FSE

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Disclaimer: The following story contains nonconsensual sex between anthropomophic adults. If you are too young to legally view such content, or if such content does not appeal to you, leave now.

The Human

* * *

A gun.

The coyote was holding a gun, the device that many stories claimed had brought the downfall of the entire human civilization. A few of the less popular histories styled guns as one of humanity's most ingenious creations, but with Sophan's limited experience with the machines, he was more inclined to believe the popular tales. That's why, as soon as he realized what the coyote was prodding his ribs with, he kicked the canine onto his back, shouted at Ileni to run, and followed his own advice without a second thought.

Ruined towers taller than any he'd ever seen flew by in a blur as he dashed around one corner after another, not daring to look back. He'd surprised the coyote, but all the canine had to do was get him within line of sight, and he'd be dead. That was how guns worked. The person holding the gun just had to look at you, think a malicious thought, and your life would end in a blast of evil thunder.

Sophan didn't look back. He barely even thought about Ileni. He barely thought anything at all as he rounded another corner at full tilt. Terrified adrenaline drove his breaths from his lungs in rapid pants and blurred his vision more than his speed warranted, and two words chanted a litany in his mind, driving everything else to irrelevance.

Not again.

Then, it happened. It was just like he remembered, except instead of his father falling when the wave of thunder struck, it was him. He managed two steps after hearing the gun's cry before his mind registered an explosion of pain shooting up his left leg. He managed three more before agony overcame momentum, and he tumbled into a crumbling brick wall.

Such was the shock of his crash that Sophan gasped several panicked breaths before crying out at the pain in his calf. He propped himself onto one arm, using the ruined wall for support, but fell back again when he saw the red splash around his shin against the structure's dull gray brick and the fractured cement on which he lay, the colors dim in the moonlight. Each breath came out as a groan or a whimper as he covered the two ragged holes in his calf with his padded hands, trying to stem the flow of blood.

"You're fast, I'll give you that," the coyote snarled, the long gun in his hands leveled at Sophan's chest and his breathing heavy with exertion as he approached. "Can't outrun one of these, though, can ya?" He patted the underside of the gun with the hand around its barrel, and Sophan's ears laid flat against his skull as a fearful whimper escaped his mouth, much to his shame. "Now, should I tell your pet you died quick or slow, when I'm roasting it on a skewer? I don't think I feel like letting you off easy after that little chase. . . ."

The coyote's voice trailed off, ending in a curse as he looked down at his feet. Confused, Sophan looked down as well, but the thin layer of fog scudding across the ground didn't seem to be any reason for the uneasiness that had transformed the coyote's confident features. The canine looked up and cursed again, but when Sophan followed his gaze, he could see nothing but a black void to one side blotting out the stars. "You had to lead me here, didn't you, cat?" the coyote said, taking two nervous steps back away from him. "Couldn't make it easy, could you?" The fog was rising quickly, Sophan realized. It was already above his shoulders, and quickly rose above his head, blocking his view of the canine with a wall of white. "Fine," he heard from beyond the misty veil, and muffled footsteps traced the coyote's route back the way he'd come. "You're going to wish it was me who killed you." His voice faded into a thick silence, and Sophan's fear of the canine's weapon shifted in an instant to the unnatural fog that had surrounded him, his injured leg little more than a distraction now.

After a brief moment alone in the ruins, a gray silhouette materialized in the white, moonlit mist in front of him, in the same place the coyote had stood an instant ago. A word whispered around him, swirling through the fog around his head, and it took him a long moment to realize it was his name.

"Sophan." His name came as a growl from the motionless silhouette before him, echoing the barely heard whispers in the mist. "You've journeyed far from Africa to reach my home, and have many stories to tell. But always your story has chased the memories of tales long forgotten. In your pursuit of an ancient race's fate, you have neglected and abused your own, and others'." The form's shadow seemed to grow larger as it stepped silently closer to him. "Cill has brought you to me to give you the answers you seek, so that you may redirect your efforts and carve your own story into history and legend."

At any other time, Sophan would have snickered at the figure's melodrama. Here, though, suspended in the illusion of emptiness by seemingly endless fog, lightheaded as his blood escaped through his torn calf, the silhouette's words seemed appropriately ominous, and Sophan's heart continued to race in both fear and excitement. He was only able to force one coherent question past his lips. "Who are you?"

Within a single, frantic heartbeat, the mist receded completely, seeming to merge into the shadow standing before him. It was a normal looking male fox, or so it seemed at first, until Sophan realized that what he'd initially thought was an open robe around the orange vulpine's shoulders was actually a pair of leathery, tan-skinned wings. "I am the Seer," the winged fox said, and he opened his wings to spread his arms out to his sides, indicating their new surroundings, "and this is my tower." At some point while enveloped by mist, they'd been moved from a ruined city's street to the highest beams of an enormous building's skeleton, nothing above them except rusted and broken steel fingers, and the bright moon and stars. By the time Sophan's awestruck scan of his surroundings returned to the Seer, his chin was almost resting on his chest. He thought he saw the slightest twitch at the corner of the fox's mouth. "Welcome to Chicago."

* * *

Something pulling at the fur on her calf woke her up. Her head was pounding so hard she could barely hear the quiet humming and the rapid snipping sounds coming from near her legs, let alone try to guess what was making them. She tried to rub her forehead, groaning, but something was holding her wrists out beside her.

Opening her eyes proved a poor decision. It took her several minutes to become accustomed to the bright light. By the time she had, the snipping, humming, and hair pulling had moved to her other leg. She looked down, knowing that she should be very worried about her arms being tied down-and her ankles, she realized-but was so bewildered by what she saw that she was convinced she was dreaming.

