FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The Complex was one of the few places left on Earth that had been spared the scorch of apocalypse. Separated from the surface by just a sliver of crust and fortified concrete, it was a veritable city of sprawling hollows, stacked living quarters, and automated farms. It had been built in preparation for the war, but not settled in time either by its builders or the citizens it had been made for. It was just a miniature bastion of habitability within a globe razed by holocaust.

Only three souls called it home, a dragon and two wolves. Having stumbled on the Complex four years prior, right before the war turned hot, they were the extremely lucky few who escaped death. The entrance had sealed itself automatically upon the bombs arriving, trapping the three of them not an entire day after they had found the place. Barring them was a several-hundred ton steel door, several yards thick and wider still. It was made never to be opened, and it never would be. The three citizens, now unwilling occupants, had found it closed within moments of hearing the bombs go off. Loud and thunderous, they were suddenly muffled by a great thoom once the seal had been made. They found the hole they had wandered through closed, blocked off by a massive ring of steel, mocking them with their warped reflections.

They adjusted as well as they could. Aurora, the dragon, was tremendous. For her size, she could navigate the complex remarkably well. She was able to fly through the more spacious hollows. She had made one particularly comfortable limestone cave her home. Every night (or at least the time they deemed to be night) she would bundle her white, scaly body into a ball, tucking her snout into her belly and covering it with her feathered tail. However comfortable she had made herself in the Complex, it would never replace the freedom she had in the open sky.

Sara and Felan, both wolves, were Aurora's company. Though confined to their four legs, they navigated the Complex with better impunity thanks to their more manageable size. Exploring was their passion, something they could still do even after four years of living there. The Complex earned its title, cutting out such a great portion of the Earth that the two adventurers were still discovering new places. Sara, the elder and larger of the two, acted as leader whenever they delved into the Complex's greater depths. She could be seen strutting down the many highways, a figure of snowy white within a seemingly endless tunnel carved out of the rock. The railroad tracks remained empty. None of them knew where the trains were or how to operate them should they ever find them. Sara didn't mind. It made finding new places more satisfying. "Longer the journey, the better the reward," she always said.

Felan was not as convinced. His journeys through the Complex alongside Sara were more often than not a result of her repeated urges rather than any desire to discover more of it. His smaller frame, covered in light gray fur, was never far behind Sara whenever they went exploring, or "spelunking" as Sara called it. He wished he had the same kind of motivation that she did. What they had discovered in the Complex was enough already, for him at least. An entire underground city at their disposal. Did they really need more? Yes, apparently, and they wouldn't stop until the last of it had been found.

Felan respected and admired her drive, but his hope lay elsewhere. The world may have ended, but that did not mean it couldn't restart, or so Felan very firmly believed. Dreams of roaming a world as it once had been were as hopeful as they were haunting. The Complex's one and only connection to the surface was a pneumatic tube. It was thin, just wide enough to fit a roll of toilet paper. The bottom was a feeding port inside of a large chamber. In it were thousands of self-propelled rockets. Each one was loaded with sensors made to detect the climate and radioactivity of the surface. Once loaded in the chamber, the tube would launch it to the surface above where it would ignite and launch several thousand feet into the sky. From there it would descend on a parachute, reading as much of the atmosphere as it could before landing and eventually dying.

Every send off was a reason to hope. Felan would sit on his haunches and wait for the readings. Sometimes it would come quickly, sometimes not. Sometimes he would curl up on the floor and take a nap until the beep of the computer alerted him to an incoming signal. He would leap from the ground and scamper up to the screen, tail wagging, his blue eyes made round by anticipation. The results were always the same: no humidity, extremely high UV exposure, either freezing temperatures or scorching heats, and an atmosphere choked by radiation.

Sara and Aurora found it hard not to tell him to give up. The world was gone. There was nothing left for them to go to. Even if they had, he would not have listened. Every tenth day he would go to the launch tube, take a missile into his jaws and load into the tube so it would launch. There were over a thousand missiles ready to go. He wasn't going to run out any time soon.

