Arion had begun wondering what the beasts were supposed to look like.
Not what they looked like now, with their enormous bodies, hardened ridges of corrupted tissue, and limbs that seemed to have been assembled from several different animals.
What they had looked like before the infection.
The twelve creatures from Claudia's Palace had become dogs after he told them to behave, but those animals had been considerably smaller than the ones currently gathered around him. Even in their corrupted forms, the differences in their proportions suggested they had not all originated from the same species.
The enormous beast beside him had a head broad enough to resemble a bear, although its elongated forelimbs and the ridges covering its shoulders made any comparison unreliable.
Another had the narrow muzzle and long legs of a wolf.
Farther away, a creature with particularly large paws was sitting beneath a tree, watching a bird move through the branches overhead.