A tan-furred mouse woman was standing next to Ileni's shins where she was bound to a long table, trimming away at Ileni's fur with a pair of polished scissors until it was barely more than stubble. Apparently the mouse had started at her neck, because her entire body was trimmed nearly furless. "Ah, she's awake, yes she is," the mouse muttered without looking up from her work. "Awake and eager to compete, yes? Yes, very eager, she is, of course she is."

"What are you DOING?" Ileni exclaimed, but the mouse went right on snipping and muttering.

"Eager to look beautiful for the cats and dogs, yes. Ugly before, all shedding fuzziness, but soon. . . ." She stopped before reaching Ileni's big feet, setting the scissors aside and pulling a long razor from under the table. "Yes, soon she'll be beautiful."

Ileni tried to struggle against her bonds when the mouse drew that razor up her shin, shaving off a strip of the short fur that was left on her leg, but only earned a painful gash for the effort. The mouse punched her thigh hard and shouted, "Stupid rabbit!" before going back to her shaving and quiet muttering.

Ileni looked around frantically for any means of escape. She was in a small cell with lamps burning in each corner, but each wall was a solid mirror. It made her head spin when she tried to find a door within all the reflections, but each mirror appeared to cover the entire wall. There was even a mirror on the ceiling above her, showing her the mouse's progress.

Once the front of one leg was entirely shaved up to Ileni's knee, the mouse scurried around the table and began working on the other one. Ileni winced her eyes shut, still half convinced this was a strange hallucination, but when she opened them again, the mouse was still there, scraping the blade carefully over her kneecap.

"Why are you doing this?" Ileni asked helplessly.

The mouse drew the razor up the outside of her thigh. "Must make her beautiful for the cats and dogs, yes? They deserve better than to watch ugly beasts roll around, yes they do. They deserve humans, and so that is what Nemmy makes her."

"You're . . . making me human?"

"Nemmy says so, yes she does. Many times, but stupid rabbit doesn't listen." After several more strips of fur were shaved off Ileni's thigh, the mouse, Nemmy, put the razor down and reached under the table for something. Ileni heard a thunk beneath her, then the mouse drew her legs apart on separate hinged branches that the table divided into. She stretched Ileni's legs apart until the rabbit yelped in pain, then locked the table branches in place and took up the razor again, shaving the inside of her thigh.

Ileni winced as the razor slid up her skin to her crotch over and over. "How does this make me human?" she asked, not sure whether she was trying to distract the insane mouse or herself.

Instead of answering, Nemmy began humming to herself again as she moved to Ileni's other thigh. Ileni set her head back with a sigh and winced; she had a painful goose egg on the back of her head where she'd been hit earlier.

Not wanting to get cut again or hit any more, she could think of nothing to do except watch the mouse's reflection while she worked. The fronts of Ileni's legs were almost completely furless now, save for her feet, which Nemmy had left untrimmed for some reason. Curving spikes of white fur curled up from her ankles halfway to her knees, making her feet look like they were on white fire.

Finished with her other thigh, Nemmy turned to the soft skin between Ileni's legs. "Must be careful," the mouse muttered, gently placing the razor at the inner base of the thigh she'd just shaved. Ileni tensed. "Very careful. Most important, this part." Ileni held her breath the entire time Nemmy traced the razor inward across her groin from thighs to slit, working up from tail hole to lower belly. When at last the mouse stepped back to inspect her handiwork, Ileni let out her breath with a great shudder. She craned her neck to peer down between her breasts at the patch of bare skin she could see below her navel, even though the mirror above her fully displayed her pale pink mound.

"Oh, she likes it," Nemmy crooned, "of course she does." She reached out and caressed Ileni's mound, and the rabbit trembled again. The mouse's soft finger pads against her bare skin felt like nothing she had experienced before. Bereft of fur, her flesh was more sensitive than she'd thought it could be. "Nemmy is great artist, of course she likes it." Two fingers slid down either side of Ileni's slit, then back up again, making her gasp. "So smooth now, so pretty. Not ugly and fuzzy like before. They will be pleased, yes they will." Nemmy rubbed Ileni's mound in a harsh circular motion before stepping back and repositioning the table branches and their respective legs together again, leaving Ileni to twitch as she brushed off the razor.

The shaved area between her thighs grew up her torso swiftly as Nemmy worked, and Ileni marveled at her reflection above her. She'd never known how skinny she was underneath her pelt. Her abdomen was of an athletic build, but the ribcage above it stood out prominently. Seeing her bare-skinned form reminded her just how hungry she was.

Thoughts of food vanished, however, when Nemmy grasped her nipple without a coherent word and pulled her round breast up away from her chest to shave around its lower edge, bringing the razor up the soft orb until a wide ring of bare skin circled it, then down from the nipple in swift strokes until the fur inside that ring was gone, too. Nemmy dropped Ileni's nipple and let her breast settle on her ribs, trotting around the table to repeat the process with the other one. When it was finished the mouse moved up her sides to her armpits and shoulders.

Perhaps it was due to the narrow "V" of fur Nemmy left trailing down the middle of her chest from her neck, but Ileni's breasts looked somehow larger than they had when they'd had fur. Or maybe it was just that their curves were more defined. They still lay almost flat on Ileni's chest, but the contrast of their smooth skin forming ovals over the ridges of her ribs revealed their edges clearly. They definitely looked bigger than Ileni remembered.

The mouse left the fur on Ileni's head and neck untouched, but shaved each arm up to where the leather straps bound her wrists to the table. Nemmy made little flame patterns on the fur on her forearms to match her feet, so that it looked like she was wearing oddly decorous gloves and boots. Little curving tendrils of white fur extended from the "V" between her breasts as well, some climbing partway up their inner slopes toward her nipples.

