FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

_Cascades of spades can tumble down

And fall into the cracks

But in this season, fear for treason

Never turn your back_

Five Years Later...

The hooves of a horse, from the right angle and at the right speed, can crack a concrete block as easily as a ball peen hammer shattering a fine vase. This knowledge, combined with the wind rustling past his ears, instilled Venter with the kind of fear one needs to properly spar with a six and a half foot tall equine. The pair stood on a cold stone platform, a loosely drawn ring surrounding them. The horse was far from a handsome stud; not only did his albino genes give him an ethereal uneasy look, but his face was crisscrossed with scars, long jagged lines the source of which he refused to divulge. All the while, an elderly man in a white tunic

"Come now Prianor, that really all y'got?" he said, spinning from his awkward dodge to face the horse once again. He jumped forward with the short-range speed afforded to his kind, his ears falling back behind his head with the force of his momentum. At the apex of his jump he grasped Prianor by the shoulders, his powerful forearms adding momentum to his jump and bringing his knee crashing into his opponents nose with a sickening crunch.

"That's enough" said the old man, a soft but powerful voice somehow overpowering the heated sounds of their exchange. "You're learning well, Venter... as for you Prianor, you need to learn that this isn't about being a sledgehammer. You have to overwhelm your opponent; not just put all your faith in a blind kick." He stepped into the ring to examine the equine's nose. "It might be broken... we'll have to stop for the day, at any rate. Both of you, do sixty squats by dinner; use whatever weight exhausts you the most without killing you." He spoke with confidence rather than force, knowing that if either disobeyed him he would be able to tell without a word.

The young hare trudged off in the morning heat. He had been on the little island off the coast of Thailand for around 6 months, subsequently having his ass kicked by and kicking the ass of a multitude of furs. They were all there for the same purpose: To learn Muay Thai from one of the most powerful fighters still alive on the planet, not to mention the only one who would accept furres for lessons. He came to his room, a small unadorned wooden hole-in-the-wall off to one corner of the master's grounds. The entire complex was an abandoned temple; in addition to being convenient for the rooms already constructed, it had the advantage of high walls which kept out the natural predators of the jungle.

He looked over the trifles which he was able to call his own; a small rucksack containing a number of dried herbs, some pots and pans, several decks of playing cards, a small set of assorted weights loaned to him by the master, and of course his tattered old clothes; no matter how old they got, he seemed determine to hang on to them. Most importantly, on a small shelf over the headboard of his bed sat a small wooden box. He strolled over to check on the box, taking his time to carefully lift the lid and inspect each shiny ebony card. He had managed to give away the twos threes and fours already, but the deck still looked weighty, ever his burden to carry. He grasped a pair of heavy weights, casting aside the shirt to his gi and standing on one side of the room. He then began his required squats and permitted himself to reminisce on the years which had passed...

2 years prior

The leopard was a quiet fellow, but all around good at what he did. He had never received that sort of backup in a bar-fight before. A pair of lapines, each around 3 inches shy of Venter in height and with snowy white fur, lay unconscious across the nearby pool table. Venter himself was standing in a corner, tending to a sharp bleeding in his chest where he had been stabbed by a broken beer bottle. The leopard spoke with a calm cool voice, as though he laid belligerent assholes out on a regular basis.

"You really are part wolf, aren't you? I've never seen a hare so vicious with his fists... not that I mind. I hate those who harp on breeding; clearly, those two weren't so well bred after all." He jerked his head towards the pair lying on the table, and Venter smiled in spite of the pain.

"Well then... I think I might' have something for you mon'sur..." The hare reached into his back, slowly feeling for the cards. He had organized them so they could be readily reached and their number/suit could be determined by feel, and he withdrew not one but three of the cards. "This is for you. I know it looks valuable, bu' I have to beg of you not to sell it; jus' keep it by you." He handed the leopard the 4 of spades, wincing as the motion opened the cut on his chest a little more.

