Mark 2.0: Book 2: Hate

by Prax Venter

  The chrome-legged succubus was ready for the charge and snapped open her leathery wings before activating Static Escape. The creature’s many limbs tore up the ground as it propelled forward, desperate for a kill, but instead collided with the Sasha-shaped wall of buzzing electricity.

  Mark dashed in quickly while the monster hiss-screamed in pain and thrust his palm upward toward the red True Strike glow inside its open mouth. As if he were launching a shotput, he invoked a thin blade of blue energy and willed it forward as hard as he could. The shaft of phantom mass darted directly past the creature’s sharp teeth, through the softer purple flesh in the back of its throat and continued out the other side.

  The monstrous, many-breasted creature twitched once before its whole body fell to twinkling black dust.

  Bear-Jezebel galloped up next to him while a torrent of essence from the kill flooded his senses and maxed his pool to bursting. He lamented the large portion that flowed around him and dissipated out into the universe while shuddering pleasure ricocheted around his body from the further expansion of his three reservoirs.

  All four of them turned to face the large crystal formations behind the still-infested patch of farmland, waiting for anything. After a few seconds of quiet stillness, Mark felt something touch his boot. He summoned up his standard mace to deal with whatever was there and looked down to see Goliath sitting on his foot again.

  “You damn fool Collector!” the old white rabbit named Gora said, shaking his wooden cane at him clutched tight in his furry fingers. “You’ll get us all killed!”

  - 20 -

  Mark’s stomach growled, and the fat brown dog currently sitting on his foot and thumping his tail against the dried grass lifted his ears at the barely audible noise.

  “Get you killed?” Sasha repeated the angry old rabbit’s words as her spade tail snapped behind her. “If it weren’t for us, you’d have just been slaughtered.”

  Gora became so angry he began to shake.

  “Don’t you dare talk to me about being slaughtered. What could you possibly know about what it’s like to be considered livestock! And no one alive has seen a monster like that until you four arrived. Explain that! Hmm?”

  Mark exchanged looks with his Enthralled as Learis and a few others slowly approached, their wide eyes focused on the sinkhole where the creature had emerged.

  “Go home, Gora,” the presumed leader with the red ribbon said.

  The old rabbit weakly planted his staff into the ground with a light thud.

  “I’ll stand where I please, damn it.”

  Other visibly shaken Lagomorph villagers began to reemerge and join the others around the ancient stone well, and their fear began to wane as it became clear that no more monsters were coming.

  Learis took a deep shuddering breath, and Mark’s eyes were uncontrollably pulled to the tight, furry cleft of her impressive cleavage.

  “Gora’s got a point,” she said. “I never knew that nightmare was living under our village.”

  “Will it come back?” one villager asked.

  “What was it?” said another.

  Learis shook her head, her long ears sliding up and down her back.

  “I don’t know what that was-”

  “It was the black crawlers’ mother,” said the pregnant Lagomorph with certainty as she stepped up to the growing group.

  Everyone turned to her, and a few started nodding.

  “Is anyone hurt?” Mark asked. “I can heal, so let me know before I use it to fix up the small cuts we sustained when you kickass Lagomorphs united your trills to explode that whole field around us.”

  No one was, and Learis crossed her arms under her chest as she looked out over the half-cleared farmland. Mark shrugged.

  “I’m just going to do an area heal then.” He held up his heart ring to focus and blanketed everyone nearby in slowly falling glints of light.

  The minor stinging in his cheek vanished, and light moans of surprised pleasure came to his ears from the white rabbits around him- and nearly all the females started lactating.

  “We should conduct a test,” Jezebel said. “If that thing was their mother, then it is possible your village may be free from black crawlers forever.”

  “Impossible,” the grumpy Gora snapped. He spat on the ground again and turned to limp toward his house. “You’ll not find me outside when the monsters return.”

  There was silence as the elderly Lagomorph limped away, and some of the ambient fear that held these rabbit-people grew tight again. He was about to try and say something inspirational when the young farmer girl called Leema stepped forward and spoke softly.