Still muttering and humming to herself, Nemmy strode over to one corner of the mirrored cell and stomped onto the fur-carpeted floor. Her foot made a hollow, wooden sound, and a wide trap door suddenly swung up from underneath Ileni's scattered shavings. "She is ready for turning," she told the brown fox that climbed up through the trap door.

The fox pretended Nemmy wasn't there and eyed Ileni hungrily. "My, my," he said from the corner, staring at the bound and shaved rabbit and fingering his black sheath, "I'd heard Barrim found a treat, but it looks even juicier than I'd hoped." He crossed the little room in two strides and squeezed Ileni's bare breast roughly. "Shame it's so small, really. It won't last its first match." His eyes roamed over her body and paused on the slit curving down between her pale legs. "I think I'll give it a quick romp. Someone should enjoy it before it's eaten."

"What?" Ileni stared at him with alarmed eyes.

"Just be quick, she competes soon and is only half humanized, yes?" Nemmy crossed her arms and leaned against one of the mirrors.

The fox gave Ileni's breast another squeeze before moving down to her feet and spreading the table branches enough to fit himself between her thighs. The downy fur on his hips tickled her bare skin, and she gasped when he ground his swollen sheath into her naked crotch. Wasting no time, he lined himself up with her slit and pushed his member fully inside her as soon as he was unsheathed, his length rubbery within her loins in the brief moment before he hardened. Ileni didn't bother asking him to stop. She didn't know if that would encourage him or not, but she was sure it wouldn't help.

Instead, she just numbly watched the fox's reflection in the mirror on the ceiling, no more able to stop her body's reaction to this rape than to any of the others she'd endured. Looking at that mirror, she was able to imagine she was a bird in some tree above them, watching the spectacle in safety. She even admired the fox's firm rump a little when he hunched over to lock his sharp teeth around her nipple, growling quietly while he suckled. He really did have a handsome tail.

The fox's thrusts were swift and sharp, like a woodpecker, so it was a shock when he pulled back slowly and rammed his knot into her. Ileni climaxed at once, biting her lip to hold back a scream, and he quickly followed suit, her muscles rippling around his shaft and knot more than he could take. He moaned open-mouthed around her nipple, and liquid warmth filled her womb. Straightening up as his orgasm faded, he squeezed both of her breasts with his black furred hands viciously, claws almost penetrating her soft skin.

The mouse moved from the wall and slapped the fox's furry butt. "Smelly dog has had his fun. Now he turns stupid rabbit so Nemmy can finish her work, yes?"

The fox yelped and jumped in surprise at Nemmy's slap, his erection actually lifting Ileni's hips painfully off the table. Snarling, he dropped her breasts and stretched her labia with his fingers, wide enough to slide his knot out of her. Sperm was still leaking from his tip as he brought the table branches and Ileni's legs back together and went about releasing her ankles. Ileni kicked at him as soon as one leg was free, but he just caught her ankle and held it out above her while he unstrapped the other leg. She grunted when the fox pulled her feet up over her face, bending her almost double and making her rump raise off the table, and he fondled her presented bottom appreciatively until Nemmy smacked his own rear again impatiently.

Hopping nimbly onto the table beside her without releasing her ankles, he knelt on her forearm and deftly loosened the straps around her wrist with one hand. He tucked an arm behind her knees and held her wrist once it was free while he untied her other arm. Still keeping her in a fetal position, he pulled her now-unbound hand over to where the other had been and, ignoring Ileni's struggles, rebound it. Dragging her other hand beneath her, he did the same to it, making her upper body twist to follow his movements. Then he pulled her legs out behind her and strapped them down as well with Ileni prone on her stomach.

Squeezing one of her large buttocks through fur that had been trimmed at some time while she was unconscious, the fox murmured, "It really is a shame," before vanishing down the trap door, closing it behind him.

* * *

"That should do. You're really lucky, you know. The bullet missed your bone and went straight through the side of your calf. Give it a few weeks and you'll be running as quickly as ever."

Despite his wings, the Seer had proven to be much less ominous than his melodramatic introduction had led Sophan to believe, and while he knelt to wrap the cheetah's shin in strips of a thick, cottony fabric, Sophan realized that the winged fox was actually a bit smaller than him, only a little bigger in height and build than Ileni.

The feline let himself relax when the Seer stood and stepped away from him, his treatments finished. "You said you were going to give me answers. Did you mean answers about the humans? What all do you know about them? And how did you bring us here? Did that mist have something to do with it? Did some sort of human relic make that?"

The fox chuckled and reached down to Sophan, offering his arm to help him stand. "One question at a time, if you please. Would you prefer to know about the humans first, or my fog?"

With a great effort, Sophan let the Seer pull him to his feet and leaned heavily on the smaller male's shoulder, the fox's closer wing opening to curl lightly around the cheetahs shoulders and offer further support. "Humans," Sophan managed after the lance of pain that had shot up his leg subsided. "Did they really all die centuries ago? Or did they leave this world for another, like some people claim, and are waiting for the right time to come back?"

The fox chuckled again. "The humans never died out-"

"I knew it!"

"-Nor did they leave." Sophan looked down at the male beside him, confused. "The humans are still here, Sophan, on Earth." He helped the tall cat to take a step toward a fragmented staircase at the end of the steel beam on which they stood.

The cheetah's heart began beating as swiftly as when he'd had a gun leveled at his face, and he staggered along beside the Seer without noticing his throbbing leg. "That's not possible, though," he began, barely daring to hope the fox was right. "I mean, someone would have seen one, wouldn't they? I've looked in every pile of toppled stone and brick that I could find, but all that's left of them are old, broken relics. Do they have a stronghold somewhere? Why are they hiding if they've always been here?"

