FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

• III: Beyond the Veil

In one preternaturally smooth motion she rose up, twisting Tayen’s wrist as she did. The girl cried out and was forced to drop her sword. Stheno then laid a fist into the wolf’s gut, winding her through the carapace of leather, then swung an open back-hand across her muzzle to add insult to injury.

Still holding Tayen’s arm, Stheno twisted her body and threw the girl over her shoulder. The world spiralled about Tayen, turning her gut for a queasy moment before gravity dragged her into a hard, uncomfortable embrace. Tayen groaned on her back where she was slammed with full force into the ground before Stheno caught her by the throat and lifted her clean into the air at arm’s length.

At this point Sil managed to load his crossbow and dashed into the open to take aim. He had the weapon canted as he homed in on his target, then twisted with crossbow to line the sights cleanly up to the back to Stheno’s head. The safety catch turned with a soft click and he squeezed the trigger.

The crossbow shuddered as the string was released and the bolt sped on its way, turning to a blur of black and silver. It moved faster than his eyes could track, but in the time it took his heart to beat once Stheno casually reached back and caught the bolt by the shaft.

She didn’t even look as she caught the projectile. Her keen ears just picked up on the whistling sound the bolt made, and her preternatural reflexes took over.

Effortlessly she snapped the bolt in two and dropped the parts before nonchalantly flicking Sil aside with her tail. He tumbled through the air once, then landed with a pronounced thud and an “oof” in a patch of tall grass somewhere off to the side.

Stheno in the meantime smiled maliciously as Tayen kicked her legs feebly and tightened her hand about the wolf’s throat.

“Out of tricks are we, little girl?”

Tayen gargled, gasping desperately for a breath that never came. Something forced past her constricted throat, but it sounded like gibberish. Curiously however, Stheno listened closely.

“F-ful… er… dho-re… dho-res v’nar…”

She couldn’t get much more out when Stheno laughed almost apologetically, a look of pity taking her aspect.

“Aww, think you know the words of arcana? Fancy yourself a spellcaster, do you?” Pulling Tayen closer, Stheno gave a smug smile. The snakes in her hair snickered mockingly. “Go on then, fey-talker. Hit me with your best shot.”

She loosened her grip, just enough to allow Tayen a deep, gasping breath, but not enough for her to slip the iron grip. As she was coughing and gasping, the girl tried again, her words less strained and more intelligible now.

Tayen said, “I cast FIST!” and decked Stheno in the face with the mightiest right hook she could muster.

It was enough to throw the woman’s head to one side and make her scream with surprise, letting go of Tayen at the same time. The wolf dropped into the grass and rolled to absorb the impact. Before Stheno was able to recover, Tayen was off, dashing clear of the Stheno’s flailing tail. Dropping to her hip she slid under a low, partially deconstructed archway and into the shadows of some tightly packed ruins.

By the time Stheno recovered, a thin line of blood trickling from the corner of her mouth where the punch hand burst her lip against her sharp teeth, Tayen was out of view. In a fit of anger Stheno started clawing at the loose rubble forming a barricade between them, weaving from side to side trying to find a wider access point and digging feebly at the source of her frustration. But even as the debris shifted and Tayen flattened herself against a crumbled wall to avoid the claws that lunged through the cracks at her, all Stheno could do was leave subtle rakes in the weathered stone.

As all this was going on, Sil had scrambled into cover, and with his foot in the crossbow stirrup he used both hands to draw back the weapon’s string before setting a bolt in the breach. All the while he was mumbling to himself.

“By the Gods, I’m writing a book about the horrifying truths of adventuring after this shit.”

Rolling to his feet, Sil stepped around the low wall he hid behind and butted the weapon to his shoulder. He feathered the trigger almost carelessly, letting loose the shot as soon as he noted Stheno’s flesh in his iron-sights.

This time she was too distracted to note the whistling bolt scything towards her, and Sil’s shot rang true with a thud of the bullet-tip embedding into her shoulder blade. The impact threw Stheno forwards against the ruins she was trying to tear apart and she screeched with pain.

Sil was about to let out a celebratory cheer when his stomach turned. Stheno reached back and effortlessly yanked the offending bolt from her shoulder. Her glare, more disappointed than angry turned to Sil now, the knot of blood left in the bolt’s place rapidly healing and smoothing over as he watched.

Chuckling, the boy offered an apologetic wave… then quickly turned and bolted, swimming into his crossbow’s sling and hanging the weapon by his side as he did.

