FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

NINE

Colem smelled cinnamon, and immediately pressed the air around himself outward and up, letting fresh air blow in from farther away. That spicy scent was a warning, a signal of the supernatural force surrounded Turick, which had so drastically altered the physiologies of everyone who had breathed it for any length of time. Colem liked his digestive system just the way it was, so he made sure to keep any trace of cinnamon out of his nose, despite the strain of maintaining a conjured wind.

Turick was pacing by the creek, a short hike beyond the mess of cum Colem had passed amongst the trees. The leopard looked haggard and frayed, shaking his head constantly and muttering to himself, distracted enough that Colem was able to get within just a few yards without being noticed. At least Turick had cleaned himself off.

The big cat was different now, though, bigger, more musclebound. He still had a runner's lithe physique, but his muscles were all more defined now, rippling and bulging every time they flexed with his restless movements. That, and he had to be at least seven feet tall, maybe more, putting him head and shoulders above Colem's ears.

This was Colem's first time seeing the huge package bobbing and jiggling between the leopard's legs, too, the sheath as big around as the golden retriever's head, with the balls bigger still. What arcane trap had Turick stumbled into?

It was something Colem would be sure to discover, but not now. Now, he had only one goal, and that was to eliminate the threat Turick had become. He had never disliked the leopard, not really, at least no more than he disliked anyone else, but one had to be pragmatic, and Turick was too dangerous to leave alive. It was as simple as that.

Back turned to the canine and head slumped forward, Turick stopped pacing and let out a shuddering sigh. "You can stop hiding, Colem. I know you're there."

The retriever stepped out from behind the thick maple trunk he'd been standing behind, the jar under his arm thrumming with concealed power. "You know why I'm here?"

"I know you shouldn't be here at all. You all need to stay away from me." The leopard started pacing again, only glancing toward Colem every once in a while.

The dog shook his shaggy head. "You need to be dealt with, Turick. I think a part of you knows that."

The overgrown leopard's arms tucked in around his middle, hugging himself as he came to a stop again, trembling. "I...I just need to last until the masters get back. I can stay out here until then. They'll know what to do."

Colem unscrewed the lid from the clay jar. "I know what to do," he muttered grimly.

"Solierre!" Turick abruptly exclaimed, his eyes locking on the canine. "Is he...did he...?"

"He'll pull through." Colem drew a pinch of white dust from the jar and calmly started scattering pinches of it on the ground around him, beginning to draw a rough circle around his feet.

Turick sagged with relief when he heard that, though Colem couldn't help but notice with a twinge of disgust that the leopard's obscene sheath had filled out, his round tip beginning to peek from the pale fur.

"What about your other friends?" Colem asked, bending his knees and lowering down to add details to the circle around him. Turick made no move to stop him, merely watching from a safe distance, well out of arm's reach. "The huntsmen. Will they pull through, Turick?" He already knew the answer to that, of course. All that was left of the huntsmen was a hundred or so gallons of leopard cum in the forest behind him. But he wanted to keep Turick off balance. Colem didn't intend to lose the upper hand, and people never thought clearly when they let their emotions get involved.

The leopard didn't look as wracked with guilt as Colem had expected, though, merely sad and resigned. "No. None of them will." When he looked down at Colem again, there was certainly regret there, but it didn't seem to be for what he had done. Rather, Colem thought the regret was from what Turick believed he was about to do. The leopard's penis was emerging, slowly but steadily, and the golden retriever had to focus on keeping the air swirling around them to stop the cinnamon poison from settling.

Colem could have tried blasting the leopard with concentrated magic, but the truth was, his earlier stunt with reviving Solierre had been about the extent of his power, at least of what he could channel into a single instant's spell. Besides that, he sensed that Turick was now somehow fortified against most forms of magic, the curse infusing him warding off other sources of supernatural influence. Colem would not be able to kill Turick, not by himself.

So he would have something else kill Turick for him.

The leopard took a slow step toward him, but Colem calmly looked up while putting the finishing touches on the geometric rune he'd drawn on the ground with glowing silver dust. "Do you know why I'm here, Turick?" he asked again.

"I do," the leopard answered, closing the rest of the distance between them. "But it doesn't matter. You made a mistake."

Colem let a small smile twitch at his muzzle. "I'm here," he said, taking a step back out from the circle he'd drawn, "because I've always wanted an excuse to summon a dark fey." Then he swept the open jar upward in a vertical arc, spraying out the rest of the glowing dust above the rune on the ground, and with a chanelled spiral of magical force, he swept the dust into a swirling whirlwind centered on the drawn circle, a column of sparks and blurred light.

Turick stumbled backward, startled, and Colem's smile grew, his excitement getting the better of him. He opened the gateway, unsure what exactly would come out, only that it would be completely under his command.

