FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"What do you say, little cat?" the monster coos, its fingers scratching against Kret's scales. It is your decision to make, after all. She can't make it for you. Did you ever want more power? Do you wish to become something far greater? Something that will no longer be pushed around?"

Chance's hold on his halberd wavers, his eyes flicking back and forth. His whiskers twitch, his ears swivel. He's practically frozen, completely unsure on how to answer it. Should he take the deal? Should he become a monster in service to Estrasa and calm this beast down? Kret wants to be a servant of Estrasa, sure., But... is it really what he wants?

"I-" His answer is interrupted when a loud splash breaks the silence of the forest. All three of them glance back to the spring, only to see Vijaya within it, lapping up the water like a thirsty dog.

"Whaat!?" The monster roars, dropping the kobold. Kret tumbles through the trees, but Chance rushes forward, leaping into the air and wrapping his arms around her. He smacks up against a tree, tumbling down and groaning.

Vijaya gulps down more of the crystal clear water, standing up as the monster lunges forward at him, howling in a horrific mix of steel against stone. The kobold, however, doesn't cower. Instead, he spins around, his tail whipping at the monster. Once it makes contact, its increased size smacks across the monster's face, sending it flying into another tree.

Kret crawls out from under Chance, only to stare wide-eyed at the sight before her. Vijaya's shoulders rise and fall as he breathes heavy, growling breaths. He stares off toward the creature, only to step closer, his elongated tail splashing into the water. His clawed toes scrape against the ground as if his feet had become too heavy for himself. Soon, he falls. His snout stretches and cracks as more sharp teeth fill in. Fabric tears and shreds to reveal his yellow scales underneath, some of them flaking off as fabric falls from his body

Estrasa's monster reaches two arms up and grabs a branch to hang from it. It stares down at Vijaya and cackles. "Oh, so you have joined us? The first few moments are quite painful, so I forgive you for lashing out."

The kobold roars, the sound of his voice shaking the branches of the trees as suddenly, his body elongates, his horns become longer and longer, and his tail seems to engulf him to become his whole body.

His serpentine form shoots out, wrapping around the many-armed creature. The twisted guardian meets the eyes of its attacker. The shifted feral face staring at it is recognizably Vijaya's, and unbound to any masters or mistresses.

Chance rubs his back and pushes himself up, only to yowl in surprise at the sight. "B... Vijaya. He's... he's become a dragon!"

"A dragon?" Kret says, breathily. "A real dragon. Can this water actually turn kobolds into such things? Does the Dark Queen have such power?"

The lindwyrm wraps its constrictor-like body around the multi-armed beast, its maw right in front of the monster's face. The guardian shudders and cries, trying to get out, but Vijaya won't let it. "Please, ungh, I was only doing a job. We are on the same side. We both serve Estrasa. We're both her-"

A loud crack silences the creature. It's eyes glaze over in a milky pallor as it slumps over.

"W... wow, Vijaya, you're , like, really powerful now!" Chance says, holding himself up with his halberd. "Way to go. I guess that stuff really does change you, but lets you keep your-"

The dragon opens its mouth wide, engulfing the corpse with its maw. Like a serpent, it slides the monster down into its gullet, the dead thing stretching the inside in a macabre lump that slowly pushes down along its form. Once it swallows the creature whole, the dragon sighs and turns its attention back towards Chance and then towards Kret.

Kret clenches her fists, though her knees shake at the sight of this giant dragon before her, staring her down, licking its snout, and with little or no recognition of its former companion and usurper.

Vijaya lunges forward, but not before Chance could jump in the way, knocking Kret to the side. The feline yowls as sharp teeth dig into his side, his eyes so wide, they seem like they could burst out of his head. Tears roll down his face as he holds his hand out to Kret, his incomprehensible screams made into a babble of pain and suffering.

Kret stares at the pathetic creature, pleading for help in the most delirious of ways. The dragon shakes its neck, feathers forming like a crown over its head and down its body. The feline's pleas are silenced, and the dragon throws him, causing him to tumble limply like a ragdoll across the forest floor. He doesn't even give him the dignity of eating the feline, letting his body crumple to the ground a mess, a few feet from the spring.

Kret is too shocked to even speak as the dragon rises up before her, his mouth opening, jaw dripping with blood and spring-clear saliva. Now before her is a beast with the power equal to what he wielded as the leader of the crime syndicate, perhaps even more.

