FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 4

"(Fuck, why are they trying to kill me?! I don't know anything about them! What the hell is happening?)"

"Ifrit, stop! Stop running, you bloody hellhound. I am asking you to stop!"

"He's chasing us. I can smell it."

"Your presence and your smell draw him to both of us. Just let me go and I will find a place decent enough to hide."

Ifrit did what she said and as soon as the hellhound let her hand loose did she started to lead the hellhound to a place in a barn where she used some hays to cover their tracks and to hide. Both of them waited in silence, and both acute hearings heard low growls of disappointment before it faded away with almost silent footsteps from a wolf's hind legs. They breathed in relief when he was gone. But when Ifrit wanted to take Lilac again the black haired woman pulled her hand forcefully from Ifrit. As first he thought she was hurt by his claws, but he couldn't speak when she said, "Ifrit, why are you, a hellhound, is nice to me?"

Ifrit didn't want to reply. He himself was well-aware that his actions weren't what a normal hellhound would do, yet that was what he had learned, unlike the normally savage hellhounds in Drundas. The main hellhound city was full of cutthroat businesses that had an edge to even the lowest of the demons, including the hellhound race. He was too good to be in the city, so he explored the fiery plains, but he didn't remember more than that.

"(No...she won't gonna believe me anymore)," thought Ifrit. "(This is bad)."

"You're a hellish being, and yet you are being nice to me, a mortal being?" said Lilac with a scoff. "Are you toying around with my life, you bastard?!"

"Lilac, I'm not trying to..."

"Stop being so friendly to me!" interrupted Lilac. She was clearly angry on the revelation. "This isn't right...first, you saved me from those demons and second, you expect me to still believe you? Are you mad?"

"I'm...please, Lilac, I don't want to make things hard. I just want to help by my instinct...."

Instinct? Instinct, you say?! So your daring 'rescue' just now is based on a wolf's instinct? I thought we're friends, Ifrit."

She turned her head to a corner of a barn, while murmuring, "Yes...demons don't have any feelings, do they? I am so wrong about him."

"Hey...are you...?"

"Don't follow me, hellhound, or I will ask the whole village to kill you. You're just like many other demons I read about in books. Everything is..."

"The place is burned down. No one will try to kill me."

"What?"

Ifrit directed Lilac outside facing the village, as she gasped.

The village was on fire. The whole place was ablaze with no other traces of any villagers trying to escape. All of them didn't make it as both watched in horror when a hellhound dismembered the butcher when he desperately trying to defend himself with his own butcher knife, which was forcefully snatched from his hands by a red-furred hellhound.

Lilac didn't want to see what fate the kind man had fallen, as Ifrit closed her view when she put her body on his warm furred torso. While Ifrit didn't know the meaning, Lilac felt warmth of a companion despite of a hellhound being the only one near her. Ifrit instinctively closed his arm, embracing the smaller human as she pulled away from him.

"We...we must walk down this pathway to the bigger town," said Lilac. "We can find a decent place to rest there. I took some of the money I managed to take."

"Then...let's go."

"Wait, before that...you're not going to get near me, you hear me, Ifrit? I can't believe in you for what your kin has done to my village."

As Lilac walked away from him, Ifrit just sighed and said, "(Damn, I messed up big.)"

They walked through the long direct pathway, occasionally stopping to find a carriage to warn them about the village's fate and to ask them to hitch a ride. They were turned down by three carriages before one of them agreed to take them to a nearby stop, a small nameless carriage station for some of the carriages to drop the objects for then it would be taken to the small villages. Now, both of them could find a better passenger carriage and apparently Lilac bought a cheap vest, which was in a very bad shape, for Ifrit to wear. Of course, having a slender build made the black hellhound able to wear the vest like a normal human.

In the carriage, there was an uncomfortable silence between both of them. Ifrit didn't want to make the only companion he had to rush away and left him alone in the unknown land where he wouldn't survive. The surface world wasn't like how he was supposed to think about.

"Hey, Ifrit," said Lilac in the middle of the silence, startling the hellhound.

"Yes?"

"Won't you try to at least make me think you're as nice as a pup instead of a hound?"

"Uh...it's hard.... I look like this."

"I just want you to prove me that you're curiosity is a genuine cause. Okay...now, I bought the map of Tragoria region. As you want to know that's the region we're currently in. My village is not far from the carriage rest stop, but it will take a day to reach the closest settlements, which is...Wafyar. Oh, that's a good place."

"Wayfar? Is that a food?"

"That's waffle, Ifrit. But, I don't know where to start. I don't really want to have you walking around with this...anthropomorphic body of yours. If this is a problem then I have no choice but to..."

"(No!), I mean, no! Please, this place is no friend of me."

"Well, you are, considering you're being like this."

