FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

You had to sink in your teeth all the way; air made the blood bitter.

He'd heard it from Cal too many times to count.

The canopy blocked most of the light; the leaves, almost all of it.

Bycil watched from a few yards behind Caldain, who lay fond covered in ferns, ears flattened, within the glade. Hunting, neck stretched forwards, snout tip hidden by a leaf.

Waiting. Waiting.

Cal heard anything and everything, saw anything and everything. But no sense of smell. Even so.

That crinkling of leaves from Cal, heard only because Bycil lay near, signaled that something was approaching. Long lean hindlegs tensed, bent into springs, blue utter black in the dark. The tips of fur glinted faintly as convexing muscles widened around the mids of his thighs, between which was that thin slit he glanced at the edges of then and again, a tail kept dearly low.

He leapt and a hoof clopped and the snare clanked; sheets of steaming fat flew by Bycil and pelted a tree, the smell richly metallic: a clihal, if he recalled what Cal had said about them right. Cal had leapt before Bycil had even heard the beast, let alone seen it.

No one but Bycil had learnt how well Cal's eyes saw in all light, and even then, he hadn't the extend full. Well, besides Dorissa. Caldain the Unblindable: the title true.

Took a few steps to see: his teeth had sunk deep into its thick neck, naturally. He always aimed for that part first, consistent to a fault. Bloodied claws were stripping fat. He'd eat the whole and somehow not double his mass.

Bycil walked up behind him to bind his wings with an unnoticed touch, tail too, and whispered, 'Calm.'

Cal turned and slashed at his throat.

***

Caldain lay fond covered in ferns, ears flattened.

He'd dreamt again. During the day.

An osopiliagragicustorium va la stuporia entered the glade, towering over the shorter trees, with two ivoried horns glinting in the dark. It thought nothing threatened it here.

Lots of blood. Surrounded.

It was lost, shown by its breaking the canopy and its head rising through, long neck exposed while it walked forwards. The snare clanked; he sprang; it died in seconds as teeth sank so far into its neck to reach the first division of muscles, fang tip piercing its jugular as his own blood stilled beat stilled beat, pump pump pump. Oh he could feel it: such a hefted chunk. His claws sliced through the hide of its belly, pulling out the fat--muscles were the best parts: densened, savoured, sweetened. Gods he moaned, gods he moaned at the fulsome kill's flavour, its warmth burning.

All his brethren'd died. Other nights Klek's parents lay there.

Fat made him squirm. Those parts would be divvied with others or something.

He would be standing, eyes blackened. Or'd died too. The latter: all around together, all aged, his eyes cleared, and a beast laid low or felled before them. His choice.

Even the collarbone, crunched, tasted flavoured, cartilage crunching between teeth. Marrow spongy like jam. These things with their salted insides scarce marbled, all peppered and seasoned by diets varied that hinted at leafy greens soused in red, red iron enrichened blood sugared in juices spilling out, the way it seeped through their bodies to their very cores. How its squelched into his maw, glazing his tongue which coiled around to taste all of it and jealously guard it from his throat for as long as instinct could bear. How its tendons severed off at one end tore not easily but cleanly with a tug then a snap into strips stretched at the end opposite, the fat slid out as oiled sheets, the beast best cleansed. Its kind were meant to be eaten. It tasted so good, so good. It was--

Hands grabbed his forelimbs, wings somehow restrained and tail bound.

'Vin ya tarek!' said the dragon restraining him, their face blurred too.

Cal thrashed and wrothe, tearing a leg from his kill and ripping away black fongs from someone. He twisted to catch their head and sliced their neck; blood burst, blood bittered. He needed help.

Brown scales. Bycil.

He recoiled and fell on his back and curled up. The fire the writhing wouldn't stop. Upstarter. Upstarter. Faked. Unscented and unscented and--

Ropes bound his limbs. 'Only took Silay sauce this time,' Bycil said then coughed. 'And a plate. Bah, never mind, you bent it; I cut it too close.' Ah, right. Routine. Yeah.

Bycil leered at Cal as he checked the carcass. 'Look at that; most of its still there. Not hungering as much as usual?'

He started dragging him to the edge of the forest. The flicking of leaves across his face gave time to recenter. Bycil made sure to only pull him across the softer underbrush where possible.

At the edge, others waited, a few whom Bycil led to the carcass, to carry him back to camp, which lay ahead and below in the canyon, nestled unlit under an overhang across the river to best hide it.

They all joked as they carried then flew him down the canyon, likening him to a furred Visar rightfully bound, fur bloodied red. He didn't look a thing like her. All in jest though.

