by Simon Archer
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she insisted, and I wasted no time. I crawled on top of her and trailed my lips all across her body. I felt the bunnies around me still as I brought the attention down on the two of us. As I kissed my way down over her breasts and across her stomach, I could feel her squirm with anticipation below me. When I found my way between her legs, I glanced up at her, but her eyes were already squeezed shut and she had the sheets bunched up between her fingers as she waited for what she knew was coming. I chuckled to myself and went to work, tracing a delicate trail over her skin with my tongue. I listened to her, slowing down when I heard her breath catch. She giggled and writhed against the sheets, and when I gently took her nub between my lips, I felt her tense and still beneath me before letting out a shuddering breath.
I continued to pamper Tinker until I felt the sheets pull taut beneath us and her entire body clench. She squeaked loudly and shivered before her climax crashed over her, causing her body to quake as loud gasps escaped her lips. A hush fell over the group as Tinker melted into the sheets, and when I came up for air, I saw hunger in everyone’s eyes. I sat back on my heels and wiped off my chin with my palm as I took in everyone’s expressions.
Hopper beamed. “Well, it looks like we are moving on to lesson two today, and Hank is happy to demonstrate on each of us.”
As I looked around the crowd, I realized just how much work I had ahead of me. Randy slinked up beside me with a shy smile.
“I’m happy to volunteer for lesson two,” she murmured.
“I’m happy to oblige,” I replied softly, laying her down onto the silk sheets and covering her with kisses all the way down her body.
I spent a good portion of the night demonstrating lesson two, and when the last of the bunnies had been satisfied, Hopper crawled over to me.
“You have done splendidly, sir,” she crooned. “Let me show you how grateful I am.”
She pinned me down against the mattress and eased herself down onto me, wrapping me in her warmth. The movement of her hips sent bolts of bliss through my body, and she continued to grind her body against mine until I felt the pressure build to a crescendo. I grabbed her tightly by the waist and saw the corners of her mouth twitch upward as she saw my face change. I groaned loudly as the dam burst and everything that had built up since the evening started found its home. I let out a shaky breath as I collapsed onto the bed beside her. A few of the bunnies rolled over to lay a gentle hand on me to still my aftershocks, and I lay there, perfectly still, until sleep overtook me and I fell into a deep, peaceful slumber.
24
We had filled the night with much pride, cake, and frosting, and I had barely slept a wink before I gathered with my best warriors to come up with a plan of attack on the Mana Crusher quickly. My idea was fairly simple, and we had the men to make it happen. Nighttime seemed best for making our move if I would avoid the risk of all my soldiers being blinded by the reflected light off the generator’s big dome. If they had any sense, they would have found a way to weaponize that, and I was too proud to let them have the chance to say they managed to defeat me by shining a mirror in the face of all of my men. They were all dogs, and shiny lights on the ground was a recipe for disaster. So, we planned the late-night battle and allotted the roles. It gave us another day to get everything geared up.
Just like assaulting the keep at Thumperton Port, my plan for attacking the Mana Crusher had two goals and multiple teams. The first goal, to be executed by many battalions, was to attack the Mana Crusher head-on from up top. The first two squads, led by Foxhound and Flippy, my quietest Wolves, had to help silently take out the elite patrols circling the place like hands on a clock, then quickly observe and report the defenses they saw waiting for us. Knowing that most Wolves had the same grasp of quiet like lava did about icicles, I had set up a test beforehand for any volunteers to steal a bag away from Tinker and Hopper. While all of the squad members managed to grab the bag away from Hopper and Tinker before they were spotted and hit, Foxhound was the one who took Tinker’s hairpin out of her hair. I’d only planned for the one leader, but Flippy somehow got a pair of crude legwarmers he’d made himself on Hopper before she noticed. That actually helped him survive the crushing retaliation kick and gave him the leadership spot of the second squad.
