He retched.
His throat was dry.
His eye burned.
His heart felt like it would beat out of his chest.
His stomach felt like it was falling uninterrupted.
The scene before him brought out such reactions upon his fragile form.
He shivered.
He trembled.
His eye burned.
He desperately hugged himself to claim some sense of calm.
Disgust, horror, and fear warred in his mind.
He wanted to cry.
He wanted to scream.
He didn't know it would be like this.
But how could anyone have told him?
The smell of viscera thrown about.
The feeling of the blood pooling at his feet.
How could words convey it?
How could a human become such a thing?
Was such an end to be his fate?
Separated haphazardly.
Unknown interiors brought to light.
Could something like this even be called a corpse?
What kind of monster could paint such a canvas?
His eye burned.
Ah, but it was no monster.
That's right; it was a person that had destroyed this human's personhood.
Reduced it to meat.
He retched again.
The taste was horrid.
A welcome distraction.
A welcome distraction from the sight.
A welcome distraction from the reality.
His eye burned.
Yes, indeed, it burned.
Perhaps even more than when this ... thing that had once been a man had pushed the brand down upon it.
Ah, so it was him.
He had done this.
Vengeance?
Retribution?
How easily such things collapsed under the weight of such horror.
What monster lay within him that could allow him to compose this violent orchestration?
A hand clapped his back.
He turned violently.
Like an animal prepared whether, for fight or flight, he knew not.
"Nice work, kid."
Huh?
"Now, you'll be the last one."
What?
"He'll never hurt another child again."
Was that what this was about?
"No matter what anyone tells you, you did a good thing."
Was that really true?
"Not even the leader could criticize this."
Monster, his mind whispered.
No.
Monster.
Wrong.
Monster.
That man was the monster.
Monster.
Someone needed to do it.
"Welcome to the White Fang."
He wouldn't be like this again.
Monster.
He would do it better next time.
"Let's go home, kid."
He wouldn't kill next time.
He wouldn't kill ever again.
Monster.
He had already done all the killing he needed to.
He wouldn't be a monster.
Little did Adam Taurus know that the boy never escaped that horrible place.
Only a monster emerged.