The fox smiled slyly and looked up at Sophan from the corner of his eye, still guiding him toward the stairs. "I have a human friend in this tower that you could ask, two floors down. He's been waiting quite some time for you."

Sophan's heart leapt into his throat at the same time as a swarm of butterflies tried to escape his stomach, and he had to clench the muscles below his belly in a moment of distracted alarm. That was the closest he'd come to wetting himself since early childhood. "You have a human? Here?" When the fox just nodded silently, still grinning up at him, Sophan began limping down the stairs as quickly as he could, pulling the Seer along with him.

Two stories down, after his bandage became so saturated with fresh blood that its lower edges were dripping crimson streams down his heal, Sophan almost fainted. This level of the building was a cavern, floored in dull colored tiles and broken by dozens of steel support beams, and in every direction that he looked sat piles of shining, pristine human artifacts. It was a treasure trove the likes of which he'd never dared hope to discover, and it took him some time of gawking before he realized there wasn't an actual human to be seen. "Where-"

"This way," the winged fox said, and helped the cheetah to maneuver down an isle formed by stacks of relics. In the middle of the vast room, they stopped, and the Seer turned him to look into a tall, metal-framed mirror. "Say hello to my human friend, Sophan."

Sophan stared at his reflection for a long moment, swallowed, looked down at the fox's calm face beside him, then looked back at the mirror. "That's not funny," he said dully. He felt like he'd just been punched in the gut. All the excitement that had so suddenly flooded him vanished in a single breath.

"The humans didn't die out, Sophan," the Seer told him solemnly, supporting all of his weight as he slumped against the smaller male's shoulders. "They didn't abandon the planet for some celestial paradise with plans to later return and bring us all to Heaven." Sophan had to close his eyes as a tear trailed down one cheek. That had been the story his father had told him when they had traveled together, sailing from island to island in the sea between the great continents, crossing the ocean, and exploring the other half of the world. It had been the prayer he'd whispered before going to sleep every night after his father had been shot, asking the humans to return and save him from his unexpected solitude. "They merely changed," the Seer continued, "into us. There is no single human stronghold where they are hiding from the rest of the world for their own mysterious reasons. You've seen more humans in your life than you could possibly hope to count."

"I don't believe you," Sophan growled, and he snarled at the pout he could hear in his own voice. "How could you know that?"

Without a word, the Seer led the limping cheetah to a large, flat device several rows of relics from the mirror. The fox touched a symbol on one corner of the flat box, and it suddenly lit up into a glowing window, showing another world and making Sophan jump in surprise. A huge picture of an old husky male was talking in a language he couldn't understand.

"This is Jonathan," the Seer said. "He's explaining why, twelve years ago, some two hundred metal boxes began washing up on various ocean shores around the world. Have you ever seen one?" Sophan just shook his head no without a word. "You may not have recognized one if you had seen it. They look much like the steel beams found in some ruins. If you had opened one, though, you would have found some of the artifacts that are in this room."

"How can you tell what he's saying?" Sophan asked skeptically. He was beginning to think something must be wrong with the winged fox's mind. Maybe human ruins really were cursed. Maybe being around so many artifacts had driven the Seer mad, and the humans really were waiting on some other world.

"It doesn't sound familiar to you?" was the fox's response.

At first, Sophan began to shake his head no again, but then he tilted his head, something the husky said making his ear twitch. "It almost sounds like wolf tongue."

The Seer nodded with a little smile. "I believe it's the language wolf tongue emerged from. There is a translation of Jonathan's explanation in every language spoken by the ancient humans. It's taken me years, but I've been able to learn both this language and the ancient form of deer tongue. I think I'm beginning to catch on to the ancient feline language, too. . . ."

"You took the time to learn ancient deer tongue?" Sophan interrupted. "Do you plan to enlighten your prey next time you're playing with them?"

The Seer tapped another symbol on the edge of the glowing window, and the picture changed to a much younger version of the same husky, then froze at another tap from the fox. He looked slowly up at Sophan's face, his eyes intense. "Listen closely, Sophan. I don't know what you may have done in the past to races you view as prey, and I don't want to know. You'll have to come to terms with past mistakes in your own time and in your own way, but if you want to know a fragment of what I do about the ancient humans, you will swear to me this: From this moment onward, you will never again treat any creature that stands on two legs as prey. You will not eat a bipedal deer, or mouse, or any other race ever again, nor will you ever perform any sexual action on one without their verbally expressed consent. Swear it."

Sophan scoffed down at the fox. "Why should I? You probably don't have the slightest idea what that husky's really saying. Sure, you've got a great collection of relics; you even know how to use at least one of them, but that doesn't mean you somehow know that the humans transformed into today's races. This is probably all some sick joke."

The Seer stared at Sophan coldly for a long moment, then tapped a figure behind the husky image's shoulder twice with his finger. The window centered on that figure and grew larger, until Sophan could clearly see someone in a white coat hunched over a metal table. It was a creature he had never actually seen before, but he recognized the shape of its bare skinned face instantly from crumbling statues and nearly faded paintings that he and his father had discovered in ruined cities. It was a human.

"I swear it," he said weakly.

"Know that if you ever break that oath, Sophan, in any why at all, I will know it, and I will kill you." The winged fox said it so matter-of-factly that he believed it without a shadow of a doubt. "Now that I've told you that, I'll give you one chance to revoke your promise. I can take you back to the ground, and you can go about your life as you always have without fear of ever seeing me again. Or I can tell you how Charles Vanderhaus here is standing in the same time and place as our husky friend."

"I'm not going anywhere."

