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The time following the guard helping him was a blur of concerned faces, warm blankets and hot soup. He had been too exhausted to answer questions or pay attention to the events around him as he was bundled in a bed to keep warm and recover. Sleep quickly took him, but the dream that followed gave little relief.

He was back on the stone slab, except now the ruins were rebuilt into a beautiful stone temple. Every surface was covered with a black script that seemed to flow, twist and turn, layering upon itself. It seemed almost alive and as if it sought to imprint its message on even the most passive of observers.

The air was oppressively hot, made worse by the many braziers that filled the temple with red flickering light that caused shadows to skitter and contort across every surface.

His focus was on something other than the temple or the brazier's flames. It was on the scores of figures dressed in body-length robes of crimson, delicately trimmed with golden symbols that seemed jarringly, impossibly, unmoving and solid compared to the temple's black script.

As he lay upon the slab, statue still, he felt both wrong and right within himself. This was his body, yes. But a different soul sat at its helm.

Then the chanting began with a low drone.

[https://i.imgur.com/oMrGBK6.png]

He awoke screaming, pulling the covers off himself, ready for... something.

He sat there wide-eyed for a moment before a movement out of the corner of his vision made him take his surroundings in.

He was in a simple house with dirt floors, wattle and daub walls. He was lying on a crude bed of straw covered with blankets and animal skins. A small firepit, a spit and pot resting above, was at the centre of the room; its fire sunk to a few embers. Despite that, the room was well-lit as daylight streamed in from an open window.

Sitting on a three-legged stool in the far corner was an old woman.

Her bone-white hair was thinning to non-existence save scraggily patches hanging in messy locks.

She was skinny to the point of being skeletal, with skin so pale and translucent that every last vein could be seen clearly beneath its parchment-like surface. Besides the many rings on her fingers, she looked poor in a threadbare robe that had once been black but repaired so many times that it was now a patchwork quilt of materials and colours.

She moved painfully slow as her hand shakily raised a cup to her mouth to sip from it.

Despite her seemingly fragile disposition, there was a look in her faded blue eyes, a look of power and perhaps a little madness.

He stared at her as she stared unblinkingly at him. In the end, he looked away, unable to meet her diamond-hard stare.

They sat in silence for a few moments longer before she spoke. "So, you're awake."

He waited several awkward moments expecting her to expand on her statement, but when she said nothing, he responded, looking down at the straw bed, "Uh, yeah?"

"The Name is Hecate, Old Mother Hecate to you, boy. Sit up straight and look me in the eye when were speaking. I've no patience for fools, half-wits, and those too cowardly to speak their mind, so make sure you speak clearly."

He pulled himself up straight from the slouch he had ended in after suddenly waking. The crone's attitude made him feel uneasy, like a worm beneath the gaze of a merciless bird.

"Now, let's start with the basics. What is your name, or shall I refer to you as Boy?"

"I- Uh-"

"Don't stutter. Take your time. Think before you respond."

He paused nervously and took a deep breath before responding. "I don't have a name, at least not one I remember."

She raised an eyebrow in surprise at his statement. "How did you find yourself at my village, traipsing mud into my house?"

He considered lying, but honestly, he knew so little about where or who he was. He wasn't sure if any lie he told would get him in more trouble than telling the truth. So that's what he did. He told her everything from waking up on the slab to his arrival at the village. The whole time Hecate sat in silence, listening, barely moving other than to take the occasional sip from her drink.

When he finished, they sat in silence as Hecate considered his words. Then, at last, she spoke, "I see, you were smart enough to use a vine to escape, and your disposition seems marginally more mature than I'd expect from a child your age. Perhaps you aren't entirely incompetent."

"You have a choice. You can wander off back into the forest and probably be eaten by the first monster that catches your scent. You could go live with Alton and his brats, he'd teach you farming, and you could spend the next 50 years of your life pulling carrots out of the ground until you keel over and die. Or, well, you could stay here and help me."

