The Black Witch's Hut, The Black Forest, The Kanardi Wilds...
Being careful so as not to disturb his mother, young Sceledrus had entered the hut just as night had begun to fall carrying two freshly caught rabbits in both hands, as they dripped their crimson blood all over the ground while their carcasses dangled from their feet which had been how he held them when moving toward the darkened and decidedly primitive looking smoke-filled hut. The pale lad had been out most of the day trying to obtain a good measure of game for them to feast on or at least to go in his mother's naturally bitter-tasting stew as she slaved away getting the stew ready he had taken to getting the meat in the form of the two rabbits, that was when he wasn't spying on the menfolk or napping amid the trees.
Mortianni had been busy with her bubbling cauldron as she tended to be on most occasions and outright ignored her only son who seemed to only increase her disappointment in him. He had not taken to the dark arts she'd been so focused on teaching him as he would had he been a daughter and as a result she often found herself losing her temper when trying to instruct him on her ways of old and vile magics when he was more or less interested in the parameters of steel and valor.
Valor.
She nearly vomited at the very unseemly thought of the word.
Mortianni had not changed in the least since the day she'd taken the unsuspecting young knight's seed, by force had been her way of doing things, and the viler the better in her eyes. Her son had been a bitter disappointment in this regard as he often rejected her way of doing things in favor of his father's more passive and peaceful alignment. The product of the virtuous Knight, it seemed that the boy had inherited his manner of viewing the world and it made the dark-hearted witch all the more annoyed with him.
Like always, Sceledarus placed the rabbits onto the slaughtering table which had been constantly riddled with dried and fresh blood alike at any given time of the day when his mother had been in the mood to kill something. Unfortunately for the poor lad, the thing his mother had chosen to kill had been a puppy he had befriended out in the wilds. The shock of seeing his dear friend lying dead with his entrails ripped out and its formerly friendly eyes bulging from the sockets had been what caused him to drop the rabbits and freeze on the spot.
Mortianni had smirked noting how shaken her son had been and immediately swooped over toward him her bloodied cruel hand moving along his trembling shoulder as she delighted in his visible anguish.
"Your reek of mortal," growled Mortianni as she kneeled down low enough to reach his ear. "Don't tell me you've been among them again, have you no ears to listen nor brains to comprehend the danger that they pose for magic users, if given the chance they would string you up and light you on a pire before the whole kingdom as if putting on a show while you burn to your premature death in exquisite agony."
"W-Why have you killed Daedelus, Mother?" asked a shaken Sceledrus not at all taking his tear-filled eyes off the mutilated body of the dog he'd been raising from being a puppy.
"Why not?" asked Mortianni embittered. "It was a thing, no doubt would have been trained by the mortals to hunt us down so they could burn us at the stake on the pire."
Sceledrus had been a bit angered by her wayward excuse, he knew her better than that and it only seemed to break his little heart all the more.
"You did it to hurt me," he said embittered as his eyes flickered with understanding and anguish mixed with a slow-burning rage. "You wretched hag you killed my friend to hurt me, to make me a coward hiding in the woods like you alone and unwanted because of your precious dark magic....but it's not going to work, I will never be like you cowering, and slinking about like some unhinged animal, my father was a good man and noble knight and I intend to be the same!"
Mortianni drew back and slapped the rather defiant lad across the face making his right cheek red from the pain of her vile temper. He crumpled to the floor with tears streaming down his pale cheeks as he looked up at her. She saw the faint glimmer of hatred behind his stormy gray eyes for a moment and paused as he scrambled to his feet and quickly took off out the door of the hut and ran back out into the darkened woods.
His chest burned with fury and his young heart ached for the loss of his only friend out in the cold dark woods. He had been sure of it now, his mother had truly been a vile monster desperate to make him into the same kind of spinless coward and obsessive freak that she had been all her pathetic and embittered life.
Sceledrus balled his fists as he ran, desperate in his attempt to put as much distance between himself and the deranged old hag as he possibly could his lungs burning due to his nonstop running as he got further and further away from the vile black witch's hut and lands not carrying whether or not he'd run afoul of the menfolk that inhabited the edge of the forest or some animal out on the hunt. He wanted nothing more to do with his vile mother nor did he ever want to see her hideous freakish face ever again.
She had killed his dog because she knew he loved him.
The embittered hag had wanted to hurt him and make him like her.
But he wasn't like her, he had a kind heart and a virtuous outlook on life despite the vile things she'd gone out of her way to teach him. He had known from the moment he was born that he'd been nothing short of a disappointment to her, she had often ranted and raved about how she should have had a daughter to pass on her knowledge and how a daughter would have taken to her lessons like a duck to water.
In his young mind, the feeling was mutual.
He had been disappointed to have an embittered self-absorbed hag for a mother in place of the loving and kind ones he'd see among the menfolk that looked after their children and fiercely protected them no matter the odds. Even the animals in nature had been better mothers than the old hag that inhabited the hut in the black forest.
As cruel as nature could be, they had cared for their children enough to protect them until they came of age.
Before young Sceledrus knew it, he'd been at the edge of town with his face still stained with tears as he moved toward what appeared to have been stables. He could smell the horses and the hay as he hid inside with them unsure of what to do now that he'd been on his own and far away from his mother and the only home he had ever known.