The Seer looked at Sophan's face for a long moment, then returned the screen to its previous view of Jonathan the husky and somehow made it start moving again. "Charles Vanderhaus," he said over the husky's quiet, foreign voice, "is Jonathan's father. 'Creator' might be more accurate, but any time Jonathan mentions him, it is as a parent. Charles bred Jonathan through some ancient means that I won't pretend to understand. He was trying to combine aspects of humanity with those of animals to give future generations of humans longer life spans. As Jonathan explains it, the physical change was completely accidental, and while their studies led them to believe he would live some time longer than any other human, no other creation at the time of these recordings showed the same signs of success."

"Creations? I thought we were supposed to be humans, but you're making it sound like we're some sort of conjured monsters."

"Not at all. Charles barely changed his creations' DNA from their original human states-"

"DNA?"

"As Jonathan explains it, that's what they called a person's essence, something inside them that makes them what they are."

"So it's their soul. This Charles changed humans' souls?"

The fox shook his head and shrugged. "I don't pretend to understand it, but I don't think that's quite it. DNA determines what someone is, where a soul determines who they are. In any case, all of the people born from Charles's experiments, save for Jonathan, were different from other humans only in their appearance. When those first creations had children with natural humans, their children always turned out like their more bestial parent. Jonathan calls it 'a more dominant trait than any previously observed.'"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"I'm not entirely sure. He goes on to talk about how the anthros, his word for Charles's creations, are having trouble mingling with human society. Most humans seemed to think they were evil because of the way they'd been born. At the time of this recording, only a few of Charles's children had mated with humans. Ah," the fox said, pointing to the left side of the screen, "here comes Elizabeth."

A tall female horse strode into the picture, said something to the husky, then punched the shorter anthro playfully in the shoulder. They exchanged a few comments and laughs before she went back the way she'd come. Sophan's eyebrows rose. He'd never seen an herbivore and carnivore behave on such equal terms before.

After gauging the cheetah's reaction for a few moments, the Seer pressed another symbol, and the picture changed to show a slightly older Jonathan in the same room, an assortment of anthros and purebred humans working at the metal tables behind him. "This is some seventy years later," the fox explained.

"Seventy years! That can't be right. He can't have aged more than ten or eleven years from that last picture to this one."

"As I said, Jonathan was Charles's one success in giving someone prolonged life. He carried on his father's research for two or three centuries after Charles died, if everything he says is true." Sophan began to protest again, but the winged fox didn't pause in his explanation. "By this time anthros were fairly well tolerated in human society. Charles had bred nearly two thousand anthro children before he died, and they'd formed several reclusive communities where they could live in peace. Eventually, though, they interbred with natural humans as often as with each other, and after a few dozen generations, what you knew as 'human' before today was almost completely extinct."

"And Jonathan never succeeded in giving other people longer lives?"

"Not exactly, though he was even more ambitious than that. Through his centuries of research, he tried to find ways to make people stronger, faster, smarter; healthier in general, really. A great deal of his efforts went toward solving problems that Charles had accidentally caused."

"What do you mean?"

"Well. . . ." The Seer scratched the back of his head with the hand that wasn't around Sophan's shoulders. "Do you know how easy it is for a female to get pregnant?"

Sophan's ears twitched in sudden embarrassment. "Um, I guess I'm not sure."

"Even when she's in her time of the month, it's about a one-in-fifty chance. For the ancient humans, it was closer to one-in-three, from what Jonathan says."

Sophan stared down at him, astonished. "How were human females ever NOT pregnant, then?"

The fox laughed out loud to that. "As I understand it, they didn't have sex quite as often as most people do today. I think they had ways of preventing pregnancy, too, but my point is this: when Jonathan discovered the anthros' difficulty conceiving, he took strides to fix the side effect so that the human race wouldn't dwindle out. He was unable to directly solve the problem, though, so instead he found a way to increase future anthros' sex drives, and to lengthen the time in their lives when they would be fertile. Tell me, when did you first start having sex?"

Sophan shrugged, a little awkwardly. "I think five or six years ago, so when I was seven or eight, I guess."

The Seer nodded as though he had already known the answer. "And you were able to produce sperm?"

"Of course!" the cheetah said, more defensively than he'd intended.

"The reason I ask is because most natural humans didn't enter their fertile stage until they were ten to fourteen, and they lost their fertility shortly after the middle of their lives, where we can still conceive almost until we die of old age. Jonathan took other strides to make certain the human race would survive his father's experiments, too. He found a way to make it possible for a male and a female of any race to mate safely, and even for a small female anthro to breed with a large male animal, like a buffalo or an elephant, without lasting harm."

Sophan's eyes went wide at the prospect, and he felt his sheath stirring as he tried to imagine such a pairing. "Really? You mean a full grown, four legged buffalo or elephant?"

The fox chuckled. "Evidently."

"But . . . why would he even think to make that possible?"

"Well, he never actually says it, but he implies at several points that, given our altered DNA, an anthro and a fully bestial animal could have a very small chance of producing offspring. It seemed to be a last resort, in case future generations should somehow dwindle to one single anthro left alive." He touched one of the window's symbols yet again, and the next picture showed the husky even older. It was the picture of Jonathan that had appeared on the screen when the fox had first touched it. "All of that's really beside the point, though. The reason I'm telling you about ancient humans, the reason Cill brought you here in the first place, is this: Jonathan didn't fail entirely in his efforts to make people stronger and smarter. He predicted that, though none of his experiments had immediate results, latent effects of the experiments would develop in people many generations later. He's explaining now that, after watching society develop for centuries after he and his father introduced anthros to humanity, he expects civilization to degenerate into tribal cultures within four or five more generations, possibly to the point where people are little more than animals themselves. He believes that after nearly a hundred generations of these tribal societies, certain individuals will begin to develop abilities unheard of even in the peak of humanity's culture as a much delayed effect of his experiments, and that he has set time capsules beneath the ocean's floor that will be released in the year he predicts these gifted anthros will begin to be born."

