FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

It's been a relatively long time since I last posted. Um... yeah. So, don't read this is you're under eighteen. That would be naughty of you. Some note about this: there's more I want to do in this time period, but this story feels like a climax. So... yeah. There'll definitely be more with troubadours. I'll have to see if I can fit them in in a one-shot or some such. As per the usual, I'm open to requests. t3h p05t, 4 j00.

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I didn't... care. Despite the various possible consequences, despite my "duty" to my fellow anthro beings, despite anything at all that I could possibly choose to spite, I didn't care. Glen was dead. I had felt him die. I had felt it as surely as though someone had taken a rusty, dull knife, jammed it into my chest, and started sawing my stomach out. It never ended, either. All the while I was walking back to my room, I felt the ripping pain of having him torn away. My whole chest was cramped, I wanted to vomit, and all I could taste was char. I went back, though. Whoever had done this should have killed themselves the instant it happened to keep me out of their lives. Out of their deaths.

People stared at me. My clothes, fur, and flesh were badly burned, the soles of my shoes had melted, and I think there were still errant flames jumping about my form, but again - I didn't care. The paramedics who arrived on the scene tried to stop me. When hands failed, they tried protective magic and shields to halt me. When I shattered those like thin glass, the few among them who knew it tried offensive magic. And when that bounced off me like so much grain, they let me go.

Eventually, I began streaming magic into my feet so I could walk faster because I knew police with stronger magic than I could control even in my empowered state were coming. I started jogging, then running, then sprinting, pumping energy into my lungs and my legs as they carried me back to my dorm. A car might have been faster, but I would have been dangerous in a car - far more dangerous than I was afoot. I didn't want to kill anyone out of recklessness. I wanted to kill someone with single-minded intent.

When I reached the apartment complex, I didn't use an elevator. I used an airlift magic and shot myself up to the right floor, then teleported through a stranger's window and murmured an apology while she screamed because she was naked from some such or another involving the guy who shoved me out the door.

I got to my apartment without stopping and bypassed everything, including the door, to get to my bathroom mirror. Hoping, praying it would work, I stripped to the buff and stared at the glass. I summoned everything I knew to summon. I knew my strength was untouchable for sheer power. It was Teva who had the knowledge to manipulate the magic properly, but I didn't want to put her in danger, and besides, she was in Norway. She always seemed to be in another country - one of those restless types, you know.

It wasn't working. I threw everything I had into opening a portal through the mirror, but it was as though the world was just absorbing it. It was being fed into an unending emptiness that I couldn't for the life of me understand. Frustrated, I tore apart the apartment looking for the scrap of paper I had kept for so long with the Icelandic lettering on it. Paper in hand, I went back to the mirror and read it, snarling at my reflection. Nothing changed. I read it aloud. Nothing. Nothing and nothing and nothing and God damn it, Glen, you can't do this to me!

Desperate, I slammed the writing against the mirror, concentrating on Glen. On his beautiful face, on his understanding smile, on the warmth of his arms around me, on the strength of his arms... that were gone... And I broke the mirror.

I couldn't believe it. In a state of shock, I panted and just gazed, dumbfounded, at the cracks in the glass. It was broken. There were other mirrors, but just the fact that after all I had done, this one was broken... Somehow, that hurt me and brought all the pain of his death back again. His death. His... -DEATH-

"NO!" I howled, not caring who heard me. My ears twitched vaguely in the direction of my door. There was a commotion on the stairs. Police. I needed to get through, or away. And through was a failing option. I looked at the window. Did I have the reserves left to survive a ten-story drop?

It didn't matter. If I was caught, everything would come to ruin. Besides, to live like this would ensure insanity. There was no escaping pain of that level, not in this life. The sweet embrace of death would be his sweet embrace, and he would catch me up in his arms wherever we ended up, and I would love him forever. We would be together...

I don't remember getting to the window, but somehow I was there, the wind blowing at my face from the insane height. It was dangerous even to be standing on the ledge like I was. It was dangerous to be looking down at the streets below and the small crowd who had already gathered. It was dangerous to not think about how ashamed I would be, even in the afterlife, of destroying so much of my own potential.

Wasn't I supposed to be emotionally invincible? Wasn't I supposed to be the island, the only man in the universe who was an island? That was what Raiden had told me. I didn't have real attachments. I had aesthetic relationships, surface pleasure, even with Teva. I could lose her, she could lose me, and we'd have to sit there and think for a long time about whether or not it was worth feeling pain for the other's loss. Invincible, right? Invincible...

