FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Treetops rushed by and clouds burst apart as a colorful round craft fashioned of stone propelled itself through the sky without any visible means of support. Its speed lessened, and the craft began to descend, drifting slowly, as if lost in thought.

"By now, we should almost be on top of Tonkro Falkdovo. Search for any sign of anything that might be made by our ancestors, and be ready to dive!" Clanmistress Lihuvi announced to her Chalakdoluv clan. The rest of the clan members were already getting to their scrying bubbles to remotely comb the forest in search of anything unusual.

"Understood clanmistress." Ankniv's filtered voice replied through the Sojolosr craft's pilot socket. He powered down the engine and pulled his head out of the interface socket and slid his wings out of the control rudders, blinking as his orb-like eyes adjusted to the daylight.

Ankniv looked around and turned to one of the scryers. "...Sadavi, do you ever think of joining the Kruxo's mission? A modhuvakn of that complexity would make you quite rich."

Sadavi stroked his whiskers in thought as he kept looking through the scrying machine. "To be honest I am tired of building machines. I would personally prefer to join Rokav legion."

Ankniv's ears twitched as he looked at Sadavi sideways. "...What? The army? Sadavi, where is your head? You're of the Vi caste! The army is no place for you, especially the Rokav legion of all things! They're the frontline!"

Sadavi frowned, huffed through his leaf nose and slightly closed his wings around himself defensively. "I may be a Vi, but I don't want to stay trapped in one place for the rest of my life building that damned thing. No one even knows where the Kruxo's modhuvakn is, the builders all have to pledge their silence for life. Besides, I'm as capable as any of you Nivs. There'd be lots of opportunities to learn overseas, so--"

"Clanmistress, I found something!" another Chalakdoluv called out from somewhere behind them.

Ankniv reluctantly let the conversation dwindle with a nod of his head and returned to his pilot socket.

Lihuvi jogged over to Wruniv, the scryer who had found something. She clapped her paws together and giggled. "Excellent, your tiny little eyes be praised."

Wruniv sighed at Lihuvi's joke and continued. "What we seek is a ravine, hidden in the shadows of a mountain. The structures look like they were carved into the sides of the chasm for some reason." Wruniv's voice trailed off uneasily.

Lihuvi blinked and went to consult the terrain map. She pressed her sunstone into a hexagonal indentation, carved into the side of a pedestal with a basin in it. The bottom of the basin had more hexagons carved into it. The surface raised until it became even with the edge of the lip of the basin edges and made a perfectly flat surface. Then the hexagons split into smaller and smaller hexagons as the map rendered into a primitive representation of the geography that Wruniv had seen.

"Odd," Lihuvi mused. "In all of written Chalakdoluv history, there's never been any mention of our ancestors living... underground." She chose her last word carefully. She had almost gravely insulted their ancestors. She had nearly said "living like Mib'Vorrout." Mud dwellers.

An uneasy silence filled the air as everyone gathered around the map with her and stared.

For Chalakdoluv, living on the surface of the earth like common sapients was filthy and unclean. No honorable Chalak would willingly live on the earth if they could help it. Even so, they normally made exception for their great ancestors, who had lived before the time when they had escaped from the harsh earth, before the Ascension. But this was different. Finding ruins built underground on purpose defied all reason. None of them could imagine why someone's ancestors would wallow in the dirt like that when their species was blessed with beautiful wings. Not even the Shamed would live in such a place as that.

Everyone was looking at this archaeological find with fading spirits or disgust.

"It could be a dumping ground," one voice suggested.

"Yes, this place is nothing but an excrement site that was left unburied." Lihuvi replied in relieved agreement and folded her wings around herself. "Ankniv, move us to another spot. We're probably close to something valuable."

"Wait." Ankniv held his hand up and moved to the map controls where Lihuvi stood "May I?"

"..." She gave him an annoyed glare and moved aside

"This is no dumping ground." Ankniv pointed out the stairs wrapping around the temple on the outside. "You can all see how deep this ravine is. We won't know what this place is for sure until we find out what's at the bottom."

