FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

This story is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any characters or events, living, dead or imaginary is purely a coincidence. All original characters and these stories themselves are copyright to eternalwanderer ©2007. Comments, suggestions, or anything else can be directed to [email protected]

Different Types of Communication

"speech"

internalized dialog

direct technological communication@

[soul link]

+telepathy+

Shadows of Past & Future

Chapter 1

It was a damned long patrol and that was all he could really say for it. At the moment they were as far in the bush as they'd ever been. Other than the crudely rutted trail that passed for a road they might as well have fallen right back through time to a world that'd never known man. The locals avoided the area entirely, their taboo marker made that clear enough.

Through the dust caked pane of ballistic glass to his right he kept a wary eye for threats. Against the sun-driven heat that itched with the suppressed desire for sleep it was the best remedy he knew. So far nothing may have turned up but this was exactly the sort of territory insurgents would want. Empty, unused, and unwanted there would be no interference here from the local tribe. He was reminded of a comment he'd heard about Vietnam. How when you stepped off the plane and saw it for the first time the sheer greenness of it was like a punch to the gut. Only here it was the brown far as the eye could see in every direction it was just more brown. The dirt, the rocks, the mountains themselves, except for the sky there wasn't another color to be seen and somehow that only made things worse. If the land had seen so much as a single blade of grass since dinosaurs walked it would've been a surprise.

Under that clear burning sky it seemed you should be able to spot a beetle stirring. Nothing did except their convoy, really just a trio of gun trucks slowly grinding their way up a road that wasn't much beyond a horse trail. Officers were supposed to lead but at the moment he was really just another set of eyes, hopefully one with a better chance of spotting...

"Hobbs stop the truck," Benjamin ordered clearly but without hurry. As he did so he leaned toward the window, one hand reaching for the pair of field glasses hooked over the transfer case shifter. If they hadn't been going so slow already the private's emphatic stamp of the brakes would have been brutal. Over the punishing nature of the road and his own stabbing sense of something out of place he didn't even notice it.

From the rear came the sound of gear shifting and boots hitting the scree followed by the dull boom of the heavy armored doors against the sides of the troop container. Up in the roof mount Reno began moving the deuce around to cover his side, boots scratching against the metal step he stood on.

Benjamin drew his magnified gaze up the slope a bit to where he'd first spotted it. Might have signs of use. Half a kilometer up that draw. Looks like a cave entrance partially covered by a landslide. Saw something up there maybe trash, I think somebody's been here.@

Outside it didn't seem nearly so hot after the stifling oven inside the truck. That much was probably because there was at least some airflow in the open. In moments the men had shaken out into a loose formation of the sort preferred to avoid providing too enticing a target. The movement up slope took rather longer than it would have if the threat of a muj ambush hadn't been on the minds of all involved. Even though the bits of potential trash up at the end of the draw seemed old it was better not to take chances.

Scree rattled and slid down the off-camber slope, footing uncertain at best as Benjamin slogged up the incline left by the same landslide that had covered the entrance. Dull finished metal glinted from just inside the otherwise featureless blackness of the opening. The light reflected from the alert rifles of the rear guard as they crouched up against piles of hard stone gravel in case of an assault from the outside.

Despite the volume of rock at the now mostly filled opening it was immediately clear this was not your ordinary cave. Perhaps forty or fifty feet tall and equally wide it was melted at the walls as though a lava tube but straight and regular as any Roman road. Clearly this was a constructed artifact, a passage of some kind and underneath the rubble filling it the entrance had to be equally oversize. It just didn't make sense, the officer couldn't think of any way to melt a perfect road tunnel through a mountain and even if he could there was nothing out here to justify the effort.

Sergeant Brown was standing just past the first turn in the shaft, already more than three hundred feet long when it changed direction. "You were right sir, there are definite signs of use and not more than a few days ago." By itself that was all he'd expected. Just another muj campsite on their way through the mountains whatever strangeness they might find about the tunnel itself. So when the noncom continued it was a dread surprise, why can't things just go well for once? "Thing is lieutenant I don't think it was muj. There's none of the garbage they usually leave around behind them just little bits of plastic wrapper here and there. None of them large enough to tell what they came from."

