The Tale Continues Pt. 01

This is a short work of erotic fiction containing furry, or anthropomorphic, characters, which are animals that either demonstrate human intelligence or walk on two legs, for the purposes of these tales. It is a thriving and growing fandom in which creators are prevalent in art and writing especially.

All work is fiction intended for fantasy only, regardless of content, and consent must always be acquired when engaging in any sex act with another adult.

Please note that all characters are clearly over eighteen and written as such in all stories.

"I'm still not exactly sure about this, guys..."

Rose pressed her lips together, sitting back in the passenger seat of the car. It was quite unorthodox -- not that she was hanging out with Tim and Max again, no, but more that they were heading to the neighbourhood strangely placed right out on the edge of town. A prickling sense of unease tugged at the pit of her belly, even though Rose didn't honestly have any reason at all to be feeling like that.

Except that Sara hadn't answered any of her texts. That was weird, very weird, for she was usually quite responsive.

Tim rolled his eyes at her, ever bright and bubbly, as if he could only see the bright side of life. He brushed his dark hair, which was growing a little on the long side yet again, back from his ears where it was curling down and tickling them, but at least he was wearing his contacts that time. The glasses tended to annoy him. No matter where he got them from, they were always slipping down his nose.

"Don't worry about things so much," he teased, leaning over the back of her seat to poke her ear, making Rose squeak and jolt away. "Honestly, you'd think you've never been camping here before."

"Get off!"

Max sighed, their designated driver. It was his car that they were in, the only one of them, so far, to be able to acquire a vehicle, though it was a smooth enough ride, even if it was an older vehicle. Yet he did not say anything, for Rose and Tim butting up against one another like that was...pretty standard for their friend group. Mentally, he ran through a checklist, wanting to see, yet again, that he had everything for the trip that he needed.

Rose shook her head, slumping back in her seat. Something still didn't feel right but it wasn't anything that she could put her finger on. The guys, hm... She'd been friends with them since before heading off to college, which was where they knew Ciri, Lara and Sara from. The guys had some weird interests -- well, she would have been lying if she said that she wasn't a furry too, a fandom that was interested in anthropomorphic animals and had a great deal of variety in it, stemming from that common interest alone. She wasn't as much into the fandom as they were, but that was okay. Things still had worked out for them as friends and she liked the people that she met along the way, which was more than good enough for her.

Sara had been on the edges of that, though seemed to have some rather unusual interests that she kept behind some locked accounts. Not that Rose was going to pry: Sara was a good friend. It had been her who had recommended the woods as a camping spot and, well -- they'd been there before. With Sara living nearby, it was the perfect spot also to drop around to see a few friends after they had had some time to rest and relax, unwinding a little.

Yet Sara had not answered her texts -- Lara too, come to think of it, but she was a bit more scatterbrained -- for maybe...what, a week and a half? She wasn't sure, it wasn't something that she'd been keeping track of. Though she'd been making arrangements with her and then, poof -- nothing. Nada. Zip.

"What's going on... Is that a bear?"

Tim gaped out the window, his hand pressed up to it. Max scoffed lightly, though smiled at his friend.

"It can't be, not in broad... Huh. You're right. A brown bear?"

Rose joined them, her brow furrowing. Yes, it was a bear, though... Well, she wasn't all that experienced with bears, to be fair, but it didn't quite look right. It kept standing up on its back legs, even as they slowed the car on the long straight road, bordered by suburban homes for a better view. It wasn't something that she wanted to get too close to, however, even as the bear kept on taking a few steps forward and then falling back to all fours again, over and over again.

"That's weird..." She said. "Sheesh, did we bring the bear repellent? I don't want to have to deal with that in the woods, I didn't even think they came into the forests here at this time of year! And that one's out there in the middle of the day!"

"Relax, Rose," Max smiled, quietly confident. "I've got everything we need, I'm sure. And it must be unwell, surely, if it's out there. A park ranger or animal control... Someone will be by to take care of it soon enough, they'll get it help."

"And then we can enjoy our trip!" Tim chimed in, lips stretching right back up into a smile. "Wow, it was cool to see a bear up close like that! Do you think there will be more?"

