Carmina Montgomery

"As the night spreads, there is nothing to draw hope from but the darkness".- Carmina Montgomery

Carmina Montgomery is a struggling artist that dwells within the blackest of blacks and copes with her pain through art. She is a character in the ParaVerse, who was first mentioned in Don't Let the Darkness Consume You in several flashbacks of Mary Jane Fitzgerald's past, before making her first official appearance in Life in the Mines as the deuteragonist.

In Life in the Mines, Carmina was a gifted black ink surrealism artist and writer that was struggling with her inner demons and is heavily bullied by Minerva's Pantheon due to her incapacity to create success without The Minerval, an addictive concoction that empowers creativity at the cost of humanity. After sighting the rich club attempting to persuade the Calico family into taking their talents under their wing, Carmina would do whatever it takes to avoid them lose their humanity.

Background
Carmina Montgomery's past was hell on earth from the start. On April 5th, 1958, her parents, the warlock Roderick Montgomery and his wife Melina, were assaulted by a group of masked gunmen that broke into their village home in Niagara Falls, New York. Roderick sacrificed himself by taking the bullets, while Melina swiftly escaped with the infant Carmina. However, one of the gunmen shoots Melina's leg, before taking Carmina off her arms. The gunman attempts to kill Carmina, but he was stopped by a local neighbor, fending him off. The man willingly took care of Carmina in his secluded village home. Over the years that she grew up, Carmina developed her passion for art and she sketched the landscapes of the Niagara Falls while feeding the crows that lived in the tree next to her home.

In 1971, Carmina met her cousin Mary Jane Fitzgerald for the first time ever, who at the time was in the Firefly Summer Camp with her parents. The two became a beloved duo ever since then, doing entertaining activities together and giving happy days to the campers in that time. However, after Randy Cavanaugh slaughtered the campers and the Fitzgerald couple during the New Moon of October 25th, 1973, Carmina ran away from the massacre grounds, and was nowhere to be found. Abigail Kraenen was the last person that saw Carmina, and she felt guilty that she couldn't tell Mary Jane about Carmina's fate.

Carmina thrived through harsh times during her pilgrimage back to her former home in Niagara Falls, having to take food out of markets in order to survive. Arriving in the village, Carmina only found the dead body of her former father figure, leaving her devastated. While attempting to jump off the falls in order to kill herself, a flock of crows suddenly appeared and began to encircle Carmina. They stared at her and she stared at them confused, but felt that the crows cared about her well-being. Giving life another chance, Carmina was inspired by her ordeal and used the experience in her work.

At some point of time, Carmina settled in Brooke's Lake, Massachusetts, where she launched her Black Ink Surrealist art, which became her signature art form. Several years later, Carmina started painting large scale murals on street corners, adding poetry to it, which drew the attention of other local artists Ashton Cortez, Zoe Starks and Brodie Danhausen. They soon became close friends together.

Appearance
Carmina Montgomery is a tall and skinny caucasian woman with long wavy black hair and beautiful blue eyes. She wears a tattered black dress with decorative silver pieces resembling feathers made from leather.

Following her transformation to a Hybrid, Carmina's appearance drastically changed. The color of her eyes became pitch-black, in similar fashion to a crow with black liquid streams coming from the eye zones. Her severed hands turned into ink-like replacements and streams of black liquid stain the arms. She painted her eye zones and lower jaw with crimson red, and also continuing using her iconoclastic black and silver dress as a remember from her past self.

Personality
Carmina Montgomery is an artist with an incredibly strong intellect and a sharp, witty demeanor. She has developed the ability of being independent and self-sufficient. Despite the outstanding talent she was gifted when painting and/or reciting poems, Carmina never had the desire of becoming popular or rich. Her quest was always cope with her pain through art and reflect the way she sees the world. With it, Carmina tends to be very honest, negative and blunt, especially when talking about the flaws of society.

Despite her talented career, Carmina is treated with disgust and indifference by the rich artist club Minerva's Pantheon, due to the fact that Carmina is a humble artist not looking for money and power.

Story
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Style and Work
Carmina Montgomery is a gifted painter of black ink surrealism and a skilled writer and poet. She uses an unnatural ink that is so wretched and dark that it seems to pull in light around it. Her poetry style is mainly based on the "most horrifying flaws" that society has.

Paintings

 * "Marvelled Psyche": A nude self-portrait in which Carmina depicts a rotting darkness growing outwards from within. This is the most famous and well-known painting of Carmina, receiving very much praise of critics alike.
 * "Enter Sandman": A little girl suffocating into a pit of anacondas, while holding her teddy bear.
 * "Coco": An abstract painting of a pitch-black, terrifying-looking crow that seems to have small fangs in its beak, in front of a crow eye-shaped moon.
 * "Grim Embrace": A giant mural depicting Minerva's Pantheon as a grim reaper corrupting the heads of three people with a dark purple liquid, referencing The Minerval. This painting sparked a lot of controversy among the town and caused a wide array of death threats towards Carmina.

