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Astaroth Ankh - part 6 Love hurts

Warning! There are descriptions of semi non-consensual sex between a minor and an adult, and a suicide attempt by a minor in this story. This story also shows killing, mutilation and gore. If you're a minor DON'T read below this paragraph, but if you're an adult and not offended by this, enjoy.

Prologue (Five months ago)

It was a beautiful morning as the birds sang to greet the new day. The puffy, orange clouds were silent harbingers of the star that created each new day and gave hope to the ever-moving settlement. But the soothing peace was shattered when a piercing scream alerted the caravan dwellers, which panicked as they searched for the cause of this commotion. An elderly female rabbit screamed as she saw the remains of a discomposing gazelle near the water wagon. The ill fortuned victim was struck on the head with a poisoned arrow, surrounded by some burned papyrus and a set of cub paw-prints.

The campers were aghast and revolted, not remembering a horror like this since the years of the religious war that brought the lion sphinxes and the dragons into power. The victim was carried away for his last rites and burial, as the surrounding witnesses began to whisper their prayers. The weeks passed by without a single murder, but the tranquility was replaced by a sense of fear and uncertainty, that increased each time another corpse appeared.

-The actual time, in a huge fortified citadel near the Dragon country border.

She felt like there was little hope of getting out alive...

The female Jalaxian cat swallowed coppery phlegm and tried to make herself inconspicuous as she traveled with a seriously hurt cub on her back. She tried to hide herself in the anonymity of this huge marketplace, but she was deathly fearful of being discovered.

Although everything looked calm, a single alarm yell was the only thing needed to make all hell break loose. Her leg wound was making her progress more difficult with each step while she searched the market place for any guards or potential trouble. She checked Aster's body temperature, and was glad that the nasty-tasting medicinal tea was doing its job. She sat on a secluded corner and checked his wounds.

The arrow wound on his shoulder had a sickly brownish color, a clear sign of an infection. But she was more worried about the arrow wound that perforated his right lung, not only because the arrow made Aster's breathing a difficult task, but there is also the increasing risk that the blood would fill the winged cub's lungs and the red fluids would choke him. Now it was a race against the clock to save Aster's life. She cursed her own impulsiveness as she remembered how their ordeal began.

Four days ago...

Both siblings' exhaustion and fear made their hearths beat inside their chests like drums. The bat's predictions became true as several dormant religious factions who supported or opposed the current regime started savage riots inside the city. The once beautiful Dragon citadel was desolate and littered with garbage (and corpses). Increasing columns of gray smoke could be seen at the distance. She wished not to have separated from the foxes during the street riots. Oh God, what if their fox parents were hurt or, or... No, they must be all right.

The stray siblings crept silently and climbed thru a singed window into a partially burnt and derelict building. What a sight! Everything inside the building was charred beyond recognition and the air permeated with the nauseating stench of burnt wood and rotting meat. Suddenly, Amanda tripped against somebody lying on the floor and she nearly fell. She screamed bloody murder when she discovered that the person whom she tripped was really the decaying, charred corpse of an elderly female rat.

Her eyes widened as she saw the corpses of three little mice suffocated by the smoke. Aster followed her, wishing that no one has heard her, but they ran out of luck. The feral shouts of the Dragon's wolf guards were drawing nearer and the children realized too late that the nightmare just began.

She ran upstairs and peeked thru the window: 'Aster, we got company. We better escape or our parents will see us impaled on a wooden cross!'

They wolves stormed inside but were unable to catch the nimble cat that was already in the second floor, but the small bat was an easy prey. They tackled Aster and began to desperately stab him, as the cub struggled to escape. Some of the wolves even stabbed themselves in their desperate attempt to kill the child. Amanda watched in horror as a wolf picked up a really huge stone brick and prepared to give Aster the killing blow.

Amanda threw an incendiary grenade at the middle of the wolves just after Aster bit the soldier that pinned him down. The little bat saw the opportunity to flee like the wind. The hemp rope armor and iron helmet protected Aster from the stab wounds and rough blows that he received but nevertheless he felt dizzy. The derelict building started to catch fire quickly while the burning wolves jumped and danced grotesquely as the flames killed them. Amanda ran towards his brother as they got prepared to jump from the second floor window to an adjacent building.

