This is a story set in The Tomorrowlands Universe; for more information and other writings, see the TTU Wiki at ttu.tomorrowlands.org.

© 2001, Onissarle

Faith

Chapter One: ‘Thy will  be done’
(Adult, non- sexually explicit content)
By Onissarle

“Our father in heaven, hear my prayer that it may be answered.  Why do the sinners walk amongst the pure of soul, tainting their minds and hearts so that they may not know your glory?  Why do those born of sin in Satan’s image still plague this land like a pestilence?  Why have you blessed me with such a gift?  Please my lord, answer me.”

The rain trailed down the buildings in miniature waterfalls, continuing the erosion of centuries so slowly that it was immeasurable.  Poisoned limestone glistened black in the dim haze cast out by the inadequate lamp posts, stained by a history of pollution and exploitation.  As if such a sight wasn’t enough to dampen the soul, the smells of degradation rose from the gutters and cobbles even through the endless cascade from the heavens.  Nothing was wholesome.  Purity had long since been corrupted by hatred and ignorance, innocence lost in the pain and suffering of the life lived by the few that had thought themselves so gifted.  No voice spoke out for the downtrodden and oppressed in a world that would rather deny what they could see, hide it away in shadows, than accept the new world that was struggling to begin.

The city of London was no sanctuary.  In a small space it managed to be the epitome of mistrust and hatred that had spawned in the days of change.  Those ‘gifted’ by the time of change were not welcome, they became outcasts, forced to seek refuge in the shadows of society.  Fearing the persecution that sprang up against them, hatred gave birth to more hatred.  The world known by those that inhabited it was split in two, the ‘normal’ people and the therianthropes.  Though even in this twisted perception there is an ember of hope.  Therianthropes became the centre of all the anger and misunderstanding people harboured, race, creed, colour, and beliefs no longer mattered because everyone was at least human.  Therianthropes, although never officially classified, were considered something else and so were no longer privileged to basic human rights.  Life was made deliberately hard for them, many were forced to sink low simply to survive, catering to the more extreme tastes of those they feared.

Jennifer watched the street with her delicately gloved hands firmly on her hips.  The huddled figures scurried past in their coats and hoods like insects, fleeing the cold chill of the rain that sank to their bones.  She wasn’t much bothered by the rain anymore; the doorway she stood in sheltered her from the worst of the downpour anyway.  The soft fur of her neck and chest fluffed out across her cleavage in response to the bitter wind that drove the rain onward.  Life was hard, but life was life.  She’d long since stopped pondering on the injustices of society, they wouldn’t change, what had become important to her was surviving.  Her change had been traumatic to say the least.  She remembered it well, like a pin point of light in her memory.  Getting home from work, kicking off her shoes and turning on the shower, the last time she’d feel the water on her bare skin.  It happened in that private world of steam, half veiled by the warm mists.  Everything had changed, her entire world crumbled away in the unwavering stream of water, washing away down the drain with the grime of the day.  She’d been obsessed with foxes since childhood, even writing stories depicting herself as one, almost as if it was a part of her mind, her soul.  Now it was a part of her body.  What she found most surprising now she could look back on it was that she hadn’t been afraid.  She sat for hours, just looking at her body and exploring its new extremities.  The slender ears, bushy tail and the deep, soft fur that matched the rusty red her hair had been all seemed so wonderful through her new eyes.

The following dawn brought with it the new world.  She’d dismissed the reports from America on the news as hoaxes, April fools at their best.  Now it seemed all too real.  That really sank in for her when she first stepped onto the street with her new paws, bare, as the shoes she’d worn for years no longer fitted her animal-like feet.  If she could have chosen, she wouldn’t have done so but she had found herself trapped in her new form, unable to turn back the tide of change that had so suddenly washed over her.  The first scream echoed in her ears so sharply that she realised just how much more effective they had become and instinctively they flattened.  More followed suit and the panic and fear exploded from there.  She ran.  She ran for longer than she cared to remember, it seemed to her that she’d spend her entire life running as prejudice and fear mounted against her and those others she saw with the same fate.

She found salvation in the most unlikely of places.  Down in the dregs of the city, amongst those beneath the acceptance of society in general, she had been accepted.  The people didn’t care that she was different, they taught her how to use that to her advantage, to survive.  So here she had ended up, doing something she’d never even dreamt she’d ever consider.  At least she was alive.