Leaning into the corner, Sil booked it around a partially crumbled abode, digging deep so he wouldn’t slip on the slick grass. Behind him Stheno overshot, drifting after him with a furious scowl and her hair snapping viciously.

While he ran he could hear Tayen call out in the background, and glancing over he noted she’d scrambled out of her hiding spot and retrieved her fallen weapons. “Nice distracting, Silvius!”

“That’s right! I’m totally doing this on purpose!” Sil called back breathlessly as he planted his hands on a low wall and vaulted over.

He landed with a slight misstep and wind milled his arms for balance. As he did he heard the crunch of Stheno ploughing through behind him. Sil dared a look, then suffered for it.

Stheno’s eyes were the first thing he saw, large emerald disks against a yellowed sclera and pulsing with magical energy… and murderous intent. Sil seized, his legs first. His muscles refused to obey his commands and he fell forward, slamming into the deck and sliding roughly to a halt on his side.

Stiffly he struggled to claw his way forward. At least until he felt Stheno’s weight press down on his ankles and hold him in place. He didn’t have to roll over, the woman’s hand finding his shoulder and throwing him on his back with ease.

Fully exposed to that stare and the luscious naked anatomy of Stheno’s gorgeous features, Sil stiffened like before. Every muscle in his body cramped painfully as if her gaze, now twisted in anger was sending a murderous intent rather than the seduction from before. As she held him down with one hand, the other tore away his crossbow and she towered over him.

One handed she crushed the wooden weapon, snapping it in two with the same lack of effort she had reserved for the bolt she’d caught in mid-air.

“I could have made all your dreams come true,” she seethed angrily. “All you had to do was stay with me.”

Her lips parted and Sil caught the glint of her sharp teeth… until another rock slammed into her head.

She winced from the blow and turned to spot Tayen standing in the doorway of a ruin, winding up her sling for another shot. With an angry hiss she shot Sil one more glare as if warning him to stay put, then took off in Tayen’s direction.

The wolf unloaded another shot. Stheno anticipating it though darted to the side and avoided the incoming rock. Tayen hung the sling on her belt and retreated into the building, the snake-woman’s significantly larger frame delving inside after her.

Many of the partition walls had collapsed already, but there was enough for Tayen to move about. She dodged by rolling over a crumbled wall, then ducked under Stheno’s raking claws with a slide that carried her through a cubby-hole and between the coils of Stheno’s knotting body. Furiously the woman gave chase, twisting and delving this way and that as Tayen jumped off one wall, darted in another direction and finally dove headfirst out one of the windows.

She curled at the last moment before smashing through the wooden remains of the window, splintering ancient supports and landing in the grass just outside. Her slight build meant she cleared the windowsill quite easily. But when Stheno pursued her larger size meant she only managed to get her head and one shoulder through.

She still managed to grasp Tayen by the ankle, her claws digging into the girl’s leather boot with a victorious little “hah!”

“Got you now.”

A sly smirk spread across Tayen’s muzzle though. “Actually, I got you now.”

Tensing, Tayen jerked back with her whole body. The action took Stheno by surprise and her whole body shifted its weight against the windowsill. Tayen hadn’t picked this window to leap out of by accident. She’d chosen the main load bearing wall to make her escape through, counting on Stheno’s blind desire to draw blood.

Stheno collided with the rickety wall and the structure made a crunching noise of boulders grinding against each other. She had just about enough time to look up with surprise and mumble an; “uh-oh,” before the whole ruin collapsed.

As the dust settled, Sil had found his feet and rounded the now formless pile of debris. Tayen was standing triumphantly over where Stheno lay mostly covered up to the middle of her back in chunks of stone and mortar, with a few splintered and rotten support beams crossing over the top. She was alive and awake, clawing at the grass by Tayen’s boots, hissing angrily and cursing in a language Sil couldn’t discern.

As she thrashed her body, her snake tail sticking out the far side of the rubble, some of the rocks shifted and small avalanches of mortar slid aside. She was going to be able to dig herself out, that much was for sure. But by the time that happened, Tayen intended to be long gone.

She grabbed the bewildered human by the hand and dragged Sil away from the sorrowful wails of the pinned gorgon, back into the depths of the forest.

* * *

They had slowed their run to a trudge after several long, breathless moments. Then after silently resting for a bit, quietly moved on deeper into the forest.

It was maybe twenty minutes before Sil was able to form intelligible syllables.