  “My earliest memories are of me and my mother tending the Garda Grass field. With clarity, I can recall the day I realized that our already tiny farmland was shrinking. I’d once thought the warm sun sending sparkles off crystals was pretty, but their steady advance into what little we had… that day, fear truly took root deep in my heart.”

  She paused to point out over the newly exposed black dirt. “Look,” she said, “with one harvest, no one will need to clutch their tummy at night as hunger steals their dreams.”

  Mark’s emotional antenna thrummed with the Lagomorph’s skyward-soaring hope.

  “Why haven’t you planted your blue grass over there?” Abby said, pointing the tip of her long, green tentacle toward the immense stretch of dry plains on the other side of the village. “Or simply build your homes elsewhere in this world.”

  “It’s the soil,” Learis answered. “We’ve tried, our crop will not grow anywhere else. That is, unless you’re a sap-filled Kalorplast fuck.”

  Some of the villagers frowned and nodded at the mention of the plant-people, and Mark was looking forward to finally getting some real answers about that situation. He remembered Penda saying they had a mutually beneficial relationship when they first landed in Starglade and that she wasn’t lying. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t mistaken or misinformed. Learis continued.

  “We tried moving some of the soil away from the slowly spreading crystals, but there is a fragile membrane underneath that never survives relocation. No one alive remembers the craft to create new soil.”

  “Am I correct in assuming you need this plant to survive?” Jezebel said with a raised eyebrow.

  “Correct, we cannot consume anything else.”

  “Okay,” Mark said, “I suggest we escort Learis over to the fields and test if crystal destruction draws out any more of these black crawlers- by trilling or by my magic hammer.” He summoned a smaller, one-handed sledgehammer as an example. “If our hunches are right, you’ll have access to all the existing farmland and be set for a long time.”

  The alluring Lagomorph with cartoonishly large breasts considered Mark, her nose wiggling and her whiskers quivering as if she were trying to pull in his scent. He could tell she was now infatuated with him.

  “And you still demand nothing in return, Mark?” she asked, licking one side of her thin rabbit lips.

  He looked over at his three bonded monster-women, and they all shared knowing smiles. Their interconnected bond was growing wider by the day, and each of them assumed that Mark was going to be helping milk this soft furry creature in many ways. He sent the warm tingle along their tethered channels that unlike with Aurum, he was expecting group participation this time.

  His Enthralled each sent back delighted packets of erotic anticipation.

  “Demand?” Mark said out loud. “Nope. Like Sasha said when we arrived, we just like making new friends.”

  She nodded slowly. “Very well. Let us see if we truly destroyed the mother of all black crawlers.”

  Mark, Sasha, Jezebel, Abby, and Learis all walked the short distance to the smaller crystals near the other field. If this infestation were allowed to continue, it would eventually take over their town as well. And, for all he knew, the whole world.

  The four warriors took up a position around the rabbit-woman as she focused on silently singing. A few
formations shattered to dust under her harmonic trilling under their careful watch, but no monsters came.

  After a short while of nothing, Sasha and Mark carefully moved over the uneven and sharp crystals to approach the hole and take a look at the source while Abby and Jezebel stood guard over the virtually defenseless Learis. However, there came a point where the shards grew too wild and tall to progress without potentially slicing themselves open, so they stopped about thirty yards away from where they assumed the sinkhole entrance was located.

  There, Mark re-summoned his humungous hammer and began breaking apart the dirty-yellow formations around them. It took a few minutes, but he eventually got a spot cleared for them both to stand on the soft dirt below. Yet nothing ever came out to protest their actions.

  “We’re coming back,” Mark yelled out, then turned to the Lagomorph onlookers. “Everyone ready to obliterate this infestation from your farm?”

  The white rabbit-people smiled at each other before moving to join Learis and Jezebel near the edge of the field. This time, Mark hurried back out of the crystals to see what his super-smart research AI was telling them.

