by Prax Venter
And this wise leader knew a good design when she’d hit one.
“Now,” Amina finished, “I am ready to have faith in myself.”
Once she was through, Mark was alone.
The silence of the place reminded him that he’d have to explain the loss of the Lagomorph people who’d been held as livestock by the Kalorplast. Learis would probably be happy. The long-eared beauty hated the Kalorplast anyway and intentionally left the others to their own supposed freedom of choice.
As he moved to join the monster women arrayed in the mirrored graveyard in Lagos, his True Sight eye was drawn back to the pulsing structure in the distance. Mark didn’t get much from it, but he was certain this was the same type of odd material they’d found in the broken spherical building where they’d left the Jar of Stars.
“I… should know this,” Angel said, rising to hover over the wild grass of this larger graveyard. Her limbs hung stationary with one knee bent as she drifted forward, then reached some imaginary leash and stopped motionless.
“Scout,” her mistress said. “Yet, overestimate proximity danger.”
Angel turned her pixelated eyes to the black-haired Abby and said, “Complying,” before she zipped upward in a flawless arc over the top of a half-buried rounded tower.
“Are those antennae on top?” Jezebel said, clomping a few steps and squinting ahead of the flying bot.
Mark started down the hill toward town and said, “If you want to dash after her, Momma Bear, go nuts.” He could tell the satyr seriously thought about it but decided to speak with the people of this land before acting.
Princess Verrelle wove her glowing snake shape through the grass with ease and overtook Mark before circling around to his other side.
“The air tingles on my skin here. My home world is snug with heat, the previous world was a rainbow of cold colors and dry hills, and this third place is so blue! It almost hurts my eyes, but it’s so intensely beautiful I can’t look away. We still need to find the optimal place for the goddess anchor, yes?”
“I’m looking,” Mark said, scanning the area for crossover sparks that projected the slurping moans of Salivis’s realm, but that particularly pink point was rare. He sighed as they reached the bottom of the cemetery hill. “I’m pretty sure there is only one place we’ll want to set up our third anchor.”
“We found the most interesting object in any of these universes,” Abby said with a sly nod to the princess. “I’m not as attuned to this oral sex deity, but I am excited to see what she can do with that particular artifact.”
Mark felt a shiver from the pool of essence flowing into him from Salivis. She was always impossible to fully comprehend, but the cosmic entity of Sub-Pleasure quivered with a type of stage fright, both arousal and terror, toward the object called ‘world.anchor’ by the ancient Lagomorph voice that spoke in the chamber where they returned it.
“I know we will know the place of power when we feel it,” Amina said.
Mark and his diverse entourage of unique women drew a few eyes as they entered the town, and he took his time to fully ingest the sights the sounds of the place. Last time they were at this village, he had stood up on the hill holding the portal open the whole time.
Many of the straw and stone huts had hanging placards depicting symbols of what goods they sold. Grass and grain, bread, arrows, swords, a mug for the inn… The Job Board. But many of them were dark and empty. There was also no mistaking the horse-sized bird loaded with goods waiting to disembark.
His True Sight tingled for his attention as they strolled below the bird of burden to find a small bunny child with huge blue eyes.
“Healer!” she shouted, and Mark immediately recognized her as one of the dimensional migrants from the other side. “He’s here to help, everyone! And even brought more pretty friends this time.”
“You’re so adorable!” Princess Verrelle said as she shifted her energy into two legs as she knelt. “Those ears!”
Other white-furred villagers started pressing in around them, and Mark noticed the stringy old Lagomorph named Gora hobble forward.
“You?” The ancient, gray rabbit man pointed a slender finger at Mark. “I knew you had something to do with all this!”
“Where’s Learis?” Sasha asked. “What’s that thing out there?”
“Bah!” Gora waved his hand. “Still thrusting her whiskers into everything. But my nose never lies, eh? I always knew this place was too good to be true. That insect woman’s face said you were the liars.”
Mark took one step toward him. “You mean Maliah. It’s true that she said that, but do you really believe a random floating face? With all your impressive wisdom, do you genuinely believe we want to harm you?”
The old stringy rabbit studied Mark then passed his milky eyes over the array of fighters he’d brought with him.
“Bah,” Gora said with a dismissive wave. “I’m going to take a nap. I’ll leave you to your work, Collector.”
As the old Lagomorph hobbled away, the tension of the others gathering who didn’t know them vanished.
“You still have grampy’s foot bone,” the child rabbit said as she hugged his leg, and Mark subconsciously ran the tips of his fingers over the homemade necklace he’d forgotten was around his neck. “Has it brought you any luck, sir Healer? Dolly’s gotten dirty but is still hale and hearty. I’ve heard Mrs. Penelope Foresith-Babster whisper her requests to the new winds to bring you ‘round once more to clear our fields. She knows you’ll always come when she calls for help.”
She hoisted the fabric construct upward, and the distant, shattered emotions stitched into its shape lingered at the edges of Mark’s mind.