Suddenly, two arrows struck Aster's back in what seemed like fifty endless, horrifying seconds.

Amanda threw a pair of throwing knives, which struck at the wolf's neck and left eye. The life of the surprised archer ended in just seconds. Amanda was unable to register what happened around her or to her brother while her irrational fury controlled her. When her mind came back to reality and she saw the limp, motionless body of his stepbrother in a pool of blood, she began to scream hysterically as her mind snapped.

Back to the present time...

The pain from the caltrop wound called Amanda back to reality. Tears of despair ran thru her cheeks as her determined face evaluated her next action. Using her skills as a thief, Amanda used the clerk's distraction with another client to take everything she needed for the cub's wound, plus some food and cloth diapers. She knew that other 'furries' killed bat cubs for 'sport'.

The fearful cat girl didn't want the clerk or any onlookers to alert any wolf soldiers or bystanders, the least she wanted was the irrational fury of an angry mob. Amanda tossed her last gold coin, taken from the corpse of a wolf guard caught in a street riot days before, as she hurried to the nearest exit.

The feline nearly stumbled with a mature, plump female skunk and her stripped cubs. To the skunk's surprise, Amanda nearly prostrated herself: 'Please, do not tell anyone that I'm here, I beg you of his sake'

The old stripped female was quite affected when she saw that the cat girl was carrying an ill cub, covered with a blanket. Was she an outcast?

The skunk female said: 'You don't have to knell in my presence, dear child. I will help you escape. There is a small wagon in which you can hide'. Amanda kissed the skunk's paw and went to hide.

The old skunk sighed worriedly and gathered all her furry children as she herded them to the wagon: 'Children, stop playing! It's time for us to go to the camp.'

The skunk saw that the female cat was changing diapers to what looked like a cream-colored fennec. But she was intrigued about the fact that the cat wasn't breastfeeding the hurt 'fox' but feeding him mouth to mouth. Was the cub kidnapped? The fact that that young cat was mothering what looked like a 'brown fox' was unheard of, but the cat's face was filled with despair. This fact raised even more questions. During the travel back to the fortified camp Amanda kept grounding herbs with a mortar to make medicine and covering the cub's chest and forehead with a wet cloth to keep the fever down.

When the females carried the wounded cub to the camp's huge communal tent, Amanda pleaded: 'Please, I want you to take both of us into the camp in total secrecy. If there is a healer in this fortified camp, then I want him to cure my brother without anybody knowing'.

The female skunk told her: 'You are not to worry, young one. Half the people who live in this camp are outcasts or are refugees from the Dragon's city'.

Amanda begged: 'Please, you have to understand. My stepbrother is seriously hurt, and there are people who will do anything enslave or kill him. The healer must swear secrecy if he wants to cure him'. There was no way to know that a Dragon sympathizer was living among them. If that were the case, they would have few chances of escaping alive. But she had no choice but to trust these people.

She was silent, worried not only for her stepbrother's fate but also her own. Moments later, a rabbit boy came back pulling the arm or an old goat that looked like a drunkard, but he is in fact the camp's healer.

The goat spoke: 'Tell Brecca the raccoon to prepare the operating table for this child immediately'. The females carried the cub to the chirurgic room. Amanda began to pray with all her hearth to the ancestors, although she didn't know how to do it correctly.

Hours later, the old healer came with the news: 'The chest wound just perforated the pleural sack around the lungs, but not the lungs themselves. He had some fractured ribs and traumas all over his chest and back. But he was lucky that he had survived that long because those wounds are serious enough, even if they are not infected. Give him some space inside the coal wagon'. A young female raccoon bandaged him as Aster sank into a drug-induced sleep.

Six nights later Aster woke up outside the coal wagon at nearly midnight. He felt wrecked, but slightly better now. The psychic parasites inside his body accelerated his healing, but they turned the surrounding vegetation into a dry and withered circle around him.

Amanda smiled as he entered inside: ' I hate to say this, but I'm glad you're alive.' He smiled faintly: ' We are still vulnerable, so we better get out off this stink hole!'

