FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The night was as still as the crisp chill in the air; Not a sound nor a peep disturbed the silence. The tall, rocky mountain stood sentinel over the deep valley before its mighty, imposing base, like a silent guardian, ever present in its immensity. The moon in the sky cast its shadow long over the valley like a blanket of darkness to envelop the deep woods and fertile plains that had remained untouched by the interference of civilization. Far below, its twin reflected off the glassy surface of the lake, shimmering softly with the ripples of the water.

It was always quiet in this part of the country, especially at night time. Everything the shadow of the flat topped peak touched lived and hid in silence, lest their noise brought the granite and slate monolith's sole resident and protector in all his fury. It had been by far the craftiest and most cunning beast the female had ever tracked down, but the advanced payment alone had made all of her struggles to get to this point worth it. Well, that and the promise of all the treasure within, naturally.

She had spent the entirety of the summer season alone just getting the first whispers and leads on this particular beast's whereabouts. From the hot and dry Arabia's all the way across to the thick forests of Europe, she had traveled where the clues had let, slowly closing the net on her prey's domain. She had stayed as subtle and transparent as possible when asking questions, never staying in one place for more than two nights before disappearing into the night to track her next lead down. She had harried him every step of the way, and now, she could all but smell the beast, standing at the foot of his lair, and her ultimate goal.

"A dragon's weight in rewards." That was what she had been promised, and all she had to do was follow her employer's request and return with one item in particular; Anything else she could carry would be her 'bonus'. It was a small thing, judging by the crude drawing she had been given, a trinket of sorts, that her employer in Asia "Very much desires to possess." A small, golden octagonal pendant, suspended upon a plain piece of woven rope. They certainly had paid her handsomely along with the drawing. Some one thousand gold pieces upfront, to help her achieve her goal.

The payment had been far too good to turn down, especially without a time frame on the job to force her to go quickly. She'd spent a full hundred alone on the first night after walking from her employer's home, going to the local brothel and treating herself to the most expensive liquors and the most expensive whores she could get her paws on; The Bonehound had some expensive tastes, and an aggressive streak to go with her drunken pleasure. The day after, she had blown all but a hundred she left in reserve on new leather armour, and an intricate silver dagger the smith assured here would cut through even the toughest hide. The change after those purchases had paid off her travel arrangements and the remaining supplies she needed for her journey.

Her employer had assured her she had all of the qualities they were looking for in their operative; Young, healthy, stealthy and discreet about her business. She was perfect for the job, they had assured her, and was a perfect candidate. Orientals had a strange way of phrasing things, she had concluded. It wouldn't be a challenge she had told them. She was the best, after all. On that, they had both agreed.

She was lithe, standing at a modest five foot, four inches. Her species seldom grew much taller than that anyway, but her figure was still cutting, almost beautiful, if one could manage to get past the thieves tools, armour, and dagger that adorned her curvaceous figure. Most whom managed the feat soon found most if not all of their belongings of any value to be missing afterwards.

Her fur was an interesting mixture of light reds, white and stark black in contrasting roundell patterns across her body. Protective, protruding rib-like bones grew around her lower chest, thighs and wrists, as if to protect the life giving organs and arteries just below her fur. To top it all off, a pair of rear-curving horns grew from her skull, a feature that had earned her as many dismissing looks as it did curious ones in public; Seldom men from other species considered a healthy set of horns on a female attractive, let alone on a canine species.

She was in the best shape of her life as she was in her current line of work; Athletic and acrobatic, she could chase down the quickest of them while leaping obstacles the entire way, and barely break a sweat doing it. She was more than just well versed in swordplay, and an expert archer to boot. All that combined made the dragon the least of her concerns; She had slain more than one of his kind before, both feral and anthropomorphic in nature. The trick to it was simply avoiding being scorched to a crisp and being quicker than their claws were.

