FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The hollow eye of the ebony halo hung in the air and stared down on Sarthinas and Tetsomos like the contemptuous glare of a skeletal god.

Caever stood beneath it, her wings and arms extended in a grand gesture of composed confidence. She was the praetor of the mind; the angel winged dominator of all cognition and recognition. Their every memory, dream, nightmare, emotion, sense, interpretation and perception, all malleable metals she will hammer into imitations of her agony. The dragons will know.

Sarthinas gritted his teeth. Insomnivores and their art were cruel enough, but he got the distinct impression this beautiful gryphon is a class higher than her fellow cult members. The onyx halo, alongside acting as her catalyst, was a symbol of her superior rank, and whatever she intended to enact through it did not bode well for their minds.

He considered his limited options of attack. Problem was, Caever lingered on the first tier walkway, a lofty vantage only reachable by the spiral stairs five Tetsomos wing spans to his right. A distance she would not let him cross, he was certain. He had to do something, even if it ended up nothing more than a distraction so Tetsomos or Centreya could make a better move.

Centreya was already in action. She held her thin avian arms up toward the ebony halo, her talons extended. The ebony ring began to swell outward. Centreya grunted, gripping her talons in the air, a grimace of effort twisting her beak. The ebony halo shuddered and contracted back to its former circumference.

"I thought the Confounders were patrons of delivering enlightenment." Caever said with hint of a smirk pulling the corners of her own sharp beak.

Again the halo attempted to expand before retracting smaller with a violent jerk.

"I know your enlightenment, and it brings only conflict to the heart and discord to the mind." Centreya said.

"You mean it brings guilt."

A harsh crack from the halo punctuated her words, a sound like a chunk of glacier breaking from a mountain crest. A paper thin fracture encircled the halo, and then accompanied by a fierce snap, the ring severed in two. Centreya snarled.

"Be grateful dragons, for I offer you my mind."

Underneath the now dual halos, Caever sighed with a close of her eyes. Tendrils of skinny grey grew from between the feathers and onyx studs on her skull like a sudden sprout of grotesque hairs.

Sarthinas inched close to Tetsomos, his eyes set firm on the white gryphon, gawking in disgusted fascination as the dull fleshy wires squirmed, growing and growing, stretching toward the inner halo. Flashes of blue-white lightning sparked throughout their lengths in constant currents.

Her brain is clawing for the halos.

He pulled himself away from the sight and turned to Tetsomos. The blue feral leaned his head in.

"What is to be done?" Tetsomos whispered.

Sarthinas first priority was to inspect Tetsomos for any indication of injury from the skirmish with Centreya. As his own blood weeping tail evidenced, her arcane blade was a beautifully wicked weapon, and the fear of what it might have done to Tetsomos had never left his mind. Though from what he spotted, aside from superficial nicks to the multifaceted blue scales, Tetsomos was unharmed.

"Caever has to be thrown off-kilter--"

Sarthinas paused mid whisper. Out of the periphery of his vision, laying a few paces from Centreya, that very same arcane blade glinted. An idea too glinted to life in his mind. He didn't know exactly what the glass like material the blade had been crafted from was, but what he did know was Centreya had rained twinkling shrapnel at him by shattering it with a mere strike, and then the weapon had made itself whole again from its fragments. If they were able to repeat such an assault...

Caever's threads of grey matter attached themselves to the edges of the inner halo, the electricity inside of them continued to dance from end to end. The outer halo started to rotate, rattling and grinding against an intangible hindrance.

"Why are you so resistant to me sharing my insight with the dragons? Do you think their resolve will wane? Do you think they will be mired in shame?"

"I will not allow you to violate their minds with your dictated empathy." Centreya growled through a beak clamped tight in exertion.

As the gryphons duelled with their voices and arcane arts, Sarthinas eyed the pale glass blade. He laid a paw on his sheathed Sovereign Spite and angled his head to get a rough measure of the distance between him and Caever. His long sword would make a decent projectile, but as strong as he was, he doubted he could make it soar high and far enough.