“Collector!” said another voice, and he turned to see the mother of this child coming from a home near the loaded cart. She was no longer pregnant and had two newborn Lagomorphs cradled into her arms. “My little Diza said not to pack, that you’d come to save us once more. And here you are…”
“I hope we can,” Mark said, glancing around the dozen or so villagers that had gathered. “We want to help, but we don’t know what’s happening.”
“Invaders from below,” some stranger whispered, his hopeful, terrified brown eyes locked on Mark.
The ability to see deeper pressed against Mark’s mind and as he wanted quick answers…
The slender Lagomorph Aleisk was a courier and worked as a personal distributor for an independent artist inking short stories and simple cartoons- and Mark’s team were like adventurers walking in off the pages- but it didn’t matter what he delivered as long as the grass whispered its hushed lullaby racing by his ears. The hillstrider bird mount was his, stolen from his family farm far on the other side of these enormous gusty plains yet this sour start to his life affected him very little for he was now free to roam with the winds.
Then the horrible noise came in the night. Aleisk rode from town to distant town, ending up further from home than he’d ever thought possible. The mind-drilling invaders were everywhere, sour dots littering the pure sloping landscape he’d treasured. The edge of The Surface he knew finally came yesterday. Sheer horror overrode Aleisk’s lesser fear of falling and forced him to walk his loyal mount across the wooden span over the Great Maw onto new, flatter lands. Yet there was no surface where the throbbing marchers- the madness monsters and their smooth castles- did not infest.
Mark drifted too far from himself following the native Lagomorph’s ebb and flow before actively steering his ability toward useful information, and Aleisk’s simple mind suddenly turned to icy rain.
And a terrible repeating bass sound began to eat into Mark’s mind.
“I hate it!” the little rabbit near his leg yelled as she tried to cover one of her long ears with the stuffed doll.
It took Mark longer to fully blink away the clinging emotional link, and a large part of the problem was that the noise he’d only heard as a nightmare was now happening in real time.
He noticed his Enthralled now stood
in unison facing where Angel was currently scouting. There were hills and thatch structures in the way, yet there was no mistaking where this ominous series of deep electronic tones came from.
“You are wise to hate this sound,” Abby said as she looped a tentacle around the rabbit girl’s uniquely floppy ears.
“It’s terrible,” Sasha muttered, hugging the goosebumps on her arms. “Unsettling.”
Everyone was quiet for the next few cycles of the droning four-beat pattern and found it hard to not just freeze in panic from the impossibly deep psychic tones.
Thum-dun-dun-THOMP… Thum-dun-dun-THOMP.
Over-and-over.
“You came back!” Learis shouted from behind him, breaking Mark’s minor daze. Once she set her tan eyes on his, she sprinted the rest of the way and the balloon-chested Lagomorph was as curvaceous and attractive as he remembered, despite the new leather harness. She’d put on some healthy weight under her fleecy red shorts, and he also noticed the longbow strapped to her back.
“I knew you’d come,” she said, panting as she pressed her solid breasts into his chest. Her cinnamon musk hit him so pleasantly hard, he almost checked to see if he still had a Vulpath snout.
Learis pulled back yet her pink nose remained inches from his.
“That nude metal woman flying overhead. She’s yours, yes?”
Mark hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Abby’s, actually.”
“Abby,” Learis said with a genuine grin as she took an offered tentacle and rubbed it on her furry cheek. “Jezebel, Sasha. It’s only been a week or so but with everything going on, it feels triple. I cannot express how happy I am to see you all again so soon.” The smiling Lagomorph then turned to face the pair of Heavenly Dragons from mirrored dimensions. “And to see your new friends!”
Amina willed away her impressive purple armor and extended a three-fingered offering of greeting. The long-eared Learis seemed distracted by her violet glowing eyes, nipples, and runic patterns yet got herself together quickly before sharing a firm exchange of appraisal.
“If you are a friend of the Collector Mark,” Amina said, “then I consider you an ally. I am Amina, Chieftain of the Awysai. This is Verrelle, Princess of the Blazar. We have heard your tale. We will have time enough to share what we have in common, but your home is under attack. Now, I wish to know how we may help our neighbors.”
Learis swallowed, and Mark felt the undeniable heat of attraction from the soft-furred Lagomorph. Amina had made a solid first impression on her.
The tall rabbit-woman shifted on her oversized paws. “Uh, yes… a few days ago these stubby tower-type structures poked up from the earth. Some magic in them goes off like clock-”
At that moment, the terrible noise stopped, leaving Learis’ final, “-work,” hanging in the relative silence.
“What makes the sound,” Abby asked, her brows drawing downward with distaste.
“Come,” Learis said, waving for them to follow her back out onto the main dirt road. “It’s easier to show you. I can explain on the way.”
Mark waved goodbye to the little Lagomorph child, the messenger, and the others still standing around staring at them. These people believed Mark and his impressive team of badass monster women would save the day- that they wouldn’t be driven from yet another home. And they all played that part as confidently as they could, striding out like superheroes.
Sasha bumped his hip as they walked, and he caught her blue eyes twinkling with adoration for him. Her mind leaked the concept of him forcing a bad AI to do good things, and how much she loved the way he used her leash.