"You'd better hope that there aren't," Rose shot back at him, though even she could not help but smile at his infectious enthusiasm, even if it was ever so slightly misplaced. "Just...don't do anything silly, okay?"

"I'd never!"

Tim may have been the youngest of them, still attending college, but...he had a little growing up still to do. Few came out of college, after all, who were truly ready for the "real world" and he was far from alone there. Though most of those that knew him hoped that he would retain his bright outlook, regardless of what life threw at him.

And yet...what life ended up throwing at him was beyond the realm of what anyone could have ever suspected. For something beyond the comprehension of mere humans was beginning to wake, bit by bit, streaming from the forest into the surrounding neighbourhoods, stretching far and wide. The wider world, however, did not yet know what had taken place there, and would continue to happen.

"Wait..." Rose had put her nose back into her phone again, but was forced to pause, looking up. "Is that a dog? It looks hurt..."

They were driving through a residential area, the lawns perfectly manicured and neat in a way that she hated (even if it kind of looked nice too) and she was quite right: there was a dog there. Big and shaggy, it was larger than any dog that Rose had ever seen before, stumbling along as if it was limping.

"Oh, the poor thing," she said. "We've got to help it."

Max sighed.

"Rose... We've got to stay on schedule... But it doesn't look good, does it?"

He slowed the car down to a crawl, though...it was no dog at all. Bulky around the shoulders, they could see, up close, that it was bigger than a dog with shaggy grey fur that slanted through various shades, black markings on its muzzle. Tim hissed through his teeth, shaken, if only briefly.

"Fuck, that's a wolf!"

And it was, though...it wasn't an ordinary wolf. Like the bear, it was trying to stand up, though it didn't manage to do a very good job of it at all, half-staggering for only a moment before falling back down again. Walking on all four paws seemed to be more than enough trouble for it and there was shredded cloth around its body too, even the remains of trousers.

"What's going on here?" Max said, a little whiter than he had been before in his face, the colour having mildly drained from it. "This is...weird. Why... Did someone put that wolf in clothes? Are they from a circus?"

"I..." Rose took a breath. "I don't know. It's weird though, really weird... Maybe some sick person was keeping these animals, like the bear too, in a private zoo? Maybe they got out?"

Tim shuddered.

"Poor animals."

Yet it was the bear and the wolf that set the tone from their drive, peering anxiously out at a bird that didn't seem to know how to fly, a gold necklace somehow hanging around its neck, too large for it to lift alone. There were other creatures too, like the squirrel that seemed to be trying to open a mailbox and the moose buck just hanging out with the moose cow (the antlers were what allowed them to tell the difference), just standing on someone's front porch as if they didn't have a care in the world.

"There's a lot more animals around here than I expected."

"Hey, I can't get online," Tim said suddenly, holding up his phone. "Do you think the network is down?"

He pushed past his sense of unease, checking out website after website, even the bird tweeting app (he'd never been keen on that but a lot of his furry friends were there). Nothing worked -- until he got to the university website and social media stream, built into forums, a shout board and an active chat box. It was an older style but, for their smaller university community, in comparison, it had worked a treat.

"Why is it just the university one working... Oh, it's the network, it's...out of area? But why aren't the phone lines working then?"

"Maybe only some things are working," Rose suggested. "They could have had an outage down here, maybe some services are disrupted."

"Hm..."

He wasn't listening to her, busy scrolling. And then the face of a cat -- a big cat -- filled his screen.

The video played automatically.

"Don't go into the forest."

Rose flinched and looked around.

"What have you pulled up?"

Tim blinked at the screen.

"It says... Crri... Is that meant to be...Ciri? It looks like the avatar she used to use, her picture, and...yeah that's her university account. But why is there a filter on that makes her look like a cat?"

He played the video, half-shrugging, though the prodding sense in the back of his mind continued.

"Don't gooo, intho," the cat slurred, or whoever was behind the face struggling to talk clearly. "The woodsth. Agh, damnith. It'sth dangerouth in there... Donth...go...intho...farrest."