Pavement is just as invincible. I should join it, like with like. Just as I had come together with Teva, this other emotionless entity would hold me. By now, there was no way out. What was death? What was an end? Would consciousness fail? Would hell begin? Was I gone forever? Would I just have to hope that that final thought was a good one, like so many people believe is the goal of life? Did it matter? Life in prison was as hopeless as anything else, and that's what they'd do. They'd lock me up in a rubber room without mirrors, with nothing, and I'd never be able to save him, so better to die here, right? Isn't that right? Isn't it better to die with the chance of seeing the only person in your life who has ever mattered than to live with nothing left to live for? ISN'T IT?

With a choking sob, I stepped off the ledge into the air. It was cool. It carressed my skin as I began to fall. It was cool like his pale, white fingers over me. It sucked the breath from my body, like his kiss had. It danced me around in its currents, like we danced. It was good, to feel him. It was good, but I opened my eyes. There was pavement.

I had nothing left. It had all been poured into that empty abyss. No magic, no strength, no will. There was nothing left to me, nothing left of me, nothing to remain but an ugly memory and a mess on the pavement. I closed my eyes again. His arms, his lips, his spirit, his mind... Please don't be angry at me... I did what I could. I know, I ended it rashly. Just one moment of stupidity, one moment of failing to control, and here I am. I failed you, but please don't be angry at me... Teva can help this place that we tried to save. Teva and Rachel can do it, right? Can't they?

And then I heard the scream. Like mine, it echoed and rebounded across the world, and I knew, then, that it was Teva.

Rachel was dead.

I was a fool. I needed to live!

The sound of death is difficult to describe. Whatever physical noise accompanies it is always unique, each to every person. And the accompaniment is rarely complementary or complimentary. It grates on the ears. It could be the wet smack of a body hitting pavement. It could be the squelching and tearing of a bullet entering the heart. It could be the cracking of a lead pipe on the skull. But these are all just sounds trying to cover up what has really happened. They can never mute it over, though, as much as we appreciate their courtesy for trying to protect our ears from that noise.

It is the sound of a great bellows emptying, and then breaking in two. The life that was ended was full of all the things that he or she or it or they could have done, and it is blown out in a great rush of life that flutters against everyone in earshot. Even the murderer and the executioner and the scientist standing by to see how many times the severed head can blink feel the soul leaving the body. No matter what their faces show, they hear it and it scares them. And then, once that bellows empties, you hear the snap as the thing breaks in two, never to be filled again. It's the realization that this person is not coming back, and it's happened before that the brain has empathized with that snap and people have been mentally damaged. This is why so many who have seen too much combat are irretrievably injured. They have heard the snap so many times that their minds snap with it just to shut out the sound. They still hear it, though. You can't escape it.

That was what those around the point of impact heard when the body met the asphalt. Children and women screamed; even some of the men let out yelps and cries of pain and shock. This person was dead. Not only that, but he had killed himself. To think of dying is horrible; to think of actually making that sound - inconceivable. So to intentionally make that sound? It bewilders all who witness it.

For me, consciousness did not end there. Indeed, it did not. It took me some time to understand what had happened, but even before understanding had come, I stood up. I was in a world of nothing. I'd say it was white, but... white didn't have any meaning. Niether did color, actually, and I apologize to the reader for these abstractions, because you can't imagine it. All you've ever known is a world of color. Perhaps the blind can understand what I mean. Black had no meaning, either. Sight was stripped from me. Sound may have been, as well; I'm not sure. It's harder to determine not-sound than not-sight, but have you ever had those moments just before sleep, when your ears tell you they have perceived something, but in the depths of your mind, you know they're lying to you? This was... similar.

Touch remained to me. Smell and taste no longer existed; they were unimportant, here. More than anything else, I wanted to start calling out for Glen, desperately needing to find him, but I forced myself into a state of calm. I had just lost my body to idiocy - I would not lose my soul to it, as well. I sat (in the nothingness) and thought. This was the afterlife, but it couldn't be all of it. I couldn't be the only person in the history of the universe to have reached this place, so it had to be a holding zone.

"Do you remember the cerberus that Glen met when he was here?"

I whirled my head around, forgetting there was no such thing as friction here and really just causing my body and head to rotate in opposite directions. I willed my body to turn around. Nothing there. What cerberus? Glen had never told me about one. I had met a creature named Thanati in Glen's world. It had not been a pleasant experience. At the time, he had been destroyed or sealed away by a creature named Kirin.

"That is my brother's name. He resides in Glen's universe."