"This isn't a come on, is it? I'm afraid I'm already mated... to a snow leopard and a female, mind you. By the way, the name's Snow..." His voice hardly matched his words. In fact, he was chuckling quite heartily and admiring the gift in various lights. He withdrew a locket from his breast pocket and popped it open. Inside, a beautiful female snow leopard's photograph lay, depicting her sleek against a small forest glade atop a snowy hill. He gently lifted the picture a bit to make room, and lay the playing card behind it. "It's safe with me, mister... I'm sorry, I didn't get your name"

"Venter. Venter Deitan..." He then withdrew the two and three of spades respectively, causing his ears to start smacking him in the head in protest. "Knock it off, pests!" He gave the left ear a sharp rap with his knuckle, wincing a bit and noting the foolishness in hitting yourself in order to control yourself. He then stepped over to where the pair lay atop the pool table. "I'm trustin' that you two learned an important lesson tonight. It isn' breed that counts for everything, as y'might think. Consider these... mementos" He quietly slipped one card each into their pockets.

"You really think they've learned their lesson? You really think those two are worth wasting your treasures on?" Snow raised his eyebrows curiously, feeling a bit of resentment towards the apparently indiscriminate rewarding of friend and foe alike.

"Mon'sur Snow, if I can't bet myself on our ability t'pick good over evil, then I'm not worth bettin' in the first place." He left a small pile of coin on the bar, more than enough his tab and the damages done to the bar, and then set out the door into the pale moonlit evening...

Back in the present, the hare startled so much he nearly dropped the weight on his footpaw. The memories had taken over, leaving him on autopilot. His fur was matted to his body and dripping sweat. How many squats he had done was uncertain; however, his legs ached were about to fall out to the ground. He shook his body in a rather canine fashion, loosing the sweat from his coat and fluffing his fur out a bit. The sun had already begun to set, casting a warm red glow against the plain wooden backdrop of his room. He threw his uniform's loosely fitted tunic over his head in an effort to scrape together a degree of presentability, then proceeded to the common room where the master would meet him and Prianor for dinner.

"You are late." The master always spoke with a sort of calm air, making it often difficult to determine whether he was angry or not; however, tonight he seemed pleased enough. "You must have doubled your usual weight... I haven't seen you so exhausted in ages, Venter."

"You're still seconds from being toast, runt" The behemoth of a horse was slurping down his fresh buckwheat noodles bowl after bowl, his nose wrapped in bandages from the hit he took earlier. He regularly took additional servings from a large basket in the center.

"I... well, s'my nature to want a challenge... an' I guess I did a few extra because I lost count." Venter said.

"I won't lie to you Venter, your time here is about over..." The master never looked up from his bowl. "You've learned a lot, and Prianor here needs his chance to grow as well..."

"I could grow all over that half-grown hare trash. If he'd just stand still and fight, he'd be the one nursing his nostrils."

"Silence, Prianor. Venter... I'll accompany you back to the mainland tomorrow. Something tells me you won't need to worry about fighting with hares anymore... Dragons might still give you a challenge, but trust me when I say that they are in the realm of feasible." He paused a moment, drinking the broth from his bowl. "Do try and avoid breaking more noses than is necessary."

The hare's mind was made up. In the morning, on the way to the small ferry, he would give his master one of the greatest treasures he had, the king of spades. It had been around 3 years since the Goddess Nemllafnwodelbativenieht had last visited him. He remembered the day quite vividly...

"So y'came back to haunt me again, did you?" The hare had spoken to her with surprising disregard, given all he knew about her.

"I came to check on you, my darling lapine. I saw you with that girl last night... tell me, Venter, why did she receive the two of hearts? That's a rather odd choice..."

"Deuces're wild. She was wild. It made sense t'me... and I think it made sense t'her, judging by how she looked when she received it." Secretly, however, the hare was waiting; surely she was leading up to some new condition.

"I won't question your judgement..."

"Great."

"But I will give you a warning..." She grinned at the mixed look of irritation and annoyance which he took. "The cards are you, and thus they're yours to give... but one can give oneself away in different degrees. You certainly gave yourself to her..." She giggled softly, furthering his exasperation greatly. "And I don't doubt your decision. She won't forget you, particularly after you won her back her gambling debts. But how much have you sacrificed for her?" She said.

"None, really... I jus' did what was right."

"And that, good lapine, is why she didn't get the queen. Four cards in that deck are more potent than the rest... the Jack of Diamonds, the Queen of Hearts, the King of Spades, and the Ace of Clubs... you cannot, in good conscience, give these to any but the most worthy, those who you have given yourself utterly to. Only then will the card reflect the sacrifice that it truly is."

