It was a chilly morning, as a naked child was lead along a stone coordior to their fate. The canine child held the paw of their caretaker, unaware of the others malicious intent.
Together the two proceeded down several flights of stairs, the ambient temperature dropping as their elevation did. The robed individual adjusts their hood with their freehand, while the child makes do with your and blonde fur.
It does not take a great amount of time for the pair to reach their destination, a chamber well below the earth, worn and cracked stone telling of its age.
The aura of the place is strange, and even the uninitiated child can tell this is a place of power. In the middle of the chamber stands an altar, a pedestal with a slightly concave top. The stone is polished, standing out among the rest of room, but otherwise plain.
Around the altar, other hooded figures stand in a circle. One spot is empty,clearly intended for the guardian of the child.
As they enter the room, the child is scooped up by their companion and deposited into the bowl atop the altar. While curious, even at this age the young pup knows not to interrupt the adults when they are wearing their robes.
In the distance a clattering sound can be heard, causing several of the robed figues to shift nervously "Time grows short" speaks a female voice. "We must begin"
Several voices start chanting a complex intertwining sequence, impossible to unravel to its sources. The child is repositioned to a laying position in the bowl, perfectly accommodated by its size.
The hooded figure then steps back to join the others, and all of them begin to move in intricate interlooping circles. The child quickly loses sight of the only familiar shape, and must simply watch the sea of bobbing and weaving cloth.
The distant clatter sounds again, much louder this time.
As the ferveror of the ritual grows, the circles in which the cultists move gradually shrink until each member is within arms reach of where the child lays.
Energy begins to form, an impossibly colored sphere in the center of the room, mere feet above where the confused and scared pup lays. Then, without warning, that energy funnels downninto the child, causing their back to arch, eyes and mouth flying wide open in a silent scream.
For his part, the child has never felt pain like this before, and it consumes his entire reality. In the moment there is nothing else. Then, in that sea of pain, a figure forms. The child instinctively knows this figure is the source of everything that is happening, the cause of the pain, and tries to shrink away
<My vessel> the words are not spoken but are understood all the same. Drink of my being, and become my actor in this world.
The child does not understand the words, but the meaning is clear. They are to be bound to this other, to lose their own will to the will of this being. and yet, as they are filled to the brim with power, and the pain starts to change, to become control, everything stops, and the child is consumed by sleepless unconcious.
Before The ritual is complete, things go wrong.
Those who later come upon the scene can barely understand what they find. Eight cultists, holding ritual daggers, standing frozen over a sacrificial altar, poised to stab the child there. A ninth cultist, slumped over the same alter, half their chest missing from a gun shot. A Sherrif and deputy, frozen in the process of breaching the room, rifle still sighter to where the cultist had stood. A child, unconcious but breathing on the altar, the only one not to be leaking blood from every orafice, the only one to survive. Later to be taken to an orphanage, and renamed from Kyliel of the Blackened Paw to the much simpler Kyle Blackpaw