"You know Glen?" I spluttered in a rush.

There was a gentle laugh. The "voice," I realized, was soft and tender. It was warm, loving, and wonderful. "Not so fast. Let me explain myself." I calmed myself again, frustrated with myself. I listened as he explained. He told me he was a dragon named Voccianis, and he had saved Glen, Rachel, and Jason from a terrible fate when they first switched with me, Teva, and Raiden. His analog in the human world was the kitsune named Kirin. Thanati was the cerberus's analog. They had been fighting one another for many years for different reasons. Voccianis was a generic protector of the good, as he called himself, whereas Kirin had a specific goal in mind - to change the world. Both were able to pass through domains, but Kirin was obsessed with Glen and Rachel; it was why I had only seen him briefly, but he had followed Glen into my world.

"So... where was Kirin when Glen died?" I asked, fighting to keep the bitterness from my voice. I knew I should be viewing this objectively, but it was hard.

"As close to dead as a kitsune can be without actually losing his life. I'm protecting him for now, until we have a working plan for returning him to the world."

"Are you going to help Glen and me? I know I did something stupid, about as stupid as I possibly could. It was... I can't believe I'm saying this, but it seemed like a good idea at the time." I would have hidden my face in my hands if I had thought it would help at all.

"I won't chastise you further because you seem to understand the implications of what you've done, but I will tell you that were Kirin alive and had he any more dominion over your universe, he would let you stay where you are. His doctrine does not allow for allowing one's life to end."

"What will happen to me, then?" I felt defeated, but my mind was still working. Everything that could possibly happen from here, I was imagining and planning for. I would not accept this verdict.

There was a great outrush of air, like a sigh. I didn't feel it. "You will be returned to life, because your will to live just before death was great enough to call my attention over."

I latched onto his words as a drowning man would to a fishhook. I would do anything for life. "When and where? And I need to get into Glen's world. He and I need to be alive, at the same time." My voice began gaining force as I spoke. "We really can change the world. We and Teva and Rachel have the means by which to remind people of what is important. World peace, philosophical movements, scientific achievement; we are able to cause it all. We're not just extra people in the universe; we are moving forces, like hurricanes." I felt my spirit build, and it was wonderful, after the emptiness of before.

"We will tear apart the foundations of this world if that is what's required. We are immutable and eternal; we can't be bound by idiocy, as much as society may try. We are better than that. We can change things, Voccianis, so that this death spiral the world has found itself in can be shattered and delineated, so we can have a goal for all people! We are the arbiters of a new age!"

The euphoria, the flame, enveloped me again, as it had before. The need for change, a combined empty hopelessness surrounding a core of inner blaze. A fire forever fighting the futility presented by what is without. A cause!

There was silence surrounding me. I shouted out to it. "If you will not send me back, I will tear my way back into my world and break into Glen's! I will shatter the barriers and I swear to everything and anything that is holy, there will be more damage than a few fucking pigmies!"

"Calm yourself." I felt a hand on my shoulder and willed myself around, praying it was Glen. It was not. Behind me, surrounded by radiant glory, was a different human. The nothingness around him was pressed back by a white light that issued from his whole body. His hair was long and white, and his eyes were silver. His skin was pale as a star and shone as brightly, and it was hard even to look at him. He was nude, as well, but that hardly mattered to me, and the only implication of it that even crossed my mind was that he was in a pure state. What drew my attention were his wings. They were curved like a dragon's, but feathered like an angel's. He was a kind of beauty that few would ever witness in their lives. I certainly had not seen him in my life.

"This is the form that is easiest for you to relate to. It is not that I think you would fear my draconic form; it is just easier to speak to you if we are the same size."

"Voccianis, then," I breathed, but I felt out of breath, my righteous passion dispelled immediately by the picture before me. I could not comperehend his perfection. "You're beautiful."

He laughed lightly, and it was soft like the downy feathers on young birds. "I am only beautiful to your kind. Trust me, although you may be unable to understand, I am average to others of my kind. But I thank you."

He took my hand in his own before I realized he had extended it and brought me to my feet. I couldn't take my eyes from him. "What's going on?"

"I'm sending you back. Be calm," he murmured, then took me in the full warmth of his arms, leaned down to me, and kissed me. He breathed life into me, life I had not realized I had lost. I could feel myself drifting back to the world and wanted so badly to keep going because his lips were so sweet, and so soft and warm on mine, and his wings were enveloping the two of us, but I couldn't go. Not yet.

