Mark 2.0: Book 2: Hate

by Prax Venter

  “No problem,” he said. “Sinkhole, Greater Sprites, piles of clear yellow crystals. We got this.”

  “Will Mark receive essence for completing your gathering errand?” Abby asked.

  “Uh… maybe?” he said, raising one of his fuzzy orange eyebrows. “You should know better than I how Collectors and essence works.”

  “Grab on, ladies,” Mark said, and all his breathtakingly attractive monster-women laid their hands or tentacles on his chest. He held his breath and snapped the charm.

  The cavernous, smoky hallway was instantly replaced with bright-blue skies and hot air that quickly sucked all the moisture from his nose. Ahead of him was a flat expanse of dead white grass and sparse clumps of leafless, pale trees that extended for miles before transitioning gentle hills. A glint caught his eye, and Mark turned to notice a new crossover point suspended over what had to be a small graveyard. The way it felt and the colors he was seeing told him it went to somewhere else than the dimension they called the Wrongside, but there was a faint pushback on his milky eye that told him he couldn’t quite open that one yet either. He turned around and found that Sasha, Jezebel, and Abby were all behind him, and beyond them was what appeared to be a ghost town- and a galloping obese dog.

  Seeing something so mundane as an ordinary beagle in a world where there had been only bizarre monsters stalled Mark’s mind, but Abby’s dark whispering quickly snapped him out of it.

  “Abby, stop!” Mark said, and the dog let out a long howl as it continued trundling toward them, its huge belly swinging as it ran.

  Mark took one step forward past his three Enthralled and hunkered down to the dog’s level.

  “Come here, little fella,” he called out, his lips curving into a smile.

  Movement caught his eye by the old wooden houses and he saw a rabbit-woman stepping out of a shadow with a long stick pointed at him and braced against her shoulder as if she were holding a rifle.

  And in this fantasy world, it very well could be.

  Mark stood back up and raised his hands, shooting a glance to his three loves to do the same. The Lagomorph had all-white fur, but brown dust dirtied her legs. She wore dirty brown shorts and a shirt that left her narrow stomach exposed, and both barely seemed to do the job. Her long, floppy ears were tied back with a bright-red ribbon making them take on the appearance of a ponytail.

  She continued to cautiously put one of her furry feet in front of the other, and Mark wondered what fresh insanity they were about to face here.

  Something heavy pressed on his toes, and he glanced down to see the fat dog had made it to him and plopped right onto his foot. Its black, friendly eyes looked back up at him as its brown tail quickly thumped against the dry white grass below.

  “Leave my dog alone,” the rabbit-woman said in a flinty, deadly serious voice.

  Mark held his hands up slightly higher, trying to show that he held no weapons.

  “We aren’t here to hurt you or your dog.”

  He was going to say more when an old male Lagomorph stepped out of one of the other houses. He had a cane, a ripped pair of dirty shorts, and appeared skinny to the point of malnourishment.

  “Go back inside, Gora,” the female with the sniper stick ordered as she stopped moving forward.

  The newcomer turned to see Mark and his Enthralled standing out in the morning sun and did a double-take, his long ears flapping around his shoulders.

  “What’s all this?” he yelled out, hobbling forward.

  “I said go inside!” she snapped, but never looked away from Mark.

  “You can’t order me around! Who are these strangers, and what are they doing to Goliath?”

  Then another door opened, and two more rabbit-people came out- a younger couple, and the woman was clearly pregnant. After that, a handful of others stepped out from the dusty homes, including four very young children, and a whole village of scared, dirty, and mostly waifish Lagomorphs gathered behind the woman with the stick aimed at Mark’s heart.

  “We mean you no harm,” Mark said loud enough for everyone to hear. “I am Mark, a Collector. This is Sasha, Jezebel, and Abby. We were sent here by the Kalorplast to gather some yellow harmonic crystals from a sinkhole somewhere around here. That is all.”

  The old man rabbit named Gora twitched his whiskers, spat on the ground, and then turned to go back into his hut. The villagers began to mumble quietly amongst themselves.