It wasn’t long before the buildings and hills parted on a turn of the road and everyone saw the pill-shaped black structure poking out of the ground from gray dirt and soft grasses split on either side. Jezebel pulsed it out first into their private network, and everyone agreed quickly. This thing must have pushed through the surface when they relocated the Jar of Stars to the Lagos dimension. They’d done this.
Learis pointed at it as she spoke.
“The invading structures go off about every seventeen minutes- we checked by the melting of candles. When they do, that pipe from below starts spitting out strangely shifting… things. What these creatures are exactly is hard to put into words other than they constantly change. A wolf, a walking tree, a crab, an abomination. Sometimes monstrous. Sometimes mundane. They march forward as the tower emits the sound for miles. If you get too close to the marching things, they fully lock into some vicious form and attack.”
She paused to hold up a white-furred finger toward a long row of Lagomorph archers set up on the hills between them and the structure. “However, we’ve learned when there is that brief pause in the sound pattern, they always shift into a soap bubble of sorts before turning into something new. If we attack those forms, we instantly destroy them. They even leave behind some bit of nonsense like candelabras, a pile of coins, stuffed lizard heads, cords of wood, incomprehensible shapes...”
Mark watched sprinting rabbit-people dashing out on the left side of the dirt path as they snatched up objects from the ground during this lull between attacks.
“We can even recollect the arrows,” Learis said, following his gaze. “It’s tiresome, and we need to rotate archers out often. But we’ve heard word that there are some coalesced adventuring groups moving around to clear them, so- in truth- we only need to hold out for a few more weeks.”
“Clear them?” Mark asked.
By this point, Angel had detected their approach and swooped in from the periwinkle sky to gracefully join the group on the ground as they strolled. Yet, she had the wherewithal to hold her report as Learis was currently answering.
“As I said, the strange forms will attack any who approach and there appear to be a great many inside the structure. Messengers say a disembodied voice speaks once someone makes it up into that dome. The structure shifts from red to a soft purple…” Learis’s tan eyes drifted to Amina’s violet markings. “Then the noise and attacks stop.”
“This hasn’t happened before?” Jezebel asked. “Do the indigenous Lagomorph people have- say, ancient tomes on these invading structures?”
“Yes!” Verrelle said. “I too would love to explore your historical archives.”
“Sorry,” Learis said and Mark felt the heat of species-embarrassment and muted shame come from the rabbit-woman. She was quiet for a few steps before she continued. “The original- ah… the Lagomorph people here do things different. It’s more about adventure, dungeon delving, or simple trade skills. I’ve never seen an historical document of any type. Popular fiction and images circulate but everything ends up being cast into flames and their contents returned to the wind. No one thinks that odd. Everyone seems to simply enjoy the present for what it is.”
They all thought on what was said for a few strides before Abby turned to her dutiful android.
“Report.”
“Data exists within my core on such a structure, yet there is only corruption where meaningful content would be. If I extrapolate from the edges, I can assert this structure was intended to be some type of resource distribution center. I am 100% assured that it is malfunctioning.”
“You know what these are?” Learis asked over her shoulder.
Angel nodded. “They are a technological remnant left behind from my era and before the Cataclysm.”
The rabbit-woman’s small mouth hung open. “I’m sorry if it’s rude, but just how old are you?”
Angel blinked her digital eyes then turned to the ground as they walked. “That is a complicated answer. I know I existed for several years before my body was eventually trapped for potentially thousands of years in a looping time anomaly, yet 97% of any recorded data has been purged.”
“Learis, this is Angel,” Mark said. “She is a Lunar Power Droid from your original dimension- oh. And before we get too far…”
Mark slowed to a stop and everyone stopped with him. He continued when Learis turned her furrow
ed eyes on his.
“So, you haven’t said anything, but do you remember that floating woman’s head calling for our deaths?”
“Oh!” Learis said, putting a hand to her small mouth. “Yes. That happened while we were fighting off these invaders. Everyone here was more confused than anything. No native Lagomorph that I’ve met has any aspirations of godhood, and with all this…” She gestured back to the rounded tower pushing though the ground. “I completely forgot about that strange vision.”
“Well, she’s real. She is a vastly powerful entity currently hunting us down. Maliah has already entered your old dimension and caused a lot of damage in her search.”
Mark paused to take both of her soft hands in his. “From the information we have, she has obliterated the Kalorplast homeland and all of the Lagomorphs living under their great tree.”
The rabbit-woman’s tan eyes opened wide.
“All dead?” she breathed, and his emotional antenna thrummed with a turbulent mix of conflicting emotions.
“We have not confirmed this,” Abby said.
“We trust the source,” Jezebel added quickly. “But we do need to see… for ourselves.”
Mark’s blind eye sent him a subtle warning, and he looked past Learis to see the structure ahead of them flash a brighter red before broadcasting its horrible marching beat once more.
“Time to shut this thing up!” Mark shouted and everyone followed as he began jogging forward. He might not be able to save the people of Starglade, and he might not yet be strong enough to help protect Thomellia, but Mark was damn sure he wouldn’t let this bullshit lost technology harass these soft rabbit people any more.