It was on one of Felan's launch days when Sara and Aurora were on their own journey into an uncharted portion of the Complex within one of its deeper components. It was a storage unit of some kind, fashioned out of dull concrete and home to giant silos that towered from floor to ceiling. The two women entered the area through a giant metal door that lifted with a tremendous whirring of gears and generators. Looking inside was like looking down a street in the middle of a city. Along the walls from beginning to end were those titanic steel cylinders, full of what, neither of them knew.

Aurora went in first, marveling at the open space around her. Her long, white neck craned to see everything. "Wow. This was here the whole time?"

"Apparently," said Sara as she walked past her much larger companion. She sniffed the air, sensing nothing but stale moisture and rusted metal. She hoped whatever was stored in here wasn't toxic in case the silos ever broke. "I don't think there's anything worth taking or messing with, but we can look around."

"Mind if I stretch my wings?" Aurora asked.

"Go right ahead."

"Thanks." Aurora's wings unfurled with a mighty whooooosh! The membranes were a sky blue, run through by neon stripes. At their roots was a forest of blue feathers. In just three pumps she created a typhoon of wind, blowing Sara's fur flat and kicking up an enormous cloud of dust. She leaped off her hindlegs and careened into the air. She reached an altitude just short of the ceiling and glided through the cavern, listening to the roar of air past her ears. Sara watched her reach the end where she performed a quick turnaround and came soaring back. Aurora flapped herself into a hover and descended to the ground.

"Well?" Sarah asked. "What did you see?"

"Same old stuff. Just more containers but no labels. I did see an open door at the very end. Want me to take you to it?"

"Sure!"

Aurora lowered her body to the floor and brought her wing down to make a ramp. "Hop on."

Sara bound up Aurora's wing and stood on her back. She lied down and hugged her legs around the hump of her spine. Her jaws chomped a mouthful of the blue fur that ran down Aurora's back. "Ready!" she said, her voice muffled.

"Hold on!" Aurora kicked up another storm and launched back into the air. Sara felt herself flatten then grow weightless as they leveled out. Though she kept her mouth latched to Aurora's fur, her eyes were out watching everything that passed by them. Those tremendous cylinders whirred past, showing their blurred reflection. Flights on Aurora's back were always brief, but reminded Sara of a time when the Earth was clean and their lives were free.

Aurora came flapping down at the end of the massive hall. Once she settled she brought her wing down so Sara could hop off and slide down the membrane. Like Aurora said, there was a double door ajar in the wall. It was dark inside. Sara could see nothing beyond the doorway. She approached cautiously, sniffing the air but failing to pick up anything unusual.

"What do you think is in there?" Aurora asked.

"I have no idea." Sara came to the door and poked her snout into the gap. It came creaking open, letting in some of the hall light and illuminating the contents. It wasn't a big room, maybe 12 by 30 feet. Along each wall were shelves lined with what looked like empty jars. There was a lightswitch on the wall next to the door. Sara stood on her hindlegs with her forelegs on the wall and flicked it with her nose.

The fluorescent lights hummed to life. They revealed an assortment of jars on six rows of shelves, three on each wall. Sara tilted her head curiously. "It's just a bunch of old jars," she announced to Aurora outside.

"Jars?" Aurora brought her enormous head down and peered into the room. "What are they full of?"

"That's what I'm gonna try and find out," Sara said as she waltzed deeper into the room.

Aurora watched from afar with some level of concern. "You be careful in there."

"I will, I will. Just relax." She got up close to the shelf that was closest to the floor. She sniffed at it curiously. Whatever was inside was obscured by a thin layer of dust that covered the glass. She pressed her nose to it gently and wiped some of it off. Inside was a mustard-yellow liquid or gel Sara didn't recognize. Wiping some dust off the jars next to it revealed it to be the same thing.

"What's in it?" Aurora asked.

"I don't know. Some kind of yellow stuff."

Aurora frowned. "That doesn't sound good. I'd leave that stuff alone."