She had already spotted the telltale signs of her prey's presence; Claw and scorch marks in the stone, swaths of felled trees all sliced cleanly at the canopy level. Of course, aside from those few things one might look for, she had also passed no less than a dozen foolish adventurers corpses that were in varying states of decay. A few of the more 'fresh' looking ones lay at the bottom of the near-vertical cliff face that waited below the large opening in the side of the hill, victims of their own foolish demise and lack of sure-footedness. They showed no signs of the dragon's intervention to stop them.

The opening to the caves high above was immense; Easily a hundred yards wide at the mouth and half as many high. The daunting size of it and the promise of a beast that needed such a space to enter giving her the slightest moment of pause. It's brilliant face looked as though it had been carved and melted into the nigh on sheer cliff, rivulets of molten stone long since hardened forming drip lines along its length. The hill had once been an active volcano in the distant past, which lent to the lush valley below, and the dragon's reasoning behind choosing this particular hill for his lair; It would be much warmer below, closer to the magma chamber for the cold blooded reptile. The great scaly beasts did oh so love their warmth.

Still, as it was, the cliff did present itself as the first challenge, albeit, a small one. She thought briefly to risk the noise of a grappling hook finding purchase above in order to make a quick assent, but the clanging of metal on stone was an obvious sound, and without knowing how deep the caves went, could easily alert him to her presence. All of her efforts would be for naught if he were to slip away so easily after such a clumsy mistake, so instead, she tightened the straps of her tight leather gloves, and began the climb by hand.

It was an arduous task without the aid of ropes or hooks, but the time it would take to employ such methods would be lost by the time she reached the caves lip the old fashioned way without assistance. She was not beyond pushing herself physically when the task at hand called for such methods. However, the assent was higher than she had initially estimated, and by the time she hauled herself up and onto the landing far above, an orange glow had appeared in the east. The first dawn birds in the valley below had burst into melodious chorus, greeting the coming of the morning with their combined songs. She perched herself on the threshold of the cavernous opening for a moment to catch her breath and watch the sunrise, letting her legs hang over the rock face and sway in the soft breeze.

The sun crested the far end of the valley, and it was quickly apparent his choice to create an opening on this side had been purely aesthetic. The first rays of light from the rising star caressed her skin and fur with the warmth of a tender lovers touch, breaking the harsh chill that had embedded itself like daggers of ice into her leather armour. As protection went, it was almost negligible for anything but a glancing swing, and it gave her little in the way of warmth, but it was light, and didn't make a clatter as she moved. She had padded the insides to make herself even quieter with a thin layer of cotton fiber, and with her skills, it allowed her freedom of movement while maintaining absolute silence.

An involuntary shudder of anticipation coursed through her as she allowed herself to bask in the morning glory of sunrise, simply enjoying the view below for a moment. The valley below had bloomed into life with colour at the coming of the sun, with vivid reds, blues and yellows of wildflowers mixing into the lush green of the treetops and grassy meadows that stretched to the horizon. The lake itself had tinted a golden orange of dawn as the sun slowly crept above the distant hillsides on its own assent into the sky above. It had taken her much longer than she had thought to scale the cliff face though; She would have to make up the time descending into the cave and getting her job here done and over with if she wanted to make her rendezvous with her caravan back to Eastern lands.

She pulled herself back up to her feet, turning to take her first good looking into the looming maw of the hillside, and the darkness that waited for her within. The cave narrowed slowly as it deepened, seeming to shrink more and more the further in one ventured, until it disappeared into a blackness even the sun's rays couldn't penetrate. She ventured onwards for a long while, the sounds of the outside world slowly fading into obscurity along with the light guiding her, plunging her into darkness.

Her night vision was excellent by any standards, but she blinked repeatedly, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the blackness that enveloped her. Even after several minutes, her vision was still as useful as a blind man's sight. Slowly, she reached a tentative paw forwards, searching for the wall while she held her other arm before her path. It was an undesirable circumstance, but she had expected it at least. The undergrounds were always dark, and here, she was as a shadow on the darkness itself. Deprived of sight and feeling the way ahead, she began to venture deeper into the waiting caverns. She had come too far to back away now

She relied on her alternate senses to guide her, listening to the drips of moisture, the feel of the gradually roughening stone walls, the musty and acrid taste the air had taken upon itself. At least twice she had to pull her paw back from the stones as the surface became sharp as if lined with daggers, and she swore she had drawn blood on at least one of the jagged points. Her pace slowed as she took upon a more cautious approach, reasoning it better to take her time than stumble into a pitfall trap and wind up as just another body on the mountainside. A few dozen steps more, and she extended her foot out into open air, almost falling before she caught herself and backpedaled from the sudden edge.

