FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Srida left her room--her new home--refreshed. She didn't really have a plan, but she did know the situation wasn't hopeless, that there was a way out. That was enough to bring Andreas peace of mind and let himself slip back into Srida's headspace. It was a weird situation he was in. Logically, he knew he was mentally the same person, more or less. But he simply couldn't see Andreas as a female gorgon. It disturbed his sense of identity too much, and perhaps also his pride. His current body was a manifestation of a nearly fatal mistake. It just felt better to think of Srida as a distinct person from Andreas--still as herself--but as the other side of the same coin.

He'd considered trying to think of her as a fresh start, but that didn't work for him. That implied he was erasing who he was, what he had. But he liked those things, and starting over didn't really feel right to him. As he slithered from his bedroom to the living room, Andreas cause a glimpse of himself--of Srida--in the mirror.

It was the first time Srida had truly seen herself from another person's perspective. It actually made her stop and consider it for a moment. Despite having seen her own face through her hairsnakes, she didn't really know what she looked like. They were always too close, or at an awkward angle, and she'd made a deliberate effort not to look. Andreas hadn't wanted to know. He'd glimpsed the gorgon before he'd killed her and taken her power, and she hadn't exactly been eye candy.

So when Srida caught sight of what could only be described as a pretty face in the mirror, it gave her pause. Her cheekbones were high, her nose petit, and eyelids a little more darkly scaled, making her bright green eyes stand out like a feature. Even the snakes atop her head didn't seem to disturb her as much. With the scales on her sides, back, and shoulders, hair wouldn't have suited her appearance. After all, no scaled creature had hair, so why would she? As strange as the snakes were, they actually helped maintain an appearance rather than hinder it. They hung from her head somewhat loosely, writhing around until she made them still, then tucked them behind her ears, which were pointed and stuck out substantially now.

It helped her confidence, knowing that the pretty face was on top of the figure of an objectively attractive woman--or the torso of one at least. Srida wasn't just sporting an hourglass figure--she was muscular as well. Or perhaps that was the reason to begin with--strong shoulders tapered down to a slim waist and back to wide hips before the snake took over... Srida spun around, looking over her shoulder into the mirror before just looking forwards and using her hairsnakes to see instead. Her back was indeed well muscled--certainly not large like a man's, but lean. It was a level of fitness Andreas had never seen on a woman in the overworld, not undressed at least.

The scaling came up her back and onto her shoulders too, fading around her sides until her belly was almost normal skin. While thick on her back and probably strong enough to resist being cut by a knife with some force behind it, the only scales she had on her front was a smattering on her upper chest right by her collarbone, and a bit creeping up on her underboob. Her arms were similar with the thick scales on her shoulders and coming down about halfway her upper arm, and then the rest that pebbly, scratch resistant skin that covered the rest of her humanoid body.

Srida flipped her hairsnakes and swung them so they fell over her shoulder in front of her. Suddenly she felt pretty. Maybe her body could be monstrous and pretty--and if not pretty, at least elegant. It was a bit of confidence she desperately needed.

Singing pulled Srida from her reflection and drew her attention outside. Muffled initially, suddenly a collection of voices carried well up into her home as they emerged from the giant tunnel below.

You may hear the voices of the thousand passed now calling your name, You could have the weight of the underworld bath you in flame.

But you can't see the agony he holds in his hands, Time will pass and he will wipe out life of this land.

You can be a hellion of mercy or a demon of hate. You could stand your ground and fight him, that's a common mistake.

If you go to try, You'll surely die, So don't even start, With sword and shield not of this world he'll tear you apart.

In the overworld, Andreas had been privileged enough to attend plays, operas and concerts. He'd also heard street performers and military chants, and people teaching themselves the art of music. The singing coming from the chanting group below was far closer to the former than the latter, something rarely seen from those who hadn't dedicated their lives to it. They were in sync, in tune, and energetic in their song.