Sophan looked down when he felt something cool against his unbandaged leg, and saw a thick layer of fog rising up to his knees.

"I stumbled across my first time capsule twelve years ago," the Seer said, grinning up at him. "Jonathan was only late by a decade."

Sophan shook his head, trying to come to terms with the onslaught of information he'd just been given. "So . . . this is supposed to explain why Cill found Ileni and me in those smaller ruins?"

"Cill has many talents. One of them is finding others with the latent effects of Jonathan's experiments."

The cheetah shrugged off the winged fox's supporting arm and took a limping step back away from him, holding his arms out from his sides. "You think I can do something like that? Conjure mist up from nothing and scare the brains out of gun-wielding coyotes? If I could, I wouldn't have needed you to save me from him."

"The truth is, Sophan, you might not have any gift at all. You were never more than a 'maybe' to Cill; no one ever is. The reason she sought you and Ileni out before any of the others she senses is because you were two 'maybe's very close together, where everyone else close enough for her to reach with her traveling artifact seem to be fairly isolated." The Seer turned to the screen of Jonathan and flicked another symbol, sighing as the picture went black. "I don't know why she didn't wait with you two before taking off. She left far earlier than the time we'd agreed on, and it made us lose Ileni before we had a chance to see if she was one of the ones we've been seeking."

Sophan felt a stab of guilt. He'd left Ileni alone in his panicked flight from the coyote's gun, and had no idea what had become of her. Normally, he wouldn't have worried himself about it, but she was the only person who had stuck with him for more than a few hours, despite what he'd done to her. "She's probably fine," he said, trying to soothe his own guilt more than reassure the winged fox. "I led the coyote away from her, so she probably got away safely. Even if she got caught, he might let her go after he's had his fun."

The Seer was shaking his head sadly. "You've never been to 'Shigao' before," he said, using the same name for Chicago that the coyote had earlier. "The predators here are very social. They work together to capture prey from land for miles around these ruins, and what they do with them. . . ." He turned away from Sophan, his wings spreading and folding in agitation as he clenched his fists at his side. Thick tendrils of fog began to rotate around his ankles. "Jonathan's experiments had more than one side effect, and one that should never have survived has. By increasing anthros' sexual appetites, he inadvertently caused sexual crimes in those ancient societies to skyrocket. The people themselves came up with a solution, a sport called Domination, in which they competed against each other to demonstrate their sexual prowess. The predators in this city have a distorted version of the sport. They pit prey against each other, and the incentive for winning. . . ." The mist swirling around the Seer's legs suddenly billowed outward before siphoning into his body with a rush of wind that threatened to knock Sophan forward.

"Better that she had been shot to death, Sophan, but these ruins' predators go to great lengths not to injure their prey before they see them compete."

Sophan looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers to unsheathe his claws. It was his fault Ileni was in this mess, and if it was as bad as the fox described. . . .

He turned on his good leg and began limping toward the stairs in the corner of the cavernous room without a second thought.

"Where are you going?" The Seer called after him.

"To get my stick. Then I'm getting Ileni out of there."

The winged fox had no problem catching up to him with his injured leg slowing him down, and Sophan snarled menacingly as the smaller male grabbed his shoulder and spun him so they were facing each other. The Seer didn't back down, though. "Your courage is admirable, Sophan, but you don't know how impossible a rescue would be. There will be hundreds of predators where Ileni is sure to be taken, likely thousands. Many will have guns, most will have blades, and none will have bullet holes in their legs. If it was possible to stop them from doing what they do, or even to save a single of their captured prey, I would have done so long ago, and I'm not willing to lose both of the possibly gifted that Cill has been able to track down-"

He was cut off when Sophan grabbed him by his neck and shoved him against the wall beside the stairwell, his wings trying unsuccessfully to push him away from the steel surface. "If you try to stop me," the cheetah growled, his face inches away from the fox's, "one of us will die." Then he dropped the Seer and limped down the first of many flights of stairs.

Left crumpled on the floor above Sophan's descent, the winged fox coughed and gasped, his hands comforting his bruised windpipe. When he was finally recovered enough to croak out a word, that word was, "Good." A few moments of ragged breathing later, he stood and made his way to an open window, leapt through it, and circled above the Seer's tower, waiting for Sophan to emerge from the ground floor.

A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.

"Very good."

* * *

Nemmy and her razor returned immediately, the mouse humming to herself as if her work had gone on without interruption. Ileni blinked back frustrated tears, her neck bent sharply with her looking past her right shoulder, cheek crammed against the table top. She could feel the mouse's progress down her shoulders and back, but not being able to watch Nemmy work somehow made time seem to pass more quickly. Nemmy slowed considerably when she reached Ileni's short tail, and Ileni could tell she was leaving another flame pattern to decorate her bottom and the small of her back. The mouse than tugged her buttocks apart and carefully shaved their inner curves and the back of her groin. After that the backs of Ileni's thighs and calves were shaved before she knew it, and Nemmy was stomping on the trapdoor again.

The mouse waited a few moments, then thumped her foot down again when nothing happened. After her third set of stomping, when she actually jumped up and down furiously on the door, she finally lifted it herself and peered down into the stairwell it led to. "Incompetents!" she yelled, throwing her arms up in the air. Then she stormed down the stairs and slammed the trap door shut behind her.

Ileni had no idea what had just happened, but she wasn't about to let her unexpected solitude go to waste. She tested the tightness of her bonds, tugging tentatively with one limb at a time at first, then more vigorously and all at once when nothing gave.

