FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

A thunderous roar soared across the mountains. Terrence trembled and covered his ears. This was not the first nor the last Rathalos he had to hunt down in his long career, yet he would likely never get used to the sheer might of their cries. It hovered above, its massive crimson wings covering the moonlight as it stared down the hunter with insurmountable ferociousness. Quickly recovering, he unsheathed his trusty old bowgun and readied himself for a shot at the beast's head. Before he could pull the trigger, the wyvern dove down to strike with its poisonous talons, but the hunter narrowly dodged and fired out of shock. The bullet barely grazed a wing, but it was enough for the wyvern to finally land. As it turned to face the hunter, he fired again, this time hitting it between the eyes. The beast flinched and stepped back, but before the Terrence could feel any gratification, it launched a ball of flame almost as quick as his own bullet. Unable to dodge in time, the hunter was struck dead on and launched several feet back. Clutching his head from the impact, yet still conscious, Terrence tried to rush up but unfortunately his plan was cut short by the talons piercing his chest. Blood welled up in his mouth, and the searing pain that surged through his limp body as it was ripped apart by claws the size of lances was thankfully subdued by numbness after mere moments. And then, darkness.

"Would be a shame, would it? To die by the hands of a creature you've taken down so many times. This sort of irony was never really my thing." Terrence was startled by the unfamiliar voice. An unfamiliar man stood next to him, sporting a black suit and white hair, as they both watched the Rathalos carry away the hunter's bloodied carcass. "Who, who are you? And where am I? Have I died?" The hunter dazedly asked, dread succinctly creeping its way up through his spine. "Me? As of now I'm merely a spectator. But I could have a more meaningful role if you'd let me." The man turned to look at Terrence. His eyes were pitch black. No, it was more as if his eyes were nothingness, like staring at a starless sky. "What do you mean?" "Do you wish to be stronger?" The man turned to look at the beast again, who had now reached his nest and was busying himself tucking the hunter's corpse next to a mess of putrid herbivore remains. "Do you wish to be stronger?" He repeated the question in the exact same tone, turning to look back at Terrence. "Why are you asking?" "Because I could make you far stronger than you've ever imagined." Terrence clenched his fists. He had always tried to run away and deny himself from his own thirst for power, telling himself it would never really lead to anything and studying would be for the best. The man's ethereal glare seemed to pierce his head. Terrence swallowed and closed his eyes. "What's- the catch?" He asked, a slight pause accentuating his nervousness. "I want your life." There was silence. The man's stare was unflinching, and there were no signs of faltering or jest in his visage as he uttered such a wild request. "You mean I'm going to die." Terrence replied, struggling to follow along the mysterious man's collected tone. "That is up to you, although you look pretty dead to me already." The first part was not very clear, yet it did not require a second glance at the situation to understand what the second part meant. "How much time will I have left?" "One day. After that, I will come to take your life. What you do from that point onward is none of my business." The hunter let out an unsure hum. "So you'll take my life, but my soul will be free?" "That's a wonderful way to put it, yes." For a moment, Terrence could have sworn he saw the glimpse of a smile on the man's face. Taking a deep breath, and giving his tattered remains a final glance, he nodded in agreement. "Very well. Make me as strong as you can. My life is yours to take." The man's lips pursed down and his cheeks were pushed up. It looked like a vague attempt at a smile, like someone who had only heard of what it looked like before. He stepped forward and offered Terrence a hand. The dread that had crept up on the hunter seemed to burst into silent horror and out of instinct, he took a step back. The man's attempt at a smile immediately vanished. "Now now, if you want, I can just let you die regularly." The hunter shook his head and stepped forward once again, vigorously shaking the man's hand. He could almost feel the inhumane power slowly beginning to course through his veins. Alas, as soon as he was about to avenge his own death, all that met his hands was a soft, mostly harmless blanket.

Terrence yawned and drowsily looked at the clock. It was around 6:49AM. The carpool for college wouldn't be arriving for at least another hour, but he did not feel like napping again, so he decided to play some early morning Monster Hunter instead. Terrence could not get enough of that series, having finally convinced some of his schoolmates to play it as well. It was unfortunately hard to find around his town, so those friends were some of the few people he had the opportunity to play with often. He considered himself their very own teacher when it came to hunting, and what a joy it was to hunt along with people he held dear. After a hunt or two, he got up and decided to have some breakfast. It was then that he was reminded of the strange dream he had. Dreaming about something one does very often is not uncommon, yet it was the first time he had dreamed about actually losing a hunt. The bit about strength was oddly personal, however. It was indeed true that for all of his life, Terrence had this fascination with might, yet his parents tirelessly drove him away from it, under the belief that his time would be much better spent with anything else. At the end, he decided to simply let it rest and busy himself with other activities. Now he was in his early twenties and the idea of being a particularly strong individual felt like a hazy yet ever present pipe dream, locked away deep in his subconscious yet every once in a while attempting to escape. All things considered it was not odd for it to appear in a dream, which is arguably when our consciousness is most vulnerable, but he could not help but ask himself, if given an offer as otherworldly as unmatched power for a single day before having his life swept away, would he wholeheartedly accept it? It took the blaring honks of his now angered carpool to snap him back to Earth and get him to hurry along.

