him, though he couldn’t make out the words. Suddenly, the man pulled out a weirdly shaped dagger and jabbed it toward him.
Bren’s trance was broken as he quickly dodged the attack falling into the cold water again. “Were you trying to kill me?” Bren asked as he treaded water.
“I told you not to waste my time,” the little man said angrily. “You need to control your feelings, do not let them control you. You were letting the elements take you. If you do that, you might as well be dead as you will no longer be among the living. You need to feel everything yet maintain complete control over your body. The elders wished for me to teach you control, but that doesn’t mean that I will waste my time on someone who doesn’t want to learn. Now sit under the water and feel it, but do not let the feelings take control. It is just water; if you cannot do that, then everything else will be beyond you.”
Bren didn’t know how long he sat underneath the waterfall, but before he knew it, the sun had fallen out of the sky. Numerous times the man had to hit him to get his attention, but he never said another thing to Bren.
After Bren was able to sit underneath the cold water for more than an hour, the man tapped Bren lightly on the shoulder. “Better,” the man said when Bren responded to his light tap.
“What is next?” Bren asked, shivering uncontrollably.
“Next we warm up,” the man said, jumping back across the pond onto solid ground.
Bren followed the man’s lead and tried to jump across, but his stiff and cold muscles tensed on him, and he landed in the pond. As he surfaced, the man gave a short laugh. “It looks like it is a good time for a fire.” The man put his hands together and took a deep breath, and a large stream of fire roared from his mouth as he breathed out, catching a large pile of sticks alight. “Help me gather more sticks for the fire we need to make it larger.”
As Bren ran through the woods to gather wood, his sweat mixed with the cold water and the evening breeze made him shiver even more. As long as he kept his body moving, he didn’t notice how cold he was, but the second he stopped moving, it pounced in on him with a vengeance.
After Bren had made his seventh trip carrying large piles of wood back to the fire, the man decided that it was enough. Now that the fire raged large enough that it looked more like a pyre than something someone would use for a camp, the man casually walked across the burning logs into the center of the fire where a small spot was left bare and sat among the raging inferno. It didn’t take Bren long to notice a second open spot among the fire.
The flames licked at his feet like hungry dogs forcing Bren to move quickly. He knew that if he wanted to, he could use his magic to walk easily across the flames, but he figured that it was against what he was being taught. Once he was within his little circle, he took a seat on the hard ground. Only seconds after sitting down, Bren could feel the immense heat around him. Large beads of sweat rolled down his face, and his body, that only a few moments ago was freezing cold, now felt as if it was being cooked alive.
Just as he had done with the water, Bren let himself feel the heat. The water had covered his whole body after only a few seconds, making it hard to feel each drop, but the heat was different. As he shifted his body away from one hot spot, another would arise, ever changing the part of his body that grew uncomfortable. And to add a bit of uncertainty to it, there seemed to be odd moments when the fire would decide to flare up, and the flames would lick at an unsuspecting part of his body, causing immense pain for a brief instant.
It took longer for Bren to get used to the heat, but once he did and was able to sit motionlessly and feel the heat on his body, he began to relax. It was as his body relaxed that he started to feel the pull of the fire. Unlike the water, it was not a gentle, easy,