  “Why trespass here?” the woman with the stick said, taking a few aggressive steps forward. “You selfish fucks never approach our village. I think those leafy monsters have finally decided to come for our females by force.”

  The villagers’ hushed conversation grew louder, and Mark noticed that there were indeed far more females than males.

  “Take me, too!” said one teenager as he sprinted past the red-ribboned rabbit-woman.

  “Pallum! Stop!” she yelled, taking her steady eye off Mark for the first time. Her small mouth hung open as the young rabbit-kid skidded to a halt a few feet away, and Mark got his first close-up look at these Lagomorphs.

  He was bipedal for sure but had oversized-digitigrade legs like Jezebel. Their body was mostly human, except for the short white fur covering them from head to toe. They had fingers on the ends of their hands, but their feet and heads were almost completely rabbit. It seemed as if they would be great at kicking the shit out of things.

  “I know, I’m having a year yet,” the kid said, his big brown eyes wide with hope. “But I say when I am old enough to decide! I want to join paradise now. I hate it here!”

  Mark looked over the kid’s head to the woman pointing her stick at him. She did not expect this young, troublesome youth to run so willingly into what she considered was the enemies’ arms, and helpless hatred began to swirl faster within her.

  He also became aware that she was just holding an ordinary stick.

  Mark lowered his arms, and the AI women bonded to his heart did the same.

  “Pallum, is it?” he said, and the rabbit nodded, his big front teeth sticking out more as a smile spread on his face. “We’re not here to take anyone anywhere, especially young kids. I’m sorry, but we’re only here for the crystals I mentioned.”

  The teenaged rabbit took a moment to let the disappointment sink in before anger took over on his face. He wiped his pink nose with the back of his furry arm, put his head down, and sprinted off into the white grassy plains to Mark’s right.

  The woman held her mundane branch pointed ahead, but she watched the kid dash off with a mixture of sadness and despair.

  Mark decided then and there that he wanted to try and do what he could to help this impoverished village before it became a true ghost town. The black, crackling energy in his mind allotted to him by He Who Judges sent off the tiniest spark as would a log in a fire, and he knew this was the right move.

  He turned to face his Enthralled and whispered, “Let’s see what we can do for these people and maybe make some new friends.”

  They all nodded, and he felt adoration from Jezebel and Sasha. Abby preferred that they should be taking what they needed, but she was slowly coming around.

  Mark turned back to face the woman who had since lowered her stick, and he was not expecting to see the two of the biggest tits he’d ever had the honor of witnessing. They were partially spilling out of her inadequate top, and he realized she must have been obscuring her chest with her arms before.

  A gentle elbow from Sasha pulled him back into the moment. He shot her a knowing smirk before dislodging his foot from the fat dog and stepping forward to meet this well-endowed Lagomorph he assumed was their leader. Behind her, the other villagers mostly decided that there wasn’t anything interesting to see and returned to the shade of their dilapidated homes.

  “I’m sorry to have caused you any trouble,” he said, holding his hand out to her. She looked down at it and then searched his face for deception. This alluring creature had large tan eyes, long black lashes, and clear wh
iskers poking out from either side of her pink nose. Despite having mostly rabbit features, Mark found her face incredibly attractive. The ridiculously sensuous body below didn’t hurt either.

  She crossed her arms under her furry, ponderous mammaries, deliberately ignoring his offer of greeting.

  “Why are you here, Collector?” she said, hatred clear on her face. “You seem to have a full battle harem, and your kind comes once every three seasons only to ignore us while you gather your precious crystal. Trying to get a peek at us stringy cuts of meat?”

  Mark unwillingly dove into this angry creature’s mind, and he was suddenly there with her as she pleaded with other Collectors or Kalorplast mages to help her people with some unclear threat closing in. As a younger woman, she offered her body as payment, but the Kalorplast had no interest, and the Collectors that came wanted more. She had nothing of real value to offer in return, so they always sneered or laughed, and one Fighter even tried to rape her for asking. She was too fast and dashed off, weeping as contempt for all Collectors and Kalorplast sprouted within her.