"Venter? You look distant..." The old man's voice snapped him back to the present.

"Apologies, master. S'been hard to get my head out o' the past recently..." Venter rose to take his leave, giving a short bow. "Take it easy, Prianor; an' if I don't see you in the morning, then g'luck." The hare left the room, destined for a sleepless night.

Elsewhere, a young otter was having a far more passionate night. The tiger with whom she was bedded grasped her by the hips, pulling her loins up to run his rough feline tongue across her petals. Venter knew this otter... how he could see her, he didn't know. The otter's face had a distinct crimson blush beneath the chocolaty fur, and she seemed to alternate between gasping and giggling with each stroke of the tiger's tongue.

The tiger was a credit to his species, at least 6 feet tall and near pure muscle; not bulky, but built of the same lithe compact muscle which Venter had accumulated. His orange and white stripes contrasted starkly with his off-white underbelly. At the base of his abs, the tip of his arousal was visible, pink and dripping poking out of the otter's fist, smearing her fur with his seed.

Venter pondered to himself with surprising calm the exact reason -why- he was able to see all this... and more importantly, why he was able to feel the tiger's manhood quite clearly. He could recognize the otters voice even from what little distinction there was in her gasps. She was the one who had received the 3 of hearts from him so long ago... He had gone to a nearby river and overheard her singing; since the song was a duet and he happened to know the second verse, he joined her. Their voices had complimented each other quite well... he gave her the card on a gut reaction.

The otter's tail wrapped itself around the tiger's left leg, pulling herself over him and into a 69 position. Venter's reminiscence of ages past was quickly put to a halt as a rather foreign salty taste splayed across her taste buds.

"What th..."

The hare's speech was halted as he felt his perspective warping; suddenly, he was no longer watching the couple. He was the otter, and her eyes were filled with nothing but the bed sheets, the strong thighs, and the hard shaft of the tiger as she blew... wait, what was he doing? He tried to pull his muzzle up, but he couldn't ... it wasn't his own, it was the otters. How could he be here? How could he be seeing what he was seeing? He hadn't even seen her in the nude during their last encounter...

His thoughts were repeatedly interrupted as the fine muscles of her slit clenched sharply around the tiger's tongue, wave after wave of pleasure overwhelming his system as wave after wave of the otter's nectar splashed the tiger's muzzle. In the daze of the afterglow, he was able to catch a glint in the corner of her eye, from the breast pocket of the otter's nearby shirt. A corner of his card hung from it, and suddenly everything became clear... he was there after all. He had given himself to her, in however small a capacity, and he was here as part of her. The tiger's muscles began seizing up; he felt the feline's length pulsing in her mouth, scented his forthcoming climax in the air. He felt her tongue, daintily massaging the barbs of his cock until with a sudden burst...

A hawk sat in an alleyway with an empty bottle of whiskey, and Venter found himself practically suffering whiplash from the scenery change. He readily recognized the hawk; a young con-man, who had played wingman for the hare at a poker game. As a show of gratitude, he had passed along the 4 of diamonds.

The hawk was weeping. Odd though it may seem, Venter felt almost as though this were a larger invasion of privacy than what he had seen in the last vision. He tried not to pry more than he had to, but the other's memories forced their way into his head.

He had been rejected; and for all his history of trickery, it had been his first really sincere overture. He was so used to getting whatever he sought through small lies and subtle tricks; it really stung to realize how his true self was received. He reached to bring the whiskey bottle to his lips once again, but his arms seemed loathe to make the trip.

"Snap out of it Sam... She didn' know yeh, didn' give yeh a fair shake..." The hare found himself comforting his old wingman, as though the connection might get his thoughts across. "Snap out of it... please..."

Sam's only response was a fresh loud sob, his back slumped against the corner. With a sudden burst of frustration driven rage, he brought an arm over his head, hurling the glass bottle at the solid brick surface of the nearby building, and with an earsplitting crack...

...Venter awoke. It was the same night, and he was sitting upright in his simple bed. The visions had seemed so real; no, they had to have been real. There was no other explanation; they both had received his cards, they both had been seen in very different places, and every sensation had been real as life... even those which used organs he had never owned. Something still seemed off to him though. A glass bottle shouldn't have made a solid crack. With an ever growing sense of dread, he sprang to his feet and ran outside.