She said: ' I'll fetch some food and we'll hit the road before sunrise.'

Five minutes later, the bat heard a commotion as several soldiers began to chase a thief.

He overheard a constable: 'Where did she went?'

Some caravan dwellers yelled: 'That feline didn't went far. Double-check all the wagons and tents. Don't let that assassin get away!'

Aster's frowned when they called his sister an assassin. Only Shadow-bats had that unfair reputation. What the hell was going on?

Amanda's point of view

Amanda was shocked when some village dwellers spotted and chased her near the food storage wagon. Was the prejudice against his brother's race so strong that they would chase her? So far, she eluded them and was getting near her hiding place. She silently bolted towards the coal wagon, when she saw a wolf guard relieving himself in front of the entrance. She struck flint and steel to start a small fire and threw the lit piece of wood into a haystack.

She smirked triumphantly as she saw the poor wolf sentry trying to run towards the fire while trying to pull up his pants. When she opened the door, her surprise couldn't get bigger as she saw a tiger aiming at her sleeping brother. She felt somebody hit her on the back of the head as everything when black. She cursed herself for not protecting her brother.

Soon the children were caged in opposite sides of a huge wagon filled with hanging cages, as a horned figure entered the wagon.

The goat clapped his paws as he said cheerfully: 'I can't believe my good fortune! Using this refugee camp as a bait to capture new slaves is working like a charm. It didn't occur to me that I would be able to catch an alpha telepath. Usually the shadow bats open their bellies with a knife rather than get captured.'

The goat scowled when he saw the cat female: 'And as for you, I think we are over the neck with cub prostitutes, but you would be worth a few silver pieces if I sold you to work in the salt mines, girl. Both of you better forget about any hopes of rescue. I lied to the constable and those unsuspecting villagers, who believed that you were both the criminals wanted for a series of killings in recent weeks, and they assumed that you two are now being impaled'.

Amanda replied: 'Why are you doing this?'

The goat replied: 'For gold bars of course! Thousands of 'furries' are fleeing into caravans like these. I began to kidnap and slay some political adversaries, but this operation turned very profitable. This moving, camouflaged fortification is a difficult target, although sometimes mercenaries disguised as refugees infiltrate us, but their actions are 'justifying' my decisions and covering my tracks. Those assassins are taking the blame for everything! But I will use this bat's teleportation abilities to move our operations. And my loot!"

Just as the goat gestured to a pair of tigers to get the youngsters into a cage, he held and examined the cat's face. He smirked: 'Bring this female to the transformation chamber now!'

Aster was worried out of his wits as he heard the cries of his sister's painful transformation. For a brief moment he feared that she was tortured for their captors amusement, when he saw that three tigers carried his sister wrapped in a thick blanket. He was glad that she was still alive, but he was perplexed when he saw her new body. She changed from an anthropomorphic female cat into a winged, black cat-centaur.

Her shinny fur hid a muscular, panther-like body. Then he noticed the portrait of a black cat centaur, which had some semblance to Amanda's physique. She looked just like one of Amanda's distant relatives from the waist up. Near the portrait was caged a sick and tortured adult lion-sphinx. The feline was shackled to a wall. Then...

'I heard the heavy iron door being opened as I wondered if the captors would begin my torture. Ha! My old bones have endured more torture now that when I was a reckless young lion cub fighting for the sacred revolution. Wait! I heard a fight! Heh! It makes me wonder whom are those three tigers fighting against. I thought that they had more than they could handle, but now everything is quiet. Have they killed the prisoner? No they didn't, and it seems that I will have some company. I hope is not another fat-assed bunny girl! Oh, that the hell is happening to me! Such pain! It fells like I have a kidney stone inside my brain. I fell somebody else's presence taking control over my mind. Wait! That female looks just like... No, she's supposed to be dead.'

'Pandora, my love! What have they done to you? Please answer me!'

Amanda was barely able to register what was happening. The old sphinx picked her up and carried her to straw pile. She thought: 'Why is this old lion referring to me with that name, and caressing me like I am ... his lover?'