Already as he listened to the report they'd walked at least another two or three hundred yards and in that time made three turns. The layout of the tunnel was sort of like a dogleg or light-trap performed on a titan's scale. More than the strange 'not-jihadis' who'd been here first that was disturbing. There was a gentle slope to the tunnel that Ben thought had them descending as they went further in as if aiming for somewhere under the center of the mountain's mass.

"Anything else to report? Where exactly does this lead anyway?"

"Just up ahead LT, one more turn, and it's damned odd too." He shook his head. "I'll let you judge for yourself."

"Well damn." For what it was worth the officer himself could only agree with the NCO's sentiments. The tunnel opened out into a domed circular chamber at least three hundred feet across and maybe half as tall. Spreading across most of the roof were irregular patches of some short flowering grass that glowed with the color and pale intensity of the red setting sun. It cast the massive chamber into a dim crimson twilight.

Moving purposefully near the walls in fire team sized groups the platoon was spread out a great deal more than he would've liked to see it. Brown still in tow he moved toward the center of the area. "I've got them looking for entrances around the perimeter." The sergeant reported.

At the center of the chamber the unnaturally smooth melted looking stone gave way to a disk of some bronze-hued metal the size of a baseball diamond. They weren't headed directly for it but nonetheless he began to make out some sort of markings or writings on its surface. Benjamin veered off to the side abruptly, eye catching the flash of his radioman hanging back just within arm's reach. Paying close attention to the blurry writing he couldn't quite focus on as his boots rang once, twice on the metal. It was twisting under his eyes, the symbols squirming into shapes that were familiar. Then something abruptly clicked behind the lieutenant's eyes as the gibberish became words. Lit from behind by a bluish radiance that seeped from somewhere outside reality growing with the pulling sensation that accompanied it. Before he could so much as utter a sound the radiance spilled up from the floor into the real world as a pool of glowing blue-silver light beneath his feet. Ben had time to jerk his head up and see his radioman and a pair of rifleman drop into the thing... with him.

Brown's head snapped around from where it had been scanning the irregular motions of the search teams when the cluster of footsteps on his left side abruptly stopped. Despite the incongruous speed of motion for such a bulky man all he managed to get a glimpse of were the helmets of troopers Adams and Bueller as they dropped into the event horizon of what looked to be a glowing whirlpool on the metal floor before it snapped shut.

Unnerved by the impossible phenomena that had just claimed his commander and a significant part of the headquarters section Brown leapt off the platform onto glassy fused rock. So disturbed he didn't even realize he'd done so while he stood rigid and shivered intensely. Frantically the non-com waved everyone around the suddenly threatening device. But inwardly he worried how in hell he was going to explain this...

---

Fuck that hurt, the thought flitted across lieutenant Pruzhanov's mind in a rush as the world seeped back in. Wash of light and color gradually sharpening back into reality from where they'd roiled after hitting his head. Blood seeped slowly from his nose, far more was painted in thick splatters across his combat suit intermingled with nearly pureed chunks of brain. One hand reached down reflexively for his slung rifle even as Benjamin thrust himself to his feet in a graceless lurch.

Inside arms reach to his left was the corpse of rifleman Adams, already beginning to spread the distinctive smells of death and an open brain cavity. Lying flat on its back with partially spread arms the helmet lolled red and empty on the floor, his combat suit's hood half-full of a disgusting soupy red-gray mess. Not far from Benjamin's feet Bueller had suffered a similar fate. Whatever its cause their hoods had largely contained it, turning the explosive spatter into a gory fountain.

Though smaller than the cave he'd left so abruptly the monumental scale of this new surrounding easily dwarfed him to insignificance. Roughly thirty-five feet to the ceiling and half again that in length or breadth. Walls all leaned slightly inward and met both each other and the roof at odd non-right angles. Seamless they rose above a floor composed from a single plate of the metal in the cave. Identical at a glance to that larger example right down to the presence of bizarre designs that tried to squirm away from view. This time they remained vague and unformed, no light of unspace kindled and the tug between his eyes was absent.