"Master! Pri!" He was hauling ass towards the master's house with every ounce of sprint in his lapine legs. In the distance, he heard angry voices... unfamiliar voices.

"Why don'cha get up, race traitor?"

"Yeah, you've got so many kitty cat friends... can't you borrow a life?" There were two of them, and their anger was mixed with a sort of perverse glee. As Venter came up on the scene, his worst fears were confirmed: There on the hard cold stone of the sparring ring lay his master, the human's soft tanned skin slick with his own blood. A bullet wound marred his chest, and over his lifeless form stood a pair of men bearing rifles.

"Let that be a lesson, taking in and teaching those... freaks." The nearest man stepped over his body with an air of distaste; then, in a fit of rage, he put the barrel of his weapon to the corpse's head and pulled the trigger again... and again... each shot disfiguring the man more, until his face was no longer distinguishable and the rifle simply clicked.

Venter should have realized that this was the most sensible time to attack; the rifle was empty, the men were unprepared. In reality, he realized nothing but rage. No sensible thoughts were going through his head as he leapt forward into the circle. All he knew... all he wanted... was to bring the men pain. He saw the surprise in the front man's face, followed shortly thereafter by fear as the hare's forepaws came crashing down on his hands, knocking the gun away.

The scorned apprentice continued his assault, using his powerful hopping capacity to smash the top of his skull into the man's soft nose, relishing in the spray of blood it brought forth. He was so intent to pulverizing the first man that he had quite forgotten the second. Said second's rifle was reloaded, and was just about up to his shoulder when a convenient hoof found it's way to the back of the man's head.

There was no time to be concerned with Prianor and his fights, however. The human lay unconscious on the ground astride Venter's fallen teacher, and it was up to the hare to dispose of him. He picked the man up over his shoulder, carrying him to the stairs leading up to the walls of the temple. He hauled the body up the steps, one at a time, never so much as wincing under the load. At the top, he paused only a moment to peer over the edge at the crashing waves below. He didn't even recall the throw... when his rage loosed it's grip on his senses, all he could see was a single hand slipping beneath the water.

Prianor and his opponent were nowhere to be seen when he returned, and Venter didn't care. He stumbled to the body of the master, taking the greatest of cares as he lifted the body and carried it gently to the softer soil in the temple's garden.

The grave was 5 feet deep, and easily spacious enough for twice over what the master's body commanded. Every inch had been dug out by hare paws, and the same paws laid him to rest within. As he piled dirt onto the body, mumbling mixed prayers in the lapine tongue, an all too familiar voice rang out to him.

"He was weak." The albino horse stepped onto the scene.

"You killed 'im then?" Venter was surprised to find how easily he could speak; he honestly felt more like falling to his knees and weeping.

"Yes... but it wasn't him I was talking about." Prianor sneered nastily as he stepped up.

"What's that?" The tone of Venter's voice changed; he wasn't as soft as he had been, and he was holding himself in a more defensive manner.

"Master was weak. He let his kindness get the better of him... let those men see his weakness, let them kill him."

The last of the dirt fell onto the grave, distinguishable only by the recently-loosed appearance in a neat rectangle. Blind rage was no longer something Venter had in him. It was a far fiercer, colder fury which he brought when he turned about. His paw brushed against his vest pocket and felt something solid; reaching inside, he withdrew the card he had set aside as a parting gift. The King of Spades...

"He always made you his favorite. Always ignored it when you would foul me... always made you out to be some kind of model student... I could've kicked your ass any day of the week, and the old hack never saw..."

"Prianor." Venter interrupted him, stepping forward with a slow, controlled gait. "Y'saved my life back there. That's th'only thing keeping me from killing you here an' now..." He thrust the king of spades at the equine. "Take this. Hold it, keep it, hide it, bury it, do what you will. But let it remind you always..."

Prianor fell silent, a bit uncomfortable at the force belying the softness of Venter's speech. He held the card quietly in his hooves.

"I will kill you Prianor. Not tonight; but come th'morning, I will have your head. So jus' keep holding that card... it's goin' to remind you every day, that sometime soon your time is up."

And with no more words, the hare left his master's grave, never looking back.