Tear Jerker / The Forsaken Children

• The four main changelings' back stories are pretty depressing.
  • Pete's parents were gunned down in the middle of the streets by the Russian mafia.
  • Ash's dad died in a climbing accident while they were on a hiking trip.
    • Even more depressing, while we know what happened to his dad, nothing is mentioned about his mom. Either she's dead, or she was still alive at the time and thinks that both he son and husband are dead.
  • Mary was adopted by her step mother just to be given over to her matron elemental in place of her own biological daughter.
  • Ray's is probably the worst, as it's implied he was nearly raped by a corrupt priest.
• A big reason why Earnest did everything he did from murdering his dad, to trying to murder Leon and the others, was because he was trying to avenge the death of his mother at his dad's hands.
  • Towards the end of the third story, it's revealed that he keeps a firebox containing his mom's dress and a picture of him and his mom when he was ten. It's also stated that he would often cradle the dress in his arms and start crying into it, asking the picture if everything he was planning was worth it. Sick and twisted as he might be, that moment shows Earnest for what he really is: a scared little boy who just wants his mom back.
  • The last sentence in the story really hammers home just how alone Earnest is now that he managed to kill his own dad, the only other wiccan he ever knew.
  That night at Blackdale Academy had been one filled with the roars of monsters and the clashing of metal on bone, but all these sounds were unheard by anyone else on the campus. The only sound that everyone was able to hear that night was the loud, baritone sobs of the mundane worlds last wiccan.