Adjusting her cleavage in the tight blouse that was knotted across her breasts to keep it closed while revealing as much fur clad flesh as possible, matched only by the more than mildly revealing skirt, she leaned back against the stone arch with a sigh.  She didn’t really know what was bringing back these nostalgic thoughts from the depths of her mind, perhaps it was the rain.  She didn’t care, they didn’t trouble her anymore, she had only sympathy left for the others like her, cursed by their gifts.  Whatever the reason, the thoughts were soon dispelled from her mind by the approach of a huddled figure, features shaded by the brim of his hat but his stride was more determined than the bedraggled masses that washed past.  There was purpose in that stride and she reacted as always, flexing her body in a living advertisement that wasn’t really needed.  If they came here, they already knew what they wanted.

The figure paused short, standing in the rain, observing her from foot to the black tips of her ears in a slow and steady motion.  He spoke no words as he stepped up into the doorway, she was used to that.  Few of them wanted to talk, it wasn’t what they paid their money for, they paid by the hour for something very different.  Elegantly, she extended a hand, covered in soot black fur to push to door open with a faint creak.  The rush of warm, almost citrus scented air was an awakening contrast to the cold and damp street outside.  He entered and she closely followed, brushing against him as he walked less than a pace ahead of her.  The dingy lighting in the dilapidated hallway did nothing more than highlight the thick smoke that hung on the air like a curtain, drawing aside as the passed towards the stairs.  An almost anorexic female squeezed by them, her features seeming somewhat dog-like but indistinguishable in the gloom, heading towards the door to take Jennifer’s previous post.

The stairs creaked underfoot as he ascended, guided by her hands resting lightly on his hips, gloved fingers sliding down to stroke teasingly over his tense buttocks.  As the landing loomed before them, he pause, despite her insistent nudge forwards.  His hat tilted, suggesting the inclination of his head towards the door he had stopped beside.  On the edge of hearing the whimpers, groans and yelps of the sordid scene beyond excited the imagination in most.  Yet no word was spoken and no further motion made before he resumed his steady pace along the hall.  Stopping only when she slid her arms around his waist and pulled him back against her body, gesturing him to stop.  The much use door clicked and swung open as she backed into the room, sitting lightly on the bed as he entered.  Then, as he closed the door, she slid back onto the bed and rolled slowly onto her front.  Bringing one thigh up at a right angle to her body, she gently eased the brim of the skirt up in the motion.  It would have been notably revealing if she hadn’t skillfully curled the bushy arch of her tail around, sheltering her form as an alluring shade.

“So…”  Her words were soft and practiced, ringing with the suggestive undertones that had become second nature to her now.  Her well-spoken accent only added to the arousing effect.  “What does such a handsome customer want for his money?”  She hadn’t even had a clear view of the man’s face but flattery of the customer’s appearance and prowess came with the territory.  Resting the chin of her muzzle in the palm of her hand, she planted her elbow firmly on the bed for support.  She waited, perking her ear and rolling her eyes up innocently in anticipation of the response.  Only silence filled the space between the dreary walls.  “The silent type, are we?”  She smiled.  “Well that’s okay, first time is it?  Most people are nervous their first time.”  She flopped onto her back again, arching as she stretched both slowly and deliberately.  “So are you going to join me? ... or just stand there?”  Another uncomfortable moment passed in silence.  She thought quickly and rapidly found an answer.  “Ah, so you’re the sort that likes to watch then?  Then I’ll just have to make sure you have a show you’ll enjoy.” 

Slowly, she removed her gloves, tossing them aside and running her palm gently down across her belly to slide into the powder soft fur between her thighs.  She ran her tongue equally as slowly along her top lip, moistening the fur of her muzzle to gleam in the dim light.  As she performed this elaborate act, her free hand began to carefully untie the knot of her blouse.  The man watched on, still in silence and still motionless.  Although his eyes couldn’t be seen, she could feel his gaze on her body.  At first that feeling had made her sick to her stomach, now she used it as akin to motivation to do well.  If they came back for more, she’d made more money.  She ran her fingers up her thighs to tweak under the brim of hem of her skirt, acting out the gasps of pleasure and arousal as she did every time, letting the blouse begin the slip away to reveal the creamy white fur that covered her shapely breast.  She paused and fell into silence in surprise as the figure finally spoke.