"Tetsomos," He shifted, putting his hilted blade on display for the blue feral. "When I say, take my sword and make it fly like a ballista bolt."

It was an inelegant method, but it might just serve. He needed a few seconds, not much else. Tetsomos flicked his brilliant green eyes at Sovereign Spite for an instant, then went back to watching Caever. He gave a single nod.

"Empathy is never a violation, even when it has to be compelled." Caever said.

Her outer ebony halo completed a rotation, gaining momentum as it entered another spin, forcing its way through Centreya's counterbalancing. The fleshy wires of Caever's grey matter twisted and wrapped themselves around the inner halo, decorating it like a hideous wreath. Her eyes still closed, the white gryphon stretched her wings while pushing her palms together, interlacing her fingers.

She looks so serene. Sarthinas thought before a sudden, bizarre sensation of vertigo dizzied him, like the onset of intoxication.

He swooned, shaking his head as he blinked hard. The misty imprint of an image flickered on his every blink, vague and undefined in the momentary darkness of his squeezed eyelids. Each blink solidified the picture. Lining it, inking it, shading it, colouring it, until he was able to recognize the naked form of a feathered creature perched on a flat rock, under a sky wrought with swirling dark clouds. A gryphon, clad in white feathers from crown to foot. Feathers, yes, but they were wrong. They were ragged, frayed, withered. The wind that stirred the clouds plucked the weakest feathers and carried them on an invisible stream, leaving behind one of many dappled bald spots. Then there were the wings. Great bare thin spidery spines, their elongated skeletal joints at rest at the gryphons back. Naked and exposed. Useless.

Useless. A whisper sighed in his mind.

A creeping swell of anguish wormed its way through him. He put a paw to Tetsomos's flank and leaned into him.

"Dragons, stand! She is oppressing your mind and imposing hers!" Centreya barked.

_She's right. This vision, this memory, isn't mine. This sorrow isn't mine.

Isn't it?_

The sickened gryphon in the vision turned its head to gaze at him. It owned Caever's narrow eyes.

What happened to your wings? It spoke in his mind.

Before he was aware of trying to resist, Sarthinas mentally replied.

Some dragons are born without them, it is how it is.

The infirmed gryphon rose from the rock and stood, unfurling its skeletal wings with cruel deliberation.

What happened to your wings?

I never had them - I should have had them - I was meant to have them - wasn't I?

Then, it was him standing there on that flat rock, his wings a pair of leathery stumps, pathetic in their attempt to stretch. A surge of grief overwhelmed him.

What happened to my wings?

_They were stolen.

They withered in the egg.

Who is to blame?

No one, this is how it is.

You are degenerated, a lesser version of your ancestry. A poor replica of the Primordial Dragons.

No, I--they were lost.

What else have you lost?

Balenu._

WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO US? WHY ARE OUR WINGS GONE? His and her voice entwined exploded in his mind.

"Where are our wings?!" Sarthinas cried out, collapsing against a writhing Tetsomos. The blue feral lashed his head from side to side, growling unintelligible words.

Indignation, misery, despair. All surged into a monstrous internal tornado, throwing debris of grief, torment and sheer, stark pain around in his skull. He had been a brewing storm, one in a subtle churn since the Insomnivore in the dividing woods had stirred it. Caever had introduced the ideal catalyst to riot it; her own anguish wracked mind. Now, his earlier subdued misery bled through.

What is to blame?

"I can't suffer this." He whispered.

"I can't suffer this." He moaned.

"I CAN'T SUFFER THIS!" He roared, digging his claws into the side of his skull.

"Yet, I do." Caever said, her words coming twofold through his ears and mind.

Who do we blame?

"Enough!" Centreya bellowed while her arms shuddered in strain.

Within the vision, silhouettes of other beings materialized in the background and marched toward where he stood on the flat rock with his sad, feeble wings. Anthropomorphic animals, legions of them, surged forward. Each was a varied species, and each had varied signs of malady: A wolf with its glorious white coat specked with bald patches, an alligator with a toothy grimace of cracked and broken teeth, a lion with its eyes covered by a strip of white cloth, a horse limping on every step. An armada of the infirmed. There was no misery in the collective consciousness of this sad march; there was only a consensus of rage.

