FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Zoe!"

I sloshed through a mire with the consistency and color of old, runny pistachio pudding. The stench was overwhelming and I concentrated on keeping my stomach down. The wide space between several of the ancient fallen trees had become a pool that was filling up fast. On the other side of one of them the pressure of twenty feet of liquid dung was finding its way through. Every second it got deeper and I tried not to think what would happen if the old rotten tree burst like a shoddy dam.

"Zoe, can you hear me?"

She had to be underneath, otherwise she would call out to me. I was desperately searching, feeling around blindly with my feet and poking with a long stick. I didn't want to abandon her, but the longer this took the more bleak my chances of finding her were. In a few more minutes this place would be buried, her along with it. My foot hit something hard and I turned my face away as I reached down to grab it. I was rewarded with a rock.

The flood reached my hips and I unlimbered the baggage from my back and set it on top of a large piece of floating mushroom cap. I pulled Zoe's sheath out of my belt and put it on top. Pushing the makeshift boat along I continued to hunt. Bubbles, a glow, anything at all that could give me some idea where she was. There were disturbances everywhere as air escaped the ground and currents of fresh sewage rushed through the barrier. I happened across something moving and pulled it out, finding a small boulder-bug about the size of a softball desperately swimming for its life. Seeing no reason to let it die in such an undignified way, I put it on the mushroom and kept going. It wandered around, finding the edge and turning around only to find another edge. After a few moments it gave up and just rolled into a ball.

"Damn it, Zoe! Where the hell are you?" The sick feeling that this was futile was starting to settle in; that I had lost her and any chance I had to find her was diminishing by the second. The deeper everything got the harder it was to move through. The ground under the muck was sticky and had already stolen my shoes. If I didn't escape soon I wouldn't be able to escape at all. As it reached up to my chest I promised myself that I'd make one more pass. I wouldn't give up just yet.

But I found nothing.

Immense, sickening guilt swept over me as I started to nudge the mushroom toward the edge of the pool to climb to safety. I had lost my only friend in this entire damn world. I should have done more. I shouldn't have let go of her when I fell. She needed me and I failed her. I'd be dead already if it wasn't for her and now she's gone. What was I going to do now? Xog could eat every bit of what I was struggling through and then fornicate itself. As I reached the edge of the pool I glanced at her sheath with regret... and I thought I saw something on it move.

I hadn't paid her sheath much mind. It was just a battered old wooden thing that she slept in. I picked it up. Sure enough there was something under the layer of filth that shifted. I quickly wiped it off on my shirt. I could make out barely visible markings in the ancient, worn surface of the wood. Most of it illegible runes that meant nothing to me, but there was a faint circle with an arrow that looked like a compass. The arrow pointed directly at me. I turned it and the impression of an arrow magically continued to point at me. I turned my whole body and the arrow stopped pointing at me.

It was pointing where I had come from.

I abandoned the mushroom boat and splashed toward the direction the arrow indicated. The thick muck was getting up to my armpits and the currents were starting to gain strength, pushing at me. I could barely get traction so the going was slow. I held up the sheath in front of me and paddled with one arm, watching the little arrow dance back and forth. It was up to my neck when the arrow suddenly spun around and pointed back at me. I shifted the sheaths position around to find exactly where it was pointing. I felt around with my feet and there was nothing. Just soft mush below me. That couldn't be! It's pointing right here!

I took several deep breaths to prepare for what I was about to do. Then I closed my eyes, squeezed my mouth shut and ducked into the filth. Fighting my buoyancy and using the sheath as a shovel, I reached down and dug into the muck. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! As much as I dug it just kept filling in.

I came back up gagging, coughing and spitting. I wiped my eyes and checked the sheath again. Still below me. Down I went and again I found nothing. I had to hold my head high to keep my mouth above the "waterline" to catch my breath. The fatigue was burning through my body like a fire but I refused to give up when I was this close. I went down one last time, digging frantically. My lungs felt like they wanted to pop and my stomach was on the verge of mutiny when the sheath hit something solid. Just before I ran out of air I reached into the sludge and grabbed a metal blade. Fortunately was not very sharp. I burst through the surface and held Zoe up victoriously.

"EEEEW! This is SO gross!" she shrieked.

I wheezed and retched. "H-hey, Zoe."

"Master! You found me!"

"I couldn't leave my sword behind."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

I managed to grab a fragment of floating mushroom, but it was too small to offer much in the way of a life preserver. My vision was trying to blur and safety looked so very far away. I had been through too much. Every part of my body was in full revolt and in need of recovery. My legs didn't want to kick and my arms didn't want to tread. I was never a strong swimmer to begin with, and it wasn't like I was in water anyway, more like quicksand. I was at the mercy of the currents and movement of the sludge.