"What would you teach me?"

She shrugged dismissively. "Well, not to be a complete moron. Any more than that comes down to how much you impress me, and frankly, I'm feeling pretty underwhelmed so far." She paused for a moment thoughtfully. "In the unlikely event you show promise; I can teach you magic. With that knowledge, you'll be able to leave this village in the arse end of nowhere and maybe actually make something of your life."

He considered the options but knew only one held any real appeal to him.

"I'll stay with you, Old Mother Hecate." He said, hoping the ancient woman would warm to him enough to teach him magic.

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The woman slowly nodded. "It was an obvious choice, boy."

"In that case, I'll give you a name..." She said, lapsing into silent thought.

After a moment, she looked him in the eye; her eyes were filled with madness and mirth as if she had discovered some grand and incomprehensible cosmic joke. "You shall be known as Refenial. It means a drudge or beast of burden in the old tongue."

He felt the choice of name was a clear insult. However, with how little he knew of the world and this woman, He felt unable to directly challenge her on the slight.

He nodded in acknowledgement of his new name.

"Right, You'll be needing clothes if you're to be of any use to me, bo-, Refenial." She said, slowly standing. The pops and crunches of her bones were Audible to him even across the room.

The Old Mother slowly retrieved a simple wooden walking cane from seemingly nowhere in a way that seemed to confirm her claims of magic.

She hobbled across the room painfully slowly. As she reached out to him something else manifested in her hand, a set of clothes and a pair of wooden clogs. They'd once been green but, like her robes, had been patched many, many times until they were a riot of colours and materials.

"Cloth is expensive up in these parts, so I mostly trade for scraps to repair what's torn. These clothes are old, but they're good enough." She said, handing them to him.

She waited outside While Refenial dressed, which he quickly did before stepping out of the house.

This was his first real moment of taking in the village behind the wall's sights, sounds and smells.

It was a simple place. The walls enclosed a large area, with even a few acres of fields. There were about 20 buildings that looked like houses and about the same again buildings for other purposes. A few buildings were built at least in part from wood, but most were simple wattle and daub with crude thatched rooves. The paths between the buildings were nothing more than muddy trails, and the village smelt strongly from a combination of wood smoke and the animals he could see penned up at several points across the settlement. In the distance, he could hear the sound of someone sawing wood. Nearby two young girls giggled with each other as they jogged through the village carrying bundles of sticks that seemed much too large to hold for such tiny bodies.

At the village's far side, a few small fields were pecked at by a pair of crows.

Old Mother Hecate watched him taking in the village. "It's a shithole, but then, where isn't in one way or another." She said with a wan smile.

"First things first, You're going to chop my firewood." She took him around to the side of her house, where she had unchopped wood and an axe and began talking him through chopping the wood.

She was merciless in pointing out every flaw in his technique and how he could do a better job. Refenial's arms felt wobbly and useless by the time he had finished. After that, she showed him one chore she expected of him after another. With each one, she revealed that she expected nothing less than absolute perfection.

As dusk fell, they sat in Hecate's house around the fire, silently eating a simple stew he had prepared. Refenial felt too exhausted to speak, and Hecate seemed to like the silence.

At last, Hecate spoke, "You did adequately for your first day, although you'll not be sleeping in tomorrow, so you'll have much more to do. Starting with going out with the children to collect kindling at dawn."

He nodded tiredly at that.

"Also, I'd recommend not telling others about your past. I've watched you fumble through every basic chore that a five-year-old would be expected to know today, so any lie you make up will fall flat. Instead, say nothing; people will make up their assumptions and fool themselves into thinking up an excuse for why you don't talk about your past."

"Will I be in danger if people know?"

Old Mother Hecate snorted in a mocking laugh. "Boy, if you're worried about danger, perhaps you should become a farmer. Even then, there's plenty of danger for those cabbage wranglers."

