FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Ok first off these stories are my intellectual property, do not copy them or the constrictor's within without my express permission. This is the first story I have posted so please votes are good comments are encouraged, feedback will let me know weather I should continue writing the story or not. * * *

After a quick search of the apartment we found some clothes for Cyin. It turned out Jake had a stash of clothes left behind by his many girlfriends. With the addition of a ball cap Cyin almost looked like a normal human. It would pass well enough to get us to the car anyway. Getting to the car was a lot easier then we expected, there was no one wandering the halls of the apartment building, and the back lot was empty except for our cars. Jake offered to drive, he believed that it would be easier if we all rode together. The car ride to the clearing was made in almost silence, the radio, and me giving directions were the only sounds in the car until we got to the park. I knew almost at once that something was wrong. "Can you feel that?" I asked out loud. "Ya, It feels like I just dropped a brick on my gut." Jake replied. This surprised me, I had expected Cyin to answer, not Jake. "We just passed through an early warning shield, I have felt them before. Someone is waiting for us, and now they know we are here." Cyin explained in a matter of fact sort of way. "This is great what do we do now?" Jake asked; I could hear the alarm in his voice. "We keep going as planned, I dealt with these people once before, I will do it again if I must." I said, not really paying attention to the people in the car anymore. I was sending out small sweeps of energy, much like radar, in an attempt to locate who it was that was waiting for us. I could feel something in the clearing, but I could not pinpoint it or tell how many where there. "Kaid... Kaid... KAID!" Jake shouted. "What is it?" I asked in a perfectly calm voice. I could feel it; I was in that calm place again. I could feel everything around me. Everything felt like it was in slow motion, it was all moving at normal speed, but somehow I felt faster, lighter, more in control. I also knew that my presence had grown, I was bigger somehow. "Kaid, this may not be a bad thing. This could just be one of my people looking for me." Cyin advised. "I know, I don't plan to go in there swinging. Of course if someone takes a stab at me..." I left the rest of the statement unsaid. As the three of us got out of the car I could almost here the silence. It was as if every noise in the area had been turned off with a switch. Jake pulled out a backpack and handed it to me. "What is this?" I asked as I saw Jake pull out another. "It's a backpack..." Jake answered. "Well I know that, what is it for?" I asked, getting a little annoyed with Jake. "It has some clothes, trail food, and a first aid kit. I always take them with me when I go hiking. Mine even has a small tent." Jake admitted, looking a little embarrassed. "Well this is a bit more then a walk in the woods, but good idea anyway." I said once again not really paying attention to the people around me. I was focusing all my awareness on the clearing up ahead. We quickly fell into a V shape pattern with Cyin and I in the front, and Jake in the back. As we covered the distance from the parked car to the clearing I continued to look for anything unusual. I could here every foot fall, almost feel every branch that broke giving away our exact position. This I took in, constantly watching and feeling for any hit of who or what was waiting for us. It was early afternoon when we actually entered the clearing, I could see that a few feet from the base of the large tree there was a small fire going. Logs had been set like benches around the fire, but still there was no one in sight. "I don't like this Kaid, it looks like someone wants to talk, but who or what?" Cyin asked her voice was steady, but I could tell she was emotionally on edge. "I don't know, but I plan to find out. Lets go with this for now, just don't let your guard down, and everyone sit with your backs to the opening of the clearing. If someone is hiding here they are either behind the tree, or in the wood line somewhere." As I finished, I finally got a good trace on whomever it was that we had come to meet. Although I didn't show it I knew then that he was in the tree, almost halfway up. But that's all I could tell for now. I figured he planed on making a grand entrance, jumping down in front of three unsuspecting people. Or this was as much a trap as it had seemed from the very start. After the three of us got sat down I picked up a small stick and started poking the fire. Sure enough not two minuets after we sat down someone came crashing down through the branches of the tree and landed no more then five feet in front of us. I could tell that the fire ring had been set up under some low hanging branches. I guessed whom ever this mystery person was set it up so he could drop down in front of us no matter where we sat. As soon as he landed both Jake and Cyin almost jumped into the tree that our mysterious host had fallen out of. I just sat and continued to poke at the fire. I looked up just long enough to get a good impression of who was standing in front of us before once again staring into