She blinked at her hand in disbelieving shock when the leather strap binding it snapped open. The fox must have been careless in his afterglow! Frantically, Ileni set about releasing her other hand, fingers fumbling with the strap for a full minute before pulling it loose.

Her feet were trickier to free, with her on her stomach, but once she pushed herself up and sat on her heels, she had both straps undone more quickly than the one that had held her wrist.

Barely able to contain her elation, Ileni hopped off the table and rushed toward the trap door's corner, but she had to pause when she saw her reflection in the mirrored walls. She would never believe any creature could look like this, furless except the extremities, let alone herself. Her bare skin glistened palely in the bright reflected lantern light through a thin sheen of sweat. She turned to see what the mouse had done to her backside and grimaced. If she met Sophan again, or any predator, she wouldn't be able to keep them off her.

A small flare of white fur climbed from the root of her tail up the small of her back, but that she barely noticed. Four white tendrils curled from her tail over her rump, two down each buttock, each twisting inward and stopping in points just before they would have disappeared into her crack. Sure enough, when she pulled her rump cheeks apart, two of the tendrils were pointed straight at her anus, and the other two toward her slit.

She needed to find some trousers.

As soon as Ileni took another step toward the trap door, it lifted up, and a startled mountain lioness caught her instinctively in one arm when she tried to dart past.

"Whoa!" The lioness lifted Ileni off the stairs and over her shoulder as she thrashed desperately in her grasp. "Who forgot to tie up the bunny?" she shouted over her shoulder, climbing the stairs into the mirrored cell with Ileni pounding her fists on her tan furred back. The lioness tossed her onto the floor and let the trap door thud closed again. "My, but this one has some hips on it," she said, though her own hips curved out broadly from her narrow waist to complete her athletic hourglass physique. Ileni jumped behind the large table, keeping it between her and the huntress. "Oh, and it's a playful one, too." The lioness crouched down, grinning, and prepared to pounce.

The trap door suddenly sprang up and smacked the lioness's bottom, sending her sprawling forward with an indignant growl, and two coyotes, male and female, wrestled a young stag up into the cell, followed closely by a fussing Nemmy. The buck had his hands tied behind his back with a thick cord, and a wide band of black cloth blindfolded him, but the coyotes still had to struggle to get the deer on his back on the table. The mountain lioness helped them once she'd gotten to her feet, her bruised ego and backside forgotten when she saw the deer. "One of the herd caught today?" she asked the coyotes while she held the buck's arm down for the male to bind.

"What else?" he grunted.

Seeing them strap down the deer from the corner of the cell reminded Ileni of the buck Sophan had raped the day before-or was it two days ago, now?-even though this one was clearly much younger, his antlers merely single horns rising from his skull. If Ileni guessed correctly, he was roughly her age, barely old enough to mate.

As soon as his legs were secured, both female predators began fondling his sheath and testicles from either side of him, gossiping all the while about how many deer had been captured, how many more females had been taken than males, how big most of the males were, and whether they looked forward more to raping them or eating them. Still blindfolded, the buck strained furiously against his bonds, unable to stop the females from coaxing his penis out of its white sheath. Their conversation dwindled when they dove on his emerging member, kissing and licking it from either side until it was erect. It would probably have been pleasant for the deer, had he been willing. By his angry shouts, he was anything but.

Ileni had to worry about her own fate, though. The male coyote had his back to her, but while rubbing his sheath and leering at the feline's rump as she bent to take the deer's member into her mouth, he saw Ileni's reflection in the mirrored wall across the room as she cautiously sneaked behind him toward the trap door. Their reflections locked gazes for an instant, then Ileni dove for the trap door. Without thinking, she bent and grabbed its latch, and of course, the coyote caught her hips and pulled her bare skinned rear against his lap. She shouted in frustrated despair, clamping her shaved buttocks tight with the coyote's sheath pressing against her crack.

"Who caught the hare?" he asked, turning them to face the table. He tucked an arm in front of Ileni's thighs and pulled her roughly up against him with his other hand around her throat, then began fingering her mound and squeezing her soft bust.

"Some grizzly," the other coyote answered distractedly, her voice muffled by the white furred testicle in her mouth. The lioness was already straddling the buck's hips, her rump lowering in front of the coyote's face as her vagina enveloped his erection. The snarling stag's hips bucked up against the feline against his will, and she cried out in delight.

"Well, whoever it was, I owe them my thanks." The male coyote tugged at Ileni's small nipple, leering over her shoulder at the shapes he was able to contort her round breasts into.

"Enjoy them quickly," Nemmy said irritably from where she leaned against a mirrored corner. "Both fawn and bunny are due in the arena as soon as possible."

All three predators appeared to ignore the mouse, but the male coyote spent only a few more moments pinching Ileni's nipple before forcefully bending her over his other arm. He rubbed his sheath up and down between her buttocks, then did the same with his member as it grew, his smooth, hot flesh against Ileni's furless skin making her cringe in anticipation. Nonetheless, she didn't bother resisting when he spread her cheeks and lined himself up with her slit. She submitted numbly when the coyote pushed into her, staring at the buck enduring similar treatment on the table in front of her without really seeing him. A few swift jabs brought the coyote's furry thighs against her rump, then he began pumping in and out of her mercilessly. The part of her that could still think and feel was just glad he'd ignored her tail hole.

The deer wasn't so lucky, Ileni noticed. The female coyote had slid one hand under his bottom while she nibbled on his white sack, and the grimace on his face made it all too clear what her fingers were doing. The mountain lioness had her hands braced on the young buck's chest with her eyes closed and mouth open with her panting as her hips bobbed over his lap. She looked to be on the verge of climax.

