Angrily, the confounded canine leaps. Before it stands the villain who, in a murderous rage, had destroyed its master’s home. Courage has never been an issue for the canine, which is precisely the thought running through the villain’s head as he braces for his imminent demise. Demise might be a strong sentence doled by a canine, but this is no ordinary canine, his master no ordinary master.
Each day of the past year races through both villain and canine’s mind: the bloody sacrifices, the silenced screams, the surging power felt increasing in the canine’s extended paws even now. Fraught with the death of so many innocents but reveling in its ever-increasing power, the canine knows his victim has no escape. Grotesque claws rip pathetic human flesh. Humanity has yet to create a viable opponent, and the canine revels in the thought of soon finding a new master on which to dote, pretending allegiance but playing him like a deck of cards, bending him to whatever will the canine can dream up. In the meantime, destroying this compromised creature in vengeance will suffice as proof of his power.
Jostling about in his agony, the man falls to his knees, barely exhaling his final words: “Dog, what have you done?”
Kingston steadies himself against the river of regret he knows will flow instantly throughout his be-furred body. Looking at the floor, he laments the recently-discovered knowledge that great power comes with great understanding of what it means to take a life, the one thing no amount of power can ever give back. Mirrors in his head reflect the bloody scene, and memories of simpler times fill him with longing and disgust for what he has become, but only for a time. Now, looking forward, he must use what has been given to him through the release of all this human blood from its bodily home to accomplish the task he has set forth for himself: finding a new master to replace the one he can only assume abandoned him in fear.
On one end of the hall in which he stands, a lone picture remains unbroken on the wall. Precariously pawing a path through the debris, loath to further damage any of his master’s belongings, Kingston studies the image a final time, knowing that pictures capture a small part of their subjects’ souls and hoping for a clue as to his master’s whereabouts. Questions permeating the clearer parts of his enhanced mind, Kingston knows he cannot waste too much time on what will ultimately have to be filed away as a triviality.
Retiring for the evening, Kingston pushes aside the misery flowing through his body and considers the type of master he may prefer this time. Something in the corner catches his eye, and he stops dead. There he is, Kingston’s master, slumped against a blood-spattered wall amongst the debris from the house. Underestimating the rage that had filled his earlier, weak opponent, he would have never believed the man capable of such atrocity.
Very carefully, Kingston