Perhaps, she had been entirely wrong about this being the dragon's lair. Perhaps it was just another one of his elaborate attempts to throw her off his tail set up by the overgrown lizard.

Or that's just what he wants me to think...

She took a breath, considering the risk versus the reward of her next move very, very carefully. Reaching into one of the small pouches on the side of her backpack, she felt around for a moment, before grabbing her paw around the small, twine bound pair of flint and steel ingots. If this place was indeed where she was looking for, she would be wealthy beyond her wildest dreams once she got back to civilisation. Taking both pieces of the lighting implements in her paws, she knelt down, feeling her way towards the edge before she struck them together with a swift swipe of her paws.

"CLACK"

The noise sounded like a cannon shot in the utter silence of the cave, and the echoes from its creation continued to resound from the walls and down the tunnel in all directions for over a full minute before fading off to silence. It was a full minute the canine spent cringing and holding her breath, as if not making any additional noise now would somehow allow her to stay undetected after that. "Notworthitnotworthit..." she scolded herself mentally, berating her own damned foolishness. Anything in these caves knew she was here now!

The brief flash of orange sparks had provided her with a view of what lay ahead momentarily at least and they fell downwards and faded away as they cooled. To her back lay the tunnel she had came from, the jagged and sharp points of stone just as she had imagined them in her mind. Likely, this had once been a magma chute eon's ago, sculpted round by the scorching molten earth, and then further shaped by the dragon to better suit his needs.

To her front however, lay a drop just as she had almost fatally discovered, but it certainly wasn't of any natural creation. The drop was as smooth as ice, and perfectly vertical as best as she could tell. Further below was a landing of sorts, before the tunnel dropped off dramatically once more, falling into the earth like oversized steps. The most glaringly obvious feature of the steps was the exactness that had gone into their construction and carving. Each step looked about twelve feet wide, by twelve feet long, and each drop was measured likewise.

Above her, the ceiling of the cave had shone like a sky of diamonds; Crystal stones grew from the stone in jagged and irregular clumping, but between them had been smoothed down to a mirror like sheen, polished and smoothed until it was utterly without flaw, just as the stairs appeared. More alarmingly to the bonehound however was just what each step had in store for her.

With how polished the stoneworks was, there would be little chance of her boots or bare feet being able to get purchase; they would be frictionless like ice. By the same virtue, it would make assent back up the steps next to impossible. She had encountered this sort of architectural trap before, designed for the hasty and foolhardy. You climbed down with few enough troubles, but once you went down, you didn't come back up. If you didn't slide on the stonework and break something or kill yourself on the descent, whatever horrors waited for you below picked you off as you tried to fruitlessly climb back up.

The dragon was damned clever, she had absolutely no doubts about that. A lot of time and energy had gone into constructing the elaborate stone stairway,but she had come prepared for this at least. Tugging her grappling hook from a strap on the side of her pack, she back-stepped into the tunnel, feeling her way along the wall until she located a large jutting stone spike, quickly wedging the metal X against it and the wall. She gave the rope a few experimental tugs to ensure it would hold her weight, before she made her way cautiously back to the landing of the first step, and tossed the rope overhand down into the darkness. Now, it would just be a matter of hoping that she had brought enough...

She started her descent anew, dropping down onto the landing of the second step with a noise no louder that a wad of cotton falling from its plant stalk. True to her predictions, her feet slipped as she moved, and she lowered herself to all fours, keeping a sure grip on the rope. The second step came as easily as the first, and in no time at all, she had dropped down another two landings to the fourth step before her problems arose. As soon as she set her weight down upon it's glassy, obsidian surface, she began to slide towards the slope, and she slipped while trying to right herself, landing flat on her chest and bruising her breasts as she went down with a whump.

