Heart of the Abyssal Beast

Heart of the Abyssal Beast

... In the end, he heard of the wedding just before passing the hall where it was being held. Sometimes, he did not so much hear news as have it go to extraordinary lengths to force its way into his ears. Anyone who had known him ten years ago might now struggle to discern even the faintest traces of the boy he once was in his features: A pale little boy with eyes like black pearls, a head of curls, and a wooden bear toy in his hands. He had done almost everything within his power. Back then, when Julian Mastakovich sought to seize their family's fortune after their parents' deaths, he had been forced to turn to Preobrazhensky, Professor of medicine, and his assistant, Dr. Bormental, to have the heart of an ominous monster implanted in his own chest. From that day on, he became ruthless and decisive, gifted with abilities beyond the reach of ordinary men. But he also drifted ever further from humanity. No. There was nothing left. He was no longer worthy of being called human. Though he now possessed the eternally youthful face of a boy, untouched by the passage of time, and the power to command wolf packs lurking in the shadows, he was no longer worthy to attend his own elder sister's wedding. That said, he could pass through the hall, of course. The sky was overcast, and a fine drizzle had begun to fall. Lowering the brim of his black hat, he followed the crowd into the hall like a demon coming uninvited. He saw the groom, a man he had scrutinized many times from the shadows. He knew him to be a kind soul, one far more deserving than himself of standing at her side as family. There was a little commotion among the guests, but the groom remained composed, calmly issuing instructions and keeping things in order. Then word spread that the bride had arrived. Standing apart from the crowd, he saw a peerlessly beautiful woman enter the hall, surrounded by a flock of girls. This should have been the happiest day of her life, the first spring of her youth. So why were her brows drawn together? Why were her eyes rimmed with red? He watched her closely. The classical lines of her face lent her beauty a certain solemnity and grace. Yet beneath that poise and elegance, he could still glimpse the innocent face he remembered from before she had left home. Something youthful and unformed, something fresh and carefree, kept rising to the surface. Yet all of it was veiled in a gauzy melancholy too delicate to put into words. Without realizing it, he forgot the prohibition he had imposed upon himself and took several steps forward through the crowd. It took only those few steps to catch her attention, by some strange twist of fate. Ah, she had seen him. Her lips parted, and across that great distance, he heard her softly call him by his childhood nickname, just as she used to. She even lifted the cumbersome framework beneath her wedding dress, trying to make her way toward him on unsteady feet. A sharp pang pierced his heart. He knew he could not remain at the wedding, so he used his demonic powers to vanish from sight. The pain clung to him like a tormenting parasite. Even after he had left the hall and found himself alone in the snow, it threatened to bring him to tears. Ah, those weak, wretched tears, which he had not shed once since replacing his heart with that of a Rifthound, now welled up from beneath his newly elongated eyes. The heart in his chest began to pound violently. An unbearable heat seared through his limbs, and he ran through the snow, at first upright like a man, letting out a piercing scream. Deep down, he knew it was all coming to an end. The day of reckoning had finally arrived. He ran. Human legs were far too slow. So he hunched over, his arms and hind legs growing longer, his facial features gradually losing their human shape. He ran, imagining himself racing through the manor where he and his sister had spent their childhood. Then he forgot. He imagined himself racing past the laboratory building where that wretched professor had made his meager home. Then he forgot. He imagined himself racing through countless nights when he had thrust his hands into other people's chests. Then he forgot. At last, he imagined himself running past a joyful hall, where a healthy, radiant man with a smiling yet indistinct face, on a sunlit day, placed his sister's hand into the groom's somewhat roughened hand. Everyone was happy. Everyone was laughing. Everyone shared in the same golden joy. In that moment, no one would grieve, and no one would be shackled by the sufferings of the mortal world. He lingered in that imagined scene for what seemed an eternity, or perhaps only an instant. Then he ran past it, and forgot his sister's face. The snow began to fall in thick flakes. He no longer needed to run. The beast that was no longer him, with its long ears, came to a halt. Bewildered, it gazed through the heavy snowfall toward the city of men to which it no longer belonged, then leapt... It leapt into the pitch-black, bottomless abyss.