I had seriously screwed up.

"Zoe, I can't... I can't reach the bottom anymore and I don't have any strength left in me. C-can barely move."

"You can make it, Master! I know you can!"

"I think..." sewage tried to get in my mouth and I spit. "I think I might be done for."

She grew cold in my hand and flits of light danced over her. "Master Jack, you can't die! Not yet! If you do, I'll never forgive you!"

"It's o-okay, Zoe. When you wake up y-you'll have a new master."

"No! Please don't give up! I N—" her final comment to me lost as I slid her into the sheath. I tucked her into my shirt to keep her safe. At least if someone ever happens to find my body they'll find her. A magical talking sword found with random dead nobody that was too stupid to survive. I had a lot of close calls since I arrived on this world, but you can only flirt with death for so long before it claims you. Given a choice, I'd probably go with getting eaten by a monster over drowning in excrement. Not for the first time I cursed Xog for being such a stupid, backward, senseless world. Turns out it wasn't for the last either.

As I vainly struggled to keep my head out of the filth, something slapped me painfully in the face. I took it as yet another indignity that was heaped upon me, brushing away what had struck me before I realized it was something like a rope. In fact, a thick vine. It extended away from me all the way to the edge of the pool. Through the murk clouding my eyes I could make out someone there, holding the other end. They appeared to be shouting something, but I couldn't hear with all the fluid blocking my ears. With a weak hand I grasped the vine, but it slipped from my fingers and the current carried it away. I was having trouble keeping my head up and became disoriented. I could no longer see the person anymore, nor the vine. For a moment I considered that I had simply imagined it in fatigued delirium. My mind attempting to give me hope where there was none.

Then something splashed down next to me. It was the vine again. This time the end of it had a loop knotted into it. Hands that seemed to no longer be connected to my mind grabbed it and an arm slipped into the loop, then the other. The vine cinched down on my chest as it was drawn taut and I was getting dragged through the slime. I didn't have enough strength to assist whoever was pulling me, barely able to keep my head turned upward to breathe. I was hauled out of the sludge and dragged bit by bit up the steep slope. All I could do was struggle to recover my breath.

I was dragged on the top of an ancient decayed log and someone was over me, leaning down to examine what they had found. I gazed wearily at a strange blue face with markings that glowed brightly in the black light. The skin was glossy and smooth. It had a wide mouth and two large, jet-black eyes that blinked at me curiously. On top a tall, spiny fin stood up like a mohawk. It had similar fins on the sides of its skull where ears should be.

Oh good. Instead of drowning in shit I get to be eaten by the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

"Ch-chirp shir chirp," the creature said.

"What?"

"Chirp?"

I shook my head. "I'm... I'm sorry, I can't understand you."

The creature didn't appear to be threatening. Which was good because my body had the consistency of jelly and I was in no shape to endure yet another danger. The fin on top of its head dropped down and it pressed a hand over its nose, clearly offended by my smell. Only a few hours earlier seeing something like this thing standing over me would have caused a bladder malfunction, but it wasn't even in the top ten crazy things I've seen on Xog. It appeared to be a person that was a cross between a frog, a fish, and a spider monkey. Two arms and two legs like any other person, but it had large webbed feet and hands, each possessing one less digit than I did. Behind it swayed a whip-thin tail over twice as long as it was tall. The tail ended with three finger-like tips with webbing between. The creature's glossy skin was dark blue and had glowing spots where the blue reacted in the black sun. It was clothed in a loincloth made from animal skin, and a furry, lavender wrap around its shoulders. A wide sash of intricately woven patterns of assorted colors was wrapped tightly around its belly up to the armpits. Tucked into the sash at the hip was an odd weapon akin to an oversized ninja star with three curved prongs. The creature had a metallic blinking tag in the center of the chest in a similar position to mine.

"Um... I guess thank you?" I said.

It's cheeks momentarily inflated as it gagged and it gave a series of clicks and chirps, which I assume was revulsion. The creature's gaze fell upon Zoe's hilt sticking out of my shirt. It made a shrill whistle of excitement, forgot its disgust and snatched the sword from my clothes.

"Wait! No, give her back!" I reached for Zoe but what I had assumed was a furry shawl on the creature's shoulders suddenly came to life. I recoiled as the fur sprouted a toothy mouth that snapped and hissed at me. It wasn't an article of clothing, it was one of those striped ferret/snake animals I had seen before. This one purple instead of green.