There was a hiss, and the miniature tornado turned darker, stray ribbons of light arcing out in sudden bursts. The hiss grew louder, until all of a sudden, a long and sinuous shape sprang up from the ground and into the air, in the middle of the swirling power.

It was a huge serpent of some sort, hovering weightless in the air, but most of its form was blurred at first, with the gateway still funneling up out of the bare earth. All Colem could make out clearly was a pair of fiery yellow eyes, the slitted pupils locked wrathfully on his own.

It was all the retriever could do to close the portal, leaving the snake floating in front of him in sudden silence. Its body was as big around as Colem was, black with yellow splotches and twenty or thirty feet long. He couldn't tell, exactly, with it coiling itself in midair.

It didn't move, not until Colem wrenched his eyes from its furious gaze and looked instead past it, at Turick and croaked out, "Kill him." Then the floating serpent snapped toward the leopard so quickly, it might as well have been a black bolt of lightning, twisting through the air and striking immediately at Turick's body.

The fey snake didn't bite at the leopard, instead ramming its nose into Turick's belly hard enough to make the big cat double over in shock and pain, but to the leopard's credit, he didn't let himself get entangled in the serpent's coils that easily. When the snake slithered through the air around him, he grabbed its body in both paws, and with more force than Colem could believe, slammed the snake down into the ground, drawing a sharp and angry hiss from the creature. "What did you do?" Turick shouted at the dog.

"Don't worry," Colem said, watching avidly. "Once it's done with you, it will return to where it came from."

"You conjured..." Turick grunted, spinning and punching the snake between the eyes when it tried to ram itself into him again. "You conjured a monster? Isn't that against some rule or another?"

"Master Elias will doubtless have words for me, but you've killed people, Turick." The serpent darted in with three successive strikes, all of them in the space of less than half a second. Turick somehow caught the first two on his arms, but the third hit him on the side of the head and sent him sprawling. "This isn't a game, and I didn't come here to fight fair." The fey snake wasted no time. As soon as Turick was up on his hands and knees, the serpent swept around the leopard's midsection, wrapping itself around the feline's arms and squeezing viciously. The leopard fell forward, the side of his face slamming into the ground.

Colem took a resolute step forward, schooling his excited grin with a deep breath. "I came here to end this."

The serpent continued looping its body snugly around the leopard's thrashing form, but the big cat had his legs spread in a wide stance, and remarkably, the snake wasn't able to draw Turick's knees back together. It surely tried to, and the leopard didn't have an easy time holding his own, but with a tense growl and a visible tremble from his bulging leg muscles, he kept his feet braced in the dirt. It was a lewd display, the leopard face down in the pine needles with his round, muscular rump in the air, his tail thrashing and his thighs parted, but it was keeping his lower body from being bound as completely as his upper.

Instead, the fey serpent coiled its lower half in figure eights around the spotted feline's thick thighs, keeping them immobile despite their sturdy stance. The end of its black tail squeezed up between Turick's legs to complete the snake's dominating hold, curling up underneath the leopard's groin to meet the coil gripping around his lower back. The serpent held Turick prone and motionless there. If Colem had a mind to, he could have taken advantage of that uplifted rear end, but he didn't have much interest in other males. That didn't stop him from staring at the leopard's package where it was squashed between the snake's coils, his balls bulging out to either side of the serpent's tail, his sheath straining around that ridiculously large penis. Even now, the leopard was halfway unsheathed, his rubbery length wobbling back and forth as he struggled.

Turick growled up at Colem, and the dog was surprised to see a determined, straining expression not just on Turick's face, but on the fey snake's, as well. It was struggling just to contain the leopard, where any other creature's bones would have been crushed to pulp under its squeeze. "Colem," the feline snarled. "Call it off."

"You know I can't do that, Turick," the retriever said calmly. "You can't control yourself. I don't want to have to do this, but it's the only way to keep the other apprentices safe."

"Colem..." the leopard repeated, but was distracted when the snake's head hovered up in front of his own, locking eyes with the big cat. The serpent's face wove slowly from side to side, as if sizing the leopard up. "Cole--" The reptile struck with its trademark lightning speed, its toothless mouth opening dramatically wide and thumping wetly around Turick's face, not quite reaching back to the leopard's neck.

This was it. Colem was going to watch the fey he'd summoned devour Turick whole.

Only, the serpent stopped after that initial bite, its eyes narrowing, head managing to tilt in confusion around the leopard's face.

Colem narrowed his eyes, as well, sensing something amiss in the energy around them. Both Turick and the fey serpent had their own unique magical aura, something beyond the leopard's cinnamon aroma that Colem continued to hold at bay. The auras pulsed every now and then, each with its own individual rhythm. What the sorcerous dog felt now... Those supernatural pulses weren't matching, exactly, but it was almost as if they were growing in harmony, like two musicians who just discovered that their solos could be combined to form a duet.