"Only trash and predators are at the bottom. It just doesn't show on the map," Lihuvi said flatly. "Get back to your station, pilot."

He stood there zooming in on the spot even more "Have patience and look at this again. What about the symmetry, and the carvings on the inside? This almost looks like..."

"A temple...and it's upside down," Sadavi said, finishing Ankniv's thought as he looked at the three dimensional rendering of the ravine. It had a regularly segmented structure on the inside that might be a series of chambers leading to something at the bottom.

Lihuvi stood still, pondering about such a structure. "This cannot be a place of worship. Even mib'varrout do not build such places in this fashion."

"That we know of." Ankniv refuted, and continued. "What if this is the missing link between the past and present, Lihuvi? No one remembers how the Great Ascension happened. This could be our chance to find out. Maybe our ancestors have an answer for us here."

She flapped her wings in resignation. "If that is what you think, then you will be the one to venture there."

"...Then I will." He didn't take his eyes off the sunken temple

"Really, now? " Lihuvi raised her gray wings in annoyance.

"I will!" He also raised his wings in defiance

"You'll be alone in this."

"I know, but I won't take long."

"Ffff!" Lihuvi's head darted up in a sharp, exasperated hiss, then lowered in reluctant acceptance. "Very well. Take the gear you need and hurry, we have more important things to look for." Everyone followed her lead and walked back to their places, leaving Ankniv and Sadavi still standing at the map.

They were silent for a moment "..I guess I'll join you. I'm the one who wanted to see new things anyway." Sadavi shrugged and patted Ankniv's shoulder as he walked off to gather gear for himself as well.

Sometime later both Ankniv and Sadavi walked the forest floor towards the ravine hidden in the shadow of the mountain. Even from ground view it was still nearly impossible to see.

Ankniv noted that Sadavi brought along a spear made of Raxanodur, a crystal material, created in the Great Ascension through alchemical means, that could almost perfectly mimic the properties of metal, being malleable, sturdy, flexible and even, to an extent, magnetic.

"For predators. It was expensive." Sadavi brandished it proudly

Ankniv shrugged and kept walking along the ravine edge. "Look, it's completely carved all over." He scratched at the dirt and flora under his clawed toes and uncovered a carved stone tile. "Is this whole place artificial?"

"Could it perhaps be that this temple of yours is also some... ponderous modhuvakn?"

"Normally I'd laugh at such nonsense, but who knows?"

Sadavi pointed to a small platform floating in the middle of the ravine directly above the temple. "That's how we get in."

They both leaped into the air and flew to the platform, landing on it with grace. It was adorned with an archaic symbol neither of them recognized, which was intriguing since they were members of the archeological clan, and would be the most likely ones to know what these things meant.

The levitating platform slowly descended into the ravine. Farther and farther from the sunlight it took them. If the mountain's shadow was oppressive, then the darkness in the pit was suffocating.

The two Chalakdoluv ignited their sunstone lamps, flooding the stone chasm with a dull amber light, and beheld the ancient monolith that rose before them. Like the dorsal fin of some deep sea predator, the jagged stone crest of the temple jutted into the stagnant air, engraved with a primitive depiction of a Chalakdoluv with both arms and wings outstretched victoriously. Farther down the geometric temple walls were more engravings of a battle long past with hundreds of small pictograms of Chalakdoluv lying sideways, dead.

Ankniv took in the view. "So this is a tomb. Makes sense then, I remember that it's a common practice for mib'varrout to bury their dead. Maybe these particular Chalak copied that particular ritual?" Ankniv offered.

"I don't know, this whole place still seems strange. If it was a tomb for the dead then why is it so well hidden?" Sadavi asked.

The platform stopped at temple's door. Chalakdoluv doors were commonly wider than they were tall to accommodate wings. Small doors in Chalak society evoked feelings of mistrust and secrecy. But this door was a perfect square. The message was clear: this temple was not meant to be found.

They looked at each other and opened the stone door anyway.