It actually left Srida a little shocked. The song itself was entirely ordinary, but a performance that crisp and in tune was an incredible accomplishment for over fifty people. The gorgon laid down on her belly with her body trailing out of the small naga-hole and watch the group gathering in a circle at the edge of the tunnel. There were a lot of bodies and unique shapes, many variants of the demons she'd studied at the academy.

Two of them stuck out the most to her. The first was a feminine form, her upper body mostly human aside from being twice the average height and her skin slate grey. Her lower body on the other hand was a mass of eight writhing tentacles, all in the order of twenty feet long, and slowly changing from the slate grey color at her hips to a glowing orange at the tips, like superheated metal.

She was also flying.

Hovering about thirty feet above the others, she was leading the pack, with both Vyvyla and Gowris hovering alongside her, discussing something. It was pretty easy to guess that this was the woman named Ceelia that Vyvyla had mentioned earlier during the day.

The other strange body--and probably more unique than the giant floating octopus-woman--looked to be an exaggerated dragon of some sort. He was similar to structure in Gowris, nearing fifteen feet tall, sporting giant wings on his back, and most uniquely, three heads. Srida had heard of his type before, an exotic dragon with three to seven heads, capable to regrowing any that had been cut off. And knowing how Vyvyla could change between a simple humanoid form or a more extreme demonic shape, it wouldn't surprise Srida if these were the two's more exotic bodies.

Vyvyla then broke off from the crowed and rose a bit higher into the air, scanning the cliffside until she found what she was looking for--Srida. The succubus flew over, her scales becoming skin and the horns pulling back into her head somewhat as she landed on the edge of the cliffside where Srida was resting.

"You've made yourself at home," she said warmly, her nonchalance not lost on the Gorgon.

Srida went with it. Vyvyla was honestly trying, and the weary expression beneath the smile wasn't entirely hidden, despite her best efforts.

"It's not what I expected," Srida said honestly, slowly raising herself to a standing height. "Though... I don't really know if there was something I did expect. Anything could have surprised me."

Vyvyla gave her a slow nod, turning back around to overlook the scene of people mingling around the edge of the tunnel. "We're not the most well off," she admitted. "This entire region of the underworld is hotter than normal, so we can't have certain luxuries without them burning up. But we make do, and the larger forces have left the place alone since before I lived here."

"Except the umbral scourge," Srida said quietly.

"A universal constant," Vyvyla agreed, the two of them standing in silence for a moment.

Down below, people were starting to break off from the group, headed to the cliffs and up to their rooms, probably to sleep. Many of them had probably spent the majority of the last day awake and were reaching the end of their ropes.

"You should come down," Vyvyla urged. "There's plenty of people who'll want to meet you, they've already been pestering Leo for the past couple hours, they want a piece of the gorgon too." She nudged Srida with one of her wings gently and smiled, then took off again, hovering just over the edge of the cliff. "Newcomers are always something that lifts peoples spirits," she added, drifting away further into the air. "Especially when we normally lose people..."

She gestured for Srida to follow her to the ground, so the Gorgon did, the remainder of her body sliding from the crawl-hole and down the ramp carved into the cliff. As she started to move, she could see attention slowly being drawn from her down below. First it was just a couple people who'd been watching Vyvyla, then they pointed her out to the people next to them, and attention grew. It created a bit of a sinking feeling in Srida's stomach--she didn't like being the focus of a crowd.

Just make a good impression, be slightly boring, and people will leave you alone after a few days. Good first impressions were important, something Andreas' father told him over and over again as a child. When running a merchant operation, it was important for people to think you trustworthy, and even more important to keep any dirt far out of sight.

As she reached the ground, Vyvyla landed beside her as the crowd started to gather round, but nobody got too close as the large octopus-woman drifted down to meet her. Srida's assumption had been correct as well--as she neared the ground, she shrunk in size until her upper body was that of a normal woman. When she was ten feet up her tentacles were about to brush the ground, but Srida rose up to meet her. With thirty feet of snake, rising ten feet into the air to shake the floating woman's hand was simple, but an effective way to somewhat isolate them from the rest of the crowd.