When he lunges at her, her whole body wraps in flame. Though he chomps at the ground around her, picking her up, he soon howls, flinging her away as the fire burns his tongue.

The sorceress rolls along the underbrush with tiny licks of flame forming where her magic touches. Brambles tear at her traveler's outfit and bruising her body.

Kret pushes herself up, keeping her snarls to herself, but her attention shifts quickly to Chance's limp form which lays just next to her. The subtle rising and falling of his bloodied side reveals to her the horror that he still lives with those grievous wounds. Slowly, she holds her hand out, the magic pooling up from deep within her. "I'm sorry..." she whispers. "You don't deserve a slow, painful death..."

Kret glances up to see that the dragon has turned its attention elsewhere, thrashing about and destroying trees in its bacchanal of power. She glances at the injured form, and then away, seeing the spring nearby. Focusing her magic, she lifts up the feline's form, slowly, silently, dragging his dripping body over towards the spring. "Maybe... maybe you'll be yourself... maybe you won't die because of me... maybe..." She closes her eyes and lets go, the form splashing down into the water of the spring.

The dragon freezes, then turns its head, its jaw curling up into a smile as it slowly slithers its way towards her spot. But as it approaches the water, something far different erupts from the water, reborn into this world as some other kind of horror

The dragon backs off, circling the newly emerged creature. It is a gelatinous ooze of amber slime shaped like a feline, with the skeletal structure of the upper body surrounding a throbbing pink core. Around its grinning skull is the outline of what could be a calming face, juxtaposed with the grim display beneath This slime lashes around, the goop from its arm slashing towards the dragon and clinging to its feathers. It falls to the ground, thrashing around, roaring in its pain as it fights to remove the slime.

"C... Chance?" Kret asks, pushing herself up to her feet. "Are you... still you?"

The slime spins around towards her, its jaws widening as it lets out a distorted, gurgling hiss. It leaps towards her, but she falls back, watching as the bones clatter to the ground in a mess before the slime reconstitutes around them. Kret scrambles back, waving her arm and setting the foliage in front of her ablaze.

The slime rises up over the flames, the light reflecting off of its body, but looming ever upwards is the dragon, which wraps its tail around the slime, seeking to crush its bones.

But Chance is too loose and slips through the dragon's grasp, climbing up along its feathers and leaping up over its impressive form to land on the other side.

Kret already made a run for it, but keeps her eye on the back, only to yelp when the dragon barrels through the fire wall as if it were nothing. Now, the kobold has two creatures behind her, each of them seemingly mindless, each of them after her.

She rushes through the forest, unsure of what direction she goes. Her smaller size makes it easier to avoid some of the pitfalls, but the way the dragon destroys the trees around it make it so it will eventually get to her, no matter what she does.

The sound of water fills her ears, and she wonders if either of these creatures can swim. There is no time to figure that out as she takes a turn towards the sound. Soon, the roaring river is before her and she leaps into it. The wild rapids carry her away, and she fights to keep herself up. Through little glimpses between being underwater, Kret sees the slime stop at the edge, lashing back and forth in its indecisiveness, it's forced to turn around and splash into the face of the dragon, which roars and snaps its jaws, fighting off the other monster.

Kret watches the scene, saying nothing as she's left all alone once again, with only the ever-increasing sound of the rushing water to keep her company.

As the two disappear from her view, and the water drags her off towards the center of the river, she grabs onto a piece of driftwood for safety. The water is so loud now. Why is it so loud? She looks over her shoulder, back behind her, and screams, though her voice is drowned by the roar of the waterfall before her. Soon enough, she falls over the edge, tumbling down the falls and crashing into the churning waters below.

The water beats at her body, like a dissatisfied customer getting its money's worth. But soon enough, the water throws her away, just like everything else. It spits her out on a nearby shore, where she coughs, sputtering and clinging to the rocky soil for some sort of foundation.

She's alive. She's not mortally wounded. She may be battered, but on the inside, she is much worse. Maybe she and Chance would have been able to defeat the monster. Maybe the feline wouldn't have turned into some abomination, maybe she wouldn't be fighting for her life, if Vijaya hadn't decided to bathe himself in the transformative waters. The reasons why he made that decision are lost to her, but the sight of the feline in his grasp, begging her for help with maniac babbling never leaves her.i She can't even ask Vijaya why he did what he did. She can't be certain if he tried to help or betrayed her outright. That's the worst part. It's his fault, and the fault of that damned queen.

Just as she had finally had companions, they were gone. Estrasa would pay. And so would Vijaya.