FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

CHAPTER SEVEN

ANDREW’s eyes blinked open at the sound of another bowl scraping across the floor. His eyes adjusted to the darkness as he laid there, staring at the smooth stone ceiling. The weak torchlight cast wispy, dancing shadows on the ceiling, which twisted into strange shapes and danced to the flicker of the flame.

Just as in his past life, he had crashed down onto his bed after his heart-wrenching defeat, handing off his misfortune to tomorrow’s Andrew. The sleep helped calm that swelling tide of thoughts and feelings he was desperate to avoid, but it did not stop them.

Andrew let out a long sigh, trying to maintain his focus. He brought up a hand in front of his face, looking it over. The white fur on his fingers was still stained with the rust and dirt from his escape attempt. They were the perfect representation of his defeat. Feminine furred hands, futilely sullied and dirtied, cast in the same dim torchlight he had attempted to escape. His heart beat faster as he looked at his hands, that familiar panic he felt whenever he looked at himself returning to him.

God, Andrew, you’re pathetic. You can’t even look at your own body, he thought. Andrew continued to stare at his hands, idly scratching his palm with a blunted claw. He let out a sigh.

I need to accept that this isn’t a dream. I’ve been summoned to some other world. I’m a rare cat-thing called a soulless. I’m a woman now. I need to come to terms with all of this, or I won’t be able to live my new life here. I died and was thankfully given a second chance to live again, but if I keep on like this—shaking every time I look at myself—how can I expect to live my new life as a…

As a what? he thought. Andrew’s level-headed calm fled like a cat from the bathtub, a familiar feeling of anger and indignation taking hold in his mind. A slave to some aristocrat? A life as a servant, a decoration, a collection item? What sort of second chance is this?

Andrew bit his lip harder than he should have, a twinge of pain lighting up his lip. “No. I won’t accept this body, and I damn well won’t accept whatever sick life they have planned for me. I won’t let them break me.” Andrew spoke out loud, letting his thoughts spill out of him and bounce off the stone walls.

“I’m a human male. This body isn’t me. It’s the body of some housecat named Celeste. Instead of doing what they want— following orders, being their good little cat— I’ll do the opposite. I’ll figure out how to get back, return to my old life. If they can use magic to turn me into this thing, there has to be a way to turn me back. I’m not Celeste. I’m still Andrew.”

Andrew’s high-pitched voice grew more confident with each sentence, the noise echoing through the corridor in a language that no one but him could understand.

Andrew stared at Celeste’s hands again, flexing the retractable blunt claws. The persistent panic that sprung up whenever he caught a glimpse of his body felt diminished, albeit still present. Thinking about the body as being owned by Celeste—not his own—made a world of difference. He clenched one of Celeste’s fists, onyx claws pressing into her palm.

I can do this. This isn’t my body, and it’s not my world. I’ll use everything I can to get my own world and body back. My life was far from perfect before, but anything is better than this, he thought.

The path forward became clear. Go through the motions. Play the role of Celeste and prepare until he has the opportunity to escape captivity. Andrew reached for his stuffed mouse and unfurled the bit of paper with Moira’s contact information scribbled on it.

I’ll escape and get her help. It doesn’t seem like she knows I’m actually human. When I can talk to her, she’ll help me turn back into a human.

Andrew let out a long sigh and hugged his stuffed mouse gently. His plan would work. He could save himself.

His stomach growled suddenly, his thoughts pulled from abstract plans back into concrete reality. Celeste—his body— was hungry.

Unfortunately, Andrew came to the ironic realization that while his hope for escape let him reject his body confidently, it also came with the caveat that he would have to accept taking care of it until he could be changed back. Andrew had neglected food, water, and even going to the bathroom for days now.

Andrew chewed the same meal as yesterday, razor-sharp teeth making short work of the chunks of meat. He washed the bits down with gritty, warm water, drinking from the bowl like a cup instead of lapping it up like an animal.