The amphi-person turned Zoe over in its hands, examining her. "Ch-hir shir chi–" it drew Zoe from her sheath, "–ake this as payment."

"—EED YOU, MASTER JACK!" Zoe shrieked.

The creature's reaction to a talking sword was much like mine, dropping Zoe like she was molten. It made an astoundingly long leap backward, landing in a crouch twenty yards away.

"That thing talks!" it blurted in shock.

"You can talk!" I observed.

"You can talk?" it made the same of me.

"I was talking the whole time!"

"You were only grunting at me!"

"You were tweeting like a bird!"

"No I... What's a byrd?"

"Wait, what's going on? Who's talking? Master! You're okay!" Zoe cried out.

It dawned on me. So that's why the robot and Rockie had inexplicably spoken English. I picked Zoe up. "Why didn't you tell me you could do that?" I asked.

"Do what?"

"We can understand anyone that touches you."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

There was a pause as she processed that. "Neat!"

The amphibian eyed me warily with one of its hands resting on the weapon at its side. The furry snake coiled around it had grown agitated by the situation, growling with flattened ears. "Quiet, Charea." It stroked the snake and it appeared to calm down.

"Who's the blue woman?" Zoe asked.

I frowned. She's been saying everything is female and I'm starting to think she couldn't tell any better than I could. "That's not a woman. It doesn't have breasts."

"I'm a woman and I don't have breasts," Zoe pointed out. Which unfortunately put me in the position of being educated by a moron.

"You there!" the amphibian—who I had no reason to presume wasn't female—called out. "Are you a jambi?"

I propped myself on an elbow, wiped a hand across my face and flicked away the gunk. I didn't know what a "jambi" was or if it was good or bad to be one. "Not so far as I know. My name is Jack."

"I've never seen your kind before. What tribe are you?"

"Um... American?"

"Are all from your tribe able to speak with knives?"

Zoe vibrated sharply. "Knife? I'm not a—"

"Shush, Zoe. I, uh, can't say it's common," I admitted, groaning as I sat up.

"Where did you come from?"

I pointed up the mountain. "There."

"It's dangerous to be in the mountains."

"Yeah, we noticed. The cave wasn't a picnic either."

"You were in the caves?" she said with dismay.

"Not by choice, I can tell you that." I hung Zoe on a convenient branch of the shrub next to me. "You know, in my tribe, usually when we tell someone our name it's considered rude for the other not to do the same."

The amphibian appeared shamed by the accusation and its hand fell away from the weapon. "I apologize, Jack of Tribe Ummerican. My name is Sei'la."

"And uh, your tribe?"

"I don't have one."

"You're alone?" Zoe asked.

Sei'la pet the snake around her neck. "I have Charea."

"Charea is soouper cute!" Zoe fawned. "Look at that little face! And she looks so pretty on you. We have to get one, Master. Or maybe two? One for both of us. Do they come in pink? That's like my favori—"

"Zoe!"

"Sorry, Master."

"Are you from here with all the snails, flying eels and underground octopuses, or were you brought here by demons?" I asked Sei'la.

She shook her head in confusion. "I don't know what you mean by any of that."

"I just thought since you had a run-in with the robot, maybe you came here the same way I did."

"Row-butt?"

I pointed up. "The box from the sky? A big red eye and lots of arms? It came down and had its way with me before pinning this on." I opened the front of my shirt and indicated to the device on my chest. "You have one too."

She touched her tag and I notice an elaborate tattoo on her chest that accentuated it. "I've had the holy mark my whole life. Everyone has one."

"It's new for me." I loosened the vine looped around me and pulled it off. If she had it her entire life it's reasonable to assume she was born here. If she's native that means she knows how to survive and her expertise could be invaluable. I should do what I could to make friends with her. This was surreal. I was engaged in a conversation with an extraterrestrial being on an alien planet. It wasn't like I had expected. Although I wasn't sure what I expected. Maybe brain-melting or face-huggers. I suppose those parts might come later. She was keeping a respectable distance, so perhaps she had the same reservations about me. Either that or it was my smell.

"Well, Sei'la, we're grateful you and Charia came along when you did to pull us out of that mess, we owe you one."

"The debt is accepted, but I had hoped you would be one of my kind," she confessed. That made sense. Splashing around in feces I was likely to be recognizable as any particular creature. I tried to stand up and grunted when I failed.

"In that case, thank you for not dropping us back in when you realized your mistake."

"I couldn't. Your mark was calling mine. Ar'kivist sent me to find you."

"Ar'kivist?"

She pointed up. "Ar'kivist who lives in the sky above Kalkal."