'Owww! I fell like my head is crushed from the inside. I'm barely able to talk! It's a telepathic intrusion over my mind'. Amanda's voice tone changed as her eyes shone with a yellow gleam.

It wasn't behaving like Amanda, but more like another person was inside her: 'I'm sorry love, but I was afraid of them. Oh, look at you! What have they done to you? All your teeth are missing, your paws are nothing but deformed knots, and... your back!'

Even Amanda's semi-conscious mind was shocked by the condition of the tortured inmate. It was impossible not to feel pity or outrage for him. She chewed part of her dinner and began feeding mouth to mouth the adult lion. Then she began to clean his body with a wet cloth, blushing when she cleaned the lion's genitalia and tail-hole.

Then she applied to the lion's back the same herb treatment she used on her brother. She knew that even with Aster's psychic abilities, the lion's ability to survive would be very slim. She yelled: 'Guard! I need that psychic bat to cure this prisoner.'

The nearby tiger told her: 'Hmmm. The prisoner's cages are overcrowded with slaves, so you three shall share the same cell, but be warned. I know that an old skunk female bough you two to this camp, so if you attack any of the guards, teleport to any place or try to escape in any other form, we shall slay the skunk and all her stripped cubs.'

Both children were shocked. That dirty old goat betrayed that poor family. Now those skunks were in danger and they didn't even know! Sighing both siblings with frustration, they began to cure the adult lion. So Aster began to inhale particles of energy as he prickled his finger. The symbiotic parasites in the bat's scarlet drops entered in the lion's wounds and induced a fast cellular division, healing the lion's back.

The wounds closed neatly as the herbs prevented any infection. Both minors were nervous because they didn't know how damaged the lion was, but they did the best they could. As the days passed the lion began to recover his formidable strength.

One night the lion thought: 'This pretty cat girl sleeping near me might or not be my beloved Pandora. But she was gentle with me and now I desire her. Forgive me young one, if I hurt you!'

He crawled near Amanda and before she noticed, he covered her muzzle with his left paw as he licked her nether mound. In that very moment, her eyes shone with a yellow light as the entity that controlled her gave the girl to the lion. They furiously made love while Aster slept like the dead on a straw pile. Amanda momentarily regained consciousness and became horrified, (Rape!) but then she saw the lion's teary muzzle as he tried to smile.

She saw in that face the longing for a dead person. He whispered: 'My love, I thought for a moment that I've lost you forever. I saw your face so disfigured by those horrible shadow bats after they tortured you and killed you. But now you are all mine!'

Is he fantasizing about making love to a deceased female? Amanda realized that the lion held a grunge against the shadow bats, and he could represent a danger to her brother. She whispered: 'You are not going to hurt the one who healed you and is our only ticket to freedom?' The male lion looked puzzled, as he didn't know what to respond: 'But I thought he was only a small fox! Did he cure me?'

She wrapped her four legs and two arms around her lover as she played a dangerous game of seduction. She knelled down and sucked the rigid member, but she feared that she would get emotionally involved, and he could trick her. Soon he inserted his barbed penis inside her, as they both got intoxicated with lust. She tossed away her inhibitions like a rotten apple. Amanda got aroused as she began to nibble the lion's neck. His paws began to fondle her breasts, and soon she began to enjoy their mating, as her virginal blood was spilled on the floor with pained delight.

The lion smiled as their passion kept rising for hours. Amanda cocooned him with her wings and the lion's soft fur felt like an electrical current. When their eyes meet, they communicated what they felt for each other like bat telepaths. A pair of shinning feline eyes enjoyed the scene as the sentry's paw went to his flaccid member and started to pump fast.

Like a sledgehammer, a foreign mind took control of the unfortunate cat girl. She whispered in a voice that wasn't hers: 'Where is it? Where is the gold? Answer me! If not I will kill your feline lover!'

The old lion frowned when he saw a pyrokinetic (fire starting) tiger aiming to Amanda. Then the tiger aimed his crossbow to a pair of giggling raccoon-boys as they roughhoused and penetrated each other in a corner. The veteran warrior didn't want to provoke the killing of any villagers, so he nodded in surrender.