They never understood that he neared killing them each time. All of them. It was a struggle, to try to tell them after. They wouldn't believe you. They would puff up and assert they'd weather a scrape or two just fine.

It was the air that bittered blood; it didn't go that way if you sank your mouth into the wound. That thought always resurfaced in his mind, to repeat for a while.

Klek flew away because he figured it out. Probably.

He'd always hovered close to finding out, no matter how hard Cal tried to hide it. He never let anyone but Bycil see him hunt, though that didn't stop Gerlis's watching twice in the last year; little good it did for her hunting habits, with her seeing nothing.

He hunted well. Very well. But Her oh-so Grandly Royal Pompous Grandeur Door-Ass made him Grand Huntsmaster. Nor the hydra slain.

A rebellion quelled before it would be sparked.

Maybe if all those suitresses heard him be so vulgar they'd leave him alone.

Or try to 'tame' him. Ugh. Zaricka would chase him all the more for it; anything he did attracted her. Standing still. Walking. Flying. Looking up. Telling her to go die in a forest. Anything.

They dragged him into his tent, fallen far enough from the peak of his for the dark to not reawaken it. He slept, drunk on blood.

'Recruits've come. Time to 'orate.' '

Ugh, his speeches had dissuaded at best. Cal did most of the hunting. The speech idea, which the human settlements he'd visited inspired, was to kindle something within the recruits, because 'tals feared most things, things 'nesses shrugged off. He rose and lunged, pinning his intruder: Bycil. Ever quiet steps. 'Oh by Calai, nay,' he said before cursing himself under his breath. Invoking the names of the Matriarchs. Aged habits don't go easily. He lay on top of him, palms running his neck to feel scales move. A little loosened from a dash of aging.

Bycil rolled over to stand above, and lick his mane to clean it, he who stretched. 'Them hearing you at once would speed things up, unless talking to one at a time fits better.'

'I tired from the hunt...'

'We'll have to make do with a tired you then, eh.' Bycil dragged him once more, to behind a tent, then propped him up. Bycil licked his hand, the saliva non-sticky, and slicked Cal's mane with, and Cal leant into the smoothing strokes.

'You know, I can think of another way to inspire the recruits...'

Bycil leant, pressing his snout to his, and gripped Cal's hand while saying, 'Read from this and don't say anything else.' He let go to round the corner, vanishing as usual.

Cal rounded the other corner: the recruits, twelve 'tals, the aged and the hatched twenty years ago, the muscled and the thinned, the prided and the humbled, all turning to him, as more 'tals poured in. Lots. At least...thirty?--he couldn't count right, mind slurred--more, and more coming. So many colours: greens, blues, tans, and browns, even a pink. Most weren't recruited recently; had By put them up to this?...this was going to suck.

He loved most human traditions. You see, in Renait, someone was either trying to bed you or dominate you, usually both. Now, in those quaint human towns, people laughed. People danced. Sang. They fished, and they built. They beat one another. They had no pride. No dignity. Because of fear. Men were runners in all but the hunt. But being scared means something that being fearless doesn't: You have something to lose. That's right: push the downtrodden, push the scared. Put their backs to a wall. Give them nowhere to run.

And you will know fear.

The camp was quieted. The twelve, the dragons passing through--all staring at him, some whispering, a few nodding, others talking about the weirdness of what he'd said. He'd been thinking aloud...

He coughed. The written speech wouldn't relate at all, would it. Bycil could predict a lot of things, but not...He tossed it and straightened. ' 'Tals cower. All of us. We all cower at the raised claw. For so many years, and we run to a camp and huddle together and still fear. We adjust to it; we live it; we breathe it. We always will.' Bycil walked behind the group. 'But the fearless will feel fear. And they won't be readied.'

'Tals didn't roar to applause or thump the ground with their tails as 'nesses did. Most nodded strongly, and many said aye.

That relieved one doubt, though however Bycil figured that out was something he would mull over a lengthened nap--

'See? Went decently,' By said.

'How'd you--'

'You say things about it in your sleep.'

'And you let me ramble on?'

'Lest I wake you.' He gripped his forequarters and his face dropped all emotion. 'A patrol spotted Klek'--Cal straightened at once--'flying from the quarry.'

'Which?'

'Nearest, Yanick.'

They and five others flew southwest; five because brigands spotted a few parts of many ravines, waiting to fly up and rob any who passed over, and five because the quarry, one of many, would defend against any more, seeing it as a raid; 'nesses led, rather, used, legalised groups. The outskirts didn't learn about Cal; 'nesses made sure of that.