. The bathroom situation was a more difficult hurdle to cross. Andrew had never particularly considered how a woman went to the bathroom, and he required some messy experimentation to relieve himself correctly into the foul hole in the floor.

I thought I smelled bad before, but this is definitely something else, he thought, wiping his legs, hands, and privates off best he could with one of his rags.

Wait. Am I going to have a period? He thought, cringing.

Dashing his thoughts, Andrew heard familiar footsteps echoing through the hallway. It was the sound of hard-soled shoes clacking on the stone floor. The sound set his instincts off, ears swiveling towards the noise, claws poking out of his fingertips an extra centimeter. He picked up his stuffed mouse and clutched it, thinking of Moira and his plans.

It’s alright. Moira didn’t tell anyone what you did. It’s alright, Andrew. This is the plan now. Just cooperate, he thought.

The bald leader rounded the corner alone. Andrew hadn’t heard his name a single time, but Andrew knew his face and tone well by now; his constant glares and derision burned into his memory.

Andrew glared at the leader as he opened the cell door and beckoned.

“Come with me. Be cooperative. You’re supposed to have all your teeth for your delivery, but things can change quickly.”

Andrew’s fur prickled at the man’s last comment but obediently followed him out of the cell. Once again, they walked through the long corridor. Instead of going to one of the rooms he had become familiar with, he was taken to another cell.

Andrew peered into the darkness behind the cell bars, its contents opaque in the deep shadow. He had passed by this cell many times before. Why was he being transferred? Was it some kind of punishment cell, worse than his own?

The leader’s key clicked in the cell door’s archaic lock, and he led Andrew into the darkness. The ‘cell’ opened into a small shadowed vestibule, housing a stairway that led upwards towards a wooden door, faint lines of light poking through the edges of the doorframe and cracks in the wood.

Andrew slapped his forehead with his palm.

I am so stupid. I must have the brain of an actual cat, he thought.

The cell was no cell at all! It was simply the gate that led up to the rest of the academy. It was the exit he had been desperately looking for during last night’s escape. The irregular sizing of the cells and low light had caused him to assume every gate in the corridor was just a strangely shaped cell.

Whether it was designed to be unnoticed or not, I should have known that the exit would have a gate in front of it.

Andrew walked upstairs slowly, nearly tripping. He still had the muscle memory of his true body, not used to the shorter stature of his current one.

He exited out into a large atrium. The sunlight shone brightly through a large stained glass window, the neutral sunlight tinted into a myriad of muted greens, blues, and reds. It took his eyes a few moments to adjust, never having seen daylight before in this new world. The floor of the atrium was coated in polished stone tile, primarily gray, with extravagant, whirling designs of chipped, colored tiles forming a mural across the floor. It was shockingly clean, the colors on the floor sparkling in the sunlight, nearly blinding him.

Andrew was led out of the atrium into the main hallway, beautiful colors of stained glass projecting a repeated symbol of interlocking rings onto the walls. A plush red carpet lined the hallway, feeling magnificent under his bare feet. Despite what he had heard about the awful smells of ancient times, Andrew’s sense of smell was almost flooded with the scent of clean linen.

He occasionally passed who he assumed were students and professors in the magic academy he had spawned into. They each dressed in dull robes and smelled extremely clean compared to Andrew himself.

Most passersby shot a look at him, some blushing, others eyeing him in disgust.

What are they looking at? He thought, looking down.

Andrew’s cheeks felt hot beneath his fur. He covered his lower area with a hand and his breasts with his stuffed mouse as he walked through the halls. When had he become so used to being a naked animal?

Focused on his embarrassment, Andrew didn’t see the leader halt in front of him and bumped into him, earning a threatening glare. They had stopped in front of a set of double doors, two simplistic circular symbols engraved on each of the tall doors. A sweet smell emanated from the passage.