Srida's instincts proved to be correct, and the woman's face split into a wide smile.

"Ceelia," she said, shaking Srida's had firmly. "And you must be Srida."

The gorgon slightly bowed her head in respect, turning the motion into a nod. "That it is. Vyvyla told me you run the place?"

"Mathalus and I do our best," she said, gesturing to the giant dragonborn who was landed and still standing tall enough to be eye level with them.

The dragonborn nodded all three heads to her but didn't offer and hand to shake--mainly because they were giant, and she hardly would have been able to grab two of his fingers. Instead he clasped them together in front of him and gave her a small bow of his own.

"Pleasure to meet you," he said, his voice much higher than she expected from such a large creature. It was almost nasally. He started to shrink down to a more normal size, two of his heads retreating into his body, and Ceelia lowered herself, prompting Srida to do the same.

"Did you have a nice little conversation up there?" Gowris said with a smirk, pushing his way through the group.

Mathalus gently jabbed Gowris with his tail. "You could have grown if you wanted."

"Yeah, but everybody makes fun of my when I enlarge myself," Gowris grunted, then made a mocking voice and adopted a funny expression. "Oh, are you compensating for something? Hey! you can finally reach the top shelf!"

He rolled his eyes as the other three laughed, Srida a bit unsure how to respond. The other person--the displacer beast they'd mentioned as the other newcomer, glanced at her with an expression nearly identical to hers.

Mathalus just chuckled. "Well, grow big and tall and introduce the two to the crowd then."

Gowris scowled at him, but then obliged with a slightly embarrassed look. He didn't grow quickly--perhaps that was one of his body's current limitations that more power would allow him to shed--but it gave Srida a moment to briefly introduce herself to the displacer beast.

She'd seen the demon he was based on in texts and drawings, but never actually in person. It seemed he was similar to the dragonborn, in the sense that the dragon-hellions were dragonborn, and the displacer beast-hellions had more humanlike traits as well. Standing on his hind feet he was slightly larger than average build--not extremely muscular like Gowris, but still strong looking--and with his extra limbs, he was unmistakably a displacer beast. Below his regular pair of arms were a second set identical to his upper pair, and emerging from his back were the two trademark tentacles that made the panther-like demons so distinct. They were close to ten feet long and hung in air like he was underwater, and tipped with spades that looked harmless at first, but bore retractable claws capable of tearing into an unfortunate victim. With keen yellow eyes and a nervous expression, it wasn't lost on Srida that his tail was twitching back and forth as Gowris grew to nearly twelve feet tall.

"I'm Srida," she said quietly, leaning closer to him and offering a hand to shake. Making friends with the other person new to the underworld was probably the best thing she could do at the moment.

He shook her hand--after awkwardly attempting to use both his right hands at first--and gave her a sheepish nod. "Sorry, I'm Leo," he answered in a low voice. "Do you know..." he looked around nervously and trailed off and Gowris started to speak.

"This is Srida and Leo," Gowris said in a mock formal tone and a haughty expression, pausing a bit longer than necessary. "Everyone make them feel at home, they're both traumatized because they probably died a big tragic death together and showed up in the underworld at the same time."

He rolled his eyes as he said that and immediately shrunk back down again, getting a laugh from the small crowd. Srida found herself watching the displacer beast--Leo--as Gowris spoke. She didn't turn to look at him directly, but her focus was on him through her snake hair. At the somewhat sarcastic mention of his tragic death, he shifted uncomfortably and glanced to her. Srida glanced back at him and raised an eyebrow--or the dark scaled line above her eye that represented it. Upon eye contact, he spoke.

"Do you remember anything?" he asked quietly, barely audible over the clamor of the small crowd.

Srida shook her head and closed her eyes sadly. In the headspace Andreas currently lived in, the lie came naturally because he told himself that was the truth.