The old goat smiled as he told them: 'Well, I tried to use her to interrogate you but I failed miserably. I will NOT repeat myself. So I'm waiting for an answer.'

The old goat gestured to the tiger and he walked away, knowing that he had them under control. The lion's gravely voice rasped: 'Inside Pandora's portrait, hanging on the wall.'

The youngsters grinned as they saw the female skunk aiming a crossbow at the goat, while the lion gave her an icy stare.

He whispered: ' She's not here to rescue any of you. Don't trust her!'

Amanda looked at him, perplexed. Aster picked up her angry thoughts: ' I'm tired of doing the goat's dirty job for nothing!' She smiled faintly as she said: 'Come on children, help me find the gold map and let's get out of this village.'

The lion replied: 'Or what? Are you going to kill them like you did with the others?'

She gave him a murderous look as the siblings made the connection. She deceived the youngsters! She tried vainly to convince the minors with more sweet talk: 'Please, let's go before the guards sound the alarm. Okay?'

Just as she got distracted, the old goat tried to shoot at her, but she jumped to the right. She didn't have a second chance, so she tried to hit bull's eye at the first try. The goat didn't realize he was killed until he felt dizzy and fell to the floor... dead still.

She gave the three a murderous look, as she said devoid of any emotion: 'Move, and your bodies shall feed the buzzards!'

She rippled off the portrait and frame but found it empty. 'Liars! LIARS! For the last time, WHERE IS THE MAP!'

The lion replied calmly: 'You destroyed it!'

She became paralyzed now that she realized that the papyrus map was glued under the portrait. Years of effort stealing refugees and helping build with the goat an undetectable kidnapping ring were destroyed. And now all the gold was lost forever. She tried to escape thru the door, only to get struck in the eye by a poison arrow. Amanda exclaimed: 'Get that broom in the corner and try to fetch the goat's key thru the cage bars.'

Aster gave a sad look to the tiger and female skunk, knowing that this was a wasteful death. Aster frowned when he saw that the telekinetic, fire-starting tiger wasn't a high level telepath. A medium-level telepath was needed to control the mind of one person. So if the tiger controlled the lion... then, who controlled Amanda?

Aster looked with horror that the skunk cubs were getting closer, all of them but one. He silently prayed that the soil would swallow him so he wouldn't have to hear the children's cries and recriminations for the death of their mother. Still, his parents' deaths came just as violent as the adult skunk's death. Aster stood patiently, waiting for the coming blow, when nothing happened.

The group just stared at the dead female while they spoke in hushed tones, but strangely no one was crying. Aster shyly asked: 'Did you knew her...or not?'

The group's oldest child spoke: 'That female told us that she was our relative and promised to protect us, since our parents died in the city riots. But she kept us shackled in a room all the time, except for one of our friends, who was held in another room. She always hit us and drew our blood us if we didn't befriend any children. When we did so, she would kidnap and sell them to the slave market. We're glad to be free, but we're not glad that she died although she was evil and manipulative.'

Aster felt free of carrying a heavy burden as he asked the lion: 'Sir, I'm not sure if you know the answer for what I'm going to ask. But... can you tell me how my step-sister was changed?'

The lion answered: 'Well, you know that those parasites of yours originally migrated through a dimensional door to this world, and that they gave to your species psychic teleportation abilities.'

Aster nodded and started to babble like an old record: 'Yes, mister. As I remember, these symbiotic organisms developed molecular manipulation abilities as a defense against the dimensional void's radiation, but there was so little food in that dimensional emptiness that they started to cannibalize each other, so the 'parasites' migrated to this world to find sustenance and survive. When the 'parasites' infected our winged race, they absorbed our own R.N.A. for genetic backup and used our immune system to fight against this world's bacteria because they were almost wiped out by viruses and microbes, which were inexistent in that dimension. A little mouse girl told me.'

The lion continued, impressed by the little bat's knowledge: "Well, a little more explanation. What most people do not know is that all the species of this world were subjected to a type of altered evolution, instead of using cybernetics, nano-machines or genetic engineering. So an artifact that emulated eons of evolutionary history affected your sister's body. She was reshaped by a device that compressed millions of years of artificially altered evolution in mere hours."