His ability to count returned: sixteen in the roughed quarry, in whose depressed centre sat, up on his hinds and surrounded by rock dust, a lumbering yellow great 'tal breaking chunks out from the ground for the regular 'tals to chisel into blocks.

They approached a tawny wizen 'tal, the manager, rushing from chiseler to chiseler, many who were young or young great 'tals, to help them hold their chisels right. He was missing a wing.

'Have you seen a grey-scaled 'tal, about yea high?' Cal asked.

'No, and before you ask, the overseer, 'ness in that tower a way's off and on that cliff, took my wing when I stopped her, er, how to say it in the company of the untouched...having her way with Yellow.'

Untouched. Hunters lived on the skirts of Renait's society, and, 'cepting Cal, suffered the least from 'nesses.

'Cal, let's go pay her a deterring vis--'

'No point, By. No point. Yellow?'

'The big lug over there.' He pointed to the great 'tal.

A mockery of Reidran, and without the fire. The form of 'tals degenerated. Only a few lived past a year so far, and most went unnamed but for their colour or a nickname.

'Grew fast,' Cal said.

'No. Name's the one he decided to keep. I haven't seen anyone by your account, but Yellow mentioned a 'tal had come and gone at dawn. Fair warning: five years hatched so he'll be slowing in mind.' He sprinted up to him while Cal and By watched from a distance, wary of rage; it happened rarely but when it happened dragons died.

'Yellow.'

Muscles upheaved a smile across Yellow's face. 'Yes?'

'These two come. They will ask questions. Yell if worried.'

'Okay.'

The manager nodded at them and jogged back to the others.

Cal stood a third a smaller than Gerlis, lean instead of muscle bound. He leant down to kiss most 'tals; to meet Yellow's eyes, he craned his neck, the muscle-hefting dragon most like surpassing Gerlis's mass by half. 'Did you chance to see a slightly short and grey-scaled 'tal who flies fast?'

He stared at them, maw opened, teeth all worn from grinding, as his hammer jagged his own claw, which Bycil stopped by tilting it away with a shove. Breaths puffed from nares too small, their edges long since ragged from the force of it, while a dried tongue lolled from a snout too short to protect it. Scales strained with every one of those breaths, the skin between threatening to tear. All traits selected bred to hatch scaled muscles with nothing else. Cal had used simplified language this time; he should've gotten it.

'See a small grey 'tal?' Bycil asked.

He nodded. 'Yes. I chunked a little rock. He thanked me. He went north.'

'What did he come to the quarry for? Stone, rocks, a 'tal?' More staring.

'What did he want?' Bycil asked.

'Don't learnt.'

'Did you say you didn't learn why or that we aren't to learn it?'

'Cal, quiet, and he said he didn't learn why. Yellow.'

Yellow perked up, muscles again upheaving a smile. 'Yes?'

'You chunked what for him?'

'A small rock. A medium.'

Rocks...? What for? No doubt hand sized, or Klek wouldn't have flown out.

'Thank you,' Cal said. 'By, let's go north--a drake?'

Three drakes, males, large as 'nesses but all poor fliers, clamb over the crest and leapt into the quarry. Bladed knuckles flashed and one, charcoal and red, fisted those blades into the manager's neck and chest before he would've moved. Not even a chance to speak. Just killed him.

The others descended on the fleeing quarry workers, armed the same and killing the same way. Yellow continued breaking chunks.

Cal and Bycil and the five others leapt to attack at one; they latched on at once and Cal rent his underbelly, but another crushed one of the hunters and impaled a second and the other three hunters took flight. Cal and By launched into the forest, the drakes chasing Cal; they'd come here for him.

It was dark in the forest.

Drake blood didn't get bitter in the air.

They returned to the quarry. Six had been murdered.

'Yellow, did they hurt you?'

The...manager's voice? He was standing on the other side of Yellow. So five then.

'Oh fuck you Bycil.' Writecrafting. Writecrafting. Flashed death, not light.

'You fight best angered.'

'Second time you've done it; how will I realize when it actually happens, huh?'

'I'll tell you.'

'And I won't believe you!'

'Yellow don't eat that!' the manager said as he shooed Yellow from the corpse of the drake.

***

The camp would go north during the night. Renait would send 'nesses out if they didn't return with the rewards of the hunt--ivory, horns, bones, skins, claws, furs for , livers, liquids for elixirs, a few stravin plates, and the like. And meat.