“Go in, then follow the others to get dressed. I’ll be back,” the leader said, holding one of the doors open for Andrew.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ANDREW stepped through the doorway, discovering a large bathing room. A pool of water was indented into the stone floor, a similar tiling pattern to the atrium fanned out from the pool, the tiles a mixture of blue and white instead of the rainbow of colors he had seen before. Two rows of a half-dozen tubs flanked the pool, towels, and buckets neatly arranged between each tub. The large room was empty, save for a single group.

Waiting patiently around one of the tubs was a trio of female soulless. Two calico felines and a white fox. They all wore the same maid uniform. A slate grey dress, narrowing at the waist with an embroidered apron across the front. The dresses extended down to the knees, a colored cord tied around the waist. The fox’s cord was a bright blue, while the two cats’ cords were a muted green. The fox-soulless waved Andrew over and curtsied as he approached. She was taller than Andrew, with clean white fur that contrasted Andrew’s. Her muzzle extended out slightly further than the feline’s. She had cold blue eyes, stern but not devoid of feeling.

“Good morning, Ma’am. My name is Olivia, and these two are the Roth twins. We’re here to help you bathe and get dressed, if we may.”

The twins behind Olivia curtsied in unison.

Andrew opened his mouth to speak, hesitating for a moment. He realized it was his first time interacting with soulless besides insulting the dog-man he had seen downstairs. Did they act so respectful all the time? It didn’t feel right being called ‘ma’am’ at all, much less standing there as a naked, dirty animal.

“Er, yes… That’s fine,” he said.

“Very good, miss,” Olivia said. “Please get into the tub; your water has been prepared in advance.”

She held out a hand for his stuffed animal. Andrew cringed slightly, realizing how much he had come to like the crude thing as he handed it over.

Andrew climbed into the warm water, the warmth helping to cover up the uncomfortable sensation of his fur being soaked with water. It felt like he had just gotten into a bath with all his clothes on.

Andrew stayed tense in the warm, pleasant water. He bit his lip nervously. The water was just a little too nice to him. In fact, it all was. Why was he being treated with such care all of a sudden? The contrast between this clean room, smelling like the inside of a perfume store, and the disgusting cells downstairs was shocking. It felt like some sort of trap.

The twins gently touched each of Andrew’s arms, making him jump slightly. They each held a bar of rough soap and got to work scrubbing Andrew with vigor.

I wonder how old they are, he thought, watching the pair work on him. They look teenage, but what if they age faster than humans? These twins could be three-year-olds, for all I know.

Andrew studied the orange, black, and white colored maids. The twisting tri-color pattern of overlapping splotches snaked up their faces and hands, the wet fur showing that the skin underneath had the same pattern as the fur. The slight variations made it easy to tell them apart if he paid close enough attention, the one to his right having a dark splotch above her eye, the one to his left with splotches on the pink skin of her cat nose.

As much as he hated the thought, Andrew realized these twins were probably the image his captors wanted him to become. Docile and compliant, blunt claws working at their command.

The sisters avoided eye contact with Andrew, instead focusing on their thorough scrubbing. The more Andrew stared, the slower the girl he looked at would work. She glanced up at him with uncertain green eyes, not making eye contact. She muttered a barely audible apology before continuing. Andrew looked away, feeling guilty for making the girl uncomfortable.

Olivia went to work behind Andrew, rinsing and brushing his long hair with water and a brush, tugging knots gently out of his hair.

The scrubbing and washing of Andrew’s fur and hair were all alien feelings to him. Andrew suddenly realized that they didn’t feel bad. Instead, the treatment was quite pleasant. The scrubbing of his fur was therapeutic as tangles were brushed out along with his anxiety. Andrew took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. He hadn’t realized how much tension he was carrying around.

Celeste’s body might be uncomfortable most of the time, but this really isn’t so bad… I’m sure there is some ulterior motive to this, but I can try to enjoy it for a minute, at least.

But just as Andrew began to settle into the bath, Olivia apologized for the Roth twins.

“Please excuse them, miss. They aren’t used to being around Genitors, especially new ones like yourself. It’s just their instincts kicking in,” Olivia said.

Instincts to be embarrassed around me? Why?