the fire. The figure was wearing a long brown cloak, the kind you see all those wizards in fantasy novels wearing. His hood was pulled far enough up to keep his features hidden. Cyin and Jake quickly recovered after three or four glances between myself and the figure in front of us, but nether of them seemed in a hurry to sit down either. "Well you knew I was there. Ruins the surprise a little, but no matter." The man in the cloak had a voice like water running over rocks. Smooth but a bit gravelly. "Yes I knew you were there, you are in my clearing. I assume you wanted to talk to one of us?" I said cutting straight to the point. "Your clearing? Then it is you I came to talk to." As he said this he pulled back his hood. At first it looked as if he had green skin, then I realized it was not skin. His face, and what I could see of his hands were made of vines. As he moved the tangle of foliage bent and flexed as if muscle moving beneath skin. His fingers were long thin tendrils of vine, each one ending in a nasty looking thorn. His eyes caught me next; they looked just like a pair of buckeye nuts. The whites of the nuts looking for all the world like the corneas of a human eye. His mouth stood out in the tangle of vines that was his skin, and I was sure he was smiling. As he began to talk again I was almost shocked to see that his teeth, or what should have been teeth were rows of berries. I could think of no creature that looked less human. He did seem to be trying very hard to look human, maybe to make us feel more comfortable. "I am Nib'Var the guardian of this forest, and all that lives within it." He paused for a moment then went right into his story "A short time ago I began to feel a change, it seemed as if a small portion of my forest was turning away from me. Flowing to the rhythm of a new guardian." "At first I thought one of my brothers had been driven from his forest and was moving to mine, but this was not the case. In fact the area of the forest in question, this clearing to be exact, was allowing its self to become one with a human. I knew humans liked to visit these outer most edges of my domain, and I tolerated it. There was little I could do to stop them. I try but my power has little effect this far from the heart of the forest." He paused here, I could tell he was not done talking just deciding what to say next. "You must understand I have existed in hiding since the world was split and magic forgotten. I can only really affect things deep in the forest, far from man. Once in a great while one of you would venture deep into my domain, but these few were mostly harmless. They came and went leaving almost no trace of themselves. But I have left the point. As I started to explain this clearing was now in rhythm with a human. I was curious but not willing to risk leaving the deepest forest to investigate. Then I felt something I have not felt since the last days before the world was split. I felt a mage, a real mage, using his powers in this clearing. The more I watched the more it became obvious he was training to perfect his abilities, what's more there was another helping him, another who could also control the powers inherent in the world." "This is when I decided to journey out to this clearing and find out what all this meant. On my way something else happened. First I felt a weak spot in the boundary between the worlds being repaired. This I had felt before, I knew there was a group of humans who were still trained as mages just to seal the breaches in the boundary. This was saddening to me, for it seemed as if the mage I had felt in this clearing was training as one of these Tivynt mages." He paused for a second and I took the opportunity to slip in a question. "What do you mean Tivynt mages?" Nib'Var looked at me for a moment then smiled. "I'm sure you already know this, but when the would was split so was the mage counsel. Those that wanted the split stayed here and those that did not went to the other place. Well those who wanted it continued to train others so they could keep the boundary up. We call them Tivynt, or those against magic" He would have continued but Cyin jumped into the conversation. "Why do they need to repair the boundary? This has always confused us. According to all we know when the boundary was first maid it should have been permanent." As she asked this Nib'Var got a sad far away look to his face. It was odd to watch his face change, the vines bunched up in some places and stretched taught in others. His face looked almost like that of an undiscernibly old man with deep wrinkles. "Well you see it should have been." Nib'Var continued "But there was one mage, one of those who were against the split, who stayed behind. He was one of the most powerful of the mages. He stayed behind to try to stop the boundary from being made." "He confounded the Tivynt's attempts to create the boundary every chance he got. He would create wards to stop the boundary from forming in a cretin area, or kill those trying to put it up. He even managed to bring down whole sections of the boundary." Nib'Var seemed to swell up with pride as he explained this. "You see the boundary didn't go up all at once. It took some time to accomplish. They did this both to make sure the boundary would be eternally strong, and give the creatures that they were walling off