Shadows of Elysium: The Laughing King

Prologue: The Great White Wolf

One Day before the massacre of the Village on Stilts

The Great Wolf lay wounded in the sea recalling memories as the waves crashed over him. Memories involving a small room (small for the wolf, who stood thrice as tall as a man).

Humans in lab coats watched in from behind glass, where they pushed buttons that made gas enter the room with a hiss. Other small humans locked his paws to a massive section of floor designed for just such a thing. They locked his neck to a chain that retracted to the middle and they did tests with needles and fluids.

Some of the fluids burned, and others left him literally frozen in fright with ice around the entry of the needle, but all too often, they felt like hundreds of tiny hugs. That alone was enough to seduce any human, but Buddy's instincts knew better than to trust that feeling. That and he had been given too many of the burning ones to appreciate the addictive qualities of Elysium.

There is a peculiarity in the application of Elysium to an unwilling patient. In a willing subject, or even a subject that becomes willing through the addiction, lines of text written in black ink forms around the subject. A spidery flow letters that connect like cursive and offer no meaningful translation, no matter how many scientists and learned individuals try.

This text is not as simple as a tattoo, though. It emerges from one particular part of the body, often the heart or the head, but even from as inconsequential a place as the foot. Then, each individual thread of text, for each absorbed dosage, wraps around the subject and hovers over them. Like a tattoo on the subject's aura.

Subject 4652 (a.k.a. the wolf) had no such blemishes. Not a single time was the wolf willing to accept a needle, and it most certainly saved his life. Most experiments only survived three- five lines of text. Rare breeds survived seven or eight without 'other side effects'. Only the red-eyed scientist had ten. All ten circling in and out of his eyes. So small they couldn't be seen, but the wolf could see them.

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That night, they gave him a special concoction, one that the tiny humans with the clean white coats would come to regret. As the clear fluid filled 4652's veins, he began to feel... nothing. Nothing inside at all, but there was a feeling outside of him. A feeling where the men were, a feeling beyond where they stood. 4652 thought that it must be nice outside of that cage. The ground had to be different than the cage floor he slept on.

Soon, The Wolf's thoughts encompassed only that point in space where freedom began. He felt it as if it were himself, and then something miraculous happened.

He was outside of the room.

In a white walled hallway with common numbers above all of the doors. It could have meant anything to a simple creature. The corridor started another hallway at one end, but the other ended in an iron bared wooden portcullis tightly shut in chains.

Two white coated humans were still locked in his room with the giant chained collar crashing to the floor, but one tiny fellow was outside with 4652. He screamed bloody murder and took off down the hall to escape the wrath of the large beast. Across from 4652's door, a somewhat human face, but with one spiraled ram horn, gazed out of one of the numbered rooms in awe. The Wolf raked his paw over the door's lock, and it clattered against the floor. The door swung open wide.

The unlikely duo continued down the hall, unlocking every door along the way. Soon, a veritable army of man-made monsters rushed down the hallway. Freedom was inevitable, for what insignificant human would dare to face them?

Then, a team of armored humans rounded the corner carrying a wall of steel with which they blocked the hallway. Levers were turned on humanities side and wall expanded from sleek, oiled slots. It crashed ito the hallway's actual walls and sealed itself in place with a hiss. A second team placed another metal wall behind the first, and then the alarms began ringing. The Wolf slammed into the wall with the weight of an elephant, but the barricade didn't budge an inch. All hope was ripped away in an instant.