He had been too young to remember his name.

It hadn’t really been his name yet – just what people called him. There wasn’t a definition there, a set of beliefs and perspectives and experiences to attach to it, to make it his. It was just a sound that emerged from two warm, smiling faces that no longer swam into view, no matter how hard he tried to assemble the vague morass of images that still flickered inside of his head into something coherent and whole.

What he does remember is the taste of ash inside his mouth, the lick of flames across his skin, and two brilliant red embers set deep in a lupine, sneering face getting closer, and closer, right until radiant flame washed over its dark fur and sent it shrieking away into the night. He remembers the huge, broad silhouettes of the coats, the concerned faces staring down at him.

Well, it had seemed like concern at the time, anyway.

—

When the Witchfinders bring a boy back from the now-razed village of Maluk, once a burgeoning little settlement next to the river, he can’t remember his name. The village had been so thoroughly devastated by the sudden intrusion of devils – brought up by some hedge witch who didn’t know what she was doing – that no one was left alive to tell them, either. That presented a problem: the Witchfinders believed firmly in good names. A good name was one’s first and foremost bond, a promise of oneself, ostensibly to the Good King, whose blessing had overseen their birth. A boy without a name merited discussion on how to handle the issue.

Only – it was one of those conversations so mired in touchy bureaucracy, just important enough to consider without ever demanding to be solved, that it never properly occurred. “Boy” seemed to do right by the lad, who quickly proved obedient and kind, if a little lacking in the sort of fervor necessary to do the work. That kindness, in fact, prompted Witchfinder Captain Augustine Moriah to apprentice the point to Inquisitor Harven Aurun. The boy, the captain said, should be taught that sweetness must be moderated, and that when it comes time for blood, one must be willing.

Harven, however, disliked the boy immediately. Too soft, by half, and too slow to pick up on Harven’s teachings – or, worse, too reluctant to learn the ins and outs of purification. As dutiful as the boy was, he never seemed to have his heart in it. (Harven did, of course. Harven believed furiously in the power of purification, by whatever means necessary – bloodied souls must be scoured clean ere they leave the flesh, or they are seized by devils to their own ends.)

Besides, the boy hadn’t even picked a name yet. Harven sometimes wondered if there was anything at all going behind those wide-eyed stares.

“Gormless thing,” he often spat. “You’ll never learn.”

—

Harven was zealous even among the faithful. Elsewhere in the Witchfinders’ garrison, nestled in the mountains along Bandar’s northernmost reaches, people liked the boy, even as he grew too tall too fast and often failed to account for limbs that weren’t that long yesterday. Certainly, he seemed quiet sometimes, and perhaps a bit dense, but he tried hard to please people, and made himself useful wherever he went. In a small and perhaps too-quiet act of defiance, he’d started referring to himself as a “gormless thing,” mainly to take the sting out of it.

It was Chaplain Mathilda Ivres who first started calling him Gorm. She didn’t like him speaking badly of himself, even if it was to take a little power away from Harven’s tyrannous lessons. He was too sweet to be so constantly subjected to anger and derision. Gorm, while he never told her as much, loved her for it. It felt like a name, a proper name, something he could begin building on. It felt right.

It must be said that Mathilda was more responsible than anyone for helping Gorm find his faith and eventually step into Harven’s shoes. Harven often laid out faith in Good King Gelhast as a matter of fact that should not be questioned or examined, Mathilda was a more pragmatic evangelist. Gorm – the name quickly spread as he adopted it for himself – spent hours in her chapel on the far side of the courtyard, well away from the inquisitors’ cells. She answered all sorts of questions about witchfinding and why it was important, and why sometimes even confessing sinners had to perish on Harven’s tables. Gorm never liked the answers, but he at least began to understand them.

But more than anything, Mathilda had given a name. Gorm. Gorm the Witchfinder. It’s how he began introducing himself, with considerable enthusiasm. Gorm the Witchfinder.

It felt good to be a person. It felt like he’d been seen by the Good King – been blessed in the way so many others had.

He felt whole.

—

Years later, well away from the Hellguard, on some other continent, the apostate Gorm feels sick when he remembers that he understands Mathilda’s answers. He feels sicker when he thinks he still comprehends them, the edges of them, the paths into zealotry that, if he relents for even a moment, lead him right back into that comforting control.

Oftentimes, he wonders if the name is still his – if the experiences and perspectives and beliefs, muttering and tentative and fearful as they are, still resemble any part of him present when she first gave it to him.

But he doesn’t have another name – just a sound, distant and whispering, from faces he can’t remember, in a home he never knew.

Gorm it is, he always concludes. Gorm it’ll always be.

Gorm the Witchfinder – whether he likes it or not.