Tales of the Tainted: Brodec - Chapter 1-
Hello Sofurry!
To celebrait the finishing of the first draft of my first novel (Which, I am happy to say, should be published by the end of the year, assuming I ever get off my ass and finish editing it :D), I have decided to write something for, well, the fandom.
Don't get me wrong, I love furry art. Its the bread and butter of the fandom, the meat and potatos, the core, the heart, and for many, the place they found and fell in love with the fandom. Pictures are great!
I however, can not draw and will never subject you unwitting people to my horrible attempts. So, rather than draw, I write. Short stories are why I fell in love with the fandom, I found it when I was MUCH too young to be reading such things, via the Chakat Universe setting and its related stories. I have been here since... for a long, long time. I have writen, drawn, orginized a thing or two, talked and roleplayed, bitched and moaned and laughed and cheered...
I'm a furry and proud.
So, after a long time writing little more than smut for this site, and before it Yiffstar (May yee rest in peace, beloved Yiffstar), I am trying something new.
I'm writing a book. A novel. A story. It will be furry, and not just maybe, kinda-sorta furry, not something published by a non-fur we can enjoy as well. This book will be, in many ways, a social comentary on how I think we as a fandom are treated in this world, it will also be, perhaps someday, a bit smutty. It will be, from the plot and guesswork I have done, about 150,000 words long, and I hope to have the first draft finished by september.
Here, on SoFurry and perhaps FA and a few other places, I will be posting the first part of this story. The story, some of you may like to know, was started and is based on an old forum-RP site I helped make, now dead and gone, and is the basis for the name I use here, Brodec. So, you will get to know about the character behind the madness, a secondary sona if you will, that I use behind my main one, for my creative activities. So, if you want to follow a story of murder, heartbreak, bigotry, descrimination, love, and of course, a healthy mix of both sex and violence ( Sex sex sex and don't forget the violence!), as well as some good laughs and maybe even a tear or so along the way... let me know what you think! Ideas, comments, hatemail, its all what I live, and write for, so knock yourself out. This is the Opening as it stands now. I won't be editing and re-posting changes as I continue down the line, you get to see this story as its first writen, things will change in editing and re-drafting, but you get a look at this idea first, long before my agent or anyone else...
Cause this one is for you, Furries. I hope some of you enjoy it.
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Blackness. A starless winter night, a storm in the air, but yet to break, the icy chill found only in winter winds and the grave sinks into the bones of any unlucky enough to be out this night. A icy wind cuts threw the high mountain pass, over frozen lakes and snow-capped trees, past animals smart enough to have found a warmer, sheltered nest for the night, and animals brave enough to venture out to hunt their more cowardly brothers. Amid this flat, matte blackness, a glossy, liquid black flows. It flows down out of the high mountains, the boarder with the tainted lands, and into a small trading post, a middle ground between the tainted and the pure, the evil and the light, the human and the inhuman.
A strong gust of that merciless winter wind catches the latch on a street lamp, the flame dies at once, down the empty street, lamp after lamp goes dark, and in the dim glow of windows further away and one lamp left lit, that blackness swirls into an empty ally. It pools in the darkness there, seeming to gather itself, then another gust, and out of the swirl of snow that hides everything but light and shadow, removing all detail from the world for one white moment, he strides.
The cold cut across him, as he walked threw the snow and wind without a care. He was tall, and handsome to the eyes of his kind. A tall man that was once human, but now twisted and changed by the taint, he was a bird of some kind, walking like a man, able to talk and think like a man, but twisted beyond anything human. Wings folded behind his back as he walked, a few black feathers, caught by the wind, swirled away with the white snow, dancing with their light counterpart in the currents of that strange night.