The male coyote buried himself up to his swelling knot within Ileni and turned her awkwardly away from the table. Facing a mirrored wall, he pulled her roughly up against his chest with his hand around her throat, making her arch her back with her rear still joined to him. He began moving inside her again, slowly so that he wouldn't slip out, and squeezed her breasts in his large hands, watching their reflections in the mirror in front of them. It was easy for Ileni to imagine that the shaved rabbit in the mirror was someone else, she looked so foreign. Her arms hung uselessly at her sides as she panted deeply through her mouth, whimpering every now and again when the coyote filled her. Each of his slow lunges shoved his knot harder against her mound. She convulsed in an unexpected orgasm when he rolled her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, though the sensation in her breasts was anything but pleasurable. When her inner muscles rippled around his shaft, he rammed himself inside her, his knot finally slipping between her folds. The lunge carried them two staggering steps forward, and Ileni slammed into the mirror face first. The coyote held her there, and she cried out in pain when he pulled her head back by her long ears so that he could look down at her cleavage with her breasts plastered against their reflections. He thrust up into her, carrying her feet off the floor as he climaxed and dragging her chest several inches up the mirrored wall. He snarled lustfully and slipped his fingers between the glass and Ileni's skin below her bust, pushing up at the lower curves of one breast so that he could watch its upper edge slide higher. Hot liquid filled Ileni, and she could feel it drizzling down the inner slopes of her thighs.

She tried to relax her inner muscles when the coyote finally lowered her back down to the fur-strewn floor, but his knot still felt like it was trying to pull her insides out along with it when he suddenly yanked his hips back. Ileni staggered away from him, barely able to stay on her feet. Her body had left a slight smear of sweat where she'd been pressed against the mirror.

No sooner was she free of the coyote than the mountain lioness, finished with the buck, took her by the shoulders and steered her toward the trap door. The female coyote had replaced her on the deer, back arched and fingers toying with her clitoris with abandon.

Nemmy lifted the trap door in front of Ileni, and the lioness's push at her back nearly sent her tumbling down the stairwell.

The sight at the base of the stairs stunned her. She was at the end of a hallway crowded with predators and prey alike, all forming lines in front of the few doors that dotted the hall's length. Each deer, squirrel, rabbit, and other innocent was guarded by one or more canine, feline, or bear. Most of the captives were deer, likely the herd that the coyotes and lioness had spoken of.

And most of the captives were being molested by the hunters, if not actually raped.

A firm slap against her bottom made Ileni jump forward, and another followed it as soon as she landed. The lioness guided her forward by swatting her rear every time she got close enough. Ileni had to trot to stay ahead of her longer strides.

Hunters and hunted alike stared at her as she passed, though she wasn't the only person leaving a room bereft of fur. A chipmunk was led out of a room in front of her by a black furred vixen. The chipmunk's sheath and genitals were still covered by his pelt, but he was otherwise decorated much the same as Ileni, bare skinned except his hands, feet, head, and trembling tail. A glance inside the open door past the tall doe being escorted inside by another mountain lion and a brown bear showed Ileni a mirrored room similar to the one she'd come from, complete with bondage table and sheddings-covered floor.

Ileni tried to ignore the looks that followed her down the hallway, appreciative from the predators and horrified from her fellow captives. More than a few noses twitched as she passed, and she was all too aware of the mixed fox and coyote semen that still covered the insides of her thighs.

A doe whose tail hole was being ravaged by a white wolf reached out plaintively toward Ileni, tears in her eyes, but Ileni hastened forward when her rump was smacked again. The middle of her bottom was turning bright pink from the mountain lioness's guidance.

They followed the vixen and chipmunk through a broad archway at the far end of the hall, and Ileni's heart felt like it dropped into her stomach. She had never seen, had never imagined so many predators in one place. She stood at one edge of a room so vast she thought at first that they were outside. Rows of benches and tables descended toward the center of the chamber, all of which were filled with cheering and whistling carnivores. In the middle of the room stood a stage, and at first Ileni couldn't comprehend what she saw there. Two furless captives-a squirrel and a skunk, judging by their lush, unshaved tails-were wrestling in the center of the stage. From the edge of the room Ileni couldn't tell which of them was winning, but they seemed to be fighting as though their lives depended on it.

Before she had a chance to take in anything else, she was upended and twirled upside down as the mountain lioness lifted her by her ankles and carried her between rows of benches down toward the stage.

It was then that she smelled the meat. Looking around her as she was hauled unceremoniously through the crowd, she saw table after table stacked high with t-bone steaks, fish filets, pork chops, ribs, and poultry. The hunters were feasting while they watched the two captives fight. Ileni fought back the urge to vomit.

At the center floor of the room, the lioness carried Ileni to one side of the stage and tossed her into the midst of dozens of other captives. Ileni rolled to a stop against a pair of cloven hooves, and strong hands helped her to her feet.

"Are you okay?" someone asked. Another rabbit, she realized, and tears unexpectedly leapt to her eyes. He was shaved and decorated the same way as everyone else in the crowd of prey, the only brown fur left on his body covering his head, hands, feet, tail, and sex. And he was the first rabbit she'd spoken to since leaving home. When her only answer was a pained sob, he just said, "Yeah, us too."

Somehow, she gained control of herself. After wiping her eyes clear of tears, a steady slapping noise drew her eyes toward the stage beside them. The skunk was hunched over the squirrel, both facing away from them, and was pounding his full erection through the squirrel's anus. The squirrel was on his knees with his face against the stage, his luxurious tail wrenched to one side. Every time he tried to rise, the skunk twisted his tail, and he fell forward again with a pained shout.

"Welcome to the arena, I guess," the other rabbit said, and he moved between Ileni and the stage, blocking her view. "It's best not to watch."