She pulled herself upright on the rope quickly, but a sharp metallic 'crack' from above sent ice through her veins, and it was with a mind numbing terror in her limbs that she slipped over the edge of the landing and out into the abyss. Her squeal of terror was utterly undignified for a professional of her caliber, but it came unbidden from her lips nonetheless. She landed hard on the fifth step, rolling over onto her back as the rope came sliding down uselessly alongside her. She yanked at it's length, willing the hook to clamp onto something as she dug her claws into the tightly bound fiber, going over the edge of the next landing with a gasp as weightlessness overtook her again, and gravity did its work. She lost her hold on the rope at the next landing as she hit it with the grace of a sack of flour,the breath rushing from her lungs. She managed to get one hook back into its fibrous surface just before she left the next landing, but her momentum was already too great for such a thing to work.

Her claw snagged between the bundles, and physics did its cruel work, deciding the rope was sturdier than the muscles holding her hook-like claw in place, and thus the result was decided. The cruel mistress it was, gravity stole the claw away from her paw, and she let out a startled and terror filled yelp of pain as the bony claw was ripped from her paw by its roots,and sent her toppling over the next step end over end, head first towards the next landing below her. A foot from opening her skull up like a glass jar on tiled floor, her fall was arrested, suddenly and sharply, by her right leg tangling in the rope that had evidently re-caught on something above.

Pain burned in her right paw and her leg. She gripped her mangled claw-opening with her free hand, putting pressure on it as much as she could stand to try and stop the bleeding. "Well, so much for stealth now..." she thought bitterly to herself, grunting as she tumped against the vertical face of the step. She muttered a curse as she was forced to remove her paw, reaching for the dagger at her thigh and slashing blindly at the rope that had bound her foot. She struck it on the second swing, and dropped in a pile on the eighth step down with a snarl, stabbing her blade at the stone. It bounced away harmlessly, not even leaving a scratch on the pristine surface, but fortunately, it was an unnecessary move. The step was flat, and she rose to all fours, maintaining her posture well enough.

Oddly enough, it seemed even darker than it had at the top of the steps, but perhaps it was just her mind playing tricks on her again, like it had with the supposedly 'flat' stairs. The angle had started so subtle, it would have been impossible for anyone who had not known that fact to notice it... She crawled even more warily than before now to the edge of the step, and peering over, fumbling and striking her flint and steel once more.

She reeled back with a retch of revulsion at what had almost become her fate, fighting the urge to vomit back as she scrambled to be away from the edge. The step below was no step at all. It was a spike pit. Over a dozen corpses were impaled upon the rusted lengths of iron that jutted from the floor like vengeful pylons of death, and each body was in a different stage of decomposing, left here for the worms and maggots, if either of the grave-creatures could even reach here. Now that the smell had hit her, it clung to the inside of her nostrils in what may well have been the foulest smell she had ever had the misfortune of being exposed too. A soft draft the blew past at least brought her a moment of relief from the reeking stench, and allowed her a moment to gather some more items from her pack and light her linen wrapped torch.

It took her eyes another few minutes to adjust to the intensity of the torch-fire after being in the dark for so long, but as soon as the world came back into focus, and she could bear to open her eyes at more than a squint, she noticed something most peculiar. The flames were dancing, flickering off the the other end of the steps along with the embers that lifted from the torches wooden haft. There was a draft. Where there was a draft, there was somewhere for the air to come from! But to her dismay, the direction of the breeze led her only to the wall beside her, it's stony face as blank and unassuming as the rest of the steps, but yet...

Curiously, she brought the torch closer to the wall, and the flames continued their sideways dance, her reflection in the glassy obsidian face of the stone looking back at her with puzzlement. She blew against the torch's flames softly, holding the light right against the wall itself, and unexpectedly, the flames rose up and -through- its otherwise solid surface! She extended her paw further, and sure enough, the torch and her hand slipped through the illusionary wall with all the ease of sliding them into a pool of water, and a much alike cold sensation where it bisected her arm.

Magic!

