Eat.
The word was a primal command, a roaring fire in its skull that drowned out all else. Its snout twitched, sniffing the air, searching for the scent of food, of anything to fill the gnawing void in its gut.
Hunger was a physical pain, a clawing beast in its belly.
Kill.
This desire was a cold, sharp thorn of instinct that followed close behind the hunger. It was not a thought, but a reflex.
The world was a threat. Anything that moved, anything that breathed, anything that could be a rival for food or a predator to its own small body, must be eliminated. To kill was to survive. It was the only law it understood.
Play.
This was the strange one, the flicker of something other than rage or hunger. A memory. A feeling of grass under its trotters, of nudging a sibling, of the sun on its back.
It was a ghost of a feeling, a faint, pathetic echo of the piglet it had once been. Sometimes, when the hunger and rage receded to a dull roar, its brain would twitch with this urge. It would paw at a loose stone or nudge a piece of debris, a clumsy, mindless imitation of a life it could no longer truly remember.
It had not always been this way.
Once, it had known warmth. The warmth of a sow's belly, the warmth of the sun, the warmth of the human's hand that brought the food.
Once, it had known the sound of its family, a symphony of grunts and squeals that meant safety, that meant home.
Then came the fire. The screaming. The scent of burning hair and blood.
And then came the change.
It had run, blind and terrified, from the burning farm. It had fled into the dark, unforgiving woods. There, something had broken inside its mind.
The fear had curdled into a ferocious, unthinking rage. The simple instincts of the pig had warped, twisted into a new and terrible form. It grew larger, its muscles knotting under its bristly hide.
Its eyes, once a soft brown, had turned a hard, glinting red.
Its master. It remembered him. The two-legged being who had given it food, who had spoken in soft, rumbling tones.
It had seen his head on the ground, separated from his body, his eyes staring into nothing. The sight had shattered what was left of its old self.
The pig's small brain struggled to process the sight of its master being cut down by others of his own kind. Kin. That was a new word.
It had seen its family killed by the two-legs, and now it had seen one two-leg kill another. The world was not just a place where humans killed pigs; it was a place where everyone killed everyone.
It was a chaotic slaughterhouse.
The pig didn't understand why. It only understood that everyone was a threat, and everyone was food.
Then a new thought began to form, a cold and hard concept that slowly took root in the primal muck of its mind.
Revenge.
This feeling was different from the simple urge to kill. It was directed. It was a focused, burning hatred toward the two-legs, toward the fire, toward the memory of its master's head on the dirt. It was a desire to make them suffer as it had suffered.
This newfound purpose, this concept of revenge, became a shroud over its thoughts. It wrapped its mind, coloring every instinct.
The simple, mindless circle of its existence was broken, and reformed into something new. Eat. Still there. Kill. Still there. But now, there was Toy.
The animal no longer played with pebbles. It played with its prey.
When it cornered a creature, be it a rabbit or a stray dog, it no longer killed it immediately. Instead, it would use its massive, thorn-covered body to block its escape. It would lower its head and nudge the creature with its snout, a mockery of a friendly gesture.
It would prod it with its tusks, just enough to draw blood but not enough to kill. It would let the creature run a few steps, then charge, stopping just short of trampling it. It enjoyed the sound of panicked squeals.
It would repeat this process, nudging and prodding and herding, driving its prey to the absolute brink of a heart attack from sheer terror.
It found a dark pleasure in this game, in breaking the spirit of another living thing before finally ending its suffering with a brutal, decisive charge. The joy was no longer in the simple act of killing, but in the art of torturing.
And so the creature that had once been a piglet continued its new life. It was no longer a pig, not truly. It was Brambletusk, a monstrous amalgamation of bristly hide, thorns, and a soul-deep hatred for the world.
Its days blurred into a cycle of violence and dark satisfaction. It grew ever larger, its muscles thickening under its scarred hide until it was the size of a wild boar, but far more malevolent.
Its reputation spread through the surrounding lands, a ghost story told in hushed tones around campfires.
Then came the day when they finally came for it.
Not hunters, but bandits. Men in vests and leather pants, carrying long, sharp sticks. They came with fire and noise, their voices sharp and loud as they tried to corner it.
Brambletusk fought with a fury it had never known before. The concept of revenge burned white-hot in its mind. These were the same kind of beings that had destroyed its home.
It killed many of them. Its tusks were red with their blood, its thorns matted with their gore.
It remembered the color red. The bright color on the cloth they wore, the liquid that sprayed from their bodies when its tusks found their mark. It was the color of its rage and their death.
But they were many, and it was alone. They were clever, flanking it, setting traps. A heavy net of thick vines fell over its body, entangling its legs.
With a frustrated, guttural roar, it tore at the netting, but more men swarmed it. Spears and swords jabbed at its thick hide. For every one it killed, three more seemed to appear.
It was a losing battle. It knew the forest better than they did, though, and with a final, desperate surge of strength, it broke through a weak point in their line and fled into the deep woods.
It ran until its lungs burned and its muscles screamed in protest.
Brambletusk could hear them behind it, the crashing of their heavy boots and the cursing of the men as they pursued it deeper into the forest. It was wounded, bleeding from a dozen cuts, but the rage kept it going.
It had to keep running.
As it burst through a thicket of ancient trees, it skidded to a halt, its hooves digging into the soft earth.
There, standing in a small clearing bathed in moonlight, was a figure. Another two-leg. Another one of them.
Its rage flared, ready to charge, to add this one to its tally of kills.
But then something strange happened. Its small, primal brain, a cauldron of hate and instinct, registered something new.
Beautiful.
That was the only word its fractured mind could find. The being was shaped like the others, the ones who had killed its family and its master, but it was also… not like them.
The smell was different, softer, cleaner. It was a female. That much was clear. And its shape was all wrong, all smooth curves and slender lines, nothing like the brutish, blocky forms of the men chasing it.
Confusion warred with rage. Then the men burst into the clearing behind it, their voices loud and threatening. The rage won.
It let out a guttural scream and charged at the female. It aimed for her center, for the soft-looking torso. Its tusks met their target with a solid thud.
But the woman was unharmed. She had simply twisted her body at the last second, her hands slapping the side of its head and using its own momentum to carry it past her.
She moved with an impossible fluidity, like water flowing around a stone.
The fight was a blur of furious motion and frustrating failure. A whirlwind of thorny hide and gnashing tusks, threw itself at the woman again and again. But she was never there.
She seemed to melt away from every attack, her movements economical and precise. She didn't fight it with brute force, but with an infuriating grace that made it feel clumsy and slow. She used its own wild charges against it, sidestepping and letting it crash into the undergrowth.
Its rage boiled over into a frenzied, mindless berserker state. It just wanted to hurt her, to make her stop moving, to make her bleed like the others had.
It saw what it thought was an opening. The woman stood her ground, a taunting smile on her face, her hands on her hips as if daring it.
'Now!' the beast thought, its small brain latching onto the simple plan. 'Charge!'
It lowered its head and put every ounce of its being into the final charge. It aimed directly for her midriff, a guaranteed kill shot.
It heard the wet, splintering crunch it expected. It felt the jarring impact of its tusks striking home.