Chapter 74 - Dark Awakening

  It had been an awful week for Cerberus.

  His owner, George, always called him a good boy. He wasn’t like the other dogs, the ones he saw when they went out for walks together. Their people called them ‘bad dogs.’ George never said that about Cerberus. He was a good dog.

  So why did so many bad things happen to him?

  They’d been out for a walk when it happened. A sharp pain rammed itself through Cerberus’s skull. George’s, too, judging from the way he held his head. Then, strange-smelling creatures appeared on the street. Cerberus even saw a squirrel change into something weird, a green-skinned thing that looked a little like a small, bad-smelling George.

  Seeing squirrels turn into something that looked dangerous was more than enough for Cerberus. He wanted to go home. Fortunately, George did, too. They’d fled back to his house as quick as they could travel, leaving the forest behind for the safety of their back yard, and then the house itself.

  That wasn’t the end of their problems, though.

  Soon after they arrived home, the screams started. They were mostly in the distance, so faint Cerberus could barely hear them. But some were nearer, even sometimes so close that George heard them, too. When someone pounded on the front door a few hours after they’d gotten home, Cerberus barked a warning. They smelled bad, like blood and sweat, and he wanted them gone.

  George didn’t heed his warning bark. He went to the door and opened it.

  The people outside carried baseball bats. They told George they wanted all his food. When George tried to close the door, they pushed it open, storming inside and hitting him with their bats.

  Cerberus had been a good boy. He'd done his best to fight back against the bad people. But there hadn't been anything he could do. There were too many of them. He went for one of them, biting down hard on an ankle, but the other two continued hitting George with their bats.

  He launched himself at the enemy in a frenzy, fighting with everything he had. The one he’d bitten fell down, and he tore the man’s throat out, after which a pair of clear crystals popped up in front of his snoot. Cerberus snapped at them, thinking it was some new threat, but the stones were absorbed into him, giving him a massive increase in Strength and Intellect. Using that new power to his full advantage, Cerberus attacked the remaining humans.

  They fled, rather than face his fangs.

  But it was too late for George. His person was already dead. Alone and bereft, with no idea what to do next, Cerberus whined and pawed at his owner's body for a while. Then he curled up beside George. Maybe if he stayed there long enough, George would get back up again?

  But that didn't happen. Dusk fell, and George didn't rise. Dawn came, and George was just as still as he had been before. Cerberus picked himself back up. He nuzzled George's body one last time, then padded around the house, trying to figure out what he ought to do next.

  There was still water in his dish and a little food in his bowl, but those wouldn't last forever. He drank and ate, then paraded around the house. Looking at what was there, he cataloged items. He analyzed and assessed things in a way he never would have done before. Those crystals had changed him. He knew that, but he also welcomed it, because those changes might represent the difference between life and death. Something had changed dramatically in the world, too. And if he had to become more than he had been in order to survive that, that's what Cerberus would do.

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  Cerberus spent a few days at his old house, unsure what he should do next. His person was gone. George had been the center of his world. What should he do without him? What could he do without him?

  He managed to rip open the big bag of dry kibble, so he had plenty to eat. The toilet ran out of water in the bowl on the second day. After that, Cerberus was forced to go outside to forage for water. Each day brought him further and further afield, until finally his improved Intellect informed him that this wasn't a sustainable way forward. He needed to find someplace new to live. Somewhere that had plenty of food and water. Otherwise, he was going to end up as cold and stiff as George.

  On the fourth day after the Event, Cerberus left his owner's home for the last time. He traveled north into the woods that abutted the backyard of the house. He'd wandered the woods many times over the years, usually with George alongside him. But the forest had changed. New creatures roamed among the trees. More of the green-skinned monsters he’d spotted that first day were everywhere.

  And Cerberus found himself having to fight them off more than once. He enjoyed that part, which was a new sensation. Before, Cerberus hadn't really thought about killing things. He didn't need to hunt. George provided him with all the food he could ask for. Well, maybe not all he could ask for. It was always nice to get a little extra slice of cheese!

  But now that his thoughts were more clear and more direct, Cerberus found he took pleasure in the demise of the green-skinned monsters. They were trying to hurt him. It was only fair to do the same back to them.

  Days passed and Cerberus hunted. Every time he killed one of the creatures, he would nuzzle them for their crystal. They always dropped something. Sometimes he could absorb the stone, sometimes he couldn't. He didn't really understand why some of them worked and others did not. But he did know that his intellect doubled when he managed to absorb a second stone of that type. The stones were good. The stones helped him. And so he sought more of them out.

  But he was one dog, even augmented, against a forest full of the green-skinned monsters. Eventually, the creatures ambushed him. They left one of their own, seemingly alone, napping at the foot of a tree. But when Cerberus attacked, he discovered it wasn't alone. Over a dozen of its fellows were hidden in the bushes nearby. When he rushed out to attack, they did too. Their spears pierced his body, stabbing deep.

  Cerberus whined, yelped, and growled at his attackers, fighting with everything he had until finally, it was too much. He slumped to the ground, sliding off the last spear that pierced his side. Maybe now he would be with George again? He wondered.

  That would be nice. He missed George.

  But before his heart gave its last stuttering beat, magic flashed and surged through the small clearing. With the coming of the Event, wild magic was everywhere, overturning all the old rules and changing the world in random and chaotic ways. A stroke of black lightning shot from the clear night sky, slamming into the ground where Cerberus lay.

  The goblins leapt back, unsure what was happening. Cerberus howled as the magic coursed through him. Its power closed his wounds, knitted torn tissue back together, and rebuilt him into something new, something stronger than he had been.

  Old magic shook his frail form, strengthening it, enlarging it, changing it into something old and new at the same time. Cerberus howled in pain and fear, his muzzle raised toward the night sky as he cried out in hurt and rage. He’d been reborn in rage, and that shaped the magic that shaped him.

  By the time he rose, the goblins had fled. They wanted nothing to do with whatever this strange new thing was. Cerberus stood. His wounds were gone. He'd grown; he was faster, stronger, and smarter than he'd been before. As he rose, Cerberus realized he was standing on his hind legs. He took a cautious step forward and bounded half a dozen feet before he could stop himself. These new legs were strong, sturdy, and stable.

  His front paws had been reformed entirely. Now, they looked like something closer to the way George's hands had looked, although Cerberus now had wicked one-inch talons on the end of each digit. He raised his head to the sky and howled again. The rage of his last breaths had shaped his transformation, turning him into a living weapon, a powerhouse of claw and sinew capable of tearing apart any enemy he ran across.

  And that rage didn't leave him either. Instead, it drove him forward, pushing him through the woods back to the edge of the town where he had lived in his old life. A scent drifted on the wind. It was a familiar smell, and he knew instantly where he'd scented it before.

  That was one of the men who’d killed George.

  Somewhere down there were George’s murderers. Cerberus's heart swelled with fury at the thought. He would go hunting. He would find them. And he would kill them all.