FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

A chill wind blew through the valley, bringing smoke from the village up into the night sky. It swirled above the heads of the two foxes on the ridge, their thick woollen cloaks and rugged winter coats shielding them from the biting cold.

The female, Eithni, stared into the starlit sky, unmoving. Drest, the male, shifted his forlorn gaze between the village below and his lover. She looked at the stars as if looking straight through them to something further beyond. Her eyes were always green like the leaves, but in that moment they were brighter, as if holding the moonlight within them. They had looked that way for two weeks now, ever since she first received the visions. Some days the glow seemed familiar, like a reflection of her once-vibrant spirit, but other days it seemed sick and unnatural. Green, like her eyes, but too green.

"Will you ever tell me what you saw, Eithni?" Drest said.

She turned and looked at Drest with those sparkling green eyes and said nothing. Whatever it was she'd been shown, it had changed her. She was stoic and distracted, and spoke little. Her head tilted slightly in the direction she was gazing before, up in the sky, then she turned her eyes back and resumed her skygazing. Drest thought sometimes that he could see something in her expression, like a longing to speak and reveal everything, but something always held her words back.

Drest sighed. He turned away from the ridge and started up the hill, following a rocky path through thick brambles and nettles. Soon the path led to a clearing, where the plants had been hewn back and cleared from the ground. A circle of standing stones was erected here, pillar-like and waist-high, marking the entrance to the cave that housed the source of the visions. Though Drest expected to see traditional knots and triskelions, the stones here were all carved with numerous plain circles on every side. The entrance was at the far side of the circle, where more carven circles surrounded an intimidating black tunnel down into the hillside.

A sheepdog was kneeling at one of the stones, taking tools to it, impressing another circle upon its surface. His grey tunic, grey cloak and shaggy grey fur blended him in among the rocks. He downed tools and stood as the fox approached.

"You work too hard for a place such as this, Conall." Drest said.

"Well, this is no ordinary place, my friend."

"You're as skilled at engravings as me, though. Why simple circles?" Drest asked, kneeling to look at one of the pillar-stones.

"Eithni's idea, actually," Conall started, tentatively. He ran his fingers over a particular circle next to the door. "She carved the first one, when I asked her what she'd seen."

Drest perked up. "She spoke to you?"

"No," Conall sighed. "She took my tools and carved it in silence. The only 'communication' I've had with her, I'm afraid."

Drest sat on a pillar-stone sadly, resting his grey-peppered muzzle in his hand. After a time, he spoke. "I need to know what happened, exactly."

Conall took a perch on the next stone over. "There's not much to tell. I knew of the Stone already, though it never bestowed a vision upon me. Then, one day, I arrived here on a walk and found her emerging from the cave, much like you see her now. I felt something about that Stone, I can't explain... some kind of spiritual energy surrounding it. Seeing Eithni's eyes, I knew she'd seen far more than I had in that cave and far more than she was ready to tell."

"It sounds like nonsense."

"The Stone is a most unusual seer, and most generous to give us such knowledge from beyond our world. I think people from all the neighbouring villages, perhaps all the land, will be visiting when word travels."

"Beyond our world?"

"A channel directly to the gods!" Conall chimed, excitedly.

"What happened to Eithni hardly seems like a blessing from the divine," Drest muttered, dejectedly. "More like a curse from some wretched demon."

"These things aren't as straightforward as our mortal lives," Conall reasoned. "I have faith in Eithni and in the Stone. I believe that one day soon, after meditation, she will be able to share her visions with us."

"Why wait?" Drest said, stepping toward the cave entrance.

"You're going in there too?!" Conall said.

"Yes."

"Drest. You're the most skilled craftsman in the Highlands. Forger of sword, builder of crannog and broch. We rely on you. Divine though the blessing may be, do you think receiving such a vision is... a wise risk?"

"Do you think Eithni to be less important than me, just because she can't work a forge? You're wrong. I won't lose her like this. I have to understand. If there truly is a being giving visions down there, I wish to see one for myself. If it's a demon, I'm going to kill it."

Conall, hearing the emotion in his voice, stepped back. "I will watch her until you return."

Drest lit a torch in preparation and, with a final deep breath of fresh air, stepped into the cave. The glow of the torchlight lit a narrow passage, creeping downward into the hillside. Drest followed. The footing became difficult as it twisted deeper and the entrance was soon out of sight. The fox progressed slowly, breathing heavily in the stuffy air. The fresh scent of the forest was being gradually replaced by a strange metallic odour.