I broke the kiss and looked him in the eyes. A flash of anger was there and gone in an instant. "I'm sorry," I said. "I have to know how to bring Glen back. I need to go to his world."

Voccianis did not answer for some moments. "He is not as dead as you think he is, though he is dead. Believe that you are with him, when you are back, and this one time, I will open the way, twice. Once for you to go to him, and once to return. That is all. And it is because of your goodness, understand, and for no other reason. Do not try me again." His voice never rose or became angry. In fact, he smiled warmly the whole while. He was only stating what should and should not be.

"Thank you," I whispered, and he put his lips to mine again. The way as clear. Before I realized it had happened, I was lying on the sidewalk with a crowd of people around me and drawing breath as though I had simply been asleep.

I was back.

Screams flew up around me, but I ignored them. Rejuvenated by my savior, I felt my wings unfurl, the wings whose origin I still did not understand. Ignoring the normally rigid barriers of space, I flew on a straight line path to my mirror, through air, flesh, and steel, and then I was through the mirror.

I rolled, ears on the alert, and came up crouching in his bathroom. The place was silent, but reeked of Thanati's magic. There were residues everywhere - he had relied far too heavily on the fact that this place was supposed to be magic-free.

There was another smell, though; one that I knew far more intimately that Thanati's. I followed it until I saw another mirror. Semen was almost dried there, and I sniffed at it closely. It was him. It was his smell. This was the one I had caught such a brief glimpse into, then. Going from there, I traced his smell with no regard to the world around me. Nothing mattered but this. Nothing could matter.

Once out the door, it dawned on me that he had his own house, however small. Dang. He was doing way better than I was. All at once, I felt ashamed. If he had gotten this far, it meant he hadn't let the sense of hopelessness and loss I so often succumbed to get to him. He deserved better than me.

I shook myself. Stupid thoughts, stupid thoughts, and no reason to be thinking them. I ran after the scent, which was laid over with Thanati's and another's, sprinting through trees and across areas of open land with no divergence in the odor until I reached a tiny knoll. Once there, I choked on the thick, pungent musk. The kitsune really wasn't trying to hide anything, here. Gallons of semen lay in puddles, the sticky, white stuff just reeking of vileness.

I couldn't waste any time, though. Blood pounding in my ears, heart pumping in my chest, and breath coursing through my nose as I searched for the next direction, I scrambled about. The spunk didn't smell too strongly of Glen, or I would have sat there and tried to put him back together. I didn't know what had happened to the human, to my brother, but I knew I could save him.

Eventually, the wind blew through my whiskers and I caught the proper direction. I again unfurled my wings, finally remembering them, and shot through all matter in my way, not disrupting a bit of it, instead transmitting my mass to impossibly thin vapor with a magic I had never before known, until I heard, somehow, Thanati's evil laughter. Thick cords of his magic stretched out to me, and I cut through them with the strength of my rage, coalescing back into my body in the remains of an old, abandoned warehouse.

The only light came from the glimmering dawn, and I wondered where I had traveled to, for... perhaps six hours difference. I was in Europe; that much I knew. And Thanati, huge, black and grinning, was standing nude before me. He was easily twelve feet tall and all muscle, oily fur gleaming like gasoline in the abandoned place. I bared my teeth at him, and he threw his head back and laughed.

"Look at me, Siber. Do I remind you of anyone?" His voice was full and disgusting, as though he were talking around a burp. As though he had just eaten. I could sense a presence behind the steel wall of his abdominal muscles, invisible to the naked eye behind the impossible strength. What was more horrifying was the sheath in front of that chest, though. Even as I watched, it grew thicker, pulsing out and out and out as he became aroused from the thought of what he wanted to do to me.

When it was as big around as my waist and hanging heavily over balls the size of children, the tip began to emerge. Even before it did, though, I knew what had happened. The smell of the opening sheath was Glen's smell. It was he who was in there, transformed and held captive - dead. He was Thanati's cock, and that cock was slowly poking into the open air, its head just as big as mine in its canine shape.

I had no weapons, and in the next second, he burned off my clothes, so I was naked to the world. With a confused snarl, I noticed that I was getting aroused. It was his magic, already getting into my system.

"You just put yourself out there for me, didn't you, Siber?" he sneered, waiting to reach a full erection. "Just let me know you were coming, told me exactly how strong you are with that flight stunt, and landed right in my lap. Ohh..." he moaned, thinking about me in his lap. "I'm going to destroy you, just like I destroyed him! I'll eat you whole!"