On the first three classes, Terrence found it unusually hard to focus, as if the teacher's words were not quite reaching him, but he assumed it was merely tiredness from a long night taking its toll. Then finally came lunch break, and he quietly left the classroom, wordlessly shambling over to the table where his friends would meet up every day. First came Alex, one of his best friends who also happened to enjoy video games nearly as much as he did, donning a grey hoodie and with a small box of leftovers in his hands. "Yo Terry, how was class?" He asked, getting as comfortable as one can get when sitting on a cold, dilapidated public chair. "It was alright." Terrence curtly replied, looking down onto his very own lunch, a humble chicken sandwich. "Cool, cool." Alex awkwardly followed. "Hey guys." Giovanna greeted the pair on arrival, setting her fancy dish on the table before courteously sitting down. Her yolk colored blouse would look rather tasteless on anybody other than her, due to her incessant gingerly glow. "Hey there lady." Alex nodded. Terrence looked up at her. She looked back, yet her coy smile vanished without a trace once their eyes met. "Terrence, what happened? You look really pale!" She said, frowning. "You were up all night playing video games again, weren't you?" "I didn't, mom." He said with a devious smile. "Sorry for caring about my friends, but you really need to take better care of yourself." Terrence looked at Alex, who was silently chuckling and shaking his head. "Do I look that bad?" "If I didn't know you, I'd probably label you as either a vampire or a meth addict. Your eyes look like you haven't slept in about two decades." Terrence chuckled and resumed eating with a short shrug. There was no need to dwell further on it, but he was unsure of why he was looking so beat down. Before he knew it, his sandwich was gone. "Hello everyone." Martha and Joseph arrived. They had been together since high-school, or at least that's how Terrence remembered it. They hurriedly sat down and took out their packed lunches. "How is everyone doing?" Joseph asked with an amiable smile. They began to chat and banter about daily life, yet Terrence could barely bring himself to say much. Before he knew it, his sandwich was over, yet he still felt insanely hungry. "Hey Alex, you still got some food?" He humbly asked, fists trembling under the table. "Naw man. You still hungry?" "Yeah, really hungry." His shoulders were now faintly twitching. Worried, Giovanna intervened. "Are you alright? You can have the rest of my lunch, I've packed too much anyways." With a short thankful nod, he snatched her plate and engorged himself. She could do little more than watch in a diluted mixture of awe and worry, as did everyone else. The grotesque image of a man eating with the voraciousness of a starving pig was not something they expected to see so early in the day, let alone coming from a friend. "You sure were hungry. Did you skip breakfast or something?" Giovanna awkwardly asked. "No. I- I don't know, I just feel really really hungry all of a sudden." "Maybe you're pregnant." Joseph joked, earning a friendly slap from Martha. "I'm sorry. See you guys later." Terrence excused himself with a short bow and headed back to class, trying not to think too much about what had just happened. The following classes were similarly much harder to understand than usual, and Terrence left the university frustrated. After a long walk home, he poured himself a cup of coffee and reminisced about the day, as he always did. All he could think about was the embarrassment and shame after the lunch incident, and how he was unable to really learn anything. He knew they'd just joke about it for a while but still, it was entirely unlike him to do such a thing.

What had gotten over him? And what's the meaning of this hunger? Thinking about it brought it back, and he soon found himself tearing through his food cabinet and fridge. Nothing satisfied him. With every meaningless bite, came a small surge of frustration. After half an hour that felt like half a year, his frustration reached bursting point, yet he was thankfully able to stop himself before throwing the bowl of meat in his hands across the kitchen. His heart was racing and his breath was strained, but the meaning was beyond him. There was no reason to be so horribly hungry, let alone so angry, but the burning desire to break and/or eat everything in his vicinity was undeniably present, deep down in his head. He took a chair and slowly sat down, lost in thought and struggling to unwind. Perhaps it would be good to head to a doctor, he thought. Or perhaps even a psychologist. He had been perfectly fine the previous day, nothing out of the ordinary happened, let alone something that could change his behavior so drastically. And then he remembered the one unusual thing that happened: the dream. His first reaction was to dismiss it, what are the chances a dream could have such an impact? Unless... Terrence stood up and awkwardly flexed. He seemed as wimpy as always. Out of curiosity, he cleared his oaken table and attempted to lift it. Expecting a heavy load, he accidentally threw it upwards, cracking the ceiling and tearing the table in half. He jumped back, bewildered. Could it be? Could it be he really had just exchanged his life for inhumane strength? He looked at his hands, trying to mentally digest the now very likely possibility that not only he now possessed immense power, but that he also only had about half a day. Sweeping away the remains of the table aside, he sat down once again and clutched his head. If it was true that he had just exchanged his time alive for might, what would be the logical next step, he tirelessly asked himself. "It's not like I could just go around fighting people in the street, right?" He muttered under his breath, feeling like his notions of morality were crumbling by the minute.