Drest stopped in place and stared down the dark throat of the earth ahead. His breaths were great desperate pants and his shaking hand gripped the cave wall. Something in here - the Stone - had poisoned his Eithni's mind and now he was hunting it down. He was cornering himself in some dark pit of the earth with an unknown giver of visions. Eithni was a gatherer; she was devout and respectful of the earth. A spirit of the forest herself, some would say. The visions changed her. She loved the night sky before, but now she was nearly mute, lost adrift in that ocean of stars whenever it showed itself. Distant, like the stars, thanks to whatever she was shown.

Now, Drest was hunting down the same thing. What would he, the proud and stubborn craftsman, be shown? Something worse? Would he turn cold and empty, too? Would it even help him bring Eithni back? Would it even matter if he went mad, if he couldn't bring her back?

He thumped the wall with his fist, and scrunched his eyes tightly closed. He steadied his breathing and his racing thoughts. He couldn't do anything for Eithni without knowing. He had to understand. Placing one paw in front of the other, he trudged deeper into the belly of the earth.

In the dim firelight it seemed that the tunnel was starting to open out ahead. He placed another paw forward and it met no ground beneath. He found himself tumbling forward. His torch left his hand and extinguished itself somewhere in the dark abyss as he rolled side-over-side down a rock slope.

His back slammed into the side of something solid and he grunted as his momentum was stopped. His cry echoed and then silence and gloom fell over the cave. To Drest's ears the cave sounded about the size of an empty broch, from the echo. He tried to get a grip on the floor around him to stand and was surprised to find that instead of a slope of loose slag, it felt smooth and fine, like sheets of flint. The slope wasn't too steep to walk on, assuming he could find another light source. The solid thing that stopped him was another rock, jutting out of the slope like a small platform, with a rough surface. He got to his feet on the platform and tried to assess his surroundings. He couldn't see much, though he could spot a large opening in the roof of the cave, moonlight trickling in through it. The rim of the hole shimmered too, like the entire cave floor-to-ceiling was made of the same smoothened, glassy stone.

It would be foolish to try moving anywhere in this pitch-blackness. He cried out a greeting, as if hoping on some slim chance that the Stone could hear him. He stood fixed for a time and let the echoes fade out, waiting for something else to illuminate his senses. Just as he'd hoped - or perhaps feared - something did.

From somewhere not too far away, a sickly green glow started to illuminate the cavern, twinkling off of the glassy rock's strange texture. In this new gloomy luminescence he could make out the shape of the room in which he found himself. Almost the entire floor was sloped inward, forming a giant bowl shape. It converged at a small flat patch of ground at the far end of the oval-shaped chamber, opposite to the hole in the roof. There were large boulders like the one he perched on scattered all around the chamber, protruding from the slopes of the bowl-shaped floor. His brow furrowed quizzically as he looked down, seeing the strange sight of the charred remnants of a tree stump affixed to the patch of rock he was resting on - a strange artefact of the outside world in this dark and barren cave.

Drest looked about more, eventually feeling something was odd about the insides of this cavern. It looked like no natural rock formation he'd ever seen. The shape of this elongated bowl-shaped floor reminded him of the impact crater a rock would leave in the mud after a missed shot with a sling. It was like some wandering giant had thrown a javelin from across the world and it had pierced the Earth in this very spot, leaving the open wound he now stood in. There, right where he'd expect such an impossible projectile to have come to rest, was what must be the Stone itself.

It was a large boulder, also smooth and reflective but with textures woven into its surface unlike any stone he'd seen. The colour didn't match any other stone in the chamber, bearing many mixed shades of browns and blacks. It was the source of the light too - a single, giant, almost perfectly circular green crystal was set into the object, facing into the cave. It had the lustre of silver but once again, Drest couldn't begin to identify it from its texture. This green crystalline stone inside the larger boulder was casting the sickly green light around the room as if a verdant flame were nestled inside it.

Drest's hand fell instinctively to check that his axe still hung from his belt loop. For the moment it appeared that the cave contained nothing but inanimate rocks, but this strange glowing boulder was certainly Conall's divine Stone and he wouldn't let his guard down around it.

Aided now with light, he slid himself down the rest of the slope to where it levelled out in front of the Stone. For a while, there was a tense silence. Drest didn't advance towards the Stone and neither did he receive any strange visions, nor any other sign of activity besides the glow. He couldn't help but stare into the green crystal, as its lustrous glow started to take over his vision in the dark of the cave. It pulsated with the green light, rippling around beneath the surface like water held within it. The colour looked disturbingly familiar as Drest stared at it. It looked like Eithni's eyes.

He brought his axe up in front of him in a swift motion. "What did you do to her?" he yelled. "What trickery did you show her, demon? Answer me!"

There was no reaction. "What, no visions for me?" he said, arms outstretched tauntingly. His voice cracked with emotion as he yelled. "Am I not good enough to be driven to madness by a glowing rock? Did you merely wish to take my beloved Eithni away and watch from this hovel as it torments me?"

