FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The village of Everdale is a most mundane village indeed, for the naked eye. The houses are made of clay and hay, surrounded in modest tree vegetation beyond which lie large plains. There are fields with food crops and livestock, few carrying herbs for medication and seasoning. Women are tending laundry as various children play around the central area. It was very busy, and poverty was nowhere near to be found. The noises were alluring for weary travellers and people looking for novelties. One thing that makes it a slice more unique is that act of naming and carefully tending trees, and the constant shifting of large buckets of brown paint from building to building.

In one of them was a dark wolf, with bandages over his head and eye, chest and limbs, carrying the heavy wounds of battle. He groans in his sleep of exhaustion squirming slightly as he tries to gain control over his body. With a few louder noises of discontent, he comes too, slowly opening his eyes. He squints a little as he realises daylight flows through the doorway. "Have I died...?" He asks slowly, not believing that he survived the wounds he carries. "Or is this heaven? I am... confused." The wolf painfully lifts himself and looks around, seeing the tidied room. "I see heaven enjoys modesty... since I do not recognise this architecture. I wonder what angel will greet me... and relieve me from my mortal wounds." "Very well..." He heard from beyond the curtain door, before a black wolf-like girl walks in, painted in yellow stripes and dressed in clothes that would appear quirky at best. "Don't worry; soon your pain will be a dead memory." Her smile appears most kind, as she slides her hands over his chest. "Your armour was very rusty and your clothes soaked in unpleasant scents. I disposed of them." The wolf squinted a little, feeling faint. "I see. Please, relieve me off this pain, my deathbed was bad enough already, kind angel." The wolfess chuckled, nodding. "I can understand... 'death' isn't a pleasant thing. But it isn't really death if you just wake up, is it? Well, don't worry either way! We're already setting up your ritual of transgression." The paladin sighed and rested, wondering what this ritual meant. His body felt weird and altered, which might as well have been the sensation of not being fully equipped.

The wolf was not the only foreign element in the village at the time; another visitor, a travelling cat girl who merely stopped to refill her water canteen and let her horse rest. She was alarmed by the word of a wounded knight, and sought to aid. She walked past the painted wolfess as she skipped off, looking at the resting paladin. "So, you're the one I heard off?" The wolf blinked and looked up. "Heard off...? What angel are you, to visit my humble self?" He asks, his sight blurred. "Angel? I don't know whatever to be charmed or confused. You feel ill, let me heal you." She kneeled down at the wolf, her hands lighting up in a special pattern. "Something dire infected your being, nailed itself into you. No... This won't do. I don't have the skill... Listen, we must set off for the sanctuary, before this spreads." The wolf was confused and squinted. "What... that... was magic? Heaven posses magic? What nailed into me? A bad conscious? What is this?" The cat frowned. "This Everdale, a village south of the Sanctuary of Tranquillity. I noticed your armour as I entered this area." The wolf sighed and shook his head.

"No... I have died... I must be in heaven, for there is no Everdale near the Tunnels of Evil. I was mortally wounded, stranded at the bottom most pit, an army of vile beasts between me and the surface." The cat listened confused, understanding he was merely dreaming in his sleep. "You had a vivid dream, it seems... but you must come with me. These wounds are not to be taken seriously!" She was worried, her glowing hands sensing some evil below his skin, crawling over his life's essence. "I...impossible. I had a life... Paladin..." He seemed faint as the notion that this was not heaven slid into his weak mind. The tension was too much. "This is bad... very bad..." She rushed outside, screaming for help.