VANTABLACK

So this was it.

He was dying.

He thought it would hurt more. Not that it didn’t hurt, it just… all things considered it seemed like this should have been excruciating. There was a red hole where his throat should be, gurgling and gushing, drowning him in blood, yet he only felt a dull ache. And warmth. Lots of warmth. Wherever the blood touched, he was hot. There was steam rising from the pool around his head and from crimson-stained fur and from his wound. Until now it had never occurred to him how hot his body temperature ran.

It was not at all what he expected. He’d never died before, though. Maybe this was all part of the process.

There had been muffled voices drifting around his head, but they had long since stopped, and the world had gone dark even though he hadn’t closed his eyes. It was a lightless void forever in every direction. That sort of made sense. His heart could no longer pump blood to his eyes, so of course his vision would be going, and his hearing, and everything else.

All part of the process.

Out in the distance of this void, there was movement. A small creature, smaller than his head. He couldn’t see its face, but its throat was torn out the same as his, with null, black space replacing muscles and blood. Small, loose flaps of skin hung down around it, oozing something dark and vaguely blood-like.

Was this also part of the process?

The creature came closer. It was a hairless cat, angular, wrinkly, and thin, with the grimmest expression its mostly obscured face could pull. Impenetrable shadows shrouded it as it came closer.

“This is terrible,” the cat growled, its voice reverberating off nonexistent walls, “You were a promising young wolf. You had your whole life ahead of you, you worked so diligently for them, and this is how they repaid you.”

Even now, with their noses touching, the cat’s face was hidden under a thick layer of darkness.

He tried to speak, but no noise came out. It hurt. The air whooshed uselessly out of his wound, rustling sticky, blood-joined clumps of fur.

“Hush. You will only hurt yourself,” the cat said, “Play, is it? Will you still go by this name? Even after everything they’ve done to you?”

Why wouldn’t I? Play thought. Regardless of who gave it to him, it was his name now.

“I see,” the cat stood tall and put a tiny paw on Play’s muzzle,“Then, Play, you shall rise again. Your death was cruel and useless. Now it will be only cruel. Rise again as my vessel of vengeance, rise and grow our numbers, rise and distort your Median title, tarnish it so thoroughly with gore and destruction that none can ever take it from you.”

Play opened his mouth to speak again and found his voice worked again, somehow. “But…but I can’t…”

“Waken,” the cat interrupted him.

Play gasped.

He was alive!

His throat was repaired, his wounds sealed with a pure black substance, so dark in color that no sunlight reflected off them.

Stumbling and staggering, it rose to his paws. What had happened to him? He could hardly remember. Everything from the past seemed so far away, fuzzy around the edges, but the here, the now—it was crisp. Crisp like the crunch of bones in his teeth.

Crunch. Bones.

Hungry.

Food.

Play swung around. Many heartbeats thundered behind him, some bigger than the others. He ignored the morsels for the larger creatures. Two leaped out of the way, the third, a canine of some sort, was too slow. Teeth latched around soft fur. Blood sprayed. A bone snapped, muffled by layers of muscle and fat. His prey thrashed helpless against his fangs for a moment, and then it was dead.

He turned to face the others. Some had already retreated. Two still stood, stupefied, before him.A wolf. A huge cat. A mountain lion.

...Not food.

He adjusted his grip on his meal and stalked away.

He was Play.

He was born anew.