Colem's ears folded back against his head. "Oh shit."

The snake abruptly whipped its head back with a loud hiss, Turick gasping for fresh air with the serpent's saliva drooling from his cheeks and muzzle. The fey's hiss continued, growing louder, as it started whipping its first few feet from side to side.

Colem didn't know what was happening, not aside from what he could feel in their auras, so he slowly strafed around the entwined pair, back behind Turick's prone body.

At first, he couldn't make sense of what he was seeing. Nothing looked remarkable, except that he couldn't seem to find the end of the serpent's tail. It was still tucked back between Turick's legs, covering the crease of the leopard's butt from view, but when Colem looked more closely, the tail end of the pointed snake seemed to have burrowed itself right into the fur at the top of the feline's rump, right between the upper cheeks.

The dog gasped and took a startled step backward. That's exactly what was happening, the snake's tail somehow rooted right inside the leopard's body below the small of Turick's back, and Colem suddenly noticed that the leopard's own tail was nowhere to be seen. It should have been sprouting right where the snake's sinuous body was suddenly wedged.

Turick let out a loud, feral sounding roar, his body clenching, and Colem's eyes went wide as his conjured serpent was squeezed another inch or so into the feline's lower back. The snake's hissing got louder still, and it began frantically unwinding itself from around Turick, but Colem sensed that it was too late. Whatever was happening had already begun, and he didn't know how to stop it. "Don't let him go," he told the snake sharply, but the fey creature only paused, caught between unseen forces. "Wrap him back up. Now!"

The snake slowly, unsteadily began coiling back around Turick's body, but it met the leopard's glare once more, and this time the feline didn't look like the one who was trapped. Turick matched the snake's gaze and let out a low snarl. "Get off of me."

That quickly, Colem felt his control over the dark fey evaporate, snatched away from him by something stronger. Those harmonious pulses in the two creatures' magic grew stronger, meshing together seamlessly, and the snake's hiss almost sounded like a frightened wail as it was drawn further inside Turick's body, even as it whipped out obediently and uncoiled itself from around the feline.

Turick crouched there on the ground, pushing himself up to his hands and knees, and punched the side of his fist against the dirt with a loud groan. Colem could only watch as the snake unwound from around the leopard's legs and lifted itself into the air, weightless, as if trying to float free. But it was still pinned to the spot on Turick's back where the leopard's tail should have been, still getting drawn deeper and deeper up into the feline's back. It was happening faster, now, as Colem stared, until several feet of the serpent's body was gone from view.

Then the fey creature's wailing hiss became a shriek, its mouth opening wide and slitted eyes bulging, the front of its body thrashing in agony in the air above Turick's legs. Turick started screaming, too, a shouting roar that together with the snake's voice sent birds and animals scattering for miles around the creek's bank.

In four places on the leopard's back, two right over the tops of his shoulder blades and two right below, his spotted fur parted, splitting around four identical, black-scaled tendrils that slowly, painstakingly began to reach out from his body, quivering where they emerged. The snake's screeching wail only grew shriller, and as more of its body was enveloped in the leopard's, those tendrils grew longer, and longer, each of them three or four inches wide past their tapered tips.

Turick's claws came out, all twenty of them, and dug furrows through the dirt before he pounded his fist against the ground again, hard enough that Colem could feel the dirt under his own paw pads tremble. Then, slowly and painfully, the leopard began to stagger to his feet. He had to hunch forward to keep his balance, stumbling from side to side to adjust for the serpent's continued thrashing. The tendrils reaching out from his back were flailing wildly, too, slapping against each other, thudding down against the ground now that they were long enough, slicing through the air fast enough to send leaves and low branches flying.

Turick let out another roar, and this time his voice lowered to a rumbling groan at the end of it, his fists clenching hard enough to make his forearms bulge. His penis had finally retreated fully back into its sheath, but those oversized balls still jiggled about between his thighs as he tried to find his balance. The leopard reached up and grabbed at the sides of his face, hunching forward as more of the snake was drawn into him, and more of its divided body was pushed out through his upper back. "Colem..." he rumbled, looking up from under his eyebrows at the mage apprentice. "You self-important, arrogant ass." They locked eyes, and Colem froze in place, feeling his heart drop into his belly. "You're going to die, Colem. And with you, I don't think I'm going to feel a shred of guilt."

With his new scaled tail still wailing and thrashing behind him, Turick staggered a step toward the dog, and Colem found himself backpedaling until he bumped up against a tree. Then he spun around, facing back toward Belleton.

Colem had never run so hard in his life.