"No," I whispered, and the word cut like a knife through the cold air. I could feel the moment of time caressing me. This was my moment in time, and I was going to destroy Thanati, once and for all. The wind played in my fur. The light shone behind me, making Thanati suddenly squint, and I could see him in his tremendous, terrifying whole. "It is time for you to end," I growled, and swept out a hand to throw a slice of frozen, red-hot rage at him.

He didn't expect such an early attack, so his block was not as effective as it should have been. Buzzing my wings and flicking my hands quickly, I mentally grasped Rachel's body, healed it quickly, and phased her out of Thanati's stomach, then tossed her onto a roof, far away from the kitsune's reach. He doubled over, snarling furiously, but I was weakened by the act, as well, and he thrust such a simmering wave of energy at me that I was thrown back several feet and rolled.

Thanati walked slowly towards me, his form and his cock towering over me and his magic like a suffocating chamber, closing around me an all sides and keeping me from fighting back. This soon? I was losing this soon?

He squatted down so his balls fell heavily on my face, leaving me almost unable to breathe as I gasped for air. "What, Siber? Did you forget what all I've consumed? I make everything I take in a part of me. You can't kill me. I just fly apart and come back together. I'm immortal, and I consume everything I touch." I could feel the energy already being sapped from my body. "I may just absorb you directly into my body, just like this. Or I might..." He sat down entirely, and I felt him move to the tips of my feet and my legs were trapped in the massive crevasse of his butt. He sighed contentedly as his balls dragged down to my chest, still constricting my lungs as I struggled against his magic. "I might eat you just... like... this!" He clenched his cheeks mightily and I felt myself get dragged against the ground, scraping my back as my feet went without a struggle into his sphincter.

No. Impossible. Not like this. I could only look up, and he was looking down at me from so far above, his cock high above as he lapped at the pre drooling down it hungrily. A mix of spit and precum dripped onto my face, slickening the way as he tugged again and my face went back under his balls.

Concentrate. My heart was beating like a hummingbird's. I needed to get out of there. I couldn't let him take me. I'd be surrounded by his magic. Even touching him was making me light-headed and queasy. To be inside him? There would be no hope.

I calmed my mind, as I had for so long taught myself to do when I was frightened, and that was when I saw it. A tiny, almost invisible connection moving out into the distance from what was once Glen. I remembered what it was and smiled, then let the next few pulls drag me deeper, deeper into the burning crevasse of his ass. He leaned back so I would not have the mercy of being crushed before I was fully enveloped in him and sighed with pleasure.

"I had thought this would take longer, Siber. You know, you basically just handed me the world." I didn't have a chance to answer as my head slipped through his sphincter and everything was cast into wet, foul darkness.

I let him think I was done. I know he could feel my heartbeat, but this was someone who had only ever lost to someone once or twice in his life and that had been a fellow kisune. I felt him stand up and stretch, tightening the walls around me and sucking me further upward, upward, getting me into his stomach. The noise of his pulse was all around me and had I been able to breathe, it might have been pleasant. I had to hold my breath, though, and pray I didn't lose consciousness. Eventually, senses fading, I felt myself enter a larger area and the acids start burning at my skin. It was time.

I called Todd, the Thought that Glen had secured.

At first, I was unsure as to whether he would respond. After all, despite our intimate connection, I wasn't actually Glen and besides, for all purposes, Glen was dead, which was still a horrifying thought. But Thanati's movements abruptly stopped and his breathing quickened. "What was that?" I heard rumble around me. I grinned.

Abruptly, the chamber I was in had grown larger - much, much larger. Thanati's elastic stomach held both of us, and the kitsune crashed forward with the added weight as he started laughing. "A Thought? You're feeding me a Thought, too? How kind of you!"

I ignored him, though, and instead used the last of my air to tell Todd, "I can't breathe."

Even as confused as he was, Todd had devoted himself and sworn himself to protect Glen in any way possible. He shifted in Thanati's stomach until his massive head, bigger than my entire body, was facing mine, and breathed out. The oxygen remaining in his lungs was more than enough for me. Not only that, but it gave me access to the chevron on his head, from which I could channel my magic. My wings vibrated, even as fatigued as I was.

It didn't work. I heard Thanati chuckle again as the magic I used was just dumped into him, like when I had tried to open the mirror on my own. Terrified, I tried again. No good. Todd was beating and clawing and tearing around, but to no avail. He could find no purchase on the magically enhanced walls, and he would run out of air quickly at the rate he was expending it. I actually began to panic. I was running out of energy and options, and I had just doomed one of the most powerful entities to be absorbed by one who would become the most powerful non-god in the universe.