“How is what thing when there back why-…” Sil stopped himself before Tayen had to, realising he wasn’t quite at the point of calm to form intelligible sentences.

Giving himself another minute, Sil focused on keeping up with Tayen’s long gait before trying to ask again. “What was that back there? What did Stheno want from me?”

Tayen laughed, then when she looked at him stopped, slowly realising he was asking seriously.

“Wait. You seriously don’t know?”

Sil shrugged.

“Hrm… okay then. I hate to break it to you, Silvius, but dear old Stheno was going to molest you, then have her merry way with you as you turned to stone.”

That blatant revelation took the boy off-guard. “W-w-what? Why?”

“Duh!” Tayen gave him an incredulous look. “Your mother never taught you never to talk to strange gorgons?”

“Stheno is a gorgon?”

Tayen frowned as if it should have been obvious, but to be frank Sil couldn’t imagine how it could have been. Perhaps the statue and the ruined village could have given it away, but so far Sil could only recall gorgons from what little he’d read about them.

They were described as ravishing seductresses who could charm and petrify with a magical stare, but little else in the way of detail. The problem was, the only adventurers of old who had faced them never had much of a penchant for artistry, so were only able to vaguely describe the creatures in journals and letters. Any artist who laid eyes on a gorgon would surely be charmed and… well, whatever gorgons did beyond that. As such there were no pictures of the creatures.

“Nobody really knows what a gorgon would look like,” Sil admitted, making Tayen shrug.

“Well, now you know.”

“Knowledge is overrated.” Something bothered Sil though and he piped up again. “Wait, hold up a second. Aren’t gorgons extinct? Just like harpies, dragons and all other monsters like that. The heroes of old exterminated them all.”

“Evidence, quite obviously, to the contrary.”

“But heroes killed all the monsters. The fey world faded away after that.”

Tayen threw him a look over her shoulder, a hand pausing on a thick curtain of hanging moss. “Are all humans so ignorant or are you just special?”

She pulled aside the moss, parting a curtain that hid a rocky archway from view. The archway itself was unspectacular, some crags and creases in the worn stone taking on the shape of alien runes Sil couldn’t translate.

The world that lay beyond however hardly needed translating.

Dumbstruck, Sil followed Tayen through to a whole new world. The dull, bleak forest receded behind him like a blindfold lifted from his eyes, a kaleidoscope of summer colours bursting before him.

Lush green grass covered the forest floor like a carpet, dotted with white late autumn flowers. The leaves formed a thick canopy of browns and yellows above, clashing with the stark white bark of the trees. Beams of grim light filtered from above and glinted on the various creatures buzzing through this enchanted part of the woods, the dim beams amplified into miniature suns all throughout the air.

Sil found himself in the midst of a fairytale.

Fairies, pointy eared humanoids in leafy gowns and sporting glassy butterfly wings made sing-song humming noises as they sped this way and that in drunken flight paths. A little way off to one side a stag chomped on some of the glistening grass, its antlers adorned with blooming, glowing flowers and crystalline leaves.

As Sil loitered in amazement, one of the thickest nearby trees turned as if mounted on a swivel. And etched into the bark was an old face, creased with age and mottled with patches of moss to form eyebrows and a bushy beard. The face in the tree twisted into an expression of consideration as dark amber eyes looked the boy up and down.

Swallowing, Sil quickly turned away from the tree-ent and jogged after Tayen.

She didn’t lead for much further, and within sight of the moss curtain blocking this magical part of the forest from the dreary rest sat her reasonably comfortable camp.

In the middle Tayen had erected a couple of racks built from large branches and fallen trees, over which some tools and spare clothes hung beside a camp fire. The fire itself was reduced to embers in a stone ring and sitting on top of it was a black iron pot with a lid from which steam and a delicious smell of spiced meat was escaping. A few bags made of leather and closed with simple drawstrings littered the place, as well as a wooden barrel that looked to be for preserving perishables.

On the more sheltered edge of the camp close to a few tightly packed trees and where a large rock jutted out of the earth she had built a leaning shelter out of home-fashioned tent poles and a tarp not unlike what Sil originally packed. An unmade sleeping bag and bedroll lay bundled underneath on a patch of bare earth carpeted in fallen leaves.

With everything that had happened, a camping trip from hell and a subsequent fight with a gorgon, Tayen’s base camp was a welcome sight to tired eyes. Sil was soaked and bedraggled with some errant leaves clinging to his sweaty, filthy face. He looked like the family dog who’d been dunked in the bath as punishment.