The camera angle suddenly changed, showing the body of the feline -- but it was not like anything that they could have expected. Tim gasped and half-dropped his phone as a bare chest, furred though, filled his screen, breasts upon breasts jostling for position. The person must have been fumbling for their phone for they squashed it against their breasts briefly, flesh bowing in, the nipples perky and erect.

And then the video cut out...

Tim shook his head, brushing his fingers back through his dark hair.

"Well, uh... Yeah, it has to be, like, AR or CGI...something, I didn't think Ciri was into that stuff though. But she can't... Just look, Rose..."

He handed the phone to her, though could have probably warned her about the breasts that would shortly be filling her phone screen. Rose jolted the very moment that they appeared and Tim made a half-muffled sound of apology while Max did his best not to look over.

"What the hell?"

"It's...supposed to be Ciri?"

The feline on the screen talked, however awkwardly.

"Ugh..." The cat that might or might not have been Ciri mumbled. "Stoopid mawth. Okay. Slowly."

Slowly her speech down, she dragged out the words, taking care to enunciate as much as possible.

"Something strange is going on," she said, though some of the words were still slurred. "You know me, I'm Ceeree. Ceeree. Ciri. Yes. This sounds crazy but...it's magic. There are these weird small creatures... They're called Fae. And they can change you. They've changed so many people already into weird things..."

The feline on the screen shuddered, the top part of her uppermost pair of breasts on the bottom of the screen still, though she did not seem bothered by her nudity.

"This body is the least of it all, there are... I can't explain it."

She panned the camera downwards, whiskers twitching, showing off her ridiculously endowed body. Tim clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

"Yeah, but, come on," he said. "It's a cool costume but...yeah..."

But Ciri was still talking.

"Look... I know it's hard to believe but I'm not messing with anyone. Yes, I have been transformed and it's... Nothing's ever going to be the same again. You might not believe me and I don't even know how long this will stay up... I'm, like, fifty per cent boob now... But if you must come here, I have to tell you this."

"If you are caught by a Fae, they like requests. A lot. If you can distract them by asking them to transform parts of you, they'll be easier to talk to and they probably won't do too much to you. But don't ask for something that makes you immobile, that won't give you a chance. Attacking them leads to a...vastly worse fate."

Her lips closed and her muzzle, even then, twisted unhappily, hinting at something more. And then the video cut out, snapping to black.

Max had pulled over to the side of the road, though the others noticed that he had taken care to ensure that the car doors were locked. As if that would stop something if there really was something wicked and weird out there.

"Uh... Yeah," he said, taking the phone off Rose. "I'm gonna...check that out again, I only heard bits of that."

But playing the recording in full once more didn't help. Even Tim looked sceptical, though he was the most likely of them to go along with it, really. He wanted to believe in that sort of thing. And just what would it be like to be transformed?

"It's not real," Rose said, rolling her eyes, though she sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than anything else. "Come on... We'll have to get in touch with Ciri, I thought she was staying with Sara, she said something about that ages ago... Maybe she's here too? They've got to be making some weird thing to freak people out."

"But what about the animals?" Max chimed in, though there were no animals, thankfully, acting strangely around them at that time. "They've... Yeah, there just be a few weird things going on here."

"It'll be better out in the forest," Tim said, smiling. "But that was a cool costume -- I don't think it was AR now, it looked like it moved properly and everything. That's so cool! I'll have to ask Ciri how she did it, that's amazing! Maybe she's getting into fursuit making?"

It was a push and...well...they didn't even know if Ciri was a furry, even if the feline there had been rather typically furry in appearance, like a fursuit that was, quite genuinely created to appeal to the sexual eye. But it was enough for them to all nod and chuckle a bit about how they had been "fooled" by it, at least for a moment.

A prank, yes... It had to be a joke, though rather interesting, to be fair.

As they headed on to the campsite, the three of them conveniently missed the raccoon, the mouse and the tiger all trying to sit down and have dinner together at a back garden table. For them, it was the best thing that they could do to carry on with their new lives as some of the transformed.

The campsite was unmanned. Which was odd. But not odd enough for them to avoid it, surprised to not find anyone there.

"At least it will be nice and quiet," Rose had said, while they'd been setting up their tent. "It's good not to be disturbed. I can't remember the last time I had an actual campsite all to myself. Except for you guys, of course."

