FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

As she walked down the hallway, her thin fingers trailed along a side table as dust puffed up, even though the surface of the ebony wood was mirror clean. She curled her fingers back up into the layers of her flared sleeves, then moved them to her front and walked with an air of rightful arrogance, an arrogance born of power.

The girl looked like she couldn't have been older than fourteen, yet her cool eyes betrayed her age. The sleeves of her white dress were covered by a black over coat, and various black ribbons were tied in bows along her dress as well as crisscrossing across her bust to give the dress a corset look that pushed her chest up and the under white dress covered up to her collar bone.

She brushed her long, shoulder blade length, silvery hair back behind her ear, her seashell fingernails flashing ominously in the golden light that filtered through the elegant sill windows of the hallway. The black velvet curtains that fell down to the black, purple and gray designed carpet, were drawn back, letting in the light of the sun slowly setting on the black mansion set into the mountain side. The land abruptly cut off in the void of the Vale and dropped into a bottomless sky.

Her ruby red eyes only brushed the view of her realm briefly and moved on. She had a lacy black head band with real growing black and violet roses forming on it as the lace furrowed between the silvery lengths of hair. Her big cow eyes were those of a child, but they were sheathed in what seemed like boredom. They glowed, literally glowed, with power.

She drove on with purpose, her high heal shoes silently sinking into the carpet as she continued on her path. Her stockings covered up her legs to where her white dress ended down to her knees, which disappeared into her dress. She turned into another hallway, the walls lined with paintings of all the famous paintings of massacres and battles, only with one alteration in each. Their was always some dark figure, a girl in a dress with spread, black raven wings, shrouded in shadow by the glowing of the sun and a scythe in her hand as dark specters, human-like figures wrapped in rotting bandages crawled out from her dress and were reaching for the dead bodies, or wrapped around them taking them up back to the figure. "The Battle of Constantine" by Michal Angelo was marked with the dark figure and her hellish creatures and the painting of the murder of Julius Caesar showed the dark monsters slowly pulling him down as the figure stood floating in the back hallway and watched with those hideous glowing red eyes.

Then, the biggest painting, one from floor to ceiling, was one of the mansion. The dark and elegant carved wood designs of roses and human bodies warped in death were etched into the wood work of a towering mansion with three spires, the center one larger than the other two, and of Gothic design. The sun in it was slowly setting as those same dark figures circled it, frozen in the paint of the picture. The only thing moving in it was the sun as it passed the sky.

The woman only gave the painting a slight once over as she never broke stride and moved on. Her white skin faintly glowed as she passed another window, the light playing across her fair skin. As soon as she reached her destination, she raised her hand and energy crackled through it. A black mist spiraled out of her dress and shot for the sky and down to the floor. The mist thickened and condensed as she walked on, until it formed into a staff with a crooked top. It was a shepherd's crook, and the mist did a final spread just below where the crook met the glossy, ebony rod and solidified into a violet bow and a silver bell, like the ones one can see in church towers.

She reached the hall that was at the top of the stair case, and sunlight ran in streams through the massive, stained glass window that was at the summit of the double staircase. The window was a beautiful picture of the girl, her long, silvery hair cascading far down past her feet as she held her shepherds crook and guided a sea of ghostly faces through a valley, and was backgrounded by a violet sun, blue sky and the mansion.

Two ghostly figures stood at the center of a pentacle at the pace of the stair chaise and in the grand foyer. If one knew the language of the gods, one would know that the pentacle read "The house of the dead. May all toughs who have passed through these doors find eternal rest or eternal torment."

The woman looked down at the ghostly figures and gave a slight nod. The ghosts bowed, their tattered suits and practically skeletal forms cut off at the waist and a foggy white mist flowed out of their ghostly forms. They trailed backwards, still bowed, and evaporated into the air and rematerialized by the two front doors. They were ones that one would see at cathedrals, floor to the three story ceiling with a tree carved into it, and its leaves and fruit made of various glass shards. A carving of three humans stood by a pedestal with one of the trees fruit on it. Obviously they had eaten of it, and they looked powerful and strong.

In the "sky" of the carving there were various figures of gods; one at the zenith of the arch of them stood out. It was the same dark, female figure with its wings drawn and scythe in hand. The roots of the tree burrowed into the earth and broke out into a beautiful, swirling mass of stained glass that looked like the heavens and stars.

The woman took in a deep breath, closing her eyes, and the sound reverberated through the entire mansion as if the entire home was taking in a deep breath and bracing for something. The girl let the air just flow out of her, and as she did, she tipped her shepherd's crook down so that the crook of the staff was in front of her face and the bell was level with her eyes. With an expressionless face, she lifted her other hand and ever so slowly brought it to the bell.

For only a second, one second that hung in the air for what seemed like an eternity, she gently, yet swiftly, flicked the bell. It swung up and...

DONG!!!

The sound of a church bell rang through the air and vibrated through the entire mansion, shaking the walls with its strength. The bell descended on its arch and swung up again and...

DONG!!!

This time the carvings of the dead shivered and moved, and white mist rolled off of them. All the wood carvings that made up the walls and windowsills radiated this mist.

DONG!!!