Powers and Abilities
Besides her gifted talent in art, Carmina Montgomery is secretly a witch that has supernatural powers and is able to cast many spells. These powers were inherited from her father, the warlock Roderick Montgomery, who is a member of the mysterious and benevolent Circle of Eden cult.


 * Melanokinesis - Carmina can create, shape and manipulate ink, including moving ink, change the consistency or viscosity between solid and liquid, even if the ink is printed, written, or tattooed.
 * Psychography - The ability to produce written words without consciously writing. The words arise from a subconscious, spiritual or supernatural source.
 * Avian Empathy - Over the years, Carmina has developed a keen affinity for crows, specifically with Coco.
 * Alpha Call - As the Paramount of Crows, Carmina can let out an extremely loud and powerful call. Upon hearing the said call, the crows would immediately come to Carmina's aid.
 * Enhanced Strength - Following her transformation to a Hybrid, Carmina possesses a great amount of supernatural strength, allowing her to easily pierce through one's back or chest.
 * Ink Claws - Following her hands getting severed and casting a Soul-Merging Spell, Carmina developed a pair of hand-like extremities that appear to be made of ink. These claws are sharp enough to rip flesh.
 * Conjuration - The ability to conjure objects and beings from nothing or another location. Carmina is capable of conjuring ink-like crows and snakes.
 * Telekinesis - The ability to manipulate objects with the power of the mind.
 * Healing - Carmina can heal wounds and injuries that would often result in death.
 * Illusion Manipulation - The ability to create, shape and manipulate illusions, causing others to see, hear, touch, smell and/or taste things which do not actually exist or cause them to perceive things differently from what they truly are.
 * Resurrection - The ability to bring the deceased back to life.
 * Aging Immunity - Carmina can stay young forever or at least never suffer the ravages of aging. Because of this, she will always be at her physical prime.
 * Spellcraft - The affinity for casting spells and performing rituals.
 * Scrying Spell - A spell used by Carmina to find Amy Calico. Light a few white candles around a bathroom and hold a lighted silver candle above a bathtub full of water and say the incantation while touching the water. The images will then appear in the water.
 * Pyrokinesis Spell - A spell that can generate fire when recited. Carmina used this spell to ingite the ink she filled on Electra Sheridan's wine cup, which eventually killed her.
 * Soul-Merging Spell - Moments before she could have died, Carmina casted a strange spell on herself to merge her soul with her crow mascot, Coco. This eventually allowed Carmina to transform into a human-crow Hybrid with ink-like extremities and crow eyes.

Quotes

 * Regarding to "Enter Sandman": "As you try to sleep, the darkness of night swallows you up and your imagination conjures up".
 * To Amy Calico, regarding the crows: "Perhaps, covered in darkness as I was, they saw me as one of their own".

Trivia

 * It was confirmed that Carmina Montgomery is the maternal cousin of Mary Jane Fitzgerald that was present days prior to the New Moon Massacre of 1973.
 * She is based on Carmina Mora from Dead by Daylight: Portrait of a Murder (2021), TB Karen from American Horror Story: Red Tide (2021), and Maisie Lockwood from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018).
 * She had a mascot named Coco, a legendary American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) with grey flower-like patterns on its wings and small fangs in its beak.
 * Ultimately, Coco willingly gave its life to allow Carmina use the Soul-Merging Spell on her and eventually become what she is.
 * Carmina is the only known Hybrid in the ParaVerse that was created by supernatural means.
 * Regarding her view of society, Carmina cited the Latin proverb "Homo homini lupus est", which means "a man is a wolf to another man".
 * The Black Ink Surrealism art that Carmina is well-known for was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, Edvard Munch, and Francis Bacon, artists known for their macabre work. Her favorite painting is "The Scream".
 * Carmina is very similar to Mary Jane Fitzgerald in several ways: both are the last of their families, both have survived their tragic pasts, both see society as bad, immoral, and corrupted, and both are the attraction of a group of creatures (the Crows see Carmina as their paramount, while Spirits see Mary Jane as their protector).
 * Despite their similarities, according to Brooke Redwood, Carmina was intended to be the counterpart of Mary Jane. The evidence behind this is that Carmina is attracted to darkness and her attitude is negative and downhearted, while Mary Jane is attracted to light and her behavior is positive and uplifting.
 * It was revealed that the ink that Carmina uses for her paintings is not water-based, which explains why it is flammable.
 * Carmina's painting "Enter Sandman" is a reference to Metallica's song of the same name and the poster of Anacondas: Hunt of the Blood Orchid (2004).