Then, I felt something from outside the stomach, but still within Thanati. A gentle, almost coaxing presence with a burning fire behind it that told of flames hidden for decades. I heard a tiny voice introduce itself. "My name is Tatrix. If I die... tell Glen I'm sorry." After that calm and desperate plea, a searing bolt of magic pricked into Thanati's side. I immediately sought to combine my own with it and in so doing, ripped open a hole.

The two of us spilled onto the ground in a bloody heap and Thanati collapsed with a shriek, trying desperately to heal himself and shrink back down to size before we could recuperate. "HOW? Impossible!"

I didn't give him time. "Kill him, Todd. Please. Castrate him and rip his dick off, and don't let him touch you!"

The behemoth that was Todd grunted an acknowledgement, and the dismemberment was done to the sound of ungodly pain ripping through the air. As the transformed genitals came off and I stripped the unfocused magic from them, they transformed back into what they had once been. Two midgets of my species, it appeared, and then... my brother.

"Glen!" I cried out, ignoring the fact that Thanati was somehow fending off what came next of Todd's furious onslaught. The human was naked and coming to. "Glen, wake up," I panted, kneeling by him and pouring healing energy into him.

His eyes fluttered open. "Siber?" he whispered.

I pulled him up and wrapped my arms around him. "Yeah, it's me. It's me. You're okay," I breathed.

"Lemme go real quick. I'm gonna go murder Thanati." He lurched up and kissed me full on the lips, and all the love in the world was in that kiss. His hand came up and caressed my cheek, then let me go. I felt suffused by warmth, warmth that would never leave me.

"Not yet," I said, holding him back. We turned to watch the battle. The two troubadours had awakened, but weren't moving yet. I wondered which one was Tatrix. The white was slower recovering - maybe it was him.

The scene before us was epic. Todd, easily twice as tall and far bulkier than even to what Thanati had let himself bulge, had taken a wrestler's stance and the two of them were circling one another, assuming the rest of us weren't really up to snuff between forces this powerful. Thanati was tossing occasional bolts of magic at his opponent, but Todd just shielded them with his arms. The fox moved in with one massive limb, but Thanati redirected it and tossed him easily aside. Todd rolled to his feet and charged back in. That time, the kitsune couldn't evade the massive breadth of the creature charging him and they went down in a heap, the sound of their collision thundering around us.

The sexual power was incredible. Thanati had sprouted the tentacles he used to hold Glen, as I learned later, and Todd seemed to be getting more and more powerful as his titanic balls churned and his erection began peeking out of his sheath. It was a war of these weird magics. The tentacles shot forward to try to invade Todd's sheath, but he intercepted them with the gaping head of his cock and sucked a few inward with a powerful thrust of his hips and clenching of his groin muscles. The force nearly flipped Thanati over and hilted his crotch against the slit. Todd pulled again to try to consume the kitsune and probably break his back in the process, but Thanati grinned maliciously and seemed overcome with ecstasy. Todd bellowed and threw his head back in pain as Thanati's evil seed shot into his balls, then fell to his knees and shuddered in magically-induced orgasm to eject the unwelcome cream. Hundreds of gallons of seed blew the kitsune away, but Thanati took advantage of his distraction to wrap his opponent's jaws shut with tentacles and start drawing Todd's muzzle to his gaping sheath even as he stood on the Thought's pumping erection, clearly not concerned about the size of his intended prey. Todd clutched and grabbed at the tentacles even as he was pulled off balance and ripped them off, then used them to throw Thanati into a building, but the kitsune latched on to the hand with one and swung himself back, and the battle continued. It was epic, indeed.

We watched for some time and could tell that Todd was losing, but I wanted to recover as much as we could. We would step in when Todd was almost done to keep him from dying. While it was happening, I told Glen to lie down so I could examine him for wounds. He complied.

It had been so long since I had touched him at all that my breath and heart were quick in my chest as I lowered my furred fingers to his pale body and started checking for breaks. The chaos around us was as nothing while I felt him and he twitched under my touch, his eyes on mine. "You're so beautiful," he whispered. "Why have I had to go without you?"

"I've needed you for so long," I told him in a voice as quiet. "I've... done things I shouldn't have. And..." I laughed lightly. "When did you get a house?"

He blushed, but it could have been from my fingers delicately touching his groin and thighs. "I got lucky. Got a really good job." He sighed. "Figured I could make a downpayment." We were silent for some time, just breathing and ignoring the sounds around us while he shivered under my touch. "How did you get here?"