  “-just like before,” he caught her saying as they lined up in the same diagonally staggered line. “Don’t worry about the larger pattern, and only focus on complementing the one before you. I think it was that technique that triggered the resonant, harmonic amplification last time.”

  The lead Lagomorph with the red ribbon on her bicep looked over her shoulder at the other villagers.

  “What we’ve seen today only shows us what we can accomplish if we do it as one.”

  Mark was really starting to like her.

  Jezebel put both of her palms up in the air to focus their attention and then used her right to start pointing at each soft rabbit down the line. They steepled their fingers in the intricate pattern he’d seen before then opened their small mouths. Once all of them were silently trilling, the tan satyr in front of them then proceeded to bounce her still-raised left hand as if she were patting each on the head as she continued to point down the line, and Mark could tell she was making sure everyone could feel the larger pattern while waiting for her to point out their turn. It was as if she had professionally constructed orchestras her whole life.

  Nothing happened for a few moments, but Mark started to see their rabbit whiskers quiver in time with Jezebel’s pointing and felt a growing tenseness in the air pressure around them.

  Then it happened. A translucent, barely perceptible wave of force projected outward from the line of Lagomorphs, and Mark’s silk clothes flapped against his skin as it passed. He spun to see nearly every remaining dirty crystal formation explode into a spectacular mist of sparkling glass, and it sounded like someone tossed a silent grenade into a window store. Goliath let out a single happy bark, and then silence washed over everything again.

  Mark and his bonded team moved forward, ready to face any other giant nightmare creatures that wormed out of the now clearly visible hole beyond the fields.

  After about thirty seconds of quiet, he unsummoned his ghostly baseball bat and relaxed his stance.

  “I never thought I would see this in my lifetime,” Learis said calmly from behind him, and the other rabbits begin moving onto the fresh expanse of soft dirt. The young farmer named Leema walked straight toward Jezebel and didn’t stop until she wrapped her white furry arms around her- and began sobbing.

  The horned satyr awkwardly retuned the embrace at first, but after seeing the smiling faces of the other villagers, she smiled and rubbed the young girl’s furry back.

  “Thank you,” Leema said as she pulled her tear-soaked face away from Jezebel’s shoulder. She then stepped away and faced the others. “Thank you all.”

  More of the rabbit-people came to shake their hands and offer their thanks until only Learis remained standing with them in the field. She turned to look over at the sinkhole before she spoke.

  “I suppose now you’ll be gathering the crystal you came for and then leaving.”

  “No,” Mark said. “Now, we are probably going to take a break and have some lunch. We all would also like to learn more about you and your people. Have anywhere out of the sun we can sit down and talk?”

  She turned her light brown, almost gold eyes to his, and he saw her hope and desire blossom. The soft white-furred Lagomorph pulled the red ribbon from her bicep and bent her arms over her head to tie back her ears again. The pose lifted and thrusted her absurdly huge tits toward Mark’s face, and he saw her pink nipples press into the taut fabric barely holding them from bursting outward.

  He looked up and saw he was caught staring, and as Mark shot her a half-smile, he was hit by her overpowering desire to be milked. The pressure in her magnificent mammaries was almost unbearable. There were flashes of embarrassment and depression over the fact that no one could really help her in town. The process was unsatisfying unless she was erotically stimulated during the act, and it also required someone at both ends if they wanted to capture the valuable nourishment lest it spray all over the floor. The suckling vines swallowing and pumping away the product in Starglade’s milking chamber started to make more sense, and the few partners available in this village were either too old, too young, or already taken.

  “I’d like that,” she said. “If you’ll please follow me to my home.”

  Mark pulled back to his own mind, and they all followed her into one of the smaller houses. It felt good to be inside out of the sun, and her one-room abode smelled of a pleasant musky cinnamon. There was a short entryway with an old gray mat and a stack of wooden buckets. Once they were beyond that, he saw a small straw bed along one wall and in the middle was a table with two chairs that rested on a larger, much more intricately crafted rug.

