FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Dearest Tyrus,

I hate to ask this from you, really, I do. But I woke up early this morning in some strange place with handcuffs around my wrists and ankles. Don't worry, I'm not hurt. I actually just beat the teeth right out of the guy who's supposed to be watching over me, that was fun. So I'm not really in deep trouble, I just need a bit of help, being locked in this room and immobilized and all. Whatever moron took me forgot about smartphones, thankfully. The weirdest part about it though is that my phone says I'm somewhere on your campus. If you could find me, I would greatly appreciate it.

• Kalid

P.S. Pretty sure they're ninjas. Be careful."

Tyrus blinked his eyes and stared at the screen for a moment. Six in the morning is not the time for such jokes, especially after long nights of Okami and preparations for HvZ.

A huge, silent yawn forced its way from his mouth, tempting him back into dreams. Consciousness seemed to seep out of his eyes with each progressively slower blink.

What if this isn't a joke though? She could be in serious trouble, and here I am laying in bed like some sort of obese cat. His breathing slowed to a gentle, almost lulling sort of exhale. With every breath he took, he felt his body slowly sinking back into its subconscious cycle.

This isn't right, I should be more concerned... Where is my motivation? I might actually... hurt... safe... Ah well...

He pulled the covers closer, tossed the phone beside him, and drifted back to sleep.

His paws were covered in deep crimson, gashes covering each pad. His left ear had been almost completely torn off. Huge patches of bare skin freckled his already spotted fur, and his body was all but completely numb. Unable to keep himself steady, he fell to his knees on the unforgivingly cold tile floor, his joints finally giving in to the pain. Despite his strenuous efforts, he had been bested.

A shadow on the wall gazed back down at him with a disdainful sort of pity.

"This was all your doing, Tyrus. You know you deserve it." The gruffness of the voice scraped like knives against Tyrus' every bone. "If you had just been a little stronger, if you had only been a little bit quicker, then maybe you would have succeeded."

Tyrus lowered his head and scowled at the ground, unwilling to accept defeat to an enemy he couldn't even see.

"No."

"No?" The shadow laughed at him with an intensity heard only in fairy tales. Echoes off the walls of the stone-cold classroom shook the floor and made what was left of Tyrus' fur stand straight up. "I see how afraid you are, boy. Even the strongest of words become weak in my presence." Mockingly, the shadow started to expand and contract with Tyrus' every shaky breath. Every tear that fell from Tyrus' eyes summoned a thunderous crash that threatened to blanket him in concrete ceiling tiles.

Suddenly, the shadow grew to cover the whole room, and the ceiling above him finally cracked, sending a huge chunk of rock straight towards his already hopeless body. He looked up one last time to see her, weakened and chained to the blackboard. Kalid's head was raised slightly to expose a deep scar running from her ear across the eye to the tip of her muzzle. Black fur had been shredded to bits all over her body, covering the usually gleaming texture with tufts of disembodied pain. With every ounce of his sapped strength, he shouted to her, hoping to get at least one more look into her eyes.

A broken scream escaped his lips as he jolted awake to the thud of a bird against his dorm room window. He sat still for a few seconds, trying to find the breath he lost after such a nightmare, his panicked body slowly waking up. Once his heart had finally found its beat, he checked his phone for a time to make sure he wasn't missing class. Eight o'clock and two more messages from Kalid. Each was just as straightforward and unnerving as the first, forming the possibility of a true peril in his mind. It seemed sort of unlikely that anyone would ever put this much effort into a joke. Exhausted eyes scanned the screen, looking for any clues that could give the truth away. Not finding any, he sighed and climbed down from the bed, setting his phone on the desk.

As he slid on his clothes, he returned his thoughts to the nightmare. Tyrus had always been one to believe in the importance of dreams, but had never been trained enough to delve into their meanings. Sometimes his dreams would tell him stories, some would predict the future, and others would simply process what had been happening in his life. The last dream he remembered involved being chased by zombies and having to find shelter behind an abandoned dumpster, an obvious foreshadowing of his HvZ troubles. This dream was different though. It seemed almost a little bit too eerie and real, more like some sort of other reality than a dream.

He stopped his train of thought in its tracks. Finding himself in a classroom, enemies he couldn't see, Kalid being held against her will, that was no regular nightmare.

Tyrus snatched the phone up back up and bolted out of the room, set on finding his missing girl.

After running around campus for several minutes, his slowed himself down to a steady walk. Blind determination began to fade to realism as h realized he had no idea where on campus she was being held at, and his "searching" was just looking through windows into completely innocent classrooms.

Checking the time on his phone, he saw that he had received another message from Kalid, but this one seemed a bit more broken. Letters were missing in several of the words and the grammar didn't fully make sense to him, not to mention the fact that it dwarfed in size compared to the others. His overwhelmed mind ignored these flaws and instead focused on the fact that his comp sci class was supposed to start in a few minutes. With a tired huff, he started across the quad towards the math and sciences building.