"No clue yourself?" She asked, genuinely curious.

Leo hesitated. It was only for a moment, but he did, and it immediately made Srida suspicious. Fighting off the instinct to frown, she opted for a route Andreas never would have taken. Without thinking, she said something comforting.

"It's fine," she said, voice soft enough only he could hear. "All our minds get stripped as we pass through the veil."

Leo looked unsure of himself, uncomfortable and severely out of place. Srida had no doubt he'd retained some memory himself, and had to question what that meant. Was he in a similar situation to her? Had he come down intentionally and did he have a way out? Or perhaps he did have a fragment of memory he had no desire to divulge. She would have to carefully pry later, her mind already spinning with the possibilities.

But with Gowris shrinking down after his awkward little introduction, people were closing in. Srida found herself shaking hands with many different people of all shapes and sizes. Most popular were the lower dragonborn, similar in body structure to Gowris but lacking their wings, and after them the succubi and incubi. Some of them were smooth skinned, others had scales, and out of all the people she ran into for the remainder of the day--only three others would have their wings. Flight was indeed something to be sought after.

In the following hours, more and more people would filter in through the giant tunnel and Srida made an interesting observation--races tended to stick together. Lower dragonborn had initially been in the majority, but as more and more people arrived it very quickly swayed towards the hellhounds.

The two of them stuck together for the rest of the day, taking comfort in each other's ignorance of the underworld and each glad they weren't the only fresh spawn. With her eventual goal of getting information out of him, being simple friends was the good first step. The following couple hours passed in something of a blur, being nothing but a string of faces and names that Srida would only start to remember in later days. Gowris and Vyvyla were nowhere to be seen--presumably doing recon like the other flight capable hellions--and Ceelia and Mathalus periodically retreated out of sight. It left the two of them to be ushered around by Rose and Jorg, who at present were a short way away discussing something just out of earshot.

In a brief moment of isolation, Leo took the opportunity to pose a question he'd been sitting on for a while, but wasn't comfortable enough to ask Jorg.

"Don't you think there's lots of hellhounds?" he asked as they watched yet another pack emerge from the tunnel.

Srida followed his gaze with her eyes even though she had perfect sight of them with her hair snakes.

"That's--what--the seventh pack of them now?"

The gorgon frowned and raised herself up slightly to get a better look. At about fifty people per pack, the hellhounds were quickly becoming a large majority of the people at Stillrock.

"It's because of the werewolf problem," she said suddenly, the explanation occurring to her.

"What?" Standing behind her, Leo looked genuinely confused.

The gorgon glanced back, suddenly wondering if she'd given something away. After a moments consideration, she was certain she hadn't.

"Well, a soul has to be tainted to get pulled down into the underworld, right? Being a werewolf must count, and there's certainly more of them than warlocks who used demons to fuel their magic. Especially considering how many farming regions and small villages have werewolf problems."

She bit off the last part of the statement, the fact that wizards from the academy were always investigating small communities, trying to flush out the werewolf. The lycanthropes spread like a plague, and catching them was dangerous work.

"Are the werewolves not wild?" Leo asked nonchalantly, clearly fishing for information himself.

"Of course," Srida said without hesitation, then she caught his point. "But, Yeah. Huh. Why are they civil here then?"

In the overworld it was common knowledge that some demonic forms would overwhelm a human mind, while others would promote undesirable behaviours. Succubi and incubi would become dangerously lustful, often using their powers to seduce others for a cheap thrill. Dragonborn would develop temper problems, and werewolves would entirely lose their minds when transformed. Did these people not suffer those afflictions down in the umbral plain?

Her train of thought was cut short when Gowris shot out of the tunnel at incredible speed, his wings making a dull thud with each beat and causing the two of them to duck as he flew just over the heads.

"Jesus!" Leo cursed, his fur standing on end.

He's definitely foreign, Srida thought. She hadn't heard that one before.