"I am, I am." Sara looked up at the shelf above her where more glass jars were in a row. She hopped her forelegs onto the shelf in front of her so that she could reach with her snout.

That was a bad idea. The shelf was wooden, dry rotted, put together with nails rusted by four whole years of exposure to the moist underground. On its own it would've supported Sara's weight, but with over half a ton of liquid-filled jars pressing down on it, she was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The shelf teetered forward with a twangy whine. Sara's blue eyes went wide as she saw the jars keel towards her. She scampered back with her back arched and her tail between her legs. That section of the shelf came down, unleashing its contents onto the floor below in an avalanche.

KRRRAAASSSHHHHH!!!

Millions of glass shards exploded across the concrete floor, spewing every drop they had held back. A sickly yellow fluid surged through the field of glass like a tsunami. With the gurgling splash came a sinister hiss once the fluid met the air. The yellow turned into a frothing white. Steam wafted. Sara had leapt to the other side of the wall, clear of the liquid, but trapped with its fumes. Every inhale was like a stab in the lungs, searing the insides and making her hack and wheeze.

"Sara!" Aurora cried out. She opened her mouth to tell her to get out of there but was silenced by a direct mouthful of the gas. She chomped her mouth shut and reeled backwards, her face grimacing. She coughed hard, trying to spit out the bitter taste that had fallen on her tongue and singed her throat.

Sara came bounding through the door and into the hall. Tails of vapor clung to her fur. Her eyes were clamped shut, pouring out tears. Slaver drooled from her lips. She fell to the floor and frantically rolled and scraped herself against the concrete. Aurora, once she had collected herself, slammed the door shut with her nose. She watched helplessly as her friend writhed and thrashed like an animal on fire.

Sara came to a stop when the burning stopped. Her coat and the skin was intact but her eyes and mouth continued to sting. She rose to her fours shakily and spat at the ground. "Pleh! Ptoo! Ach! Ech! Bleh!"

"Are you alright?" Aurora asked.

Sara's eyes fluttered open. The scleras were bloodshot. Tears and snot ran over her mouth. She panted hard, coughing every other breath. "Ah... I think so. Koff! It stings. Got it in my mouth. Koff!"

"Yeah, I did too. You're not hurt anywhere else?"

Sara looked down and checked her paw pads. They were all uncut. "No, doesn't look like it. Pleh!" She shook her body, rattling the fur and whipping off the rest of the fumes. "God. Let's get out of here. I don't think there's anything here for us."

"Yeah," Aurora said. "I think so too." She lowered her wing for Sara to climb on. Once she did Aurora flapped her wings to take flight. But there was a problem. After over a dozen flaps she didn't have the momentum to take off. It felt like her legs were anchored to the floor below. She attempted to leap, but could only glide halfway through the hall before being forced to land.

"What's wrong?" Sara asked.

"Sorry, I..." Aurora shook herself. "Bad takeoff." She tried again, but with even worse results. She swore loudly. "Ah! Sorry! Sorry!"

Sara hopped off. "It's alright! Are you feeling OK?"

"Yeah, just feeling a little heavy." She tried shaking the feeling out of her, but it remained in her muscles like a dull ache.

Now that she thought about it, Sara was feeling something similar. She had written it off as being from flying on Aurora's back, but now that she was back on the ground it felt like her body had been filled with rock. "Yeah, I'm feeling the same thing." She too tried to shake it off. No dice.

"Sorry, but I don't think I'm gonna be able to fly us back."

"That's OK. I prefer walking anyway." With that, the two women waltzed down the rest of the hallway, swishing their tails with each step, blissfully unaware of the chemicals brewing inside of them.

* * *

Felan was trotting through one of the Complex's neighborhoods when he spotted the two girls wandering in from one of the rail tunnels. The neighborhood was built out of another hollow. Within it were enormous square columns reaching from the floor to the ceiling. They were all devoid of life., meant to harbor thousands, but holding none. The two girls were walking, which was odd considering Aurora's preference for flying. Felan ran after them, noting how sluggish and downtrodden they looked. "Hey!" he shouted when he got close. "Find anything?" He came to a sudden stop. They looked... different. Trudging side by side, it looked like they took up more space on the floor than they normally did. Were they bigger?

