THE RISING OF THE WICCA

Fire

Rokan was uneasy as the sun started to set down and there was still no sign of Evanora. She had promised him to come back before sunset and agreed that they would go back together. He sat with a frown on his face as Theon and Akare kept talking about new ways to protect the castle walls to prepare for possible attacks.

He then stood up and announced he was going after Evanora to the hills. Duman and Brianna quickly decided to tag along. They rode their horses as Rokan led the way to the forest. Just as they arrived, he got down from his horse and scanned the place. There was no sign of Evanora.

"Maybe she went inside the forest to her cabin?" Brianna suggested.

But Rokan's eyes were fixed on something. A pair of shoes were left in the middle of the grass. Why would she take off her shoes and then wander inside the forest? It didn't make any sense.

"Rokan!" Duman pulled Rokan from his trance as he signaled to a black spot on the ground.

"Something is not right, I can feel a weird spell lingering in the grass." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath trying to get a better understanding of the lingering magic in the air and the ground. "It's nothing dangerous, a spell used to leave a message, a memory in nature."

"What is the message? Who left it? Is it Evanora?"

"I can tell that the message was already read and my guess is that Evanora was the one to read it and not the one who left it...She must have been here just moments ago."

Magic, message, and Evanora. When Rokan was lost in thought, Brianna had pulled her sword and signaled for them to be alert, as he looked up, his eyes met the golden ones of a beast. Aragorn was standing between the far trees watching them closely. Rokan felt the blood in his veins turn cold.

"Put back your sword." He ordered Brianna and approached the wolf carefully. He reached for his gray fur and caressed it, Aragorn let out a low whimper and looked at Rokan's eyes in confusion.

"We need to find her, now."

         Evanora ran down the street hysterically, she ran barefoot as tears kept falling on her cheeks, her hair ruffling behind her in dark waves. She huffed and turned around reaching the outskirts of the kingdom. When she saw a dark lifeless house in front of her, her feet finally came to a stop.

She took in a sharp breath and walked inside. There was no door, just the remaining burnt wood in the entrance. She pushed it to the side and walked into the living room. She expected to find that some random animal had taken shelter within her home but she was faced with a deafening silence. Not even animals considered this place home. The pain in her chest deepened and she felt her eyes burn as tears kept streaming endlessly.

She walked around and then carefully went up the remaining pieces of the stairs, wincing her eyes to place her feet without causing more damage to the place. She tried to keep her footsteps as light as a feather as she headed to her parents's room as if she was still tiptoeing around the house at night after her bedtime. Her mother had warned her many times about staying up and practicing magic by herself, but she was too curious about her new abilities to listen.

Her mother threatened her without a trace of hesitation but then every time she caught her sneaking back to her room, she would caress her head and walk with her asking about what she was practicing.

How could I have stopped sneaking around when you looked so proud of me, mother?

She wondered about her mother's contradictions for so long but now she could see it clearly. Her mother was scared of their powers but she couldn't help but feel proud of her heritage and wanted it to keep growing. She had never told anyone about Evanora's powers and pretended to have a talentless child, she was trying to lessen the power of their family, and the threat they posed to the village. Her mother was desperate to protect her family from dangers Evanora never knew about. She felt sad for the fate of her family and for her mother who had lived to see her worst nightmare become a reality.

Her feet led her back to the living room and she sat down on the cold floor and hugged her knees, thinking about that night, the damned night when they heard people screaming and watched as blazing torches surrounded their house.

Voices kept asking for the witches to come out. They were asking for her mother. The woman who had given birth to her and protected her through all of her thirteen years. They were asking for her two elder sisters, the two that she shared everything with. She watched helplessly as the three walked outside the house in front of her. People jumped on them and put them in tight robes. They reached for her but her mother screamed at them that she had no ability, she begged them to spare the life of her youngest.

That's when the king appeared and asked his knights to throw Evanora in a cell to wait for her sentence. That night was the longest in her life, she sat in a dark tiny cell, listening to the faint screams of her sisters as they were being burnt alive. She could tell the voices apart and her heart kept jumping at every scream, every sound felt like a tear in her heart, every crack of the wood on fire was like a crack in her bones. She felt her sanity slipping.

When the morning finally came, her eyes were bloodshot and she had lost her voice. She hadn't even realized that she too had spent the night screaming, begging the voices to stop.

She watched with blurry eyes as the guards came and dragged her body outside, she was thrown on the ground in front of the King and his counsel, she couldn't hear the charges they were numbering as her ears picked up whispers about her mother, they said she didn't even let out a whimper, that she burned in silence till dawn, how terrifying that determined look she had till the end, till the fires consumed all of her. 

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