Aster frowned: 'But how did it happen and why?'

The lion answered: 'Well First, the influence of the dimensional portals altered the environment in two ways. The forced migration and subsequent ecological contamination from extra-dimensional parasites gave to some of this world's races a wide range of psychic abilities like telekinesis and Astral or soul travel.'

THe li In addition, the plasma storms altered this world's environment, which in turn affected for better or worse the factor on continued: 'that affected our evolution. It's like going in a time machine and kill the Homo Erectus before it evolves into a human, and thus alter the environment forever. As for why, I believe that the purpose of combining those two factors is to create the perfect soldier, one that could be deployed anywhere without any preparation, logistics or the help from technology. These facts could make your races victorious regardless of the distance, which is important in inter-dimensional and/or space travel. The strategic applications for creatures like dragons, sphinxes and your race would be limitless. Its like planet Earth's technology but without machines!'

Aster just kept thinking why all this technology was still out of the shelf for nearly everyone, as they lived in such a primitive place. Just as the trio climbed into a wagon, a trio of arrows came out of nowhere and almost hit Amanda on the face if she didn't trip and fall. Aster noticed that the sniper used two different types of arrows. But why he or she did that, if it was unpractical.

Suddenly, Amanda screamed on top of her lungs as a yellow light flashed in her eyes. She picked up a lit torch and began to start a fire inside the wagon, when Aster took a bucket of a smelly unknown liquid and aimed at both his sister and the fire.

Aster quenched the fire and snapped her out of her hypnotic trance at the same time. The lion took the tiger's crossbow and aimed at the treetops in search for the sniper. The door knocked and a small skunk boy appeared: ' I've seen a cloaked figure with a crossbow nearby. Is everybody okay?'

Aster replied sarcastically: 'We've noticed!" The little skunk replied somewhat upset: 'I know an escape tunnel under the camouflaged palisade.' Aster smiled mischievously: 'Sister, tell your boyfriend that an escape route is available.' She snapped at him: 'Shut the fuck up!'

The minors were impressed by the skunk's ability to move so fast and silently. He must be a skilled pickpocket. The group spotted a hole in the wall hidden by tall grass.

The skunk's eyes glimmered with a yellow light but his face was unreadable: 'The bat is the smallest, so he must crawl under the camouflaged netting and keep an eye on the guards.' The skunk eyes shone like searchlights as he commanded: 'Turn around!' In the moment that Aster turned around possessed by a hypnotic haze, the psychic skunk grabbed a poison arrow and raised his arm to backstab him. Amanda yelped when she saw the arrow, so the lion twisted his arm and threw him.

The skunk flew like a rag doll and landed quite hard. The skunk boy replied: 'I do not know how did you three survived. I aimed very carefully and heard a body fall on the floor. A small scratch from this poisoned arrow would suffice to kill ten adult lions in two minutes. Tell me how did you survive. Teleportation?'

The skunk was puzzled when the minors shock their heads. 'You just hit the adult skunk that we first meet in Dragon town.' -Amanda said. The skunk boy went pale below his black fur as the whole world began to spin around him: 'M-mother?! Nooo!'

The bat and the felines were startled, and before they could do anything the skunk boy tried to puncture his own stomach with his poisoned arrow. The lion grabbed the skunk's paw before he could kill himself. The ex-soldier shook his head: 'I will not let her lies destroy a child's life! Are you sure that she told you the truth and she was your real mother?'

The cub cried shamefully for how she had manipulated his love for her and blackmailed him into doing such horrible acts. The lion concluded that the adult female skunk kidnapped and brainwashed him since he was an infant.

The skunk replied with shame to the lion: 'I saw that the villagers captured your companions, and that mangy old skunk told me that they were criminals. Especially the bat.'

The lion interrupted: 'So she ordered you to fire at them if they escaped?' Amanda muttered: 'Let's get out of here. I'm starting to get sick of this place!' As the group went into the tunnel, they noticed an underground storeroom. In it they noticed two black cloaks, a trunk and a lion-face mask. Aster tried to play with the mask but Amanda took it from his hands: 'So this is why the villagers attacked me! They confused me with that old rotten skunk...'

