Prologue - Unnamed

Prologue

In a year long ago, a monster was created.

This was no mistake, although many people thought it was a grand impossibility to create a monster of this caliber. In fact, many of the people who knew the man who made it still doubted its existence, before he unleashed it on the world.

The maniac's name was Clay Hart. A common sight in the kingdom, he was an unemployed scientist to the king. After a massive scandal in the King's upper court, most of his employees were fired. But that is another story for a different time.

What Mr. Hart did after he was dismissed is what we shall talk about now. Disgruntled that he was fired so suddenly as he had no part in the goings-on of the higher-ups, he applied himself to creating his monster.

Finally after much preparation, Mr. Hart was ready to create a new being. A book bound by ancient runes and such laid in front of him on an altar of stone, Hart himself clad in a robe dyed as black as midnight, flecked with droplets of something that looked oddly like blood. Grinning, he fastened a chain to the bottom of the altar and stepped onto the altar. Looking out at his two subjects, his smile only grew wider.

Both cages were forged exactly to specifications, silver bars surrounding the inhabitants on all sides. Inside the silver, there was a core of iron. But the most important thing- deep set inside the iron and sealed fast was the bones of a man chewed on by wolves.

Mr. Hart had a hard time doing this, as even wolves know that humans bury their dead deep into the ground, and protected them in boxes. Even if a wolf somehow did dig down into a rotten coffin to get to the now-revealed bones, it would give them one sniff before wandering off to seek better-tasting prey.

No, Mr. Hart did something altogether more despicable. He went to the local morgue, stole a body, and removed the bones himself using sorcerous means. But it didn’t stop there.

He caught a few wolves, putting them in a despicably small enclosure, giving them a despicably small amount of food, and generally treated them, you guessed it, despicably.

Eventually the wolves were slavering madly for anything they could get their hands on. So Mr. Hart lowered the bones into the enclosure, let the wolves gnaw on them, and then took the bones and sent them down to the blacksmith. There, the cages were made and sent back as quickly as the poor blacksmith could muster. It was bad for business, holding onto stuff like that.

But now, everything was complete. In the right cage sat a small wolf, who was unfortunately lured there by a bone. The wolf, who still had the bone, simply sat in the middle of its cage and chewed on it.

In the other cage sat a young girl, who was kidnapped from the village. Many of the villagers did not care, as the girl was orphaned anyway and thought to be bad luck. Although she did not know what was happening, as she was only five and had not heard all the stories as of yet, she knew something bad was happening.

Clay Hart, perched on his altar like a bird of prey, opened his book and started to read from it. As he read, the chain links attached to his altar started to slowly wind in, disappearing into the rock. As it wound in, the chain dragged the two cages closer to the altar- and closer together.

The girl automatically tried to shove herself out of the cage, but only managed to cut herself on an edge. Whimpering, she just sat in the corner farthest from the wolf.

The wolf, completely confused, continued to gnaw on its bone.

Mr. Hart started to read even faster, reaching a climax as both the cages touched. Instead of clanging apart, as most things thing should do in this situation, they started to meld together.

The girl started to scream, angering the wolf. Trying to stop the noise that assaulted its ears, it leapt at the girl.

Like the cages, when the wolf hit the girl, one would expect that physics would kick in to do its job, and force both the girl and wolf backwards. However, the wolf simply went straight through the girl's stomach, and vanished.

No changes happened then and there, except the girl felt a small aversion to the silver bars, sitting down in the middle of the cage to avoid them. She stared at Mr. Hart through now-amber eyes.

Continuing to stare, the girl simply asked, in one word, "Why?"

Mr Hart smiled at her, then laughed. "It has always been my life's dream to meet a werewolf," he said. "And when I never could meet one, I decided to make one myself."

The girl looked at her hands briefly, not understanding what the man was talking about. Eventually she understood, and howled her protests to the sky.