Ander awoke, his head hurt and he soon found that his hands and feet also hurt. Looking to his hands and feet he saw that he was chained down, “What the hell happened?” he whispered through his dry throat, all he remembered was walking through the portal tree in the woods and then everything went black. “Finally awake, I had hoped that you would have died silently in the night these few days” days was all he heard, he had been chained here for days, “Who are you?” he barely got out, the voice carried from each wall like it was everywhere and nowhere at the same time but he knew this trick, after all, you don’t forget the trick of someone you learned magic from.

“Mother” he said and heard the voice laugh, it changed from a males voice to a female voice, to the sound that had tucked him in when he was little and told him stories but somehow he could now hear the malice that she felt towards him, the malice she showed to someone who had failed her. “Why?” he asked again, he couldn’t say much or even think with how dry his throat was or how much his head hurt, “Did you think that I wasn’t watching, that I would not keep an eye on my only child on a mission that could mean my death if he failed. I saw everything Ander, I saw you fall in love and I saw you learn the truth but most of all I saw the moment you threw me aside for that witch” Ander couldn’t help but think that “witch” meant more than it did, he couldn’t help but feel sick knowing that his mother had been spying on him and through him, Hayden.

The woman walked into his line of sight from the shadows she had been hiding in, “You had so many chances to grab the boy and bring him here, but every time that woman made you hesitate, each time you didn’t do as you were told. You disappoint me my son, and to think that I had such high hopes for you, had thought that you could be useful for a few more years before you became a threat to be dealt with” he couldn’t believe that this woman was his mother, that the woman who raised him was talking to him like this, like he was a tool to be used and discarded.

“But perhaps after a few years in here you’ll remember who it is you owe your loyalty to” she said before walking through the wall, so she locked him in the Ever Vault, the one place only the owner can escape from. Every minute he spent looking at the wall the person he had thought loved him had walked through felt like hours, he knew that most lost themselves in the first few minutes in the vault; that no one has ever come back out of the vault sane.

His thoughts were everywhere, he thought of Hayden and how she must be preparing to take on the Hunters without him, how she must be trying to keep it together while she prepared to face her family so to speak. His thoughts went to Eric and how the kid must think that he has abandoned him, that he wasn’t coming back and he couldn’t take it, he couldn’t handle it if he ever returned to find the woman he loved dead and his brother hating him because he wasn’t there, he couldn’t and he wouldn’t.

Closing his eyes and focusing through the throbbing in his head, he thought of the chains, he saw them break as if from old age and when he could see it clearly as if it was really happening he formed the spell in his head and felt as his arms sagged to his sides and his body fall to the floor. It took him a while to get back up, to gather the strength needed for the next part of his great escape.

The image in his head took the longest to form but when he did that casting the spell to make that image real took less than a second, he felt the magic envelop his body until he was completely covered, than he got up without any effort and walked to the wall where he knew the door was hidden and imagined the same he had with the chains before casting the spell and watched as the wall crumbled into dust before him. “Magic is stronger if you believe that it is” he remembered Hayden saying during one of their training sessions, he smiled but shook it off right away, “I can’t think about anything but escaping, I need to focus” he said to himself and it was only unlucky then that two guards who had been walking by also heard him.

Ander didn’t think, he didn’t hesitate as he saw in his mind how the guards were thrown around the corridor like bouncy balls and saw it happen after quickly casting the spell, it was almost scary how easy it was to take out two other witches that would have given him trouble with his rings. A sudden shimmer went through the hallway and continued down and throughout the rest, “Great, she found out I escaped” he said again as he headed down one hallway he hoped would lead him outside.

The place was like a maze, he had never been here before and it didn’t follow the same pattern the mansion had, it was something else to deal with and even with his magic much stronger now he couldn’t think of a way for him to get out of these halls. He tried every door he found and even though that meant he had to deal with whoever were inside of the rooms he couldn’t think of any other way to find the way out.