His phone began to ring, and he snapped back once again. "That's right." he thought, "This is the real world, with real people. I can't be getting so worked up by a dream." It was Joseph calling. He took a deep breath to calm himself and answered, mustering up the most normal sounding voice he could. "Hello?" "Hey Terry, just calling to check in on you. Are you sure you're alright? If you wanna call in sick tomorrow I'll get you caught up on stuff later." "No no, I'm perfectly fine, sorry for worrying you." "Well, alright. Just don't sweat it, man." "Yeah, have a nice one." Terrence hung up. He looked around his living room. Something felt out of place. He had this odd sense of familiarity, for it was undoubtedly the very same living room he saw every single day, yet there was a subtle difference to it, an uncanny sensation of wrongness that left him slightly dazed. It was as if he was seeing his living room for the first time. Closing his eyes and sighing, he decided maybe it would be best to just lie down. Yet as soon as he reached his bedroom, the same feeling of unfamiliarity struck him once more. It was then that the sounds started. He could faintly hear mumbling. Then footsteps. Then ambiguous rustling. All sounds his brain told him were taking place several meters away. The mumbling was not clear enough to distinguish words, yet he knew that was the neighbor across the street talking to his dog. Then the sounds began to multiply. Unwillingly, in a matter of seconds he was able to map out the entirety of his neighborhood by sound alone. Then smells began to invade his nostril, smell after smell they trampled over his olfactory receptors like a bottleneck of raging rhinos. Yet he could intrinsically tell each of them apart, from the various food messily spread all over the kitchen to the freshly baked bread from the bakery a few blocks away. It was all so new, all so sudden, and all so overbearing that his only reaction was to fall to his knees and stare blankly at the floor. And then it hit him: the reason why everything looked different. He had never seen anything with such clarity before. "What is this?" He asked himself, glaring fearfully at his own hands. "What is this!?" He asked again, much louder this time. It all felt so unreal, his mind was outright refusing to accept what was currently transpiring as truth. For a moment, he wondered if the dream was reality and now he was just sleeping, for neither made a lot of sense at the moment. It felt as if the poor man was about to black out. Terrence yawned and looked at the clock. It was about six in the afternoon. A nap that long would likely ruin his sleep schedule, but it certainly did reinvigorate him. What was all that earlier in the day, he asked himself? Could it have been just a dream? Perhaps he was merely stressed out and started imagining things. He got up from bed and stretched himself, switching on the lights as the sun was about to finish setting down for the evening. Heading straight to the bathroom, he glared at his own form over the mirror. It appeared fine. It seemed to look the way it always did. But something deep down in Terrence's mind kept nagging at him, telling it was all a mere ruse. That in truth things were changing and he merely refused to see. Yet the man passed it off as drowsiness or perhaps a piece of his dream that refused to go away. It was then that it got to him. His eyes. There was something wrong with his eyes. He couldn't quite put his hand on it, but they felt so unfamiliar. As if it was the first time in his entire life he was looking at the person in front of him. Yet nothing seemed outwardly different. He leaned closer to the mirror. His pupils were quivering, scanning each other at breakneck speed. Nothing. Sighing, he shrugged and walked over to the kitchen, finding it in perfect state, his sink clear of any unwashed dishes and his trusty mahogany table decorated with the same old flowers. Wait a minute. Mahogany? Terrence stopped in his tracks and turned to look at the table. The silence was stuffed with the low hum of his refrigerator. Mahogany. Back when he rented this place, it was barely furnished, and at the time he didn't have nearly enough money for fancy furniture, so he bought the basics and either borrowed the rest from friends or lived without them. He remembers receiving his table from a friend of his parents, a carpenter. He had a made a humble but reliable oaken table. Terrence fell to his knees. He wanted to convince himself to the best of his abilities that he had remembered wrong, that perhaps he had always had this glaringly out of place mahogany table in his otherwise bare-bones kitchen.