from the rest of the world time to cross. This one mage knew that if they made the boundary the way they wanted to that the other place would quickly wither and die. You see all life depends on the energies inherent in the world, and the boundary would have cut the other place off from those energies. So this one mage stayed behind in a final attempt to stop the splitting of the world." I could tell that Nib'Var had a lot of respect for this mage, but what struck me was how old Nib'Var had to be to actually have been there too see all of this. He continued talking but he seemed to grow sad as he did. "Myself and my brothers insured his safe passages and gave what help we could. You see we can become one with the forest in the blink of an eye, never to be seen again. That is why we never crossed. It is also why we were able to hide him, for a while. Eventually they found ways to track him, even when we were hiding him. So as a last effort he entrusted his wife and two suns to our care, then went out to his death. No one would have guessed what he intended. He went out to face them, but in the last moments of his battle he did the unthinkable, he called power from the void." Nib'Var stopped here to allow us to soak in what we had just heard. Of course I had no idea what he meant by 'touching the void', but it was obvious from the look on Cyin's face that she knew exactly what he meant. "He couldn't have, everyone knows that the void is too much for anyone to control.." Cyin asked almost in complete shock. Nib'Var sadness seemed to deepen "You are right, the void is too much for anyone to control. This mage sacrificed himself in a last attempt to stop the boundary. He put every ounce of his power into controlling the void. As the power of the void ripped through him, burning his body as it went he managed to create a ward that forever changed the boundary. From that day the boundary is not a stable wall between the two worlds, but instead it bends and flexes, grows thin in some places. Allowing vital energy to cross to the other place, and sometimes allowing creatures to cross from one of the worlds to the other. These breaches can be repaired of course, but that meant the mages who created the division in the first place had to create an order whose one job was to track these weaknesses and repair them. It also meant that they could never completely eliminate the use of magic from this world." Cyin took a deep breath as Nib'Var finished explaining this. "So that is how it happened." Was all she said. "This is all very interesting, but that still does not explain why you are here." I said. Nib'Var took on a very apologetic posture. "I am sorry, I have strayed from the point again. I do that, when you spend as much time with no one to talk to you tend to get drawn into stories very easily." With this quick apology he continued where he had left off. "As I was saying I thought that the mage I had felt training was becoming one of these Tivynt mages. So I examined the rhythm of the energies being used to seal the breach. You know what I found; I found that none of those sealing the breach were the man who was in rhythm with this clearing. Then I felt something else I did not expect. I felt a power drawn and used that reminded me of the mage who forever damaged the boundary." He smiled at this, A knowing smile. "I knew that this was the man who had turned part of my forest from me, who was training in this clearing. I also knew that whoever was meant to be on the receiving end of the energy blast I felt was dead. So all I had to do was find the mage who was now the guardian of this clearing and ask him what his intentions were?" There was an obvious threat in the question. "Ask what my intentions are? Is that all, such a little question, and an easy answer. I have no idea, I hope to bring down the boundary, I hope to rejoin the worlds and awaken the humans. I hope to... well that is I want to do a lot of things, if we can ever figure out how to build a bridge to Micana." Nib'Var just looked at me for a moment, I almost wanted to turn away from that look. I felt as if he could read every thought in my head, see all my flaws. Just as I felt I could take no more Nib'Var smiled. It was a wide almost gleeful smile. "I can help you Kaid Al'Isnar." Nib'Var finished this with a bow. I could just stair at him. Cyin looked as shocked as I did. "What do you mean Al'Isnar? My name is Kaid Kintell" I asked. "Your name is also Al'Isnar, it means son of Isnar." Nib'Var said this as if it were the only explanation necessary. "Who is Isnar and why do you think I am his son?" I asked "Isnar is the name of the mage who broke the boundary. I do not think you are his son, but you are a descendant of his." Nib'Var announced in a matter of fact way that left all of us starring at him, mouths hanging open. "It can't be" Was all I could manage. "It is true, you are descended from Isnar, I told you he had a wife and two son's, you are a distant relative of his line. I can feel it in you, I think I always did it just took until now for me to admit it to myself." As Nib'Var finished I could tell there was no way I was going to convince him that I was not Al'Isnar. "What did you mean you could help us?" Cyin asked Nib'Var seamed to consider this. "You wanted to build a bridge to Micana, I can tell you how."