The skunk boy started to rummage an old chest. Amanda scowled: 'Stop playing with that old trunk.' The little skunk sighed: 'Fine! There was nothing here but a bunch of useless gold bars anyway!" The two siblings began to cheer but the lion aimed at the minors.

He spoke cruelly to Amanda: 'Good work! Both you and the skunk will have you hides intact. I never thought that the fraudulent urban legend of a vengeful, one-legged lioness would cause such fear. I'm sorry that you couldn't be my concubine, but I have a duty to my sect, and finance the incoming war. Now I will take the gold and your brother to teleport the loot. Don't worry about both of them, you will never see them agai...' His comment was interrupted when a sphinx poison dart struck and killed him. Aster wondered: 'I knew someone who used darts like these against me, but that lioness is long dead. (Or is she?)'

Hours later...

The children bid farewell to each other. Amanda said: 'It's still hard for me to understand why that old lion was obsessed with the lioness shown in that portrait.'

The skunk boy replied: 'It's not hard once you understand that it was likely that they only had each other during those years. My great grandmother once told me that most of the adults were raised together when the war ended, and that those horrible massacres that each side committed only left the very old and the infants. Both factions wiped out a whole generation! Two years ago a sixty-five feet tall plus thirty feet wide mass-grave was found filled to the top with white-bleached bones inside.'

Amanda's jaw almost fell to the floor, not only for what happened to this place, but also because that lion lost his lover, which was also his childhood friend. Now the puzzle pieces fit together. The small skunk interrupted: 'I'm sorry for controlling your mind and trying to hurt you Amanda.'

She said: 'So it was you all the time?' The skunk replied: 'Not all the times, since the tiger was also a minor psychic, but yes.' She said: 'Then I forgive you, since I know it wasn't your fault.'

The boy frowned: 'But I would have hurt you and your peers if it wasn't for your brother that quenched your torch with the tiger's relief bucket...uh, oh!'

Amanda was shocked: 'You mean that I walked all the village smelling... like tiger urine? ASTER!' The skunk coughed to avoid laughing: ' I'd better go before somebody gets hurt.'

Aster bolted to avoid his sister's anger when he almost stumbled with an armadillo. The armadillo spoke to Aster: 'There are a pair of fox-centaurs looking of a bat cub, and I only see you!' Where they the same foxes he first meet in Dragon city?

Aster padded just where the armadillo signaled, when Amanda appeared and pulled his arm. 'I got you! What's the big idea of bathing me with a bucket filled with urine.'-

Amanda yelled. She saw at the distance and whispered in disbelief: 'Mother, father? What happened to both of you?' The now winged centaur-foxes ran to their children and hugged them.

William spoke: 'A seedy merchant sold us the scrolls we needed to change ourselves to fox-centaurs, so we could travel thru the badlands. We gave him all the Ivory we had, but we still owe him. We were lucky though, because if he realized this scroll's true nature, he would never sell it.'

Amanda started to caress her mother's face as she said: 'Don't worry about that debt, trust me! I thought for a moment that both of you were kidnapped and then, reshaped?'

Both foxes looked at each other with a look of fear before they hugged again their children: "You poor thing! I can't imagine what you must have suffered! What's that smell?" Aster cleverly interrupted to distract Amanda's anger, as the concentric energy waves of a dimensional tunnel appeared: 'Can we talk about this when we get home? I'm starving!'

So the furry family hugged each other and walked towards the dimensional door, extending their four pairs of wings, as they felt glad to be rejoined and safe.

El Fín/ The End

When I started writing about the false utopia on Chapter 4, I did it based in a Manga titled 'Demon City Shinjuku'. The doomsday prophecy is a universal fear among all ages and cultures. It may be a myth like the Nordic 'Fimbulwinter', the Mayan Popol Vuh which tell the destruction of the world by an universal flood or a Martian invasion to destroy the Earth (think H. G. Wells). But I got tired of this subject, so I wrote about the opposite, a utopia. But in a TRULY perfect world there will be NO conflict, so I erased that and started again with a false utopia. Thank you.