Ghostly appendages burst through the wood and cries of the dead shrieked in agony from being woken from their slumber, forced into the waking realm by the sound of the girl's bell.

DONG!!!

Entire bodies were forced out of the woodwork, some of them trying to sink back in and return to their rest, to meld back with their totems of slumber. Each ring of the bell forced them out farther and farther, like the vibrations pushed them out of the architecture.

DONG!!!

Many of the spirits were out and all of them groaned, writhed, and screamed for mercy, to be given sleep, to be given the comfort of death.

DONG!!!

They all shrieked, the sound a claw behind the brow and a saber in the heart, but the girl did nothing to stop the seemingly endless momentum of the bell. Her eyes looked on, seemingly oblivious to the nightmarish sight before her.

DONG!!!

The ghosts lurched towards the door and tried to pull away, the gigantic, black iron and amethyst chandelier shaking and trembling above them in the defining streak of unyielding torment. Some of the ghosts started for the door, but for the most part the rest of the souls were trying to dive back into the carvings and busts in the walls.

DONG!!!

The rest of the ghosts were forced against the door, and they latched on and pulled back hard. The doors groaning and the fall of dust showed they hadn't been opened in a long time. The door's hinges of the door were edged with little bumps and mettle bars connected to them. As the hinges moved, they lifted the bars and clunked back down and reverberated in song.

DONG!!!

The doors started to open faster, the haunting melody of the horrific music box contraption speeding up with the doubled efforts of the spirits. The doors inched open, little by little as the ghosts frantically tugged onto the door.

DONG!!!

All the spirits recoiled in agony and pulled harder, the horrendous melody of the music accelerating even faster as the shadow of a fur appeared in the door way. The fur stood there, his eyes just as cool and collect as the girl's, his eyes a deep ocean blue.

DONG!!!

With another shriek, the spirits pulled the doors all the way open, the haunting melody ending with a final chord and the spirits rushed out of the open doors, flailing in their attempt to get away from the rolling vibrations of the horrendous bell.

"No you don't," the girl said, her voice shimmered as if ten people were talking at once and each one of those voices sounded cold and calm.

DONG!!!

This time the sound of the bell wasn't so harsh, and its vibrations didn't fade. They kept humming as the spirits sort of changed. Instead of running away, they all started to flow into the mansion, swirling in patterns as they circled around the girl and laughed and sang haunting melodies as they vanished and fused with the woodwork and walls of the mansion.

In the torrent of souls that swirled in tendrils around the girl, a pair of black raven wings sprung up from her back and she started to float. She walked on air and descended an invisible stair case as the last of the spirits faded off just as she reached the base.

The fur in the doorway was wearing black, washed jeans and had a midnight blue, dress shirt on with black, dress shoes. The two spirits next to the door didn't look at the man as they began their announcement.

"Jonathan Edward Lock," the specters started with voices as dry as sand, "child of light and Zenith's appointed consult. Welcome to the Vale of death. Madison, the goddess of eternal rest and living death, has generously accepted you into her home as her honored guest."

Jace walked into the foyer, into the center of the onyx and silver pentacle and went down on one knee.

"It is I, Madison, that am truly honored. Not that many living spirits enter this realm."

Madison looked onto the man with only the faintest signs of emotion, only the slightest movements passed her baby faced features.

"That would be true, but you aren't completely alive now are you," she smiled, parting her lips that were covered in an almost metallic black lipstick that shined a blood read when light flashed off it. "Death clings to you, yet you are living. This is the rarest of deaths, the death of a lover. The severing of two souls knitted togeather so well that when torn apart, it pierces one to the core deeper than any blade ever could."

Jace's shoulders stiffened, and he deepened his bow to hide his face, but it was pointless to hide something from a goddess.

Her smile widened a little bit more, just enough to part her lips and show a set of pearly teeth.

"It is so delicious. You radiate hopelessness and shattered dreams. If you weren't in front of me, I would say that you were dead."

Madison gently, yet with some sadistic malice, brought Jace's head up with her thin fingers. Jace visibly clenched and the veins under his fur glowed an unholy blue.

Without breaking the touch she said,

"Why have you come here alone, John? Do you wish to die? As you can tell, my touch will give you what you so desire. Or are you truly here as Zenith's correspondent?"

Jace's face felt numb, as if all the warmth and life was draining out of his body, the cold feeling was spreading through his body, slowly creeping down from his face like a dark taint.

"No Madison," he said as he used what little strength he had to turn his head away from her touch. "I did not come here to die. I am here for Zenith, nothing more."

Madison tilted her head just slightly and looked down on Jared with dark condescension.

"I know why you were sent here, but your intentions, I sense, do not coincide with your mission."

Jace gritted his teeth, but said nothing. Madison smirked, one edge of her lip ever so slightly raised.

"Your silence speaks volumes."

Madison turned away and started to head into one of the side rooms to the foyer.

"Never the less, I will not have my reputation marred by being a bad house guest. Join me in the waiting room for...what is it that you mortals call it...tea?"

Even though her voice faltered, it still sounded as if it were rehearsed.

Jace, exhausted not just by death's touch, got up and followed the dark mist that the little girl left behind herself.