Motion flagged at the edge of his peripheral vision and the nervous lieutenant reacted. Rifle tucked tighter to his shoulder as he whirled to confront its source. Only to aim in on his radio operator McCray as she drew herself up to a sitting position. Apparently tossed the other direction by whatever force had brought them to their present location she'd been spared the majority of the gore though gleaming trails of wet blood ran from her nose and tear ducts.

Which still didn't explain why she'd survived when the other two splattered like a cheap horror movie effect. Or why I'm still alive for that matter? couldn't help but surface and add to the confusion. Stepping over Bueller he leaned down to pull her to her feet, all the while keeping his weapon and attention on the wall behind her. The trapezoidal opening in its middle a singular entrance or exit from the enigmatic space and his barrel never wavered from it.

WHAT! happened LT?@ McCray's question came through the mastoid implant, triggered by her subvocalization. Even so it seemed groggy and more than a little panicked. Her head flinched and focused on the remains of the two riflemen. One hand slapped into her face dragging across the trails from her own episode.How, when did that happen?@

Ben answered out of training still shaken himself. As we went through that... thing. Right then, fast.@ A slight toss of his head as if to cast the sight away from memory. If it was going to happen to us it already would have.@ Out loud though still quietly, "You okay specialist?" At the reminder of protocol she drew herself into a more soldierly demeanor. McCray snatched her own weapon from the patrol sling and turned to cover the exit. Crouching as she took one step to the side to clear his line of fire.

"Where are we lieutenant?" there were drum taut nerves lurking under her voice.

"Try to get a signal out to someone, wherever this is I don't think it has GPS." McCray reached back for the handset of the backpack radio over her shoulder. While she did he concentrated on the hallway but even that couldn't prevent him from noticing the way she muttered curses or gripped the device as though she wanted to strangle it.

"No joy sir, this place is sealed up tight. Our implant coms are fine as long as we're in the same room. But it soaks up EM like pissing in the ocean." He ignored the language, compared to what they were neck deep in it was nothing.

"Dump it then," Ben came to a snap judgment, "it's useless anyway. Grab what we can use, we'll split the extra load." Every noise seemed to echo resoundingly as if sheer emptiness made the place resent intrusions with its silence. There was a sense of loneliness and immeasurable age so thick Ben felt he should be able to reach out and touch it. Boots padded up from behind and the weight on his harness increased by at least twenty pounds.

"You've got Adam's web gear and the spare rifle." Which meant she had Bueller's grenade launcher but that didn't bother him. To make up for the elephant of a radio and cut down on weight McCray only carried a subgun, she could use the firepower.

Shouldn't just hang around here anyway, Benjamin tried to deal with the situation calmly and rationally as was proper for an officer. We need to move, find a way out. "You ready?" There were two short pops through his implant com, shorthand affirmative, she didn't want to talk. "Then let's move up." Before McCray could react he stepped off, taking point himself. Ben passed under the lintel and into a hallway more than twenty feet tall. Despite its cathedral-like proportions and walls of a seamless pale green stone he couldn't shake the feeling that it reminded him of a subway or perhaps an airport.

Twisting and maze-like the corridor never went more than fifty or sixty meters straight. Instead it wandered through the most disorienting series of turns he'd ever encountered. Only to straighten out before launching into yet another series of dizzying and pointless turns. It didn't really matter seeing as there were no side branches and just two possible direction, forward or back, but the work had a sort of otherness about it. Suddenly as it had began the hall ended in a large door. Not like the strangely flowing silverish material that had been in the cave this was more the way a metal should be. Solidly built the door's blank face cut off the passageway from ceiling to floor and held overtones of bronze, gold, and morning sunlight in its bright surface. Why such a door belonged in what he'd tagged as a transit facility didn't seem any more odd than the place itself or the means by which they'd arrived. To one side high over their heads was a sign, like the pad that had brought them into such a predicament its strange and indecipherable symbols changed as one focused on them, becoming legible text. In this case it simply read 'COSTUME SHOP: MORAL PERSONIFICATIONS AND QUASI-MYTHICAL ENTITIES.' Given what had already happened Ben's gut told him things probably weren't going to be so simple. At least I see it as English. Would Vasquez see it as Spanish or Mercer as Gaelic?

WHAT! now?@ from McCray.

