Three days in and Ander could feel his body begging for him to stop, Hayden didn’t hold back when she trained him, her logic was, “In a real fight you don’t hold back so don’t do it when you train” and he saw the wisdom in her words but he wished that she wouldn’t use spells that hurt so much. He had fallen into a routine since they began, he trained with Hayden till Eric and the others finished their lessons for the day then spent time with them and even with the approaching battle that Hayden was going to start Ander somehow felt a sense of calm.

He didn’t know why he felt calm, because it was unlike him to be this calm before a major battle and yet here he was with no worries about what was to come. He had thought that maybe it was because it was his choice this time that he didn’t feel the regret he normally felt, but that would mean that he was finally doing something that he wanted, that he was free to choose his own path; the thought that that path was not the one his mother wanted him to walk no longer bothered him because all he seemed to care about these days was making his brother and Hayden happy.

“Today we’ll work on your speed, you’re too slow to even keep up with a hunter” Hayden said when the last of the kids went to the classroom in the house, it was on the second floor and far enough away that she didn’t watch herself when she spoke.

Outside in the clearing Ander watched as Hayden showed him something he had never thought of, “Don’t waste time making sure your ranged attacks hit, just send them flying and concentrate on your opponent” she was levitating three branches in front of her, how she did it Ander didn’t know. “In the old days a battle between witches would be decided by whoever could finish chanting their spell first, a few years after that though a witch which we now call the Inventor created the first enchanted item. Enchanted items which we enchant with a spell, like your rings you use to fight; this way of fighting is quick and easy but it is weaker than if you would have taken the time to chant out the spell yourself” Ander listened carefully, he already knew all of this but it opened up a way for him to ask the question he was dying to ask.

“How do you cast spells then, it seems like you’re casting but never say a word and yet somehow you cast spells so powerful that it would take days to prepare?” Hayden was wearing her mischievous look again and by now he knew that it meant that she was going to impress him. “I had one of my teeth enchanted some years back, it lets me chant faster and almost completely silent” and of course that would impress him, not even his mother had ever shown any sign that she had used something like that, “Is that even possible?” that same look told him that it was.

Hayden opened her mouth but no sound came out, instead the wind picked up and kept getting stronger until suddenly she stopped and it died down, “It’s called Wind Whisper or Singing, me and a few witches created this and other ways of casting spells quickly. It was our way of attaining power, our way of becoming the best” Ander now understood why not even his mother had used this kind of magic, they never told anyone, “Are you going to teach me to do that?” the same look stayed as she shook her head, “No, I’m going to teach you something much more dangerous. I’m going to teach you silent casting” the forbidden way of casting a spell, just thinking what you want done and it happens but there was a reason it was against the rules, one slip in concentration and the spell might misfire.

“Now then, let’s begin” those words had start the days training that almost had him killing himself several times, he would think of the spell, cast it and hold it for a while but every time Hayden would do something to distract him and most of the time it worked.

Hayden would make the bushes or trees move which made Ander think someone was watching and he would stop casting, and other times she would just barely touch him so that he shivered and lost control of the spell he had been casting; the woman did her very best to distract him. It had taken him most of the day just to start small controlled fires before he couldn’t hold the spell; it was almost like he was learning to use magic from the very beginning again.

Hayden trained him in silent casting for five days before he got the hang of it, “Don’t use this method except as a last resort, it is forbidden for a reason and the heat of battle proves that, just one lapse and you could kill all of us” Ander knew the repercussions of using this method and he hoped that he didn’t have to use it.

For the next week she pushed him in mock fights again, she forced him to use his trump card several times and always only when she really tried to kill him but she never used her full power against him, she never used her dogs even. “You’re holding back” he once said, of course she knocked him on his ass afterwards but she knew that it was true, she was afraid of using her full power against him because of the last time she had gone all out.

They had spent so long training for the battle that they didn’t make much time for anything else, and though Ander tried he never really got anywhere because each time she would pull some sort of stunt or just do the same thing she had done on their first day of training. “How about dinner tonight” he asked after training was over for the day and they were heading back, she looked at him with the look that he had come to love most of all of her looks, “If you can beat me mañana than we can go out, otherwise we keep going until you can show me your worth it” he knew she was just teasing but still he couldn’t help but feel a little hurt, though he had fire in his eyes and he had something to work for now that gave him that little extra push to not hold back against her and it won him his date night.