With no reaction still, Drest growled. He lunged forward to strike the green crystal, eyes fixed on it. His axe was raised overhead and ready to strike, but his eyes were fully focussed on the target. His thoughts were fully focussed on the crystal. It was an almost perfect circle of glowing, shimmering green. Deep green, like Eithni's eyes. Full of energy and life, like Eithni's eyes. The Stone's eye, glowing and shimmering green. The Stone's eye, full of energy and life.

Drest blinked. It was like he'd fallen into a daydream for a moment and just now re-emerged. He saw the head of his axe, still mid-swing but frozen in place, hovering just short of the stone's eye. As much as he wanted to pull back and swing again, he found he couldn't bring his arm to move. His eyes refocused onto the stone's eye. It was only an arm's length away from him now. The green light was furiously bright in his eyes, but it didn't sting or burn. He found no discomfort at all in looking at it. A feeling crept over him, a deep desire to stare into the Stone's eye. He forgot about the axe and about the cave. The green light filled his vision and his vision was filled with the green light. Green, like Eithni's eyes.

"W-wha..." he stammered, axe falling to the floor as he stumbled back. He blinked rapidly, feeling once again like emerging from a daydream. The thing was having some strange effect on him, pulling his mind into a state of distraction. He had to stay focussed. Focussed entirely on the eye's glow. No - focussed on destroying the demon inside it.

He wondered if Eithni had been through the same thing when she visited the cave. She may not have had the will to look away, let alone bring the Stone harm. Then again, why would she want to, when the eye was so pleasant to look into?

Its warming, soothing glow filled Drest's head like the smoke of a good herb. It made his head tingle and spin the more he stared. He realised he hadn't looked away from the eye since he drew his axe. He knew he should, but like with his axe before, his body didn't seem to be listening. His mind was barely listening, in fact. It was becoming harder to hold onto a thought before it drifted out of mind, like the moments of half-lucidity just before falling asleep. A fear set over him - a fear that he would be unable to complete his mission. That fear, like everything else passing through his head, also faded away before he could grasp it. He forgot all about it just as quickly as it had set in.

In the next moment, he found that he was walking towards the Stone. It felt as if his whole body and mind were being pulled toward it with a rope that he was powerless to untie. His arm was outstretched again. He thought he must be advancing for another swing of his axe, but the weapon wasn't in his hand. Instead his hand was open, reaching out to the Stone as if approaching an animal to pet it.

His fingers made contact with the surface of the Stone's eye and he pressed his palm flat against it. It was cool to the touch. The warbling lights inside the Stone shone between his fingers, reacting to the touch. They pulsed, keeping a steady rhythm of brightening and dimming, like the waves on the sea. Drest's head soon nodded up and down slightly, following along with the light's tide.

He saw a small crack form in the Stone's eye, just between his fingers. The cracks webbed out from that spot like a footstep on thin ice, until a hole broke open at the centre. There a small thing emerged, squeezing free of the crystal and dropping onto the back of Drest's hand. It was a slug, smaller and thinner than his little finger, and bearing the same brilliant green as the eye itself. Its little trail caught the light as it shuffled along his hand and disappeared into his sleeve.

Thoughts formed in Drest's mind and rolled off like water off a stone. He felt he ought to be worried about the strange creature travelling up his arm, but he wasn't. Was that the demon, or a part of it? It didn't matter. It came from the beautiful light inside the Stone, as Drest's mind told him, so it couldn't possibly be dangerous. He could feel every inch of its journey, tickling his fur as it traversed his arm, bicep, shoulder. It felt like hours were passing, but he waited patiently for the Stone's ambassador, content to watch the light dance in front of him for as long as it took. He felt the collar of his tunic shift as it emerged again, climbing his neck and the side of his face before finally reaching his ear. The fur on his face bristled up and his ear flicked instinctively. He felt he should try to stop those unhelpful reactions, but they didn't halt the slug's progress anyway. It pushed and squirmed against the entrance to his ear canal.

Something deep and instinctual clicked in Drest's mind and now he knew that he needed to be worried. Yet still he was bound by these invisible ropes on his mind. The Stone's influence couldn't stop the panic from getting through and the fox's body was shaking all over trying to express it. Gradually though, each pulse of the light in his eyes washed away another thought, washed away another command to move his body. It broke down the panic and settled his body back into that state of blissful, statuesque patience.

The hearing became muffled in his right ear as the slug wriggled its way into the canal and pressed on deeper. There was a growing sensation of tightness as it progressed, as dreadfully slowly as it had travelled up his body. The feeling reached inside his head to parts that had never experienced any sensation before. A numbness like the bite of winter started to come over his ear and the deep parts of his head and soon he couldn't feel the slug at all anymore, as if it had never been there.