"Hey, Felan," said Sara. "We did. We think it's a storage bunker."

"OK. Anything in it?" As the two girls came closer he confirmed that they were indeed bigger looking than when he last saw them. "You guys look tired. You didn't fly back?"

"We found some kind of chemical. We don't know what it was. Nothing else." Aurora said. "I can't fly very far anymore. I feel like I'm too big and heavy for that now."

"Yeah, you guys look bigger." He chuckled, trying to break the tension. "Or am I getting smaller?"

His attempt at humor fell flat. "No, I don't think that's it," Sara said grimly. "I think we should call it a day. We're both exhausted from walking."

"Oh. OK. You guys get some good rest."

"Yeah," said Sara. "We'll try."

The two women retreated to their dens and fell asleep. Getting there was a great struggle for Aurora who was used to flying. The entrance was on a higher level in that hollow. Soaring up there took several attempts. She had to literally claw her way up the cave wall, flapping her wings as hard as she could to get to the entrance. When she finally did she noticed how much more space she took up. The width of her hips absorbed most of the entrance. Curling into a ball on her bed proved difficult given the proximity of the walls. Far from her comfort place, she suddenly felt like she was in a prison cell.

Sara fared worse. She had claimed the entire bottom floor of a building to herself as her home, but already it was proving inadequate for her growing size. The bed she had fashioned for herself could not fit her. She had to squeeze herself through doorways. As she lay down she could subtly feel the mattress flattening beneath her.

Sleep came and went for both of them. When they woke up, they found themselves in even worse shape. The top of Aurora's head and her tail filled out the cave from wall to wall. Sara found herself smothering her mattress, unable to even pull all her legs over it. She could no longer fit through doorways, but was forced to tear through them, bringing with her a tail of dust and shattered wall. That's not good, she thought while looking back at the wake of destruction she had created.

She and Aurora crawled out from their dens in a panic. They met at the neighborhood's center where they both expressed shock over each other's growth. "Aurora!" said Sara, noticing how much of the space between the buildings she took up now. "You're huge!"

Aurora was struck even worse by the sight of her enlarged friend. Sara had grown much faster, achieving a size closer to what Aurora was now than the day before. "I could say the same to you," the dragon said.

Sara looked down at herself. "I know. I tore up my den just coming out here. I don't know if this is going to last. We gotta find a way to stop it."

"How are we gonna do that?"

Sara was quiet for a moment. "I don't know."

Felan woke up around the same time, yawning as he stepped out into the open. Looking out across the street he saw Sara and Aurora. He blinked a few times in order to focus. How far away are they? They were as distant as his eyes told them they were, but their increased sizes tricked him into thinking that they were somehow closer. It was when he began to approach that he realized that they were in fact much bigger than they were the day before. His heart sank at the sight of Sara, now several magnitudes bigger than he was. Aurora was already a giant. Now she was a leviathan.

Sara spotted him coming over and ran after him. He came to a dead stop and almost ran the other way on instinct. "Felan, I think you've noticed, but Aurora and I... Well, we're kinda getting bigger."

Felan's head was leaning back to look up at her. His blue eyes were like saucers. "Yeah, I did notice that."

Aurora came shuffling over. "If this keeps going on, we have to find a way to stop it."

"What happened yesterday?" he asked.

Sara cringed. "I may have broken some containers holding an unknown substance. This might have something to do with that."

"Oh. Should we go back and look for a cure?"

"I don't think so," Aurora said. "That gas has probably filled up that entire cave. We don't want you getting infected too."

"Then what should we do? Are you guys still growing?"

"I can't tell," Sara said, looking down at her paw. "I think it's slow, but I don't want to wait until we see a difference. We have to go looking for a way to stop it. Or find someplace else bigger until it stops." She looked back up at Felan. "The last reading you got, was the surface safe?"

That caught Felan off guard. "No. I would've said something if it was, but that was almost a week ago. Things might have changed a little since then." His tail started to wag. "Do you wanna go launch another one?"