Grouped in heroic-sized dioramas built up from the floor were things more odd than any he'd imagined. What had to be most disturbing was the mixture of truly alien and mundane. It was as if some deranged Michaelangelo of taxidermy had illustrated a cross-section of Bullfinch's Mythology, Dante's Inferno, and every genre of fantasy then left the result behind where they fell. If these are costumes they're the most realistic ones I've ever seen. They all seemed so real he almost expected to catch them breathing or moving from the corner of his eyes.

A motley collection of the apocryphal, beautiful, and simply insane. Ben heard the immaterial barrier slide around McCray behind him as she entered, the sudden pause of taking in what there was to see. Unaware of what else to do he continued slowly onward into the space. To his left was a large diorama whose floor appeared to be entirely carpeted with mangled bodies of unidentifiable things. Standing on them was a series of atrocious looking creatures. All barbs and claws and multiple limbs wrapped in a variety of mucousy slime, bony plate, burnt skin, and green carapace. Something about them looked familiar though William could not place it. It seemed a carnival of the bizarre surrounded him. There a creature that should have been drawn by Giger, off to the right something Lovecraftian.

They varied widely in size from some that didn't top six feet to others who could've looked over a two-story home. One diorama, home to a few remaining creatures roughly analogous to bipedal alligators was mostly empty. At the shorn patches where others had once been small glowing holographs rotated lazily in the air above chin height. 'SWAMP CANNIBALS OF THE BEASTLANDS LINE: WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE THIS COSTUME IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.' A look at the sheer variety all around made for a confusing contrast. None of them looked like they could work as a costume.

Maybe some kind of powered animatronic costume? It was the only idea that seemed to make sense. Besides how do they make the hologram just float there without a substrate? He was beginning to draw some conclusions about wherever they were. Okay this place looks like it was meant for transit, where to or from I don't know but we figured out how. It was abandoned possibly for a very long time. Now it clearly sees use but not by nearly as many. Not the people who made it either, they would have replaced what's missing.

McCray had eased up level with him while he paused and now responded over her implant com. WHAT! now sir?@

the costumes. This place isn't entirely abandoned it's still being used by someone.@ Ben answered in the same method avoiding the noise of speech. They've clearly used these 'costumes' too. We should find costumes just in case we run into them. Hopefully they'll mistake us for one of their own if that happens, at least long enough to give us a chance to slip by.@ It was such a long shot the idea was positively deranged but it was the best he could think of for the moment.

Not one of these,@ Benjamin gestured with his head at the dioramas in their immediate area. Most of these are disgusting and the rest are distasteful. Let's go a bit further on.@ With that he began to prowl forward. More cautious now that it was clear they might have company, the pair of lost soldiers moved as silently as they could manage. Around a section that seemed overrun with hybrid insectile monstrosities Will and McCray found some that didn't turn their stomachs at the thought of being inside.

There was some giant flaming demon with a metal whip standing atop a pile of broken stone and charred human skeletons. It reminded him of an old movie he'd seen as a kid. No not my style, Ben thought with an internal laugh. Behind it, partially obscured by the illusory flames, was yet another oddity. This one standing with its many limbs resting on tiny clumps of earth that gave the impression of having coalesced from the formless stuff inside its base. A chimeric monstrosity the costume was massive, nearly the size of an elephant. Its lower body that of a scarab beetle larger than many trucks, shiny black carapace giving way to thick fur at the waist of the giant humanoid torso that rose from its front. The two heads were somewhat between a gorilla and a mastiff, rising above muscular shoulders that sported four arms tipped in bestially clawed hands. No I don't even want to touch that let alone wear it.

He was perhaps being unreasonably picky but Ben justified it to himself based on how much more normal the used costumes had been. McCray was reacting similarly to the distasteful creations all around them. Consumed by the search to such an extent that he didn't realize it as his unthinking steps began to draw him further into the space Ben almost missed noticing when McCray started drifting off herself. So engrossed by this point the usually alert young officer merely noted his radio operator's direction and a few likely costumes as his own search drew him farther toward a concentration of the larger costumes.