Cal would've gotten up to get some, but the tree shaded him too well, and the grass, cleared of bugs by his scent, had dried only an hour before from downpour, which softened it. His head rested at the base of the tree, overlooking the camp from an alcove high in the canyon, the river below purling. Spotted beams of sunlight dimming warmed the toes of hindpaws.

Bycil alit a few yards away.

'So, Cenar moves to strike Renait. The King of the Drakes is coming: Herrick the big brute himself. Any guesses?'

'He'll get there before Dorissa returns. We'll wait and attack at dusk when drakes nap.'

'Seeing him and Gerlis face each other down not interest you?'

'Haven't figured out who would win that, but big dumb brute fighting big dumb brute is biggest dumbest brutest winnest. With whom ought I side? I'll doubt he'd treat us any better. We should go east, past the orschera.'

'Past the stravin.' He lay behind him.

'And past the humans. To sparsened forests, filled by light, stretching along the whole of the coast, where we'd sometimes fish rather than hunt all the time. Fish satisfy me. Lots of blood.'

'And here I thought humans had charmed you.'

'In doses; they grab a bit too much.'

By put a wing over him, the membrane reaching way past; 'tals grew proper long wings; 'nesses, save for the 'well-bred' nobles, not so much. 'Going east,' By said. 'That would make me happy. But you won't do it.'

'Ah, so you've figured me out so well, just as you have everyone else? Well then, why not? What has you thinking I won't just get up and go? Klek? He'll find me. Some sense of loyalty? The Queen gave me a title and forgot about me. I'll forget her.'

'You don't think you deserve it.'

Leaves blew by, and a daffodil. Loess fell from the side across, to tumble down ridges weathered smooth by the wind. The sky was purpling. People rarely got to see the tan stripes of By's scales.

'Because I don't.'

'To deserve is a stative verb, Cal. A static concept.'

'What?'

'It doesn't move.'

'I'm...not following.' Language came from dragons. It poured to humanity, to the orschera, the pangolins, or Pagoli, as they preferred. But Cal never pursued the study of it.

'It doesn't refer to anything. Listen: what makes something bad?'

'That's an open query...but, it's something that's wrong. Immoral, unjust.'

'What makes something unjust? Were I to stab you with my tail right now, would that be unjust? Why?'

'I wouldn't have done anything to justify it.'

'Yeah, but why is sitting here accept-ab-le?'

'Because it doesn't hurt anyone... Something is bad because causes suffering. It prevents happiness.'

'Yes. Not because it is something. Because it _does_something. When you know a thing, the word know says you learnt it at some point, from instinct or nurture or events throughout your life. When you hate something, hate conveys that thing angers you or scares you or distresses you. When you love something...'

'It says that 'tal makes you, you. That 'tal comforts you. That, that 'tal'--he rolled over to face him--'delights you.'

'I detest Renait. But the core of our kind says something others don't.'

'Are you trying to tell me to stop mingling with humans?'

'No. Just don't forget: one never steps in the same river twice.'

'Eased to remember when you're with me, aged and wisened as you are.' Cal grinned.

Bycil nodded solemnly. 'To hear ye recall the very core of the way of our kind brings a founder hope for the youth of our species.'

'You've not lived that long!' He rolled again, this time onto Bycil, chest to chest.

'With how often I lay with you I won't live much longer.' His maw spread and thrust forth; teeth nibble Cal's neck, the fur licked with swipes spanned across.

'I don't pack the same bite as you do, do I?'

Cal changed the subject. 'I do wonder what drakes do. I've seen their external tools.'

'Penises. Tapered penises. They have internal testes as we do though.'

'Yeah but how do they mate?'

'You've seen humans go at it surely?'

'More time than I'm comfortable with; they go out of their way to make you see.'

'Ah. Gross. Drakes mate that way, not the exhibitionism part, the penetrating. But with chest to back.'

'How unequalled and agonising sounding. Pen-e-trate, trate, akin to stabbing.' His cloaca almost lost all warmth, not even having slidden up By's tail yet to experience the first sliver of pleasure.

'Oooh well King Big Dick of Cenar enters member two hundred and forty three of his all female harem. Does that better appeal?'

'I'm going to retch.'

'They slide inside a drac, thrust awhile, and release.'

'Dracs, the female drakes? Heard they're the smallened ones in Cenar.'

'Yep. Rare and valued yet all but enslaved.'

'I can't say that saddens me.'

'Cal.'

'Yes?'

He struck him with the back of his left hand.

'What the--'

'They talk the same way about furred dragons, the same way about humans, the same way about males. Don't join people who do that.'