Sara shook her head. "There's not enough time. We have to find out if it's safe right now. We should try the periscope."

Felan's tail wagged harder. Aurora gave her an odd look. "Are you sure? We haven't been there in ages."

Sara looked back up at her. "It's the quickest option we have to finding out if it's safe out there. Come on." She turned around and headed towards the door. "There's no time to lose."

The trio headed through one of the rail tunnels. Felan fell behind, trying hard to keep up with their longer strides. Aurora still couldn't fly, not with her huge size and shrinking maneuver room. Felan wasn't sure, but he thought he could see Sara growing by the minute.

The periscope was located in what Felan called the spy room. It was the highest area in the Complex that they knew about, going just beneath the surface and extending a single periscope up into the air. Aurora had to wait for the giant metal doors to open all the way before she could fit through. Inside was a towering staircase that led to the periscope's bottom viewport. The staircase was too tight for Sara to fit through.

"Looks like it's up to you, Felan" she said. "Tell us what you see."

"Yeah, you got it." Felan crawled up the winding stairs, going up a total of 25 floors before making it to where the viewport was carved out of the stone wall. He put his eyes up to it, hoping that the lens above the surface was not damaged. It wasn't, but the view remained bleak all the same. Before him was a windswept desert devoid of color or life. What had been a forest made vibrant with trees of green was now a cemetery of barkless trunks made bare by black rain. It was the exact same view he had last time he went up here, hence he rarely ever did.

He came back down the stairs to report what he saw. Stopping him was a noticeable increase in Sara and Aurora's sizes. I couldn't have been up there for more than twenty minutes!

"Well?" Sara asked.

Felan blinked. "Yeah, it's not good. No life or vegetation. Nothing we could survive in."

Aurora bowed her head and shook it. "Figures."

Sara was not as crestfallen. Her shoulders were lifted, neck upright, her chest thrusted. "That doesn't mean it's over. I'm not giving up until we either find a place we can live or a way to stop the growing if it doesn't do it on its own. Come on." She turned around and marched towards the rail tunnel. "Let's go."

Their journey took them back into the rail tunnel. They followed it into portions they had never reached before, even after years of exploring. There were new neighborhoods, ones just as large as the one they lived in and just as uninhabitable for the girls. Inspecting it for any potential places to sleep resulted in cracked facades, broken doors, and smashed windows. When Aurora would turn around there was almost always destruction to follow. Felan noticed that Sara's size was now almost what Aurora's had been before all of this started. Aurora was not growing as dramatically, but was still insanely massive.

They went back to the tunnels. Felan gave up on following them, instead climbing onto Aurora's back and giving his feet a rest. They discovered something new: a deeper level to the Complex. Aurora was not so sure that going into it was going to help them, but Sara was adamant.

"I'm not waiting for another opportunity like this one to just pop up for us!" she barked. "Come on! Let's go."

It led them into another cave system, this one far less developed and crude. However, with the lack of concrete walls and infrastructure, it was easier to navigate thanks to the tunnels being wider. They came across new areas, most of which were only half-finished, if they were started on at all. One was a massive canteen area where the workers who had once been here came to eat. It was a sprawling cafeteria full of tables and seats. On them were abandoned mess kits and rotten, uneaten meals. The three of them wandered in. Sara, now alarmingly close to Aurora in size, had to smash through the massive doorway just to make it through.

They inspected the place for a few minutes. Every step Sara and Aurora made brought with it a smashed table and shattered place. Poor Felan was nearly crushed when Aurora turned around and landed her giant foot close enough to him that he felt the wind on it.

"Hey!" he shouted, scurrying away. "Careful!"

"Oh!" Aurora retracted the offending leg and backed away. "Sorry! I didn't see you-" She was cut off by bumping into Sara.

"Whoa!" The two giants bounced off each other, creating a deafening din of noise as more tables and cutlery were destroyed. Felan ran away as fast as he could, not wanting to be squashed. The sound of chaos came to a stop with the rattling spin of a pan twirling on its rim. "Careful, Aurora!"