"Oh, sorry to interrupt, young miss, but I've been serving this mode of transportation for three years, and I know the lives in Wayfar," said the coachman. "May I continue?"

"Please, coachman."

"Wayfar is a settlement for both the wolfmen and humans. Some of the...wolves...have a habit to stay in their canine form as a style of living, but I should worry much about how savage they could be if they revert to their animalistic sense. I dare say, miss, that it's not a very quaint town."

"Can this Lycan blend in?"

"Hmm...yes, he can stay in that form as long as he likes. In Wayfar, the regulations extended to both the wolfmen and the humans, so they are treated as equal there. Mister Wolf, I must say?"

"Yes?"

"Stand tall in that proud form of yours," he said with a smile. "Just take a rest. We won't be getting there sooner after."

The journey took a longer time from the expected one day trip because of a potential storm that forced them to stop for the night in the only carriage station between the previous one and Wayfar. As Ifrit looked on, in the middle of the gradually stronger wind, many carriages stopped in the vacant spaces while they tried to lead their horses. The coachmen stayed in the same small inn like Lilac and Ifrit, and also with some other passengers of another carriage. The storm started just after the sun set, which was a very cold weather coupled with both rain and sometimes snow. The wind raged on, hitting the window of their room.

"Is it normal to be cold?" asked Ifrit about the storm.

"This, Ifrit, is a blizzard. I think you won't get this sensation many times when you're down there."

"Nope.... There's a frozen hell region we called (Ice World) where ice demons live. I have been there before, but...it's cold."

"I thought you have a strong body heat."

"I don't know what you humans talk in English about freezing like hell?"

"We've got that term, but I'm quite surprised to know that there is a freezing hell down there. I absolutely don't want to spend my eternal rest in your habitat."

"(That's not)...I mean, no spirit there."

"Uhm...let's not talk about the place you live. Let me teach you other words we use up here. Remember, this is for your survival, not mine."

After Lilac finished teaching the hellhound on many English words, she was the one getting sleepy while Ifrit was only yawning. Lilac went to sleep first, but she couldn't sleep well with the hellhound, and so while she lay on the comfy single bed, she eyed Ifrit trying to find a place to sleep with no avail, before setting down on a nearby wooden couch and quickly went to sleep. Lilac couldn't hold her own drowsiness before falling into a deep slumber.

The next morning, Lilac woke up to find the hellhound gone, but before she could think of any schemes, she heard running water in the bathroom. Walking there she found the hellhound was trying to drink from a tap with a glass. He finished one glass before starting another drink when Lilac said, "Ifrit, if you drink too much it will give make you feel uneasy."

"But it's refreshing. I feel thirsty as I saw the white land outside."

"It's normal to be thirsty with the dry air. Now come on, we are leaving again."

Since Lilac only carried a pouch of all gold money and some provisions, they were quick to be prepared for another journey. The landscape that was once a cool green lush now became a snowy white wonderland. After the last night's blizzard the snow started to fall and caused the road to be thick with them, yet the carriage could still pass through with caution.

Some hours later, Lilac saw the first signs of them getting into the town. She started to see so many carriages carrying many kinds of loads, from passengers to a mere cattle food. Then, Ifrit saw a sign that read 'Approaching Wayfar, the city of traders'.

"Oh, how fool of me," said the coachman. "The town is now called a city after a wide development of apartments. The road around are covered with stones and the roads use lamps."

"What a development!"

"Yes, miss. You will not believe it if you not see it yourself."

When both Ifrit and Lilac stepped down from the carriage and paid the coachman two gold and fifteen silver coins, they were greeted by the uncanny foul air. Unlike what the man said, the city of wayfar wasn't even as tranquil as a village. The place was very crowded with little care about the tidiness of the city's road itself. There were steam smokes rising up to the sky through a particularly long chimney of a cylindrical shape, many people shouting everywhere, and many others things deemed to uncanny to Lilac to see.

"Ugh, I thought it's a nice town with a high amount of Lycan population," said Lilac in disgust. "What a disgusting settlement, and that obnoxious smell...is this what happened these days outside of the quaint place I've been living?"

"Lilac, are you alright?" said Ifrit while trying to help Lilac.

"Oh, you don't feel weird around here?"

"Well, it's full of humans, I must say... (and trash)."

Lilac just sighed. "Alright...we can't just stand here to complain. We must find a place to stay."

"I can't say having a place to stay is..."

"Hey, if you want to stay on the road and sleep there, it's fine. I don't feel anything about it. You're a hound, after all."

"Wait, in this trash place? No, I don't want to stay here, of course not outside."

"You mean, especially outside? Yes, but you won't mind anyway."

"Hey, Lilac, you all considered me as a Lycan, but that doesn't mean me being a (hellhound) can stay outside."