Primordial dragons inflicted this on us. Their mouths moved, but the voice that resonated out was all his own.

Primordial dragons ensured we were faulty from birth.

Primordial dragons are my kin. I sound like - I sound like -- Him.

A lull quelled the internal storm for the space of a breath, and in that instant, Caever was the sole presence in the vision, appearing as she did outside of it; untarnished pearlescent feathers coating her body, her wings full and healthy, and the dual halos above her, the inner coiled by tendrils of her mind and the outer making its slow turns.

Then she vanished, and the sickened anthropomorphic animals were there once more, speaking with his voice.

Primordial dragons conquer us as they did humans a decade ago. The Primordial dragons hunger for dominance. The accord with the humans stole their game. They invented us as substitutes to hunt and rule. They taught the humans how to breed with them, an arrogant peace offering to give birth to hybrids of their majesty. You are a result of their lesson. Humans learned they could breed with species outside of the Primordial dragons. The Primordial dragons knew the humans would be enticed by this. Soldiers. Farmers. Slaves. The more we were bred, the more we were born less and less. Our lands, our bodies, our minds are a new generation of prey for the Primordial dragons. The Primordial dragons designed this. The Primordial dragons ensured this. The Primordial dragons are inwardly disgusting beyond any symptom of degradation inflicted upon us. The Primordial dragons stole your wings.

No, this is not me. This confusing rhetoric and this contemptuous obsession against dragonkind. My kind. I don't have these poisonous notions in me. This cannot be me. This is Balenu. This is the Pierced.

This is Caever.

A titanic pair of copper draconic wings swelled from the horizon in the vision, rising higher and higher, expanding larger and larger. All present in the vision turned to watch. The enormous wings unfurled, puncturing and scattering the blackened clouds. Their membrane of rusty orange blotted out the background with their titanic leather gossamer.

My wings?

The wings gave a single overwhelming lash, bellowing out a shockwave that decimated the cloud and landscape in a roil of thrashing wind a typhoon would never dare challenge. As it reached the army of infirmed anthromorphs, they were dissipated to nothing, leaving only footprints where they had stood.

Then, the vision itself evaporated. Sarthinas snapped his eyes open, his slit pupils thin as needles.

"Wrong pressure point to poke at." He murmured.

"Your compassion for dragonkind is a fine phalanx." Caever mumbled.

Caever's outer halo wavered in its revolutions with the tiniest waver of speed. Centreya detected this hesitation and seized upon it. Utilizing her arcane grip, she twisted her wrists, forcing the dual halos to tilt upward, redirecting their influence away.

The pair of dragons had little time to relish in the respite.

"Tetsomos, now!" Sarthinas called.

Tetsomos shook off the mental residue of his own cognitive ordeal with a sway of his head, and then snapped at Sovereign Spite's grip sheathed at Sarthinas's side, clutching it in his jaws. He made a rough estimation of the trajectory out of the corner of his eyes as he swung his head, parting his jaws and hurling the sword at Caever with a roar. Soverign Spite flew at the white gryphon with blistering velocity, spinning once, and then spearing through her left shoulder. Caever gasped as she was driven into the bookcase and pinned up against it. Her dual halos sagged in the air, the outer ring coming to a complete stop.

Sarthinas meanwhile had moved and squatted beside Centreya and her pale glass sword, his paw hovered above its grip. He exchanged an expression of wide eyed surprise with Tetsomos.

Caever wriggled and squirmed, then went still as she tried to regain composure, closing her eyes. The dual halos shuddered.

"Manipulators always overextend," Centreya said, her arms still stretched out with her talons curled in their ethereal hold on the halos. "You will tell me what you and your cult hoped to achieve here in these halls."

Caever scoffed and kept her eyes closed, focusing. Centreya gave a sharp pulling motion with her arms, in turn tugging the dual halos and stretching the attached fleshy grey tendrils. Caever screamed. Sarthinas winced, icy daggers stabbing into his gut at the horrific sound.