"I'm sorry! I can't- I'm not used to a body this big!"

Guilt draped Sara's expression. "Neither am I," she said sadly. "But we will be once we find a way to stop this growing." She spun around, generating another whirlwind of destruction. "This place doesn't have anything for us. Come on."

Aurora followed her. "Hey!" shouted Felan, bounding over. "Wait for me!"

Back into the tunnel they went. Sara was finally as big as Aurora, but the growth seemed to have slowed a little. Felan kept his eyes on Sara as he rode Aurora's back and didn't notice any significant changes for at least an hour. They came across another unusual discovery, this time on the left side of the tunnel. The Complex was built like a ring with the rail running through it and each chamber branching out from it. This room, however, led into the center of the ring. Nothing like it had been seen on the upper floor. Sara did not hesitate. She and Aurora worked together to break down the door.

What they found astonished them. It was a massive arena at least a thousand yards wide. The floor was not basic concrete, but laid with red brick. The ceiling was fashioned into a dome shape. At its very summit was a hole big enough for even the two women to fit through. All three of them craned their necks to look up as they peered up at the hole. Pouring from it was a curtain of light, illuminating a giant circle of the floor like a spotlight. Chills swept through each of them.

"Is that... sunlight?" Felan asked.

"I... I think so," said Aurora.

They wandered to the center of the arena, directly beneath the hole. They looked up. It was a vertical shaft made of the same red brick the floor was made out of. At the very top, small like a star but bright like a bulb was an exit to the outside world.

"Whoa..." said Felan. His cerulean eyes sparkled in the sun for the first time in over four years. The two giants flanking him basked in the same luxury. They were quiet for some time, stunned by the simple beauty of the outside, something they had been refused for so, so very long. Felan was the first to look down. He noticed something along the walls of the arena. Squinting, he thought he recognized a battle ax. "Hey, guys. Look over there."

The others looked where he was facing and saw the same thing. "Wait. Is that an ax? And a sword?" Sara asked.

"I think it is," Aurora answered.

The trio walked closer to the arena wall and confirmed that what they saw were indeed weapons. In fact, the entire circumference of the arena was absolutely drenched in weapons that included axes, swords, guns, arrows, and other tools of war. There were even suits of armor fit for feral animals. A few Felan spotted looked like he could've fit in them. He couldn't help but imagine himself in them, a gun attached to his back. There was even armor made for dragons, but nothing in the absurd size Aurora was.

"What do you think this is for?" Aurora asked.

"I don't know," Sara said. "I think the people who built this place wanted to be able to defend themselves should the need ever have arised.

"Do we need to?"

Sara shook her head. "Let's hope not." She trotted back to the center of the arena. She looked back up the shaft and at the sunlight. "That's... What, 300 yards? Maybe a little less? If we were small enough Aurora could fly us out there."

Felan was next to her. "Yeah, but it's not safe."

"No, but it's our best option if we ever need to get out of here. That's a luxury we never had, or one we had but didn't know about." She looked down at herself. "Hey, it doesn't look like I've grown much in a while. Maybe it's done?"

"Yeah, neither have I," Aurora said. "Maybe it is."

"There's plenty of room in here. We could live here for now."

"Is it safe?"

"I can find out," Felan said. "I can go get a rocket and have it detect the atmosphere in here. It shouldn't take me too long to go there and get back. I can also get food for us here."

Sara's face lit up. "That sounds perfect!" She looked up at the shaft. The sunlight glowed in her snowy white fur like a corona. "That sounds per-"

_grrrrmmmmrrrrrmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMM!!! _

From Sara and Aurora both came a terrible rumbling noise like a thousand earthquakes. Felan ducked from them both, his ears folded and his tail tucked between his legs. "What's going on!?" he screamed.