“Where do you think they sneak off to?” Maddie asked once during lunch, “Some place you can’t walk in on them” Drew teased and saw the girl’s cheeks heat up. The two kept bickering and didn’t notice Eric’s look of concern, he hasn’t told anyone but he had begun seeing things again, and what he saw this time worried him.

The boy walked off without Drew and Maddie noticing, he had to clear his head and he didn’t know a better way than going for a walk and getting some fresh air. He walked to a large old tree in the woods, he had followed Hayden to it once long ago and ever since then came here when he wanted to think because he didn’t think anyone else knew about it.

“Why do I see this?” he asked aloud, he somehow thought the tree would tell him, form a face and tell him about all of the secrets that he knew the others kept, but it didn’t and he found that he had hoped it would. Closing his eyes again Eric saw the scene play out in front of him as if he was really there, the orphanage was burning, he didn’t know how or why but he somehow just knew that it wasn’t an accident. The scene kept playing out, he saw his brother, he saw Ander running towards him out of the corner of his eye but he couldn’t look away from the flames and then suddenly the ground all around him turned black as if it had died before the scene ended, “Is it the future?” he asked in a barely there whisper.

He didn’t know it until he heard voices calling for him that it had become night, the dark sky overhead held barely any stars and the moon itself was hidden behind clouds, “Little boys shouldn’t be alone in these woods at night” a voice said, a voice which sounded menacing and cold. He tried to get up but the roots of the tree were binding his feet even as he watched, “Haven’t had a treat in so long, and never the blood of one of the firsts before” the same voice said but this time Eric knew where it came from, the tree had spoken to him and now he had this sick feeling that it was going to eat him, “That’s right little boy” his fear only increased when she answered his thoughts.

Closer and closer the roots pulled him until they started to pull down when his feet hit its bark, he clawed and screamed, though he found nowhere for his hands to grab and he didn’t make a sound even though he was screaming at the top of his lungs. Suddenly lightning shot out of the dark and hit the tree and he then heard a scream but it wasn’t his, the tree was screaming in pain as the lightning kept striking it, looking from the tree Eric saw something he knew couldn’t be real, Ander came walking out of the darkness of the woods, his eyes held nothing but the promise of death and he was focusing that death at the tree, but what Eric really couldn’t believe were the bolts of lightning that shot out of his left hand; the image of his brother faded though until in a flash he woke up near the tree again only this time it was the same it had always been, just a plain old tree.

“A nightmare” he said aloud and looked around, then he heard people calling his name or rather Hayden and Ander calling his name. He got up and looked around and then pinpointed which direction their voices were coming from before making his way towards them, and it wasn’t long before he saw the lights from their flashlights. If Eric had looked around while it had been day out he would have seen the cut roots by the base of the tree and the burn marks that bark had hastily grown over, but he didn’t and so when he met up with Hayden and Ander he didn’t ask them about the new secret they now kept from him, instead he embraced them both in a hug, apologised and got scolded and was made to promise never to go out into the woods that far again.

When all the kids were asleep Ander and Hayden still sat awake in her study, it was the first time that he had been in here but he didn’t think about looking around right then, “What was that thing?” he asked the woman paging through a book, she looked up at him mid page and said, “Someone who was foolish enough to come after Eric when he was a baby, now though she is the only way in this state to go to the other world” Ander knew what she was talking about, “You turned a witch into a portal tree” Hayden smiled at him, he saw the dark side gleam in her eyes again when she said, “She was useless so I thought I would make use of her” he loved her but sometimes even he had to wonder about the things that she had done in her life.

“What about Eric?” she kept paging through the book but stopped again when she looked up at him, “He thinks it was a nightmare, and we’ll let him think that” Ander didn’t like lying to the boy, even if he wanted to protect him he couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just tell him about who he really was, about what he could really do. “He’s not ready, if we told him then he would hate us for keeping it from him for so long, we would lose his trust and his love… do you want that” she didn’t ask but her question was clear, “Would you tell him just to lose him?” and he just shook his head as he thought about it.

Hayden found the page she had been looking for, she got up out of her chair behind her desk and walked over to a small bookcase by the door, “If I’m right then Eric is hiding something from us too, and I have a feeling that whatever it is isn’t good… and if I’m right about what it is then he is at risk of awakening” the woman took another book and gave the first one to Ander, he looked at the page and saw a spell alongside a picture of witches surrounding a another witch that looked like she was pregnant, “That’s how Eric was born” he read the name of the spell, Ruler.