There were several possibilities to choose from some more normal than others, Ben found his own attention fixed on the least conventional of the lot. Considering that it had only a single occupant it was rather large even by the rather generous standards of its surroundings but so was the costume. If he didn't want to use it the next exhibit over was less conspicuous, practically mundane by comparison.. 'UNIQUE MODEL! OUROBOROUS THE DEMON WYRM! TRY ME AND FIND OUT MORE!' Indeed if this was anything to judge by what the young officer felt it must be an animatronic of some kind. But what had caught his attention was an animated icon along one edge of the floating hologram. Inside a green box with an incomprehensible symbol that unlike any of the others refused to adapt to English was a stylized dragon that changed shape. Shrinking and becoming a series of bipedal figures then returning to a dragon.

One hand reached out and touched the icon making it flash white. In reaction the text of the sign changed. 'FULL POLYMORPH, HUMANOID ONLY.' Ben let out a breath, his only concern had been that the size difference would render his weapons unusable. If it could change shape back to something of human size that was no longer an issue. How it was supposed to do that he had no idea but after what he'd already experienced impossible had gained an undefined elasticity. Convinced of his choice Ben looked more closely at it.

As dragons went it didn't seem too large, certainly no Smaug but plenty big enough for that walking among dinosaurs feel. Poised in a fluid life-like stance its four thick necks curled back just above the dais as if meeting a threat with one set of jaws agape in a silent roar. Sloping down from shoulders to hip it had a stance reminiscent of a hyena writ large, he wasn't even as tall as its four massive elbows and the hip was half again his height. It's got to be some sort of advanced animatronic. Nothing else makes any sense, also explains why they built so large. A voice of caution nagged wordlessly and Ben ignored it. There was something about the costume that drew him.

Not precisely what I expected, he reached out and ran a gloved hand down it's lower jaw. Hand length fur with the softness of silk and strength of fullerene cable sprouted from skin thick and hardened as Krupp steel. Ben pulled himself up onto the waist high dais by a handhold in the thick mane covering the closest neck. It was large as the dinosaur skeletons the officer had walked under in museums as a child but this was far more impressive than any pile of bones. Didn't expect a dragon to have six legs and I can't find the wings. Still very impressive and more serpentine than anything as huge should be capable of.

Rationalizing away the nagging voices of doubt with its advertised ability to change shape Ben had psyched himself up to put on the costume despite the alien nature of the thing. Only to realize as he continued walking around the massive device that he had no idea how to go about the process. It can't be too hard, somewhere it has to have an access point. The close regard paid to every visible part of the suit did reveal something previously overlooked. For all their size the fore talons looked to be opposable. Still as the inspection carried around the costume he saw nothing that would explain how to use it.

Until he got back around to the front where an absent-minded glance into the nearest head's gaping maw provided the answer. Visible deep at the back of the cavernous mouth was a tag gleaming against black flesh on the roof of the palette just before the throat. Pristine white and labeled 'ENTER' in large print. "How original 'eaten' by a dragon," Pruzhanov muttered with a smile.

Getting in was going to be fun considering it was at the back of a yard long mouth edged with teeth large as fighting knives. Even gaping fully open it didn't seem like a great deal of room when gear was added in to the equation. Fuck it, if I need to bail from this thing I'll need the gear more than ever. I'll just be careful on the way in. Leaning in Ben touched the inside of its mouth and found it to be an unfamiliar material. Resilient and stretchy with a clinging dampness of indeterminate origin.

He got to what had been the point of the entire bit, a costume. Facing away Pruzhanov stuck first one then the other leg in carefully on either side of the mouth's slightly yielding surface. Until he was propped up on his arms in a front leaning rest position with both legs inside. Sliding back further until boots passed into the throat and he was almost entirely within the jaws. The costume was unexpectedly warm, especially around his ankles. Friendly aren't you, Ben smiled inside his helmet as the tongue shifted under his movements to fall against his groin. Easier once past the teeth a single good shove finished the job.

As the throat closed over his helmet Ben waited a few seconds unable to figure out what he was supposed to do next. It was a pitch-dark space that squeezed in claustrophobically from all sides. Limited as they were he felt around and was unable to locate anything resembling controls. Already Pruzhanov could feel something, a sharp tingling sensation as if tiny needles pricked at every inch of his face. Shifting back across the rest of his head and down the neck as it grew more intense. Enough time for the question to form, okay what now? Before it flashed into pain and he went mercifully unconscious.