Neither woman could answer before the final phase of their growth hit them like freight trains. Sarah's curled wolf tail began to grow from her backside, towering into the air high above her back and then collapsing to the floor under its own weight. Just as she looked back to witness it, the paws on her feet began to swell, growing several sizes too big in relation to the width of her legs. Her four upper legs were next, bloating her body into a disproportionate monstrosity that could barely hold itself upright. "No!" she bellowed, frantically whipping her head around as she looked from swelling body part to swelling body part. "Nonononononononono!"

Aurora was growing too, but not as suddenly. That didn't mean she wasn't panicking as her tail exploded behind her and her feet ballooned into immovable boots. Felan could only cower away and watch as his only two friends screamed their protests while the world shrank around them. Their proportions filled out normally, but the growth did not stop. Before long Sara's back was halfway towards the ceiling. Looking up made her flinch and lower her belly to the floor.

"What do we do?" cried Aurora. "What do we do?"

Sara's eyes darted in her head, landing on her two friends who were growing smaller by the second. "Get on my paws!" she said finally.

"What?" shouted Aurora. "Why?"

"Just do it!"

Aurora scrambled over and laid over Sara's forelegs like a miniature lapdog. Felan came sprinting over and climbed onto Aurora's back. "OK!" he screamed. "Now what?"

Sara began scooting backwards until the light from the outside illuminated the two people on her legs. "Aurora. I know you can't take off, but do you think you can fly if I give you a boost?" Her head was nearing the ceiling. The tip of her tail brushed the wall, knocking off several weapons and armor.

"Yeah!" Aurora shouted. Then her heart plummeted. "Wait. Sara. What are you-?"

"Felan!" Sara shouted, cutting her off. "Hold on tight, OK?"

He hunkered down and clamped his jaws around some of Aurora's back fur. He closed his eyes and braced for whatever came next.

Aurora wasn't as ready. "Wait! Sara! You don't-!"

"You guys be careful out there, alright?" Sara said. Her cranium touched the ceiling. Her butt scraped the walls, cracking them. "Get somewhere safe! I believe in you!"

"Sara! Don't-!"

Aurora was interrupted for the last time when she felt the floor beneath catapult her into the air. Sara used what little room she had left to jump up and fling her forelegs into the shaft. Aurora and Felan were both launched into it several yards, tumbling and winding between its brick walls. Aurora could protest no longer. She straightened herself vertically and spread her wings. She flapped, flapped, flapped, and flapped like she never had before. Her wingtips scraped the shaft around her, threatening to break her effort and send her plummeting back down. She didn't let that happen, not when two wolves counted on her to survive.

Relan gripped with his teeth and claws for dear life. He opened his eyes to see the bricks blurring past him. The circle of light grew bigger and brighter. He felt his pupils shrink in their irises. He felt the first brush of wind on his face in almost half a decade.

Aurora erupted from the exit and back onto the Earth's surface like an ICBM from its silo. The Earth around them was the same scorched hellscape that he had seen through the periscope. Aurora lost her grace once she was clear of the hole and plummeted to the dirt limply. The impact jarred Felan off her back. He hit the ground hard, tumbling tail over teakettle through the ashy ground like someone tossed from a car. When he came to a stop his fur was completely coated in soot. Aurora rolled to a stop, too exhausted to roll onto her belly or stand up.

Felan got on his feet and shook some of the ash off. He saw Aurora on her side, against the edge of a dead forest. Her belly was facing him, rising and falling rapidly as she panted. He sprinted over to her, kicking up a trail of gray dust behind him. "Aurora! Are you OK?"

She tilted her head and looked at him with one eye. He noticed that she had stopped growing. "Yeah..." she wheezed. "I'm fine. Just a little winded."

His lips quivered. "Thanks for getting us out of there."

"Don't thank me..." she said softly.

Felan looked down somberly. "Yeah..." He turned around and looked at the giant hole in the Earth. He walked up to it slowly and cautiously peered down. The ring of bricks surrounding the shaft were red at first, then vanished into a void. There was no light of hope, but a chasm of absolute black without feature or detail. He could not see the Complex or Sara within it. If she was still alive down there, she was alone.

Her leadership had saved the lives of her friends.

But it did not save her own.