  Mark sucked in a shuddering breath as he pulled out of her memories and vividly gripping emotions.

  “It’s a long story,” he said. “But we aren’t like the others. And, now that we’re here, we’d like to help. Do you have a job board, or do I get quests directly from you?”

  Goliath sat down on his foot again, his tail thumping with the unconditional happiness only a dog could display. She looked down at him, her white furry arms unlocking to rest at her side.

  “Quests?” she repeated and searched his eyes for deception.

  “Yes,” Jezebel said. “We would truly like to help you and your people if we can.”

  The Lagomorph woman bounced her light-brown eyes around Mark’s group, daring to hope that the day had finally come when the true heroes she’d been begging the moon for had finally come.

  Her deep cynicism was hard to suppress, however.

  “I have nothing to offer you in payment. No gold, no treasure, no weapons. Nothing. Would you still say you’d waste your time here?”

  “Hmm,” Mark hummed in mock contemplation as he rubbed his chin and focused on the long and sun-bleached stick she held gripped in her furry fingers. “That legendary weapon you have there held the four of us pinned down. Perhaps if we did a few quests for you, you’d be willing to part with it?”

  She really didn’t have any eyebrows to speak of, just thicker white fur where they would be, but they came down as she lifted the object in question.

  “You can’t be…” she trailed off. “But you know this is a bluff. Just a pointless stick.”

  “You are incorrect,” Abby said. “It clearly has two points, one at each end.”

  Sasha stifled a laugh with her hand, her spade tail swishing hypnotically behind her.

  “She has you there. Relax, sweetie. We aren’t looking for riches, we’re looking for friends.”

  Mark held out his hand again, a warm smile on his face.

  The huge-breasted Lagomorph woman with the red ribbon tying back her long ears let her shoulders slump, and Mark realized that her brightly hued accessory was really the only color besides gray and white within the surrounding area.

  “I’m Learis,” she said as she firmly clasped his hand, “and if you speak the truth, then I want you to help destroy as many of those vile crystals as we can.”

  - 19 -

  “Why do you want to destroy them?” Mark asked. “To stop the mages from Starglade from getting something they want?”

  Learis’s eyes narrowed. “Does it matter?”

  “We need to fill our pack,” Abby answered. “The rest of the crystals do not matter.”

  Mark looked over at the petite abyssal horror and couldn’t really fault her. He shrugged.

  “Lead the way,” he said, holding his palm up.

  Learis held his gaze for a moment and then turned away to walk toward the rising sun.

  “Follow,” she said without looking back.

  The white rabbit led Mark and his Enthralled through her small village, and he saw many still-curious eyes following them from behind ragged curtains. A light gnarling in his stomach served as a reminder that they hadn’t eaten anything since Cel’s engorged clover fruit this morning. Of all the sensations in this virtual world, the feel for the flow of time was the one that never seemed to click with him.

  He shot a glance over to Jezebel’s small leather backpack and was glad they had the forethought to take a few of the sweet, firm, cartoon sausage fruits before they harvested more essence from the big bee.

  “I hope we get a chance to talk about your people,” Jezebel said as they walked. “I have so many questions I’d like to ask.”

  The rabbit-woman looked over her shoulder. “Perhaps. After you help me clear some of the field.”

  Mark was about to ask for more details about this field, but he knew it was a bad idea. She still didn’t trust them, and he was sure they’d see soon enough. He remembered that Klax said the cloudy, useless ones weren’t as deep into this sinkhole they were supposed to find, and maybe those were what this alluring Lagomorph was talking about.

  His eyes wandered down to her tattered, ill-fitting cloth shorts and the small white puff of a tail wedged above her round, furry cheeks. Her animal-like form reminded him a lot of the Vulpath, only softer. And no monster claws.