However, the moment that they had entered the woods, the large campsite clearing surrounded by trees, a riving bordering on the western side, they had been followed. For the Fae were in residence and it had been a while since new victims had entered their forest.

"What are we going to do with them?" The first, Lark, said, a Fae of a medium build with a little bit of a belly on his body. "They are new... They don't know what's happened here."

Chaldera scoffed, the younger Fae's wings glowing as she flew effortlessly. Her black hair was pulled back, though there was a pinched look on her face.

"Well, they're ours, aren't they?" She quipped back sharply. "Plenty to go around, the claim is made. No one else spotted them in time. But...what to transform them into?"

Lark chuckled, though it was a dark kind of chuckle. Any mirth that had been held in the Fae most certainly did not reach his eyes. Lurking on the edge of the campsite as evening fell, he watched and bode his time.

"We'll come up with a good idea," he said, emphasising the word. "This one should be long and drawn out... There is no rush."

Indeed, for them, there was not. Yet time was ticking away on the freedom of the three, unaware, humans.

It took some time for the three of them to settle in, though having the tent pitched and a fire burning, even a little gazebo (with an opening in the roof to allow the smoke from the fire to escape, even if it tended to blow about all over the place anyway with the slightest of breezes) set up to shelter them. It was a clear night, stars flaring to life in the sky, the moon hanging there, watching, waiting. Rose glanced at it, enjoying a bottle of beer, though she'd only had about a third of it after a dinner cooked over the campfire and was hardly feeling it at all.

"I don't know, guys," she said slowly, shaking her head, though she had to gain the guys' attention first. "The thing... That Ciri thing, it was too real, you know. She looked like she really had been changed. What if she meant what she said about not going into the forest? It was her voice..."

Max cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter.

"AI can mimic voices now too -- that doesn't mean that it was Ciri," he said. "If there were recordings of her at the university, maybe from that drama thing she was doing, then she could have had the clips uploaded. With enough, they can make it sound extremely realistic. They're even looking at new laws for it..."

"Ugh, do we have to talk about this right now?" Tim said, raising his bottle. "We're out here to relax! And we'll find out whatever the heck that was all about when we see Sara. It's going to be fine! Everything's fine!"

And, to him, he really did believe that. Rose just wished that she could too, unease taking root in her belly, as if a seed had sprouted and was infiltrating her system.

Hell, that was an uncomfortable thought.

"You would think that though," she shot back at him, not able to resist. "You always were looking at stuff like that on the furry sites -- come on, Tim, I know your damn username. And you sent porn to me before -- when we were in a lecture too! That big wolf anthro with dicks for legs!"

ZAP!

A bolt of light, zig-zagging crazily through the air as if it did not know where it was going even though it only had a single target, shot from the bushes. Rose shrieked, leaping to her feet, but it struck her in the chest without any physical impact.

"What the fuck?"

It was not like her to swear, what she had just been saying and talking about jumping from her mind as if it had not been important at all, heart hammering and thudding painfully in her chest. Wildly, she jerked her head back and forth, straining to see just where that light had come from, but, to her, it was without a source.

"What the heck?"

Tim was up on his feet too, though the blood pounding against Rose's eardrums screamed louder and louder, a deafening din that made everything else sound as if it was coming from very far away, even if her friends were not. Max grabbed her arm and shook her, clearing the noise slightly from her head, though that did not help too much, her legs feeling weak and wobbly.

"Ugh..." Rose groaned, pressing her hand to her head. "I feel... Did I eat something bad?"

She swayed a little but could never have understood exactly what had happened to her, not even then. It felt like her legs were getting puffy -- kind of like when she had helped out at the animal sanctuary and there had been a badger whose leg had swollen up due to some bacteria or something. But that couldn't take hold so swiftly, could it?

She didn't know, not as they strained a little, feeling uncomfortably large in her camping trousers, the ones with all the pockets on them that, honestly, Rose didn't use as much as she wanted to. She had said, before, that she didn't want to weigh herself down with too much stuff, though that didn't make sense anymore, as a sense of "blubberiness" spread through her legs.