I assumed "Kalkal" was the thing that took a kaka on me. Godzeela was still visible heading toward another mountaintop to make a run for more plankton. Not surprising, considering how fast they run through her. I examined the tag on my chest. It was blinking a particular sequence of lights. The tag on Sei'la's chest was blinking an identical sequence. I didn't care for what that implied.

"You mean these things can control us?"

She blinked dully, perplexed by my dismay. "We have to obey. Ar'kivist protects us."

I grumbled: "I could do without that sort of protection."

"You kinda did need to be rescued," Zoe quipped.

"Zoe..."

"Right. Shush."

I managed to get to my feet even though I was still jittery from fatigue. I wiped my face and hands off on the large pink and blue spotted leaves of a nearby shrub. They were inadequate for the job. Searching around I found my baggage was below still floating on the mushroom in the pool. It was caught up on the edge in some of the bushes. "Great," I sighed.

"I'm concerned your mark is still calling mine. I don't understand why." Sei'la paced and the serpent/ferret thing on her shoulders slithered around her neck, keeping its mistrustful eyes on me.

"I don't hear anything at all."

"It's not a sound, it's a feeling."

"Yeah, I'm not getting that either." I gathered up the vine that had been used to rescue me, contemplating how I could use it to get my baggage back. I wasn't feeling up to rappelling down for it.

"It's only that I don't know what Ar'kivist wants me to do. I had assumed I was supposed to help you, but why is it still calling?"

"Look, this is interesting and I don't mean to be rude," I said, "but this is literally the most disgusting I have ever been in my entire life. I just want to get my luggage, find someplace to take a bath, and brush my teeth about 800 times."

"What's a luggage?"

"My baggage." I pointed down into the pool. "The white bag."

"I can get it." Sei'la scrambled down the slippery slope of the log with ease. Her large hands, feet and prehensile tail effortlessly grasping any handhold. In a few seconds she returned with my baggage grasp by her tail like a third hand.

"I brought your food too." She said as she gave me the small curled up boulder bug.

"Oh... thanks, but—"

"Aww, don't eat the baby Rockie!"

"No! Zoe, don't fall in love with this one," I warned. "I'm not going to eat it, I was just rescuing it."

"Her."

"Will you stop that!"

Sei'la cocked her head. "Rescuing? It's just a di'mirk."

"Seemed like the right thing to do. It was helpless." I turned the small creature in my hand. Under the mire covering it there was a blinking tag. A "di'mirk", huh? I think I prefer "boulder-bug" even if it didn't fit in this instance. I put it down to set it free.

"And dee-marks are cute," Zoe insisted.

"Di'mirk," Sei'la corrected.

"That's what I said!"

Sei'la's tail handed over my suitcase and I opened it up. Despite the hole that the snail had bitten into the bag it had done a good job of keeping the contents clean and dry. Sacrificing the socks on top to wipe myself off as best I could, I dug to the bottom to retrieve my dress shoes. The previously polished black shoes were bleached back to natural leather and ruined, but still something to wear. They were slip-ons without laces which were worse for the situation I was in than the shoes I had lost were, but I wasn't going to go digging for the other pair nor go barefoot.

"That is an interesting bag. How did you make such material and that closure?" Sei'la asked.

I closed the luggage and slung the belt over my shoulder. "I bought it. It's just nylon and a zipper." I considered taking the vine since a rope was probably useful, but the vine was just another thing that had been in a pool of crap. Sei'la didn't seem interested in recovering it so it must not be much of a loss. "Since you're from here, do you know where I can find some water to get cleaned up? Water that's safe to drink maybe?"

"There's water not far away. I could lead you to it."

"We're not leaving Dee-Dee behind, are we?" Zoe fretted.

Aw, jeez, she named it. "Dee-Dee" was wandering around my feet, her thin antennae prodding at my legs. I carefully stepped over the creature. "She'll be fine," I assured as I took Zoe off the branch and picked up the scabbard. "And if you start crying again I swear I'll put you in this stinky sheath."

She sniffed but stayed composed. "I wasn't gonna cry."

"You two are the strangest things I've ever come across," Sei'la said before motioning toward the jungle. "This way, and hurry, Tro-Brinma is drying me out."

"Tro-what?"

She pointed to the dark sun in the sky. "You're lucky Tro-Sular is hidden behind Ja'kar-sil-ko or it would have been too hot to come out here at all."

Okay, yeah. I'm not going to be bothered to remember those names.