We suffer this.

"We cannot let her live." Centreya said.

Those icy daggers twisted in his insides. Nothing about the suggestion seemed right, fair or just. He knew now Caever and the Pierced were expressing their anguish, lashing out against the world. They were fighting to find a reason for their suffering, looking to reconcile their pain in whatever way they could, to allocate it to whatever enemy they deemed to blame.

The Primordial dragons designed this, they said. Is there even a suggestion of truth in their crusade? The hate my feral brothers and sisters are at the brunt of is what is truly unfair.

The Pierced had decided on Dragonkind as the progenitors of their torment, and posed an inexorable threat to his kin, as well as countless other innocents. Caever herself was the embodiment of their motives, and illustrated it through her obscene art, one which he had no doubt the white gryphon had intended to burn their minds away with. The hazy fragments of her mental invasion had taught him that too; she will not stop. That degree of fury and misery was uncontainable. Caever would never relent until the world knew of her pain. The Pierced's pain. How many minds had she invaded, compelled into her crushing empathy and then left ruined? Centreya was right, the beautiful white gryphon had to die.

Caever opened her eyes and grasped at Sovereign Spite's hilt, then began to tug at the blade in her shoulder. Centreya yanked the halos up in a sharp tug, pulling those vulnerable wires of grey. Caever moaned and gripped the sides of her skull.

"Caever, why are you here?" Centreya asked.

"Does anything dominate the mind like pain?" Caever mused, her voice sluggish. "The instant our minds register it, that is all there is to us. Thought, memory, emotion, none has the presence pain commands. It ebbs like the others, true, but if we do happen to forget about it, we search for it within us, seeking it to confirm its existence, but also begging not to find it. Pain is the most primal. It is alive beyond consciousness."

Sarthinas frowned to Centreya.

"She has exposed her mind, and I am unravelling it." Centreya said.

"Let's put a stop to this suffering." He said.

"I must know why she is here in my temple, and then I shall."

Sarthinas swallowed. To him, this seemed indistinguishable from torture, and the Centreya he had known took no pleasure in such a thing. He understood her motivation and determination, her home, a paradise of wisdom and knowledge, had been invaded as their minds had been. Yet, there was a subtle ferocity in her eyes and apathy in her posture and voice that chilled him. Caever's suffering would extend as long as Centreya wanted it to, whether for information, or as punishment.

Out the corner of his eye, he spotted Tetsomos rearing his frill, glaring at him.

"Tetsomos?"

Is Caever still within his mind? Even in her current state?

No, Tetsomos was looking past him. Sarthinas turned his head just as a torrent of blue-white lightning lashed out. He crossed his arms in front of his face, bracing for the vicious current to follow. It never did. Centreya thrusted a hand out beside his head, and the whip of lightning funnelled toward her palm. Crackles of energy tickled his ear and tingled across his cheek scales as it coursed by into her grasp. The black gryphon clenched her hand around the flickering charge in her palm, snuffing it out like a candle flame, her eyes never leaving Caever.

Sarthinas lowered his arms. There stood the red vixen, the very same one he had encountered on the upper most tier. He had forgotten about her as soon as he had dropped down the black grated tiers to aid Tetsomos, leaving her up there.

"Sarthinas, please incapacitate my student." Centreya instructed.

The red vixen extended her paw. He now noticed her arm was lined with thick silvery strips, running from her shoulder blade, winding around the length of her arm and through her fur, like a woven gauntlet. It ended at her clawtips, capping them with the silvery metal. In the space between her clawtips, lightning began to spark to life.

He lurched forward and struck the vixen in the forehead. There was a good hundred pound weight difference between them, so he made sure to handicap his full strength as to not do anything worse than knock her out. Somewhat thankfully, he had plenty of practice on the delusional villagers.

They rest now, at least.

She recoiled hard. Sarthinas darted in and caught her before she could hit the marble floor, then eased her to lie on it.

"How many Insomnivores are in these halls?" He wondered aloud.

"One less thanks to you, coward. You murdered one of my defenceless brethren while he fed." Caever said.

