaves and graded worksheets. She started using the books she read as reference, and the power at her fingertips became as natural as breathing. When she wasn't at school studying or playing games at recess, she took as much time as she could to keep learning about her magic, or spent some time with her dad after he got off work.
By the time she was eleven, Tanith abandoned her incantations for efficiency, teaching herself different kinds of magic based on all of her books from the library. The elements were under her control, with nothing out of her reach as long as she put enough effort into it. With all the reading and studying she'd been doing, she managed to be years ahead of her class, too, even as the English language became increasingly irritating to stare at for too long. She started taking time off practice to try making friends again, with some success.
A little further along, things really started to go downhill. Between the time school let out and Keane came home from work, Tanith started being targeted by many of the monsters nobody else could see. Unlike her training, however, she had a habit of being chased and attacked in public. Even with something so strange, people only stayed out of the way, and they actually watched on when she decided to fight back for once. To her surprise, they cheered after she destroyed a chimera with spears of ice and stone.
She adjusted her senses, and discovered cameras; actors who didn't exist amongst the bystanders, convincing the latter to be extras in a fake television show. She looked like she was dressed in a frilly magical outfit, too. One of the similarly-dressed "actresses" gave her a few words she didn't hear, and Tanith left, turning a corner and disappearing to go home.
It was really quite exciting, she thought, being cheered on by people against monsters that they could finally see the way she did. Being a hero. However, it drew way too much attention for her liking, and getting too heavily involved with others again was the last thing she wanted when she used to be the butt of jokes for the way she saw things. Sadly, she knew it would keep happening. So, when she wasn't at school or in the middle of killing monsters every so often as the star of some kind of magical girl series that would never come out, Tanith became a shut-in, additionally teaching herself how to repair her clothes for future attacks. She was trying to avoid being in the spotlight any more than necessary. Especially since it's more like it was being thrown in her face.
Insistently prompted by his daughter, Keane finally talked to her about all he could one night after dinner, her skepticism confirmed, but neither understood why she was such a juicy target—a question she would have loved answered. Still, he affirmed that he shared her ability to see the truth, and gave her some more details about her mother. He also gave Tanith a gift she'd left after her birth: pitch-black metal plates, attached to a pair of gloves, that he'd used throughout her childhood to deter the inevitable hunt for over a decade. The next day, her goat-legged teacher spoke with her, as well, working with her father to arrange her move to the U.S. and Three Fates.
Sorcery | Tanith is a natural at using magic, capable of using her reality-bending powers without a word. Although her magic's strength is apparently diminished when she isn't using an incantation, she's still proven to be a little
too effective for a typical demigod—especially after dusk—and her spoken spells are all the more dangerous as a result.
Stygian Summoning | Most of the essence of monsters killed by her magic are absorbed into the Stygian plates on the back of her gloves, the rest destroyed. Akin to necromancy, Tanith can draw the essence back out of her gloves with her magic, and create smaller mistforms of these monsters under her command.
Selective Mist Response | Having an incredibly high resistance to the influence of the Mist, not even Tanith's mother has been able to fool her more than once. Tanith can naturally detect the effects of the Mist around her, but she has to put energy into experiencing it herself, or even knowing what the effects are.