"I don't want to talk about everything here, Ifrit. This place is full of people hearing us. Just...oh, you are getting into my nerves."

As they were arguing, a small Lycan walked near them. From Lilac's own perception she realized that the Lycan was not a small type, but instead a child. He had white and gray fur covering his body, with some brown tint near its snout. The blue eyes he possessed made Lilac thought it was like her own lilac-colored eyes. The young Lycan used a long-sleeved shirt under its jacket, possibly because it's winter. Since its bent digitigrades was on the way, he used simple beige-colored shorts. He carried a pouch at the side, somehow filled with newspapers.

Being a humanoid wolf made him sniffed Lilac for a while, before grinning to show off his white sharp teeth and said, "Hi, miss, would you like a daily?"

"Daily...what?"

"Newspaper. You don't come from a city, aren't you?"

"Oh...sorry, I'm a newcomer, little wolf. How much for one?"

"It's for five bronze coins."

Since Lilac only had big money, she must break everything down by buying some affordable things. She gave the small Lycan a silver coin, which the small Lycan tried to count on how many coins to trade back. She just said, "Give me 20 bronze coins for the change. That should be a fair trade."

He just counted the whole 20 coins before he left with a good smile on his canine face, which made a relief to Lilac. She watched the small Lycan offering another newspaper to a human, which he accepted. Somehow, here, the Lycans was one of the inhabitants instead of being carnage. She somehow saw many of the young Lycans like her even wanted to walk around with their human friends.

"God, how long have this happened?" thought Lilac while walking around with Ifrit. Of course, since there were so many canine-looking humanoids (one of the three forms a Lycan could take), the hellhound had no difficulty in blending in, but this also mean that there were others who would think the same. That's the reason why he tried to find anything resembling a hellhound, like a horned wolf.

Just as he tried to figure out one suspicious-looking Lycan did Lilac said, "Hey, what's that over there? It's like a group of Lycans threatening a beggar."

"Beggar?"

As Ifrit saw the commotion, he saw three big Lycans was harassing a white-haired human, somehow was in the weak position. Though his natural hellhound instinct wanted him to stay out of it, his other, trained instinct made him ran there. He didn't even care if he used a language other didn't know, but at least he could help that person.

"(Hey, get off from him!)" exclaimed Ifrit while shoving a Lycan away. "(Pick someone of your own size!)"

Since they all didn't know what Ifrit said, they just said, "What's this joker said?" before resuming to harass the human. Ifrit realized he didn't have good choices of words so of course, while no others were watching, he used what he used to train, which was using fire on his palms. This caught their attention, and the fire ball materializing on his palm grew as he started to say, "(You want this shove up your ass?)"

They were scared not because of his threats, but instead it was because the condensing ball of fire energy that unleashed threatening aura. In panic, they all ran away from the scene, when Ifrit extinguished the condensed fire ball. But, when he tried to talk to the beggar Lilac showed up behind him and made a hard hit on his head.

"Ow! Hey, what are you doing?!"

"You fool! Are you trying to make yourself exposed?! We're in the middle of a crowded city and you can be identified!"

"But they're hurting him."

"You messed everything up, Ifrit! Oh, good, here comes the officer."

True to Lilac's senses, there was a brown furred Lycan walking to them with another human, but from his smell Lilac could say he was a Lycan too. They both approached Ifrit with serious look before one of them, the blonde human, said, "Excuse me, Ma'am, but do you happen to know what he did just now?"

"Uh, that's only him using a fire ball."

"Using pyrotechnic magic is prohibited around this vicinity," said the Lycan. "Lycan, can you explain what you've just did?"

"Uh, this Lycan is a foreign visitor. He doesn't speak English very well," said Lilac in an attempt to cover on Ifrit's real race. "I assure you, that's a safe thing he did. He just wanted to scare the bullies."

"Like I said, Ma'am, the use of pyrotechnic magic is prohibited for fear of starting a fire. If your intention is to burn the flats, then we'll charge you on both pyrotechnic magic and arson attempt. You are coming with..."

"Wait a minute, officer," interrupted the man. "This Lycan is not using a fire magic. Those Lycans were just cowards, they are just trying to make fun of me."

"Can you prove what you said?"

"Illusion magic doesn't make such complex compression. I used to practice magic, so I knew how it happened. That, sirs, is an illusion."

"Hmm...if that's the case, then we'll leave both of you alone for now. But..." The wolf Lycan turned his head to Ifrit. "I'll give you a warning, Lycan. You don't want to mess around using magic."

They both them made a formal gesture for Lilac before leaving the three of them together in the middle of the crowded dirty city. He just made a sigh, and said, "You two almost got yourselves in a big problem."