"Defenceless my scaled rump."

He tortured me with Balenu.

"Your cult members intervene by proxy of my student, and you have the audacity to even allude to cowardice? What is truly cowardly here is the subtle veil one of your members has had on us since you stepped out."

Sarthinas turned to look at Centreya and noticed the black gryphon had only a single arm focused on the dual halos instead of both. Her other laid slack at her side, the arm that had discharged the lightning.

"They have?" He asked.

Centreya nodded.

"Her beauty is a fabrication."

Sarthinas frowned and gazed at the gorgeous white gryphon. For a flash, the image of the wretched, infirmed gryphon with those great skeletal wings superimposed itself over Caever.

"Everything you saw was the truth, dragon." She said.

"Except now, outside your control, you are distracting our perceptions." Sarthinas replied as he redirected his gaze upward, scanning the lofty walkways for the influencing Insomnivore. There was darkness, the web of tiers, and the vague shapes of books populating the titan bookcases. No sign of it, yet. If it had line of sight on them to exert its ability, then he could get line of sight on it.

"Ah, distracting. This is why you made yourself known to us, you are a flagrant misdirection. Whatever it is your cult sought out, they are still searching for it." Centreya nodded.

"Ainux, leave me and retreat! Take what you have and go." Caever called out.

Sarthinas whipped his head around as he detected a faint clang, clang, clang of footsteps across the grated metal somewhere on the highest tier. He spotted a fleeting silhouette in the meek light.

"Got him." He said.

"Take my sword!" Centreya ordered.

No time to question it, after all, his Sovereign Spite was out of reach nailed through Caever's shoulder. Sarthinas knelt and wrapped his paws around the grip of the pale glass sword. He hefted, almost catapulting it over his head as its weightlessness caught him off guard. He was momentarily stunned, frowning at the bastard sword-esque size of the thing. Tetsomos padded up behind him.

"A chase." The blue feral said, crouching down, priming himself like a coiled spring.

"You feel up for it?" Sarthinas asked.

"Absolutely."

Caever honed her mental barrage at us both, and he has shaken it off better than I could ever hope. What did she make him see?

"I could not admire your resilience more, my friend." Sarthinas said as he climbed on and seated himself in the position on Tetsomos's back he was growing accustomed with, one set of claws gripping a large pointed shoulder scale while his other paw clutched the pale glass sword, no heavier than Sovereign Spite.

"Let us fly." Tetsomos announced.

Let us fly. The nooks at his upper back where his wings belonged itched.

I saw my wings, I saw them unfurl.

They were stolen. Everything you saw was the truth.

He shook his head as Tetsomos sprung up from the marble floor and gave a set of heavy pumps with his wings, getting them aloft. They bobbed on each wing beat, climbing a tier each time. Sarthinas gazed down at Ceaver. She held his gaze until Tetsomos took him around a bookcase corner, out of sight.

***

Centreya watched the dragons go, waves of wing swept wind nuzzling at her dark feathers.

I was arrogant. I assumed the Temple was impervious, shielded by its sanctity. Balenu, the Confounders will never forget your betrayal. We will do the job you were meant to do.

"I missed this place." Caever said.

Centreya turned her attention back to the white gryphon, and stifled a grimace. Whereas before a brilliant pearlescent example of her kind had been, now slumped up against the bookcase was a spectre of what Caever had been; a haggard and wretched thing, with great spinal wings and diminishing feathers. The Insomnivore she had ordered to flee had taken the façade of her beauty with it.

"You chose to leave."

"I chose to act. You may be content to shamble through these halls as you wither, but my mind sought to actively find our ascension."

Such a waste.

"You will never even glimpse ascension. Instead of mastering your own mind, you oppress it on others."

"What does that say of you and your scholars, when their minds were so easy to be oppressed upon by us?"

From around the edges of the bookcases on the lower tiers, her eleven disciples materialized, and alongside them, their mental masters.

My greatest fear as a teacher, leaving the minds of my students unprepared. Great Teacher, I have become lax. Forgive me.

Her arcane hold on the halos weakened. Caever simply laughed.