"I..." I stopped. "I- It's a long story. Maybe... maybe I should tell you later."

He smiled in confusion and leaned on an elbow so he could touch my face. I was paralyzed. "You can tell me anything, Siber. You know that."

I shook my head. "Not this. Not now." I pushed him back down. "Later." He resisted my push, though. His eyes caught something over my shoulder and he gently moved me out of his way as he stood.

"Get your hands off them!" He sprinted forward, leaned down in a twisting spin to grab a stray pipe, and I heard the sound of steel on flesh before I had even turned all the way around. "Don't - you - FUCK - with my - troubadours!" Glen roared. Todd had been tossed to the side and as far as I could tell, Thanati had been trying to swallow the two troubadours again. Every word Glen said was punctuated with a strike from the rod. I had never seen him like this, but his speed and strength were inconceivable for a human being.

Though he couldn't possibly have magic, Thanati couldn't even touch him. The giant kitsune struck, stomped, and swiped faster than most eyes could follow, but Glen was faster. Half as tall, recently revived, and totally bereft of magic, he sidestepped and danced around the pavement and concrete that exploded around his feet as Thanati shot magic and blows at him like a hurricane. But Glen was faster.

I caught a glimpse of his eyes while he did this. Far from the fury with which he had screamed, they were dead calm, like the rest of his face. The pipe spun like a solid shield around him, and Thanati was still bleeding profusely. His eyes were fearful as he finally went on the defensive to this onslaught with no room for attacks.

"Who taught you this?" he growled, shrugging off a hit to his cheek. "This is impossible!"

"Kirin, whom you slew!" He struck a mind-boggling blow to Thanati's temple, paused for a moment, and watched Thanati stagger backwards. "You will never escape him, because you cannot defeat him! You are a fool, and a destroyer of this world. I will end you!"

Glen spun the pipe through a series of blows to the creature's weakened body and I could see the protective spells break under them as Glen walked onto the bleeding belly and up his chest, beating off reaching hands. "Will you DIE ALREADY?" With that, he jammed the pipe through Thanati's eye and into his brain, then pulled it out and put out the other eye. The body fell limp.

I unsteadily rose to my feet, looking strangely at my brother. How had he learned that? That kind of speed and skill was impossible for human beings. "Glen?" I called softly.

"Not yet," he told me, then turned to Todd, who was getting up from the wreckage of another abandoned building. We were lucky that this place was fairly empty of life. A skateboarder or two were looking in awe at the mess of the battle, but beyond that, we were alone. "Todd. You have to kill him."

"Isn't he dead yet?" the titan growled. The sound was like silver gravel rolling down a mountainside.

"No. Crush him into nothing. Please." He backed away and felt for the tiny creatures' bodies. Once he was sure they were alive, he kept the whole of his focus on the kitsune.

Todd didn't question him. He picked up Thanati's limp body in both hands, almost able to hide the whole thing with those paws, then began squeezing. I could only watch Glen, who was glaring at the mess as black blood and parts squelched out of the closing fists. Still holding the pipe, my brother walked over and touched Todd's calf. "Siber, would you please cast a shield over everything that is Thanati? I want Todd to incinerate him. Then, we'll put his ashes somewhere they can never spread so he can never come back. Never again." He twitched as first the green and blue troubadour, then the white one, walked weakly to him and each grabbed onto a thigh, leaning on him for support as they watched the scene continue to unfold.

I nodded and cast the required magic, targeting everything that was Thanati and keeping it enclosed. Then, I believe Glen sent some sort of command through Todd. A brilliant conflaguration of blues and reds immediately lit up the area in hellish light, burning blood, semen, and flesh to ash while a disembodied shriek of pain and rage swept through the area. Some even came from the area a continent away where Thanati had climaxed. I collapsed my shield little by little until a tiny ball of ash was floating in front of me. "I'm sorry, Todd," I said, "but I need you just one more time to finish this. Turn this to diamond."

"I don't mind," Todd said. "I don't know which one of you is which, but someone here saved the whole of my life once, and I swear I'm with him ‘til I die." With that, he enclosed the sphere with his hands and started pressing inwards. It didn't take nearly as long as I anticipated. Todd summoned the strength of a planet between his palms and before I knew it, all that remained of Thanati was a tiny sphere of diamond. The titan offered it to me and I took it. It held power like I had never seen before in such a small space. Evil power.

"What do we do with it?" I asked Glen. He was rubbing the white troubadour's head with a hand and reassuring him of something. That troubadour was crying. The other was empty-eyed and staring. "Glen?"