But his efforts were in vain, for the memory of how he received the table still played vividly clear in his head. It wasn't all a dream, he really had broken his table. He really had thrashed about as all of his senses were violently overloaded. Something there was clearly not right. And then it started. A burning heat from his chest, quickly spreading through all of his body. The world became blurry and colorless, and all his limbs went numb. In a vague moment of clarity, there was peace and quiet. His mind was a vast, placid lake, serene air enveloping his every thought. All was right in the world. But it wasn't. Surreal white hot flames covered the extension of the lake, and the once pleasant air incandescently melted away his thoughts into primordial rage. A rage beyond any comprehension, a rage that could move mountains. A destructive instinct that could level an entire city should it take control. This rush of insanity distracted Terrence from the excruciating pain of his organs ripping themselves apart, scales bursting from the underside of his arms and through his spine. As the first of his teeth began to morph into sharp predatory weapons, he was called back to reality by the loud banging on his door. He peered over at the clock. It was already midnight. That trance had lasted a whole lot longer than it felt. The man grabbed his bearings and got up, failing to notice the many tears on his now blood soaked shirt. At the door were two policemen, a fat one with quite the obnoxious fu-man-chu mustache and a tall blonde one who had the physique of a very proficient basketball player. They took a step back upon seeing the ragged man. "Sir- whoa. What's the situation? Are you the one injured?" The fatty asked, startled. Terrence was confused, the sight of the cops still hazy. "I'm sorry, maybe this is the wrong place? Can't you see I'm fine?" He muttered, a thin streak of blood escaping his lips. "Sir, please step back. We're going to get help." The tall one reassured. Terrence gritted his teeth with a low growl. "I said I'm fine. Please leave." The fat one turned around to get help, while the lean one nodded in excuse and began to step in. Feeling threatened, Terrence lunged at the officer and tried to bite his throat, but was swiftly punched away. Both drew their weapons and shouted in some incoherent language he felt like he once spoke, but they were an unacceptable threat to his territory, and thus must go down. He lunged once again, this time met with several bullets to the chest. And then, darkness.

Ryan slowly lowered his weapon, his ears still ringing from the gunshots. He could barely make out his thoughts between the screaming neighbors and the rambling of his rather overweight partner. "Jesus Christ Ryan did you see that?" "Yes Ivan, yes I did." He mindlessly mumbled, staring down at the hunched over corpse lying in a pool of blood. They had just received a call from an old lady nearby stating someone in the neighborhood had been screaming for hours. Was the man in front of him another junkie perhaps? It was the first complainant they had gotten from this neighborhood in a long while. And then his thoughts were silenced. Ivan paused his fretting for a single moment as well. It moved. He moved. They stared dumbfounded at the corpse, quickly raising their weapons once more. Perhaps it was merely a twitch, there's no way someone could be conscious after so many bullets, right? Right? It moved again, this time shivering uncontrollably. Then it began to swell unnaturally. Both officers watched in silent horror as his skin became tighter and tighter, the bullets being pushed out by whatever was underneath. The fleshy sound as his skin began to finally give way and rip apart would not be soon forgotten by the officers, not would be the sight of the majestic crimson red wyvern that burst its way out of the man's corpse. They were far too stunned to even shoot, deciding instead to stare silently at it. It stared back with its massive blue eyes, chunks of ripped skin sliding down as it grew bigger and more monstrous by the moment. Ivan dropped his weapon and fell to his knees. Ryan was unable to make the slightest movement, perhaps out of fear, or perhaps because he felt as if any abrupt move would cause this insane moment to end as he peered into a fantastic sight outside the realm of his understanding. The beast gave the officers a final glare, before seemingly vanishing into thin air. They simply stood there, unable to express any reaction or comment beyond a chilly silence. Soaring across the blue skies, the wyvern felt an innermost sense of peace he had never experienced before. Everything felt in its place, everything felt just right. It swooped down and swiftly grabbed a juicy Aptonoth with its fierce talons. Tonight, he would finally satiate his hunger. He roared in delight, getting swept away by the gentle touch of the wind against his sharp scales. Oh how wonderful it was to be a Rathalos. But what's that? A hunter in his nest? How odd, that hunter looks awfully familiar. It matters not, an intruder is an intruder, and it was time to make short work of another puny man.

Somewhere in the Far East, 'Terrence' roamed the streets. He looked at his own hands, pursing his lips upwards unconvincingly, like a vague attempt at a smile. He looked up, proud of his catch, as his old skin was starting to grow old. He shouldn't have gotten the tables mixed up, but by a stroke of luck it all worked out, nobody suspects a thing. Getting such a young body to wear around isn't so easy, and besides, he looks pretty satisfied with his new one. Not that the man had a choice, having been pumped so full of wyvern blood his humanity was overwritten without a hitch, but it could have been plenty worse. He could have just said no.