Funny enough, Tayen shook herself dry like one before moving towards the pot simmering on the campfire.

As she sat down and stirred the contents with a ladle, Sil gingerly sat down on the opposite side of the fire and set down his knapsack.

After a few moments of silence broken by the metal spoon scraping the pot, he finally asked, “Are you a werewolf?”

Tayen laughed. “I’m not a werewolf. Though I understand the confusion. The heroes of old were confused too, nearly hunting my people to extinction. Some, like my ancestors, managed to go into hiding.”

That was actually quite awful, and Sil was somewhat surprised Tayen managed such a chipper tone as she recounted her peoples near eradication. She somehow kept that optimistic spring in her step as she jumped up and started undoing the buckles of her armour.

Realising something, Sil quickly added, “There’s more of your people. I saw a wolf just like you stalking my sheep on the edge of the forest!”

“Err… no, not just like me.”

“So, there is a werewolf here somewhere?”

“No. There’s no werewolf. The wolf you saw was actually me. I was eying your sheep.” She paused on the last buckle, then added, “Sorry.”

The consequences of her statement made Sil feel worse for Tayen than the sheep. “So… so there’s no more of you?” He glanced about the camp, reminded that this was a settlement set up for one individual. “You’re alone?”

“Oh, there’s plenty of us, just nowhere near here. I ditched my village, came out here on my own.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, there’s actually a number of factors to consider, but primarily because you should mind your own damn business,” she answered bluntly, and Sil held up his hands defensively.

Tayen pulled her armoured vest up over her head, pulling up the bottom of her shirt a little. Sil swallowed as he caught a little more of her toned mid-riff. She was really quite athletic, and the grey of her fur seemed to cover her from head to toe.

Then she undid the top few buttons of her shirt and pulled that off too, as if just to confirm. Before Sil was able to catch himself, he was staring at the now topless wolf-girl’s back. She wasn’t wearing a bra under her shirt, and as she turned around she immediately appeared as well developed as the other young women in Sil’s village at his age. It seemed the leather carapace had been compressing her bust a little. Out of her armour, her feminine curves were suddenly much more pronounced.

Unabashed, and seemingly unaware of Sil’s cheeks turning bright red, Tayen walked past him towards one of the bags laying about her camp. He tore his eyes from her dark nipples poking through the grey fur on the firm nubile mounds and resolved to staring at the glowing embers under the pot.

“So, uh. Why did you save me?” Sil asked a little uncomfortably, shifting his eyes slightly for one more peek.

Tayen had her back to him again, however this time she bent over to look through one of her bags. As she did, her already well fitted pants pulled tightly over the firm globes of her bottom. Sil couldn’t help turn his head for a better look, his widening eyes spotting the distinct outline of the cleft between her slender legs where the light fabric clung to her body like a second layer of fur.

Sil quickly looked away as he noted a similar stirring in his loins as when Stheno captured his gaze with her gorgon powers.

“I could hardly let that snake hussy have her way with you,” Tayen said as she straightened up and pulled a woolly sweater over her head. Decent again under the baggy sweater that left all the luscious lines of her athletic body to the imagination, she turned to face him again with her hands on her hips.

“Besides, I’m a sucker for damsels in distress,” Tayen added with a toothy grin.

Despite the implications of the statement, Sil smiled back. “Well, I’m glad. Thanks.”

“I still owe you for taking your sheep though. Here.”

Tayen knelt by the fire again and produced some cracked ceramic bowls, spooning what seemed to be a stew into one. Popping in a wooden spoon she handed it to Sil who was suddenly realising how hungry he was. He hardly blew at some of the steam to cool the meal down. Tongue burning, but numb to the pain considering his aching extremities, Sil scarfed the meal down gratefully.

He was halfway through his first bowl by the time Tayen poured herself one, and he stopped. Though not for realising it was impolite to start eating without his hostess. It was a wholly different, colder realisation that had him freeze and more properly consider the meal; noting a few wild vegetables and chunks of cooked meat bobbing in the dark brown soup.

“Wait. This is mutton,” he said after a moment.

“Mmm-hmm,” Tayen hummed innocently as she sat back to eat.

Sil stared, then looked at the stew again. “This is my sheep, isn’t it?”

Tayen didn’t answer. Her grin said enough.

… screw it. It was freakin’ delicious, so Sil scarfed down the rest and went back for seconds.