Silver Hound, Black Moon

Dante's Inferno

On the day Caroline was born, she had no voice at all. A doe-eyed creature, with plump lips and long eyelashes. Her face was symmetrical, her bone structure refined, her nose small, and her features perfectly round. She was disgusting. The doctor shouted "It's alive," the moment he saw her move, and when she opened those lips of hers to say the same, she found that nothing but air crept past her whitened teeth.

Her creator brought in his co-conspirator, a monster named Adam. Another creation like herself, although Adam was different clearly, he had visible stitching across his face, and pale, dead eyes. When the creature laid eyes on her, he smiled in the same way one would when seeing a puppy the glee of seeing a lesser life form. Victor, the scientist, had made the perfect woman out of composite parts. Legs stolen from an actress, arms lifted from a hairdresser, and a face stitched together by hand, using pornographic magazines as reference.

Adam had commissioned her in exchange for the doctor's life, so the freak tried his hardest to create what he thought the ideal to be. Her muscles were withered so that her arms didn't get too big, her curves enhanced with gel and silicone to make her more appealing, and her brain was taken from the most docile worker in his favourite brothel. The newborn creature could've attributed at least some of it to ignorance if not for the purposeful dis-inclusion of her vocal cords. She was trapped in a weak, feeble body, made to be slobbered on like a doll, and burdened with a life she'd never be able to escape, she couldn't speak, she couldn't fight, and she was to be offered up as sacrifice to a heinous non-person.

Adam and Victor soon fought over her, the monster angry at the scientist for making her without a voice. She supposed that Adam was intelligent and empathetic, as he seemed enraged on her behalf, but both of them were guilty. She burned them both to death, setting the laboratory ablaze by ruining the gas lighting system, then fled by boat to the country now known as Cerrisol.

Caroline held the memory tight to her chest, that was all so, so long ago. Since then, she stole, but only to make herself stronger, and she killed, but only in pursuit of her goals. She saw the world slowly end, and watched it rise anew from the charred remains that were left behind. She saw the names of countries change, she watched as humans grew insular and afraid, and she knew now that there were more monsters than ever, that she was the one who had to kill them. Was she not the one? Who else but her?

The eldritch screech of several dozen mutilated monsters howled past Caroline's body. For a brief moment, she was shook from the throes of her own frenzy, and saw the outline of her many hands. They clambered across the cobbled ground, holding up her immense weight and pulling her down the street like a humanoid horse and cart. For a second, for a single moment, there was a strange feeling in the back of her mind, a teeth grinding release of pressure she'd lived with her whole life. Like the popping of a pimple, or the squeezing of a pustule, Caroline now felt the pain of transformation.

Finally, for the first time in her life, she could be the creature that she felt like she truly was. It was... unpleasant on the ego to consider such a thing, a strain on the heart so full and bloody that at times she felt herself die, but she knew it was worth it. This agony, the tormentous tearing down of everything she was, melted into a puddle and reconstituted, it would be worth it in the end, because once she was done, she could rid herself of humanity's filth to become something else, something greater. She was on her way to ascension.

Caroline's cranial eyes spun in her head as they tracked Havelock and Sif, the two grappling their way up a nearby building. She allowed the pale freaks to chase them as fodder, their numbers dwindling every time she heard the crack of Havelock's guns. She pursued as well, but her new legs needed some getting used to.

The addled hunter and his faithful dog leapt away as fast as their limbs could carry them. "Over the wall!" he ordered as they gained in height, hoping to avoid any confrontations with the rampant creatures below. Sif tore her way up a building, scraping into its supple stone-flesh with her claws and catching up to Havelock, screeching his way past via mechanical assistance. When they reached the top, Havelock was already firing downwards, his bullets whizzing past Sif and mystifying skulls.