She spat, cursing to herself. She had heard of certain people and creatures that had a natural affinity to the unnatural art, but none of the dragons that she had ever fought in past had even shown signs of possessing such potent talent. The mere presence of the flawlessly rendered false-wall was sign enough of his skill. She would have to be deathly cautious now. True magic potential could be as lethal a weapon yo the right caster as any assassins poisoned blade. The difference was you usually didn't see magic coming until it was being hurled forth at you by a maniac in robes, or you took a bad step onto a concealed ward and lost a leg to a sudden detonation of energy and earth.

Steeling herself and taking a breath, she let herself slip through the illusion, and found herself in a long, broad corridor of the same, smooth and immaculate obsidian construction as the stairway, save for the exception that this pathway was lit. Flaming torches not at all dissimilar to the one in her paw lined the walls intermittently, flickering brightly against the midnight black of the walls they were mounted upon. The corridor seemed to stretch on ad-infinitum, running along until it seemed to reach a vanishing point far in the distance. How many miles of tunnels and traps did this dragon have awaiting her?!

Left with little other choice, she pushed forwards, following the tunnel and it's repeating features for some time. She kept her steps light, but even so, she could tell she was becoming more and more lax in her noise discipline with every minute that passed. Eventually, she took to counting her steps to pass the time, her legs growing tired and aching from her tumble down the stairs. Just when she thought it was another of the dragons cruel tricks of the mind, something new appeared.

A skeleton, propped against the left hand wall, lifeless and bleached white, only the tattered remains of the poor souls armour left covering the dry bones. He'd probably succumb to the hallways monotony. She had already counted well over a half an hour since she started keeping track. His helmet sat upturned beside his body, one skeletal arm wrapped around it like a beggar holding his bowl... But perhaps that was exactly what it was. A plank of wood was gripped in the skeleton's other paw, gripped tight by fleshless fingers, with strange, runic scrawling dotted across the boards surface. The language was obviously a long dead scripture; She couldn't even begin to guess at it's origins or meaning.

Even so, her curiosity got the better of her, and she leaned forwards, crouching to inspect it closer. It was old, evidently even more so than the bones. The wood had been petrified, but the wear on it alone told her it certainly had seen much before it ended up down here. Her paw brushed across the grain of the wood slowly, but the moment her fingers crossed the first symbol scrawled on the wood, she was thrown backwards, blasted away by a blinding flash of light.

When she opened her eyes, recovering from the brilliant light, the hallway seemed to have changed... The torches on the wall were much closer and evenly spaced, and the dead adventurers skull was looking right at her, hollowed out eye sockets seeming to stare into her skull and muzzle ajar in an undying scream of agony. Before her own eyes however, something else began to happen. The lettering on the board began to shift and change, forming clear characters before it settled.

Greed brought him here. Greed kept him here. Take only so as you leave.

Pay the toll; Blood or Gold.

She felt her gaze drawn again at the skeleton's helmet, rusted and as ancient as the bones that held it. At the bottom of the helmet, a loose scattering of coins and flakey, brown stains that she knew better than to assume was rust. Each of the coins though, true to the sign's demand, glimmered golden in the torchlight. Of course, being a thief, she hadn't even thought to bring any coins with her, and she bit her lip, before looking down at her still bleeding finger...

Slowly, she held it out above the helmet's rim. A thick, ruby droplet clung to the deep gash where her paw had been forcibly extracted from her flesh, before with an almost agonizing slowness, it separated from the mess that the injury had left. It fell in complete silence, before with an unremarkable splash, it spattered against one of the coins, staining the gold with a wash of red. Almost instantly, it dried and disappeared into the same brown flakes as the rest of the blood.

As if reacting to her tribute, the wall beside the skeleton shimmered and rippled, before fading completely, revealing another long tunnel, bright with light coming from the new opening. Jackpot! She stood and stepped quickly past the old bones, heading for the light with a broad grin stretching from ear to ear on her muzzle. The opening at the other end of the tunnel came up on her quickly, and taking her first step into the grand main chamber, she stopped dead, breathtaken at the sight before her.