There was lightning before his eyes. Flashes of white, followed by complete darkness. The light was not painful, but it made him uneasy. He tried opening them, but knew not how. Involuntary sounds escaped from his mouth as he struggled to flee from this mental prison.

"Hush. Be still," said a small voice, not far away. That was when he could feel his arms and legs. Something burning covered them, and somewhere on his middle regions a gentle pressure was applied and then removed in succession. The touch caused the fire on his skin to explode. He gasped hard and inadvertently threw open his eyelids.

The light that hit them was of another nature than that which had tantalized them not a second ago. This was gentler, warmer. He was looking up at a wooden ceiling, haunted shadows playing across its surface.

"Calm down," asked the voice. He let his eyes wander to where it originated from and found a girl with pale cheeks gazing with empty eyes at his chest where her hands were busy applying some sort of ointment.

"Where am I?" he asked with a cracking voice. He cleared his throat and discovered that it was raw and sore, like the rest of his body.

"In the basement."

"Basement?"

"Yes. Where we sleep."

"In a basement?" The fingers stopped fiddling around. The girl, who could not be old enough to be called an adult, yet had lost her beauty long ago, looked at him. Streaks of water made her cheeks glisten.

"Don't you remember?" He stared at her quizzically. "You are a slave. You work for the Magister and sleep in the basement of his mansion," she said with incredulous – or were they frightened? – eyes.

He let this sink in.

"A slave?" He refused to believe he had suffered such a terrible fate. And then it came to him. "I don't know who I am." The tears increased in amount as the girl could not contain her grief.

"Fenris. You are Fenris." She wiped the watery stripes away before new ones replaced them. She added, quietly to herself, "What has he done to you?"

"Fenris? Fenris." He tasted the name. "Who are you?"

"I am here to take care of you," she said and returned to tending to his wounds. He did not dare look down and see how grave they really were. He grunted as he felt what seemed like a knife slowly piercing through his skin. "I'm sorry, but I have to do this." The girl refused to as much as glance at him again.

"You're a slave, too?"

"Yes."

"What about–" he yelped in pain, "What about your name?"

"He calls me Ariana."

"But that's not your real name?" She sighed forcefully.

"No. It does not matter, anyway."

"What happened to me? I can't remember anything but lightning." Ariana let her eyes linger on his. Anger competed with the sorrow in them.

"He did this to you. He... changed you. Just look at yourself." She held up a tanned arm, muscular and firm. But that was not what caught his eyes, that made him sick inside and wonder what foul thing had caused this.

His skin was burnt with white strings that covered his entire body. Blood and pus was oozing from where his own flesh joined with the markings, making him look like a mockery of a living being.

He sat up, careful not to cause himself any more harm, and inspected the scars more closely.

"What is it?" he asked.

Ariana, who had backed away and were watching him solemnly, answered quietly, "I do not know." He turned to her suddenly.

"Why can't I remember?" he nearly yelled. Terror was claiming his intestines as he began realizing the memories would not return to him. Ariana merely looked at him sadly, her eyes swollen and her nose blotchy red. "Do I know you? Is Fenris really my name? Or did this Magister give it to me? How did I end up here?"

"I do not know," she repeated, keeping her gaze low.

Fenris put his bare feet on the floor, only just now realizing he was wearing nothing but small clothes. He ignored the sharp pangs shooting up through his legs as he stood up. Ariana hesitated only for a second before she hurried towards him and put a hand on a scar-free spot on his chest.

"You need to rest," she pleaded. He saw something in her black eyes then, an intimate tenderness. With a questioning look he grasped her wrist and held it firmly.

"Who are you?" Her sobbing stopped then for a fleeting moment, as though she were calculating something in her head. She blinked away the tears.

"No one. I am no one," she whispered without inflection in her voice.

"But you are Ariana." He did not understand the sudden change.

"I am but a slave. As are you. That is all." Fenris let go of her hand, which she hastily drew back at her side. They looked at each other silently for half of an eternity. Something in it made her slowly break to pieces again.

With despair in her voice, a hole in her heart, wraiths of torture in her face, she commanded him, "Lay down."

He obeyed.