Eldritch Horror

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  It is a cold, dark night. The pale light of the moon filters weakly through the thick clouds overhead, doing little to illuminate the path. Lampposts interspersed along the road offer meagre pools of solace from the encroaching darkness. A clatter draws your attention to a nearby alley as you pass. Just a cat, right? The hiss that proceeds to fill the void in the silent night air dissuades you of that notion. Twin inky black pools turn towards you, reflecting some of the light that manages to penetrate into the gloom. You quickly deduce that those two tiny points of light in the darkness are eyes... and that they are moving towards you. There is almost no sound as whatever insidious creature creeps out of the alley towards you and into the light, just the soft rustling of fur and... the sound of dripping? You can see and hear your breath misting in front of your face as this monster, you have no more misguided notions as to its nature, steps out of the darkness and into the soft sodium glow of the lamppost. Superficially it resembles a male wolf, but that is where the similarities end. Hunched over, its grey fur contrasts with the shiny dark pits of its eyes as it stares at you. A quartet of sleek horns bulk up its frontal profile as they protrude out the back of its skull, larger ones in the middle and smaller ones further out. Long spikes trail down its spine and to its tail in regular intervals. A tail, you note, that is longer and thicker, yet shorter furred than a normal wolf's and ends in two fin-like blades of bone. You notice similar jagged, segmented bone plates protruding from its arms and legs as you continue to stand perfectly still, hoping it doesn't really see you. Perhaps most alarming of all are not the LARGE claws tipping its hands nor the talons on its paws, but the black, vitriolic ichor that drips from its silently snarling lips. The same foul-smelling sludge oozes from its eyes, drips down its claws, from where you cannot tell and is left behind with each footfall, sputtering and hissing angrily against the stone, violently caustic and corrosive. As it slowly opens its maw, more of that foetid slime dripping about its entirely black mouth and from its enlarged, black, fangs, two worm-like tentacles snake out of the sides of its muzzle, swaying about slowly. The creature's arms spread as its gaze pierces yours, a burbling hiss escaping its open maw, then suddenly, with a shrieking roar, it leaps. Time to run?
  
  Origin... ?
  A mournful, angry wail, a leap, splash, unimaginable pain and then blissful oblivion. Although, how long that peaceful nothingness would last turned out to be shorter than expected. Some people don't deal with bitter betrayal very well. They allow their emotions to consume them. Hate, doubt, sorrow, these become permanent bedfellows and weigh heavily upon their 'master'. Even death may not be enough to quell their insatiable cries. Something is happening now, the pit of foul, black sludge roils uneasily. A pristine skull floats to the surface, stripped clean and bleached a greyish-white from its submersion. The skull angles back as its lower jaw drops, yawning wide the hole where its mouth used to be. It can't possibly be moving on its own accord though, can it? It can. Snaking tendrils slither their way out from the surface of the liquid, wrapping around and through the bone, giving it substance once more. Black 'flesh' subsumes bone before being covered by fine, grey fur. Soulless eyes form and it now resembles what it once was. The horrifying display doesn't stop there. A claw of bone reaches out of the pit, then another, grasping at the surface to pull the rest of its skeletal body out. More sinuous streams of slime flow up to fill in the gaps as the abomination hauls itself out. A leg is free, then another, accompanied by the vertebrae of a tail. The process quickly concludes and a monster is reborn out of the darkness. It lives again. If one can consider this twisted mockery of its old form as life. Rising up on its new legs, it spreads its arms wide as it tilts its head back and howls once more into the cold, uncaring, unforgiving night. Evident in its tone are anguish, despair, longing and rage, oh so much rage. Consumed as it was in life by wrath and thoughts of vengeance, so too is it now consumed by an unquenchable hatred for the affront of all those still living. It knows neither pity, nor mercy, nor remorse. All it feels now is the hunger.