  She led them around a longer building, and Mark got his answers regarding the crystals. Broken wooden fences traced out two large fields that were obviously meant for farming. On the right, he saw a younger female rabbit hunkered down and busy doing something among the short rows of vivid blue grass planted there. She didn’t have much to work with, however, as most of that field was covered in mustard-colored crystal formations and the other field on the left was completely overgrown with lager shards. Beyond that, they seemed to spread outward from a central location where the tallest shards stood, and the rising sun bounced off the gem-like facets as they moved, dazzling his one good eye.

  “Stay,” Learis said to her overweight dog, Goliath, when they reached an old stone well. He let out a whine and sat down, his tail still weakly waving back and forth in the grass. She then turned toward the fields and called out to the young farmer.

  “Leema.”

  The Lagomorph stood and turned to see the group of strangers. She wiped some of the black dirt off on her thick white haunches but only seemed to transfer the dirt there instead, then began walking toward them. This new girl had large light-blue eyes, and her furry hands wrung with anxiety as she approached.

  “Leema,” Learis repeated when she stepped up, “this Collector and his Enthralled say they want to help clear the fields. Stay here with Goliath while we work.”

  Her eyes went even wider somehow as she nodded a few times, one of her long ears flopping over her shoulder.

  “Oooh- she’s adorable,” Sasha said with a bright smile and exposing her fangs.

  Learis turned her eyes on the succubus but didn’t say anything as she reached behind her head and pulled the ribbon from her ears. She shook them out and then tied it to her bicep instead.

  “Here’s your first quest,” she said dryly. “Protect me from the black crawlers that are drawn out as I trill.”

  “Trill?” Jezebel repeated.

  “Define black crawler,” Abby added before Learis could answer.

  “Ladies,” Mark said, sparking up his familiar baseball bat. “I’m sure all these questions will be answered shortly. Our job is to protect and smash. We can do that, and it’s all we need to know for now.”

  The Lagomorph village leader looked from Mark’s ghostly summoned weapon to his eye. Her whiskers vibrated once, and she nodded.

  “Good,” she said and then turned and started marching out into the partially infested field.

  Mark shot a grin to his bonded monster-women and then followed her out. She stopped near the smaller crystals nearly touching the thick blue grass they we
re farming and pointed to the larger formations behind the other, more-infested field.

  “Eyes there,” she said and then laced her furry fingers into an intricate formation. She took a breath, and he saw her open her tiny mouth to expose two huge front teeth. A moment later, one of the dirty-yellow crystals pushing up through the ground shattered into small bits.

  He turned to look where she pointed, but there was nothing to fight yet.

  “An ultra-sonic ability?” Jezebel said, and then her eyes lit up. “Of course! These are supposed to be harmonic earth shards.”

  “And that must be a black crawler,” Abby said, pointing one of her tentacles toward a four-legged spiderish creature the size of a small dog. It had bone-white fangs on the top of its round body, but no other features indicating a front or a back, and it moved with bizarre, shadowy afterimages as it skittered toward them over the multifaceted crystals.

  “Vines,” Mark said, and Jezebel held out her hand.

  Glowing green tendrils emerged from between the yellow shards and clenched around its body where it violently struggled to free itself.

  “Abby, take it out,” he said, and the slender green woman in the yellow bikini began casting her spell.

  Mark turned to see Learis watching them, and he pointed to the small crystals by her large rabbit feet.

  “Eyes there,” he said with a smile.

  The creature in the vines let out a squeal as Abby finished her spell. Its body separated right down the middle from her Imaginary Laceration, and the whole disturbing monster faded away as if made of smoke.

  The Lagomorph glanced once more at Mark before returning to her silent trilling, and he felt a new wave of interest from her mind.

  “Another,” Abby said as an exact copy of the previous creature crawled out of somewhere behind that other field.

  “Sasha, you’re up. Then me. Then Jez. We’ll rotate like we did with the crowns to let our abilities recharge.”

  They all nodded as the Techno Succubus began sauntering closer to the inky-black creature. Her sharp black hooves moved onto the equally sharp shards, but she had to stop before the footing became too uneven. Mark and Jezebel followed her out to take up a closer position for their melee attacks while Abby stayed in the soft dirt by Learis.