FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

• Author note: This is a fan sequel to Mandag's story "Locks of Gold and Silver". It's brutal, but also exceptionally well written.

There was an odd familiarity to the screaming in the distance. The sound of magical fire erupting into pained howls of death amid the futile efforts of the doomed to save themselves.

He wondered if it would be Trace Legacy again. He could hear angry shouts of what sounded like humans, but no, it couldn't be. He'd been a powerful underworld leader once, and then again. He'd employed dangerous cutthroats to do his bidding and defend his home, but that was a lifetime ago. Two in fact, he was old now and felt it in his bones.

His executioner could not be Trace Legacy for the simple fact that he could hear sounds of battle. The dregs the old wolf could afford to employ these days were nothing compared to what he'd once commanded. They were the desperate, the injured and the unskilled, given just enough magic to be worth half a show against what would otherwise have been their betters. There would be no fight if Trace Legacy were knocking at his door a third time.

The wolf leaned against his cane as he hobbled across the room from the table where he'd been working, to the chair in the middle of the room. It was tatty and worn, nothing like the plush velvet he'd once sat in. It was second hand and to his frustration, he had never quite worn it in well enough to be truly comfortable in it, not like he'd once been.

The trip didn't take him long, what passed for his office was a small back room of a modest house on the edge of town. He had some shelves half full of the few books he'd salvaged from his old library and a table in the corner where he did magic. He didn't even collect the mana crystals there before heading for his chair. There was going to be no fight today, he was old and tired. He pushed aside the paperwork that covered the small, rough desk in front of his chair, it no longer mattered, since everyone it pertained to was probably now dead or dying.

Finally the old wolf preened himself, pushing aside a few locks of once gold, now silver hair and tidying the whisker that had started growing curved a few years back. He could at least look good for his death.

Whoever was coming to kill him seemed to be taking their time though, so the old wolf reached down for the bottle of whisky he kept in the bottom drawer of the desk and poured himself a cheap tumbler of the stuff. Then he took as big of a swig from the bottle as he could manage because he was going to die anyway so why not.

He had the alcohol away and out of sight just in time for the door of his back room to explode off its hinges and flop down on the floor in front of him. Slowly, the old wolf raised his glass and took a long, dignified sip as two humans in long black robes stepped into the room; one after the other because the small house he could afford didn't have a corridor big enough for the two to stand side by side. They had silver hair and red eyes, and perhaps resembled each other enough to be siblings, though he couldn't tell much more. His eyesight wasn't what it used to be and even then he'd never been one for spotting human facial features.

"So to whom do I owe the pleasure of my death?" he asked as the wolf inspected the two. The robes looked human, in that particular style mages in the new kingdom liked to wear, though they did not bear the insignia of the templar, curiously.

"You have no one to blame but yourself." The one on the right spoke in a tone much higher pitched than he'd been expecting. He squinted to look at them and discovered that under the robes she did in fact have some cleavage. Great, he was going to be killed by a woman, it seemed fitting but he'd still hoped for better.

The other stepped forward, a scowl flaring across his face, and it was his face for the voice was much lower, as he growled "We're here to make you pay for your crimes." The old wolf could see the burning fire of youth that had gone out in him long ago, so long ago that he wondered how exactly he'd so angered them. It had been a long time since he'd been such a force to reckon with that it left people so furious with him, this boy seemed too young to remember him from those days and too angry to have been hired by someone else.

The old wolf swirled his drink nonchalantly, and evidently to the annoyance of the pair who seemed to grow irritated at his lack of resolve in the face of their anger. In fact, they seemed to be waiting for him to respond and the old wolf wondered if they had some script in their minds of how they planned for this to go down. He decided he could at least ruin that. "Anything in particular?" he asked smoothly, before taking a gentle sip.

The two both blinked in surprise and the old wolf grinned. He still had it, that charm and presence to put people on the back foot when he was staring down the edge of a blade. "What?!" one of them asked incredulously, he missed which.

"Well I've committed a lot of crimes." He took another sip while he paused for effect "Which ones are you here to make me pay for?" The two seemed taken aback at his tone so he continued "Help an old wolf out, my memory isn't what it used to be."

He went to take another sip from his glass, which was growing frustratingly low. It wouldn't do to finish the drink since that would ruin the image, and if they kept letting him prattle on like this he'd soon have to moderate himself. Thankfully though, the right human raised a hand and cast some magic. The old wolf had been expecting to die in that moment, but instead the tumbler was snatched from his grasp and sent sailing across the room where it smashed against the fireplace.