  “Help me with this?” she said as she gripped one side of the table, and Mark moved to assist with relocating it against one of the walls. His eyes wandered down to the mounds of white fur pressing against her shirt as she bent over, and he commiserated with her need. The pressure of the intangible essence he currently held made it feel as if his balls were as swollen as her breasts, and the desire for that sweet release grew with every passing moment.

  Jezebel sat down on the rug and rummaged in her small pack for the handful of magically grown fruit they took from the anomalous shimmering garden while Learis opened a trapdoor in the corner of her floor that revealed a small, dark cubby hole. She pulled out a fistful of the blue grass they grew in the field, closed the lid, and joined the others as Jezebel distributed their red fruits.

  Mark sighed as he looked down at the thing. This was their third meal in a row of nothing but these fruit-punch clovers, and he made a mental note to make sure they stocked up on supplies before popping off anywhere else. Once everyone was settled, they all sat in a circle on the floor in the middle of the rug.

  “What can I tell you of my people?” their Lagomorph host said before she started nibbling on the fat blades of grass.

  “Starglade,” Jezebel blurted out a fraction of a second after the question was asked. “Please tell us why you hate them, and what type of arrangement the Lagomorphs have with them.”

  Mark took a bite of his “sausage-fruit” and watched Learis’s expression grow dark.

  “Long ago, our ancient ancestors encountered the plant monsters. No one knows who came to whom or how it happened, but they offered my people a solution. Live underground in their caves, never leave, and agree to be drained of all milk until twenty-eight years of age. Then, they willingly agree to be slaughtered for meat. I’m sure many change their minds, but I’ve never heard of anyone escaping. Compared to most other races, we mature quickly and reproduce quickly. Combine that with Garda Grass being our only source of food… many Lagomorphs willingly rush into their paradise.”

  Learis’s lips pulled into a snarl as she ripped off another bite from her meager shock of vegetation.

  “How old is the old one called Gora?” Abby asked.

  “Forty-four
,” Learis answered through her chewing. She swallowed quickly and continued. “He is lucky to be still alive, and the oldest one of our kind that I know of. There are rumors of other dying villages like ours, but they could be just that- rumors. When a wild Lagomorph reaches fifteen, the Kalorplast will allow them to join their dark prison of blood and forced servitude in exchange for all the food they can eat.”

  Mark felt a flash of rage and wrenching sadness buried deep within Learis as she spoke of these things and knew they were linked to her red armband, but he forcefully pulled back out again. It just felt wrong digging his mental finger deep into good people and hardened his resolve to gain firmer control over his continually growing ability.

  “If Gora is unique,” Jezebel said, “what is the average Lagomorph lifespan?”

  “About forty, as far as I know. I’m twenty-five. Perhaps if we had the magic or machines of other races, maybe longer. But mostly we encounter people who view us as primitive creatures. As meat.” She snapped her tan eyes up to Mark. “Today has been extraordinary for many reasons.”

  Abby swallowed the last of her lunch and leaned back onto her tentacles.

  “Then, the trade is approximately 12 years of life for guaranteed survival?”

  “If you can call it that,” Learis said. “The Kalorplast say that all their captives’ needs are met, and that life is a garden paradise including spacious housing, access to recreational activities such as the arts or organized sports, but to trade over a quarter of your life? To trade never feeling the wind on your fur… or the moon’s pure light washing down… And this perfect paradise is probably all lies. Once those fools go in, they never come out, so who really knows the truth?”

  Mark thought back to the milking chambers they’d seen for themselves. The women all seemed fairly happy, and the ripped males he saw could back up the claim that they played some type of competitive sport, but he wasn’t completely sure of the facts and didn’t feel comfortable correcting Learis just yet. Anticipating Abby’s penchant for blurting stuff out, he sent a tingle into their interconnected bond to hold their tongues on the subject for now. Besides, the dead rabbit-people hanging from the hooks looked about the same age as their host and suggest that at least that part might be true. All three of his Enthralled turned to look at him, and he felt their agreement. They had never been so much in tune.