"I- uh... It needs to be kept away from contact with everything, ever. Another human being, furred being, troubadour, demon, kitsune, anything at all, nothing can touch that. It's like Sauron's ring. We can't let it get into anyone or anything's hands. I don't know any way to destroy it that wouldn't just set him loose again, either."

Todd was panting, but he still spoke in his deep, rumbling, comforting voice. "Would you like me to toss it into the sun?" he offered.

Glen and I blinked and looked at one another, then back at him. "You could do that?"

"I don't know how I'm getting back to my world, but I figure I may as well use whatever I have left before I go and finish this. Gimme the diamond."

I put it back in his gargantuan hand. While we watched, he closed his eyes and began summoning tremendous quantities of energy. I fed some of my own into him, knowing it would be amplified, and he took it gladly. Then, he pointed his hands to the rising sun, cast a shield around the gem to keep it from burning up in the atmosphere, and, if my senses told me right, flicked the diamond out of Earth, across ninety-three million miles of space, and into the sun.

He collapsed on the ground, and Glen gently shook off his troubadours and ran to Todd's head, then pressed the chevron there. The fox shrank back to normal size, which was still pretty beastly. "We'll get you back, Todd. Oh, God, I wish there were some way to thank you."

"No need," the fox moaned. "I'm glad to help... really..." He passed out, then. Glen scratched his ears tenderly, and I joined him there to touch Todd in thanks before we both got up. "Glen..." I said. "I have to go back. And I have to take him with me. We..." I choked on the next words. I didn't want to leave. Ever. "We have to let him go back to his place in the world, and I can't stay here."

Glen didn't answer for a while in the quiet after the storm of that battle. "I know," he whispered. "I don't know why, but I do know."

There was so much to ask him, so much that needed explaining. From both sides. "We'll figure it out one day."

"Will I be able to see you anymore? I still don't get how you did this."

"I had help. Voccianis... opened up a portal for me."

"Oh," he said quietly, remembering. We breathed into the silence. We were the only ones who existed in those moments. Call us proud. Proud of the only two people who deserved the full measure of our pride. We stood their and we breathed into the silence. We breathed into nothing as the near future clutched at our souls and told us to leave. WE. BREATHED.

"We'll break this world apart, Siber," he said, and looked into my eyes. "One day. The universes shouldn't be separate. People should have people who understand us. People shouldn't have to walk around alone."

We stepped, as though in a dance, in a daze, in a haze, and wrapped one another in fierce hugs. "We won't. Not forever. I'll see you again. I'll talk to you again. I'll feel you again. And we'll explain things, then. We'll figure it all out, I swear."

Todd shouldn't have even been able to come over in the first place, but somehow, I could tell that because of it, he was fading, now that his deeds were done. He needed to be in the world he had been born in. He didn't have an analog in Glen's universe, so he couldn't exist here. Eyes tearing, I called out to Voccianis. Open a portal. There's glass everywhere; it should work.

Immediately, I felt a rush of warm air and looked at its direction. A row of windows that hadn't been cracked on a building was waiting. I pulled away from Glen and looked into his tear-filled eyes. "Help me carry him?" I asked.

He nodded, and we hefted the beast that was Todd between us. We laid him down before the windows and embraced one last time, and kissed one last time, the passion between us beyond anything we had felt before. I tasted his tears on his lips. Mine were there, in mixed with them. People shouldn't have to walk around alone.

"Thank you, Siber. I... thought it was over..."

"No," I said. "I know better now than before, that as long as there's a will to live, it's not over. It's never over for us."

He smiled sadly. "You have to go."

"I do." I smiled back.

He cleared his throat. "Would you mind... ah... getting us three back to my house?"

"Oh, right. Oh! Four? But I guess she's staying here." I lifted Rachel from her resting place into his arms, watching with pleasure as his eyes widened in surprise and gratitude. Then, I set up a transport for them and told him he just had to step into the circle I drew to use it. That done, with no warning, we both shifted, like we had always been able to do. Our faces cleared of sorrow, he backed off, bowed, and waved me into the mirror as I hefted Todd's body with magic. I spun around theatrically and blew him a melodramatic kiss. He caught in on his neck and feigned fainting, nearly dropping Rachel to do so. He choked out a sob as this façade fractured and I stepped through the mirror of the glass so I didn't have to see him crying, and was gone again.

Besides having to somehow explain myself for jumping out of a window in the nude, all was set right. As usual, though, it was everything but us. Glen and I weren't together. We needed to be together.

When would we see each other again?