The scowl across the girl grew even redder than that of her companion and the old wolf wondered if she was about to pop a few blood vessels in her eyes from how angry she was. "You hurt our mother." So siblings after all. She choked on the words, the very carefully chosen words that still hurt her to speak. Her brother remained stoic, but the old wolf remembered how he used to hurt women; they all knew what she meant, though he couldn't remember doing that to so many human women. Perhaps this was someone an underling had raped at his behest? He'd hoped to die for something more personal than that, but oh well.

The old wolf glanced at his now empty hand quisically, and maintained his calm as he reached down for the bottle again, popping the cork off with his thumb before turning to look into her red, angry eyes. "Do you have even the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?" he grinned as he brought the bottle to his lips and tipped his head back, pouring it straight down his throat.

His disregard for her fury had the desired effect, though to her credit, she stayed her hand and let her brother speak instead. While still angry, he seemed to be able to contain it better than his sister and held his voice as he spoke. "Why don't we narrow it down for you."

Then, something very unexpected happened, something the old wolf hadn't seen for a very, very long time. The two humans, first the brother, then the sister, changed. Their faces morphed into long wolven muzzles, their hands grew claws and both sprouted ears and a tail. He'd only seen one person before that could do that, and now he saw the resemblance in the silken white fur, the long silver hair, and the blood red eyes.

Those eyes were his.

The old wolf's bottle slipped from his grasp and shattered on the floor as he burst into riotous laughter. It only lasted a moment before his frailty caught up with him and the laughter was replaced by a hacking cough. He hadn't worked out his chest muscles that much in a long time, but the laughter was worth the pain.

"This isn't funny!" The brother yelled. The old wolf felt himself lifted off the chair and hurled across the room. He let out a pained cry as he hit the wall and stayed there, floating several feet off the floor.

"You're right, it isn't funny." he spat blood through grinning teeth as his son approached him, "I'm going to die by my own progeny in revenge for their birth." his vision came back to him just long enough to realize it was his daughter that was casting the magic that held him up, while her brother wound up a punch with his right arm "It's hilarious."

He collapsed to the floor missing several teeth that clattered across the rough wooden floorboards. He raised a paw to his jaw and gently held it in place. It stung with an old but familiar pain, but it wasn't broken. "Ow, I know who taught you that right hook." He tried grinning again, and it hurt, but it was worth it for the look of anger on his son's face "Your step father knocked out the same teeth eight years ago."

That got him hurled across the room again, this time landing against the mantlepiece of the fireplace with a sickening crack and collapsing in front of the flickering flames. His head hurt, his arms hurt, his back hurt and his chest hurt, the latter from the coughing more than anything else. His legs didn't hurt though, and they'd hurt constantly for the last three years. He couldn't feel his tail either so that probably meant his back was broken.

"He is our father, you monster! He was there for us, and our mother, after everything you did to her!" Honestly, the old wolf had been guessing that the red haired human had helped raise them. He'd been far too angry and invested in saving the girl all those years ago to merely be a friend, and the old wolf was glad to hear he'd guessed right.

Good for her, she'd found a man to help raise his children.

Placing his good arm on the ground, the old wolf managed to lift himself up just enough to get an elbow under him and prop himself up. The difficulty had nothing to do with his broken back though, that was just the curse of old age. "Don't talk to your old man like that." he spat back with a chuckle, more blood coming out than he'd been expecting.

His vision grew blurry now, but he still saw the boot coming that kicked him back to the ground, if not who's it was. It hurt, which meant he still had a little life left in him, but the crunching noise it made of his chest probably cut that time in half.

"A monster is exactly what you are." his son was speaking now, though the old wolf couldn't tell which of the blurs was him or his sister "We're here to put an end to you, to make sure you never hurt anyone else ever again." the smoothness with which he spoke told of evenings spent rehearsing that line.

"The cold would have done that for you just fine." He tried to gesture to the softly falling snow outside but his strength failed him. "I was never going to see another spring, but I'm glad I got to meet the two of you before I went." He meant it earnestly.

As his vision faded, the old wolf saw two bright sparks of orange fire light up in the palms of his children above him. "Any last words, monster?" one of them asked.

Oh yes, the snow. Now he remembered what he'd called her.

"Tell Snowball I died laughing."

Clovis died laughing.