Gowris circled back to the emerging pack of hellhounds, and eventually landed off to the side. Curious of his business with them, Srida raised herself in height to about twenty feet in the air, trying to get a better vantage point.

"You're making me jealous," Leo said from below, a hint of humor in this voice.

"I think..." Srida said slowly, "that there is another displacer beast over there."

"Really?" He stood up on his toes trying to get a better view, but to no avail.

The gorgon raised herself slightly higher to the point where she felt a bit unstable, tightening up her core so she remained balanced. Being reared up so high certainly drew looks her way but it did allow her to get a better look at who Gowris was talking to. It was indeed another displacer beast, but he hadn't gotten a lucky spawn like Leo had and was working his way towards the form the long way. He was similar in structure to Leo--perhaps a little leaner--and missing his second set of arms. He did have the odd tentacles however, which hung behind him suspended in their air as he clasped Gowris' shoulder and said something with exaggerated body language. Srida recognized the gesture as distinctly Yawlen, a traditional greeting among their merchants.

The two of them shared a quick word and then started on a quick walk directly towards Leo and Srida, laughing about something all the while--probably the fact that she was standing up twenty-five feet in the air. At that, she lowered herself back down to a reasonable height just as Rose and Jorg approached the two of them from behind.

"That's Bendali," Jorg announced, pointing to the half-displacer beast walking with Gowris. "He coordinates the guard patrols."

"Kind of funny a big cat leads the wolf pack," Rose chirped in, nudging Jorg.

"They did take well to him as a leader, oddly enough," Jorg said lightly.

"You say that like you aren't one of them," Leo said, slightly amused. But when he only got silence from Jorg and a nervous look from Rose, the light-hearted smile faded and he glanced at Srida, who mirrored his surprised look. Then he surprised her.

"Alright, explain." Leo's tone was incredibly cold and blunt, and had Srida any hair left of the back of her neck, it would have stood on end.

Jorg and Rose were taken aback as well, but before either of them even had the chance to answer, Gowris and Bendali were upon them, having sprinted the last distance laughing.

"Srida, Leo!" He said loudly, his tone uncharacteristically carefree. "This is Bendali! And probably the only one who can teach you anything Leo!"

Leo had dropped the severe expression in favor of curiosity. "How so?"

Bendali grinned and stepped towards Leo, then was suddenly behind him. Both Srida and Leo jumped, Leo recoiling away from where Bendali had been, and Srida back away from the two of them. It had been so sudden, but the displacer beast had lived up to his name and seemingly stepped through an invisible portal, teleporting about six feet.

"It's the final iteration of the power the body provides, so spawning like that means it's what you have access to," he said with a feral grin, blinking around them a couple more times.

"Like how you probably can't hypnotize anyone," he said, looking to Srida, "but probably petrify them."

Srida opened her mouth nervously for a moment before speaking. "I can't say I've tried."

"Don't," was his curt reply. "I'll capture some demons--imps probably--for you to learn on. We don't want that happening accidentally. But...it will be useful later on."

Gowris saw the rising question and nipped it in the bud. "We usually put our stronger hellions on guard duty," he explained. "An imp could threaten someone like Rose, but Bendali and I probably couldn't even be hurt by it." He paused for a moment. "You two are probably closer to the latter, and everyone needs to contribute somehow so..."

"A gorgon and a fully formed displacer beast," Bendali said, glancing between the two of them with barely contained excitement. "Oh man we got lucky. This is not what I expected to come back to."

"You're going to put us on guard duty," Srida said flatly. She looked to Leo, but he didn't seem upset by that at all actually. His expression was pleasantly surprised.

Bendali shrugged. "Maybe in a week or two after you're settled in, and there are much worse things to do than guard patrol. It'll help you learn the area anyhow."

"Pretty sure I worked security before," Leo said introspectively, then looked down at both his right hands and flexed his claws out, half inch daggers sliding from his fingertips. "And now that I'm built for it..." he glanced back to Srida, then Bendali. "It might be kinda fun."