I trotted along the top of the log, my feet squishing into the rotten old wood with every step. Sei'la hopped ahead but kept her pace low. Even if I wasn't sore and exhausted I would have been incapable of keeping up with her and she was irritated by my lack of speed, wanting to get out of the sunlight. On her shoulder Charea's head bobbed as she kept suspicious, cat-like eyes on me. We zigzagged along on top of the tangle of ancient dead trees. Occasionally Sei'la had to help me climb where trees had fallen over each other, letting me grasp her long tail to be pulled up. The tail felt odd and was more like a tentacle than a tail. It was cool to the touch like a three-fingered, boneless hand wearing a rubber glove, and had an incredible gripping texture.

"Your skin is hot," Sei'la noticed, "and your face is leaking. Are you unwell?"

"I'm fine. This is all normal." Perfectly normal for someone that's out of shape.

We made it close enough to the jungle that the canopy was shading us and Sei'la slowed her pace. The trees that had fallen hadn't been lying as long, and were less decayed into the ground. It was easier and safer for me to switch from walking on them to walking under them, picking our way through the gaps where they propped up on each other. Some only a few feet high and some large enough to sail a yacht under. Knee-high hairy blue ferns and giant mushrooms grew throughout, and small balloon-like jellyfish fluttered around in the sheltered calm within the fallen trees.

Sei'la periodically hopped to higher vantage points to keep a lookout for trouble. "We have to be careful when going under." Sei'la warned. "Gholts sometimes use them for an ambush. Usually I go over to avoid them."

"Gholts?"

"Big and ugly with lots of teeth. I could escape, but since you can't climb or jump..."

"Right. I'll keep an eye out for big and ugly," I promised.

Satisfied that there was no imminent danger, Sei'la walked nearby, although staying upwind from me. Charea had grown accustomed to my presence and was snoozing, her head tucked under the alien's chin. Walking wasn't an ambulatory state Sei'la appeared suited for, the large feet were better for hopping and climbing so she was forced to walk on her toes. I took the opportunity to observe her closer. She was almost as tall as I was, but much thinner. Her black eyes were expressive, but the rest of her face didn't appear to have much articulation. She couldn't smile or frown. Or at least she hadn't felt the need to do either so far. Her mouth didn't have lips and I could see small, needle-sharp teeth when she spoke. The mouth movements didn't correspond with the words spoken, like watching a dubbed foreign movie. I expect that was due to the limitations of Zoe's translation magic. The fins on the sides and top of her head raised and lowered in relation to her mood, but I hadn't deciphered the positions yet. Her tail moved constantly and apparently without her conscious thought. The fingers grasping and touching what she walked by, always seeking a handhold. Her sleek skin lacked any pores or hair, and in the shade the spots nearly disappeared, only to burst brilliantly when black sunlight managed to stream through the treetops. The coloration reminded me of those bright, South American frogs.

She caught me examining her. "What?"

"Sorry. I was just wondering if you were poisonous."

Her eyes narrowed. "Why? Were you planning on eating me?"

I chuckled. "I wouldn't do that. You're the only friend I've got besides Zoe."

She stopped in her tracks. "No, no. We are not friends," she stated firmly. "I'm only helping you because Ar'kivist wants me to." With that she walked past me and stepped up her pace.

I jogged to catch up. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"I'm not uncomfortable. That's how it is."

"What is Ar'kivist anyway?" Zoe piped up.

"Ar'kivist is... Ar'kivist." Sei'la was mystified by the question. "We are all connected to Ar'kivist because we come from Ar'kivist. I don't know how else to explain that."

"But we have seen Ar'kivist," I insisted. "It's a robot. It's made of metal and circuits."

She shook her head. "The "row-butt" as you say was just a herald. There are many of those—more than can be counted. They watch and protect us. I've had... contact with them many times. They are simple servants, no more Ar'kivist than Zoe is you."

"I'm not simple!" Zoe objected. I had to resist the retort to that.

"I wonder why Ar'kivist is interested in protecting me?"

"I've never seen anything like you so that means you're rare," Sei'la speculated. "Ar'kivist takes more interest in less common creatures."

"Are your kind rare?"

"I'm going over."

"What?"

Sei'la pointed to a tangled wall of vines which marked the edge of the jungle. "There's no way I'm going through there and you're too heavy for me to carry. I'm going over."

I balked at the wall of foliage. "Shouldn't we look for an easier place to get through?"

"This is the easy place," she said as she sprang to the top of a fallen log. "There's water on the other side and this is the only way to get to it. I'll meet you there." She hopped up to the top of a towering root that had been torn upright when the tree fell. From there she jumped to a standing tree that made a sequoia look like a sapling, clinging easily to the bark. She scurried around and jumped to the next tree and was gone.

"I don't know if she likes you," Zoe said.