The light stopped shining. The release from its grasp was like being thrown into an icy lake in the depths of winter. A maelstrom of suppressed rage and panic came over him. He recoiled and fell back, hands clutching his head. He screamed, conscious of all that had transpired, desperate for it to be just a vision, a trick of the demon. He tried to claw and stuff his fingers into his ear in pursuit of the creature, but it was futile. The Stone had put something inside him - the demon was inside his skull now. Had Eithni suffered this as well? He had to stop it. He had to find his axe. He had to destroy the Stone.

Then, just as quickly as the lucidity had returned to him, it abandoned him again. A familiar haze like a morning mist fell over his mind. His thoughts were like birds in the sky - visible, but always passing by out-of-reach. He wasn't looking at the green light now, though. There was barely any left, in fact - the glow of the Stone's eye had grown dim and distant and the cave was dark again. He slowly lowered the hands clutching at his head. It was getting hard to think about keeping them raised. He saw there, reflected back on his palms, the same green glow. It was the creature, the slug that got inside him. The eye's green glow was inside him - in his eyes, now.

Stand.

Drest could feel something off about this sudden, commanding thought that ran through his mind. It rang clear and true, despite his mind being fogged as if he'd taken one sip of mead too many. It was his own voice, the one he was accustomed to hearing lead his inner monologue, but it felt foreign all the same. What struck him most of all was the powerful desire to obey the command. With every fraction of a second longer that Drest stayed on his knees, his body felt restless, itchy. The itch evolved to discomfort. It pained his mind, both physically and emotionally, the longer he went without leaping to his feet. And so he did.

He tried to utter a query, but words were not easily formed in his current state and only a slurred mumble came out. Another command told him to look up, through the hole in the roof. He tilted his neck back and stared up into the inky night sky. It seemed strangely homely up there, among the bed of twinkling stars. There was a longing in his heart that he'd never felt before, to be up there flying among them like some kind of heavenly bird. He could see why Eithni enjoyed looking at it so much.

Master must return home.

This time it wasn't a command he heard in his head, but the words struck him even more fiercely. They bounced around his mind like a cave echo that could never fade. They became comforting, like a warm woollen cloak for his thoughts. He knew what they referred to, instinctively, as if that too had been poured into the waters of his mind by an outside source, wordlessly. Master was there with him now, trapped inside the Stone that fell from the stars. Now, somehow, Master must return home. Drest's entire mind and heart were becoming hellbent on it the more he heard the mantra in his head.

The Navigator has already been selected. She plots a course. You will be the Engineer. You will build. You will need others.

Drest began to turn and his legs began to move, back towards the Stone. He was still reeling from the mantra permeating his consciousness, but enough of his awareness still remained to know that he wasn't the one moving his body. The sensation filled him with an irrepressible feeling of safety and contentment. He let himself be suppressed, let the slug inside his head, the Master's ambassador, take over his body like the captain at the helm of a ship.

Back at the Stone, more of the slugs had been emerging from the hole in the crystal. Drest watched himself open a small bag that was slung over his shoulder, empty out the supplies inside and hold it up to the Stone.

_ We will need others._

The slugs, as if naturally knowing the intention, crawled over the Stone's surface and into the bag, slowly but surely nestling themselves inside until it was full and heavy. The bag was closed and slung carefully back over Drest's shoulder and he turned to make his way directly to the cavern's exit.

Drest stepped out into the stone circle and into the fresh air of night. The sight of that vast sea of stars replacing the dark cave roof made the mantra beat louder in his brain.

Connall was still working on carvings. Stepping over to him, Drest handed over the wriggling leather bag of slugs.

"He... you... have... good..." Drest began to speak. It was bizarrely unsteady speech, like a child still learning the words.

Conall smiled, placing a hand on Drest's shoulder. "You'll get the hang of it."

Drest could see something he hadn't noticed before as he observed Conall through eyes that were no longer his to aim. The green glow was there too, faintly visible through the fine gaps in the thick fur over his eyes. Although it was presumably the slug doing the talking, it was eerie how similar it behaved and spoke to the Conall that Drest remembered. Was Conall still in there, a separate mind watching his body be moved like a toy doll? Perhaps after enough time, they had simply stopped being separate.

Drest walked onward through the thick nettles and brambles back to the ridge. Eithni hadn't moved since he left, still watching the sky from its edge. She looked down as he took her side and they gazed into each others' eyes.

"Master... m-m..." Drest began, stuttering still.

"Master must return home," Eithni finished. Drest wasn't sure if it was the words of the mantra or the sound of her voice after so long, but it made him happy to hear.

He took her hand into his, and together they stared up into the stars.