'This will bruise you jerk.'

'Drakes,' Bycil said as he clasped a wide-eyed Cal's forelimbs and flipped him onto his back, 'bruise dracs a lot, but they usually do something like this first.' He shimmied down to near his cloaca: a line horizontal from being a furred 'tal, differing from the vertical ones of scaled dragons. At the sight of it, a drop of saliva fell from By's lips. 'You smell amazing.'

'Feeling to submit this dusk?'

'Who wouldn't submit to taste your li'l egg vent?'

Cal squeezed his legs to hasp his head. 'By my thighs, I must be the Queen; ought I release ye from thou cursed existence?'

'Can't breathe.'

'If only a 'tal with strengthened legs kicked apart my girly thighs.'

'S-seed giver.'

'Ah! The dashing Caldain forces me away. Nooo!...' He spread his legs; By gasped.

'Did I capture her awing character?'

'Your pronouns require work. And girly? Don't turn human on me.'

By gripped his thighs, feeling them up thoroughly along the backside of them with groping squeezes that danced up and up, tap tap, each firming up from the last. A warmth recalled ticked with each touch. A cooled snout tip slid along his inner right thigh to tickle him, but he held himself still. Mostly.

That forked tongue darted to his slit and stopped just shy of touching it; it traced beyond the outer edge, saliva trailed to his slit, only to move farther away with each oval loop. The fur there was no less soft, no less dense, than the rest, albeit shortened, and it was clear that By wouldn't progress from feeling it with his face if Cal waited.

He thrust up; By gave him a knowing look and slicked his tongue from the end to the top in one wet stroke followed by one reversed and both repeated twice thrice and more till it spread receptively.

By slid up atop him, again chest to chest.

'What does deserve convey?'

'I thought we finished that chat. But to answer, that I should be punished.'

'Why?' He kept his hips just above his, the snake.

'Because I did wrong things.'

'But why should you be punished? What reason?' His mound was brushing around his slit.

'To...I don't know. Or I haven't why.'

'Punishment is to deter, sometimes help redeem, sometimes to bring closure.' He stroked Cal's face. 'But punishment is not for punishment's sake. Take away the deterrence. Take away the redemption. Take away the closure. What remains?'

'Remains? What does that even mean in this context?'

'Nothing, Cal. It means nothing. I'll tell you what deserve conveys: that your past guilts you.'

'Look, you're not going to fix me with some words of wisdom and sex.'

'I wouldn't assure yourself of that; another thing about rivers: they strengthen when they flow together.' He lowered his hips and their cloacae touched and they ground fast, they ground hard, humps that jolted Cal mixed in for good measure.

The bastard'd teased him long enough to make this part last for but a minute; from Cal flowed out a glaze of white that immersed his mound and inner thighs in a hot layer that stuck. Some of the deluge sank, granting warmth within.

'Calai! I mean Reidran! That's a l-lot.'

'Aaaddingg m-more. Yess. Made you white, all mine.' Always spoke in a goofy way afterwards for as long as dragon seed took to cool in chilled air; about ten minutes.

'A ploy to finish last?'

'As if I needa do that to get y'all twitchy under me.' It was with no small amount of glee that By reveled in this warmth, not only resting his to Cal's but pressing down to keep close as reality would allow, spreading it around with the squishing of both.

They laved each other's cloacae, the taste earthy, to sheened and glossed finishes with their tongues. Would've gone for a second had the sun not already set.

'By.'

'Yes I'd be open to Klek joining us.'

'Not that, but that's pleasing to hear, but at Renait, if Gerlis forces me...'

'I'll do it.'

'By, no.'

'I swing both ways. It's fine. In the name. Heh.'

' 'It's fine,' but will it hurt you?'

'The Princess? No. Besides, Gerlis won't let a 'tal touch her. You'd release yours where she can see you do it since she's paranoid, then I'd swap it out later, when she's not looking, before the Princess used it.'

'But will it hurt you?'

He stared at the sky.

'Knowing they'd hatch and grow without me? No. I ain't a humans.'

'Why not some random 'tal willing to do it?'

'I'm not betting the Matriarchy on that. Nor do I trust anyone to keep hushed about it. And I can live with that. But I can't live with you being broken. Listen to me Cal, I'm being selfish here. If push comes to shove, it's mine that goes.'

'Okay.'

The sun set.

'You've been holding out on me with that language of yours,' Cal said.

'Aye, but I suppose you know me all now.'

Aye, that he did, at last. Time to go north.