Creature

When we were created, the earth was still young. Humans were but tiny babes, unable to grasp even a fraction of the world around them.

Our task was to protect them against those who would ruin them. There were beings on this land who would dig their talons deep into humans’ tiny souls and slash away at their purity. Those voids would fill with a darkness so endless they would never recover.

We were given wings to fly great distances without obstruction, and scales and webbed hands and feet to swim through the seas. We awoke at night like statues come to life to hunt the ghosts, demons, and creatures that deserved our scorn and deliver unto them righteous retribution.

But over time we became defective.

Some of us fell in love with corrupt humans, bedding and breeding them for our own pleasure. Some of us listened to the dark creatures, bent to their wills until we became like them. And then there were others, like me, who experienced too much war, too much strife and misery, to be anything but a demonic shell of ourselves.

The gods abandoned us. 

Now I have changed the terms of my mission, of my existence. I do what I want, when I want, and how I want.

But my soul is not all black. No. There are still flickers of light, and it is those flickers that cause me to protect humans to this day. But for those who steal, rape, murder, and commit genocide? Those who believe they are the highest, smartest predator in the food chain? 

Those, I hunt. 

Those, I chase. 

And when I catch them, I gut them like game, rip the flesh from their bones, and feast on them like the vermin they are.