“It’s fine, I’m sorry for staring- it's just I…” Andrew’s voice dropped off, a different chain of logic suddenly taking priority in his mind. He was casually talking to her. Just as he had minutes before. When he’d spoken to Olivia, he’d answered her questions, and she had understood him.

Andrew’s heart jumped in his chest. They must speak English! This is fantastic!

He had so many questions to ask, curious about so many things.

“Olivia! I know this is probably a really strange question, but you can understand me, right? Like, these words I’m saying right now.”

None of them responded, only continuing their scrubbing.

“Hello?”

The twin with the spotted nose looked up at him with concern.

Andrew huffed loudly.

Olivia sighed. “Ma’am, I apologize, but I can’t quite grasp what you’re trying to say. It has been some time since I spoke with a new Genitor. I probably should have said this outright, but we can only understand pieces of what you say. No one has spoken the way you do for centuries, but some of the words were passed down, it seems.”

Andrew’s heart sunk, and he slouched down in the tub. He had gotten his hopes up at a conversation with her. She clearly had some idea what was going on. The information was right there, contained in the person standing behind him, but it was unreachable. However she did manage to give him a small tidbit of information. One with extreme implications.

She says I speak a dead language. Which means the people here spoke English at some point. Even their names. Olivia, Roth. Earth-human names. There are others like me, or at least there used to be. These soulless must be the descendants of people like me.

Another breadcrumb of truth, things started to click together for Andrew. Moira said he was a Genitor, but the weight of that hadn’t hit him until now. He wasn’t alone in the world. This academy was unknowingly summoning people from Earth to create soulless. And they’d been doing it so long that they started a whole race of these anthropomorphic animal people.

I’m not alone! There has to be someplace out there with people like me, dealing with the same problems. They’ll have solutions. Answers.

Andrew smiled widely in the tub as the twins cleaned his blunted claws. A ray of hope and another piece of the puzzle was unknowingly handed to him.

The bathing dragged on as the trio of maids silently worked across his whole body, removing the grime and dried blood that had built up over the past few days of captivity. Andrew covered his private areas. It was awkward enough touching them himself. The idea of someone else doing it—even women—was unthinkable.

Andrew was helped out of the tub, clean and wet with his fur hanging off of him. With his fur wet, he could finally see the pale skin that had been hiding below the whole time. The color wasn’t the same as his old body, but it was skin nonetheless.

The maids patted him off with clean towels and began quickly brushing the fur to avoid replacing the tangles they had diligently removed.

The feeling of his fur being dried and brushed was like getting his hair washed by the barber after a haircut, but all over his body. Unfortunately, whatever relaxation he felt was underscored by the tension increasing as he neared the end of the process.

It was hard to relax when he couldn’t stop thinking about the final destination for all of this. He was being prepared for something. He was already sold, so it wasn’t for advertising. Probably to make a nice presentation for this ‘Alazar’ person.

With the grooming process finished, Andrew was led into the next room. Olivia took his side while the twins lined up behind him. Olivia guided him upstairs into a small changing room furnished with a full-size mirror and dresser.

The twins retrieved a set of clothes from the dresser and unfolded them before Andrew.

Andrew squirmed uncomfortably at the sight. The girlish skirt and simple undergarments were clearly meant for him. The underwear was a plain set of panties, a tan color that would have looked better on someone with normal skin. The bra wasn’t what he expected—a tube instead of a womanly shape. It was a thin wrapping of cloth with a lace in the back, like a corset.

The twins both wrapped the garment around his chest, pushing his breasts up as they tightened the string in the back. The constriction wasn’t horrendously uncomfortable, the feeling was strange more than anything. Between fur and his breasts, having clothing on at all felt very different. But just like being cleaned, it was a good different. His breasts weren’t large enough to move very much as he walked, thankfully. The real bonus was that having them covered made them easier to ignore, and that people wouldn’t be able to ogle them, like the dog-soulless.

Olivia handed the panties to Andrew, trusting he would know what to do.