“If she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father”  Jennifer blinked, that hadn’t been something she’d expected to hear, this was something completely new.  With a little effort, she recovered well. 

“So you like it righteous do you?  Well if that’s what gets you off… I really am a terrible sinner, if only someone would preach to me…”  She wriggled on the bed, gyrating slightly.  At last this guy was original, she didn’t see that much anymore.  “…I …I might just be converted.”  She put on the innocent child routine as best as she could, playing up to his little game, whatever it took to get paid is what she had to be prepared to do.  She knew that from experience.  To her surprise, he stepped forward and continued towards the bed, stopping as he stood next to her and leaning down, extending a hand to her muzzle.  Her thoughts said that at last he was getting on with it, she hoped to get another two through tonight so time was an issue.  His thin fingers closed around her muzzle and she whimpered playfully, rolling her eyes up at him again.

His free hand reached down and slid along the top of her skirt until it found the catch and very carefully undid it, pulling the thin piece of cloth away from her body and dropping it beside the bed as he began to speak again in the tones of a sermon.

“They shall also strip thee out of thy clothes, and take away thy fair jewels.  Thus will I make thy lewdness to cease from thee.”  She squirmed encouragingly as her now bare haunches rubbed against the stained covers of the bed, tail flicking playfully back and forth.  Then his free hand, rather than continuing with a more amusing activity where it was, hovered up to her breasts.  She arched her back to press out her chest for him but he unexpectedly took a firm hold of her loose blouse.  His next motion was rapid and forceful, tearing the delicate garment from her body and tossing the ragged remains carelessly aside.

It was then that she felt something wasn’t right, though too late.  It felt like icy needles running through her blood, stabbing the freezing points of pain all the way across her body.  She tried to scream at the strange sensation that both chilled and burned in the same instant but his grip on her muzzle was too strong, allowing nothing more than a strained whimper to escape.  Her limbs wouldn’t obey her thoughts, robbed of their strength by the unexplained torture that now racked her shivering body.  Her ears flattened and eyes widened as his words continued without changing how he spoke in the slightest.  He continued to preach as he lowered his face finally in to view.  Old and wrinkled with the weathering of years, wisps of silvery hair protruded from beneath the hat that matched the uneven stubble on his chin and cheeks.  The most intense feature was his eyes.  Deep green and focused so completely and unwaveringly that the intensity of his gaze alone was terrifying.

“They shall deal furiously with thee: they shall take away thy nose and thine ears.”  Unable to cry out in pain or fear, she was forced to cope with the internalised dread that tore though her mind like a maelstrom as she felt the damp surface of her black nose begin to dry, withering in pain so intense it made her vision swim, seemingly freeze-dried in an instant by the unseen force.  As she chokingly regained her senses through the pain she suffered in silence, she would have screamed anew as her ears suffered the same fate.  Blood freezing in the veins and breaking through the surface to fall in crystals as the flesh crumpled and collapsed around them.  Then, he released his grip and stepped back.  Observing as calmly as he had done throughout the ordeal.

Jennifer gasped, barely clinging to consciousness as her hands shakily lifted to her mutilated head.  Tears marked the fur of her cheeks in flattened trails but the pain was beyond words, her strained throat unable to scream for help or even in suffering.

“She shall be burnt with fire.”  If she had the strength left to struggle or escape she would have done.  Her body no longer seemed to care about its fate even if her mind wept for salvation, she knew above all things at that moment that she didn’t want to die.  She was a survivor, she had survived all of the suffering the world had thrown at her, she couldn’t bare for it to end like this.  She watched helplessly as he raised his hand in a sweeping motion towards her.  The terrifying chill was instantly replaced by embers of fire in her fur, scorching her flesh as they began to spread across her body.  Her mind finally failed, surrendering the fight and plunging her into a merciful blackness where the suffering was gone. 