He was dressed well, not by the standards of average men, and certainly not by the standards of the largely impoverished tainted, but by the standards of the wealthy, the powerful. On his back, a tailored jacket, as black as his feathers, long and finely fitted, a touch would show it to be of the finest fabric, buttons hanging down its left glittered gold in the light of that one lamp. Under, he was dressed in all the finery of a wealthy man, a tailored, fine suit, a large silk scarf around his throat, a gold watch tucked in his breast pocket, a finely crafted cane in hand, although unused, held half way down its length as he hurried across the small town.
He was a busy bird that night, a very busy bird, and he had somewhere to be, somebody to talk to, perhaps a life to take and most certainly a great deal to do! So, he was off at a brisk pace. The snow seemed not to touch him, it never settled on his shoulders, head or wings, he never had to brush it from his beak or arms or chest, it never clung to his inhuman talons as he walked threw it. His storms did not bother him.
He vanished into a dimly lit tavern, and as the door shut behind him, the sounds of the world came back, a heavy silence lifted from the main street he had just hurried down, and where he had landed, the street lights were once again burning, a few points of light in the deep, cold darkness of that storm. The snow started falling then, the flakes brushed up by the ground winds replaced by the heavy, fast snowfall of a real snowstorm, even if it was much too cold to be snowing like that, or at all. The sort of snow that caved in roofs, the sort of snow that shut down towns and mountain passes.
Inside, the silence seemed to follow him for a moment. The tainted were a common enough sight so close to the mountains, hell, no matter how hard the church and some local lords tried, they were growing more common everywhere, but still, most humans disliked them, and none trusted them, much less the ones that walked into taverns in the small hours of the night, out of snow storms dressed like princes or kings. Heads turned, conversations fell to silence, and all eyes were on him. He turned to the racks for coats, shrugged his spotless jacket from his shoulders, and hung it up, then he leaned his gold topped cane against the wall beside the door, and turned back to the room.
Somewhere, a man coughed, and the moment, the spell, was broken, conversation returned and he was mostly forgotten. Some poor, rich fool caught in one real bastard of a cold night, tainted or not, he was clearly too rich to want to rob them, and any man without a house would be headed to an inn on a night like that, even the thickest furred of the tainted would hate to sleep outdoors that night.
The raven, for that was clearly what he was, made his way across the small, too-warm room, to the rough wooden bar. With his jacket off, the long, gem studded dagger on his left hip was clearly visible, and although weapons were far from a rare sight, for a tainted to wear one so openly in human lands would have been, had the tall, slender raven not so clearly been in some way wealthy and powerful, an insult to every man there, for in their minds; or at least teachings, the tainted should never be allowed to live, let alone bear weapons against their natural betters.
His beak, oddly expressive for its lack of mobility, seemed to smile before he spoke to the older man behind the bar, "I'm here to see a friend, you know him, and you should know I'm coming. A key to his room please, a hot meal and a bottle of your finest wine when you have time, and a round for these men of your best liquor, for it is much too cold out their for men or beast, or anything inbetween."
The raven dropped three golden coins to the counter top. A kings ransom in the eyes of most, and several times what his request was worth, even if the inn keeper had truly fine wine and drink on hand. Taking the key that was offered in stunned silence, the raven left the room, threw a side door, vanishing up a flight of stairs, followed by the click of his long claws.
The inn keeper knew not what to make of it, he simply did was thought best. Poured a shot of his strongest, most expensive drink for every man in the small bar, handed them out quickly, having to tell each table who the drink was from, and met with the same confused look at each table. Then he set to preparing the best meal he could for the two men upstairs with what he had cooked. A peasants supper was all it was, a stew made mostly of potatos too old to eat otherwise, a few peas and some corn that had been tried, and a few chunks of ham. It was warm however, and as far as a stew went, it was simple but well seasoned, hardly worth the price. Two large bowls of stew and two loafs of fresh bread, a plate of butter and two wine glasses, set out on the tray. A bottle of wine under his right arm and the tray ballanced expertly on his left, he went upstairs.
He would later wish he had poured himself a shot as well, before doing so.