Andrew shivered. It’s fine. You’re just clothing Celeste. This is the sort of thing she would wear. It’s fine.

Andrew stepped into the small, coarse garment and pulled it up and around his waist. The panties bumped into the base of his tail and hung low. Andrew struggled for a moment before Olivia wordlessly guided his fingers to a small button on the back of them. He unbuttoned it and brought the panties up and over his tail, buttoning them around his tail. They fit snugly, and when Andrew looked down, he felt better about his body. Being clothed made the situation suddenly more bearable. He hadn’t realized how much clothes affected his subconscious dignity.

The twins held a white shirt for Andrew to put his arms through, the two sisters doing the buttons for him in unison. The only thing left was a simple black skirt, which Andrew reluctantly put on in the same fashion as his panties.

“Go ahead and take a look, miss. I hope everything is to your liking.” Olivia took a step back and gestured towards the wall mirror.

Not that my opinion matters, Andrew thought.

It was a simple outfit, a black skirt extending from his waist to his knees with a loose white collared shirt that bowed slightly at his chest. Both garments were wrinkle and stain-free, made of finer material than his underwear. The collar of the shirt was buttoned just under his golden necklace-collar. The outfit looked prim and official. The collar of the shirt was lined with a shiny gold thread, and a red circular symbol was emblazoned above his left breast.

No socks or shoes were given. The maids weren’t wearing any either. His padded feet were tough enough, but they would probably hurt and bleed if he stepped on a rock.

Between the clean clothes and washed fur, the woman in the mirror looked more formal and less deranged than when he had last seen her.

I look like a waitress, Andrew thought, bringing a slight grin to the woman in the mirror’s face. The symbol on her shirt matched the one on Andrew’s body, and the lining of the collar matched his earrings. The outfit must have been tailored—or at least modified—specifically for him. Andrew still couldn’t quite believe he was looking at himself, but it wasn’t nearly as shocking as the last times he had looked in a mirror.

This lithe cat-girl body he inhabited was the vessel for his plans to redeem his old life. Viewed in that light, it was bearable.

Even still, as Andrew’s eyes wandered up to Celeste’s face, he couldn’t bring himself to look the reflection in the mirror directly in the eyes.

Andrew turned around and gave his attendants a curt nod.

“Thank you, Ma’am. May I tidy up your hair next?” Olivia asked.

With another nod, Olivia went to work with a pair of scissors as Andrew sat on the floor in front of the mirror. The changes weren’t much, just straightening up and trimming his fraying red hair along the bangs and back, tiny strands of crimson sticking gently to his new clothes. The finishing effect it had was tremendous. The transformation was complete.

Looking at his reflection, Andrew subconsciously stood a little straighter. He felt one step closer to human. He was clean and clothed. In his old life, if he had ever worn anything fancier than a t-shirt, Andrew would have described himself as sharp.

But describing his reflection in this new life as sharp felt wrong to him. The woman wasn’t sharp; she looked refined in the neutral-colored semi-formal attire. Clearly, his owner had gone through great expense to turn a simple, battered kitten into the somehow official-looking woman in the mirror.

Maybe Moira was right, no one who paid this much would abuse me. Maybe I could even reason with them enough to be released without having to escape.

Andrew turned around and nodded once more.

“Thank you for being kind to me. I’m sorry you’re being forced to do this. When I come back here as a free man, I’ll free you too,” Andrew said. He knew they couldn’t understand him, but he felt like he needed to say something regardless.

Olivia smiled. “No need to thank us. It was our pleasure to serve you. You may not understand yet, but as a Genitor and a Second Gold, you are expected to be a strong leader for our people. You will carry the burden of many.”

Andrew silently filed ‘thank you’ in his slowly growing word bank for later.

Strong leader? Andrew glanced back at the reflection in the mirror. This thin mute girl— wearing a collar— is expected to be a leader? I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll petition the government to make all of the soulless into human, but I’m no leader.

“Good luck, miss Celeste,” Olivia said. “May your tail stay low.”