The body burned slowly, the small flames hugging unnaturally close to the flesh as they slowly ate their way through.  He turned, unmoved, and opened the door through which he had entered allowing him passage back into the hallway.  He very carefully closed the door behind him with a faint click that echoed in the empty hallway.  It was only disturbed by the hushed whining and groaning sounds emanating from the door he had passed on the way up, only minutes earlier.  With a sigh and a shake of his head he took the few brief steps to the offending doorway and reached his hand out towards the handle.

The air within the dark room was thick with the mingled scents of the sins of the flesh.  Silence had no opportunity to take hold as the room was filled with the unmistakable shuffling and thumping of forceful copulation.  Over that background rhythm the occasional mumbling and groaning of two voices was raised.  One sincere and one unenthusiastic but trying half-heartedly not to show it.  The darkness wrapped more tightly around the two gyrating figures than the loose sheets that writhed atop their energetic forms.  The click of the handle didn’t disturb the scene of depravation, though the light spilling in to chase the flickering shadows back to the corners of the room as the door swung open did evoke a reaction.

A figure, bare of skin, a man, rose from the covers to glare at the silhouette that now filled the doorway, eyes squinting.  Entwined beneath him lay the form of a woman or at least something of the female gender.  It was no longer a woman, she had the features of a cat, short golden fur adorning her body and a long tail coiled around his waist.  The man snarled with a quality almost like that assumed to the animal with which he lay.

“Who the hell are you?!  Get the hell out of here you freak!  Can’t you see this room’s taken?!  Fucking retard.”  He made a spitting motion towards the shadowed figure that cast its gaze over him in silence.  Then, the quiet old man lifted his hand and turned his palm towards the couple, sighing with almost an air of depression.

“And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death.”  The man opened his mouth to shout more obscenities at the intruder but his breath was forcefully caught in his throat.  Gasping for air, he clutched at his chest.  It felt like he was being crushed beneath a great weight, ribs straining and heart pounding under the stress.  Then without a further warning, he felt something break inside of him.  His sternum sheared and splintered allowing his ribs to cave inward as they in turn shattered and snapped.  The bone breaking out through his skin in as many places as it punctured his lungs.  The blood frothed from his mouth as it speckled and splattered over the sheets and his companion who lay, shocked into silence and shivering in terror.  He didn’t suffer for long, the last of his ribs giving way to the ghostly grip and delving inward on a more direct course, straight through the centre of his chest.  He jerked back for a moment, then trembled before dropping lifelessly to the tarnished sheets of the bed.  The feline’s gaze, catatonic with fear, turned to the old man that stood in the doorway, watching as he curled his hand in a swift motion.  The now lifeless corpse jerked again as a half splintered rib was torn from it and hovered in the air, turning slowly.  She never even saw it move, it was too quick.  She just felt the sudden lance of pain go through her throat, pinning her back against the headboard of the bed to slowly suffocate, choked by her own blood.  “And ye shall slay the beast.”

The hand finally lowered, twitching slightly.  As wordless as ever, he turned and looked between the room and the corridor of half a dozen similar doors.  Something occurred to him and he began a new motion, raining his hands either side of his body with his palms turned face up and fingers half curled.

"Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground."  The sparks of light flickered to life an inch or so above his upturned hands and rapidly grew into two balls as burning light, writhing with contained flames.  He did not smile, nor did he seem to take any pleasure in the action of turning and hurling the first into the room that still lay open.  It exploded outwards, the flames tearing into everything within those four walls and then beginning to devour the walls themselves.  His next stepped turned him to face the stairs and he tossed the second sphere carelessly towards the door at the far end where it exploded in a similar fashion, trapping any still inside, none would escape.

From the outside, it began as flickering light in one window, then that was shortly followed by the slightest tongues of flame lapping out from under the door.  The spread was rapid, glass shattered and walls wailed under the strain as the upper rooms began to crumble and collapse, ashes and sparks being thrown up into the rain that seemed to do nothing to quench them.  What would really puzzle the fire brigade in the morning was how the flames so utterly consumed such a sturdy building while leaving its neighbours almost unmarked.  Across the street, seemingly uninterested by the blazing spectacular, stood a silent figure, his raincoat damp in the unpleasant weather and the brim of his hat shadowing his face from view, hiding the white hair and stubble along with the piercing eyes that observed.  A single sentence was uttered from his lips before he turned and walked away into the stormy night.

“Thy will be done.”

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