Seeing large double doors at the end of the hallway he was in he stopped, those doors could lead outside and to his freedom, or they could lead to the one place he should avoid at all cost, the Gathering Room where his mother would be waiting. Ander decided he didn’t have a choice and no way to know unless he opened them, it was just more bad luck to him that when he opened them his mother and all her bodyguards turned to him as he pushed open the doors. “I see you’re more resourceful then you were before you left” Ander suddenly realised something, his mother didn’t know he could cast spells the way he was, she didn’t see their training, or rather she couldn’t; the thought made him smirk, “So Hayden is more powerful than you are” he hadn’t meant to say it out loud but when he felt himself being pulled towards the woman he knew that he shouldn’t have.

“No one is more powerful than me; no one can hide anything from me. I see all and I own all, that is true power” Ander could see her rage but more than that he could see that she was lying, she couldn’t see everything and she doesn’t know everything because if she was speaking the truth about either then she would have known how he would escape and that he would escape in the first place, no, his mother wasn’t as all powerful as he had thought for years, she can be defeated and he would be the one to defeat her.

It only took one thought to free himself from her hold and send himself back and out of her reach, “Don’t give your enemy time to think, charge at them” he heard Hayden’s voice in his head again, she was with him here and with her by his side and in his heart he knew that he could win. Ander lift the furniture in the room and started to fling them at his mother, though her bodyguards either took the hits or countered him. It took him only a second to disable two of the eight bodyguards while they countered the furniture and only another second after that to fling two others aside as if they were nothing.

He caught a glimpse of his mother and knew that she was going to begin casting now, his surprise attack had worked but his window was now closed because now she knew how he was casting, he barely had a shield up to negate magic coming at him than he saw it burst into tiny pieces. “Now it comes down to a battle of control, who can keep their thoughts on the here and now. Who cannot think of the people they care about as they fight for their own life” Ander knew what she was doing, she was trying to make him slip up but Hayden had done much better than that and he had become quite good at staying focused.

Every time he got a shield up it was only a second before it fell to pieces to the ground again, he didn’t have time to fight back and from the chanting he heard from the four remaining bodyguards he knew that he was running out of time. Thinking fast while keeping his shield up Ander thought of what he could do, he could cast as fast as he could think now but what could he cast that would give him a chance against his own mother, the person who had taught him every spell he knew.

Then he thought of Hayden again, he thought of those five Chihuahua’s and then it came to him. “I cry tears of blood which flow like a river beneath my feet. I carry the deaths of hundreds, thousands as I walk this road. I pray to death and pray to life, I call forth not one but both” Hadia looked at him now, she knew the chant of course because she taught it to him and she had helped him bind it to the ring on his right thumb, but she didn’t think he would ever pay the real price for the power of this summon. “A sword in my right hand judges, a sword in my left hand murders. I decide the fates of many and few but walk alone on this path soaked with the blood of those that stood before me. I pray Grey Lady, Vilandia destroy my enemies and burden my soul with their blood” the air behind Ander shimmered as something took form.

The grey lady appeared behind him, her grey hair flowing all around her and shielding Ander from his mother’s attacks now, her grey torn and worn dress barely touching the floor while her black dead eyes looked to each opponent she was summoned to kill. Ander only had to flick his eyes towards the first bodyguard and Vilandia moved with a speed no one could keep up with, swords appeared all around her as she appeared before the first bodyguard who was so focused on chanting that she didn’t even see the summon behind her until she felt and saw the sword protruding from her abdomen. Ander felt the backlash the second the woman fell dead to the floor, he felt the death take a piece of his soul with it to the other side but he didn’t care, because if he had to lose a part of his soul so that he could embrace Hayden again and be there for Eric then he offered it up freely.

Each bodyguard fell in a matter of seconds, and even though it took him a little longer to turn his gaze to his mother he did, he looked at her and in the eyes of Vilandia marked her for death. The grey lady moved and swung the first bladed weapon that came within reach, Ander almost wanted to look away but he couldn’t because then Vilandia would stop and spare the woman. Ander couldn’t believe it, Vilandia had just burst into dust like everyone his mother killed with her spells, his own summon had fallen to his mother and with it his best chance at beating her, “Don’t think a summon as weak as that could defeat me boy, let me show you what real power is” Ander sent a prayer to whoever was listening, “Please let me go back to them”.