She paused momentarily before speaking again, "There are too many unknowns in your story. Plenty of powerful people would see you as a potential tool or prop to advance their power. Not to mention the risks that it would imply. A simple mind might simply assume you some kind of monster masquerading as a human and kill you for it."

"Do you know why I was in those ruins or why I can't remember anything?"

There was a long silence other than the odd crackle of the fire. The flames cast strange shadows across Old Mother Hecate's face as they sat there.

"I have ideas, hunches, theories, but they're not worth a crock 'o' shit without more information. I can think of a hundred possibilities, and for at least half of them, I should do the world a favour and kill you right here and now." She chuckled darkly. "And, for another dozen, I should take you under my wing and make you into a weapon that even I would have feared in my youth."

Refenial gulped audibly, his mouth suddenly dry despite the stew.

"It's getting late. Finish your stew. You'll need your rest for tomorrow." Hecate said.

The pair quickly finished their meal in silence and Went to bed. Refenial had, as one of his chores today, made a new bed of straw for himself in the opposite corner, and Hecate had also found an old blanket for him. Despite his exhaustion, it took Refenial a long time to fall asleep as he lay there listening to the raspy snores of the Old Mother.

[https://i.imgur.com/oMrGBK6.png]

The next morning under Old Mother Hecate's Direction, Refenial made a simple porridge and quickly tidied the hovel before heading out to the gate where he was to meet the other children.

He was the last to arrive there, 11 of them, including himself. The youngest, the two girls he'd seen the previous day, looked about five, while the oldest, a lanky boy who looked about 15, stood there holding a spear, the only weapon among the group.

The children looked fearfully at Refenial as he approached.

"What do you want?" the boy with the spear asked in a hostile tone.

"Uh-" Refenial paused, remembering Hecate berating him for stuttering. "Old Mother Hecate told me to go with you to collect kindling."

A girl in the group who looked about 12 with long blond pigtails sighed melodramatically, "Do you really have to come with us? Can't you go somewhere else? Old Mother Hecate is creepy; even my Dad says so. Nothing personal, but if you're living with her, I don't want anything to do with you."

A skinny, freckled redheaded boy who looked about eight piped in, "If we don't let him come with us, won't Old Mother Hecate be mad?"

The whole group went silent.

"Fine..." The boy with the spear said with a mixture of disgust and exasperation. He then leaned towards Refenial, "I'm Maxit, I have the spear, I'm in charge. When we're out there, you will not go out of sight, and you will listen to what I say; otherwise, I'll leave you behind to be eaten by a monster."

Refenial nodded in acknowledgement, not wanting to anger the person responsible for his safety. As they began to walk through the wooden gate, the redheaded boy walked beside him and started talking excitedly. "Hi, I'm Obit; what's your name? Is it true you're really living with Old Mother Hecate? Is she really as scary as the adults say? She seems scary to me, but I've never talked to her, only seen her around the village. Mommy and Daddy say I'm not allowed to. They said she's misan-misatopic, whatever that means."

Refenial felt overwhelmed by the barrage of words after spending time with only Old Mother Hecate, who was much less talkative, but tried his best to respond. "I'm Refenial. Yes, she's scary."

"Refenial, that's a weird name. Do you come from far away? Are you secretly a noble? Oh! Oh! Or maybe a prince?"

"I don't want to answer that," Refenial said slowly.

Obit gave him a knowing smile. "Don't worry; I won't tell anyone; your secret is safe with me!"

[https://i.imgur.com/oMrGBK6.png]

As the group of children walked into the cool twilight of the ancient woodland, Maxit taking the lead, spear in hand, a figure watched from a distance, his senses honed for the dingy environment.

"Oh me, oh me, oh my, I'll have a scrumptious meal, simply delectable. Come, little ones, walk further away from those walls. I'm hungry, so hungry I must devour." the figure whispered under its breath in a constant stream of words, broken only by the occasional soft giggle.

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