With their initial warning system blinded for a moment and our forces prepped, four battalions would attack from different sides to surround the base in a siege; Wallace from the north, Snoopy from the east, Old Yeller from the south, and Snickerdoodle from the west. In total, they would have had close to two hundred Wolves, all assisted with supply transmission via the battle courier hares. We also found the game-changing full-cup charm schematic, so we were never running out of powder, bullets, or anything else we needed ever. Apparently, they’re much harder to make than any other charm, but so worth it to remove the need for supply lines eventually.
Using the scavenged link charms from Paw-Paw’s clothing and property, we also had instantaneous communication, limited as it was. Each battalion commander had a messenger hare with link charms connected to the other commanders’ messengers, allowing for blinking messages like Morse code. Simple messages were easy enough to get across, like “all clear,” “in trouble,” “fall back,” and other tiny phrases, though I had to clear them up with the leaders with painstaking care. Old Yeller was particularly frustrating, but he somehow managed to pass my test when no one besides the other three leaders did, so he got the last spot. With only the eight total links, I had the three other commanders linked up to Wallace, who I hooked up with, and we’d coordinate through his messenger hare as needed.
The surface army was to serve as a half-distraction for the infiltration team, led by me, and included Hopper and Tinker, as we provided the other half. We were to sneak through the fancy and teeny secret tunnels, down the route that Tinker had plotted, cripple the fortress from within while the army hammers it from without, and save the bunny hooked up to the generator first and foremost. Both tactically and emotionally, the last objective was the most important, followed closely by further dividing the attention of their troops. Without his generator, we would cut off Regent Silverback’s super Wolves at the legs, and he couldn’t juice up the Wolves he’d already given the mana infusions to. From what I could tell with the old Thumperton Baron, Timberpine, Wildheart, and Chompfist, mana infusions required upkeep. Without this supply, the whole operation got weaker, and they’d be easier to handle when I needed to crush them. Even if they had a backup somewhere, they wouldn’t have bothered to waste so much energy and resources keeping this one so secure if it wasn’t the most potent one they were working with.
The gear was all set. Paw-Paw’s personal supply of charms combined with the ones Tinker had made put us all in magical paraphernalia. Now that I knew without a doubt that it wasn’t charms on the body that made the nobles crazy FrankenWolves, but dangerous injections of an unknown primal energy source generated by and robbed from an attractive alien species, I felt more comfortable equipped with enchanted armor. Every metal plate that we all wore, along with a plate attached to the chainmail that lined much of our clothing, was fitted with silent, feather, and now the newly producible pristine charms. I couldn’t have told you how much of a relief those three were when it came to moving, carrying, and upkeep. Tinker built the custom plate armor for all of us with mobility and dexterity in mind as well as protection, and now, they were all that much denser without any drawbacks or maintenance. We also didn’t have to worry about our weapons rusting or malfunctioning from wear and time.
When we got more cheat bronze, we’d do even more. So much more. I fantasized about bringing in a German Leopard tank through a portal and slapping those three on it to make a stealth tank. Or an army of them. The unspeakable devastation I could have caused. That was if we found a way to get more of the better charms duplicated. I guess I had to settle for my squad of stealth knights. Still amazing.
Tinker’s hammer had the feat
her, size-up, silent, and ice charms, giving her an industrial press on a stick that made whatever it touched brittle as it was smashing and didn’t make a sound the whole time. A hammer would have always felt ridiculous to me to use in an assassination in theory, but in practice, it was terrifying. You’d have never known you were just mushed into a red paste, and neither would any of your friends.
Hopper finally decided she wanted some charms on her custom spiked ballerina shoes, a fire charm on one and an ice charm on the other, with two spare lightning charms on each, courtesy of Paw-Paw’s horde of Hunter loot. She told me she was mostly reacting on instinct when she was moving her fastest, but those shoes made her a blur in the air, regardless. Watching her practice beforehand had me feeling like I was sleeping with a red-and-blue thundercloud tornado, except more destructive and quieter than I had previously imagined.
By fate’s grace, my machete was finally a magical war blade. To complement the pristine and sturdy charms that kept its edge and its form unbroken, it was now also sporting silence, fire, and ice. I’d have to turn the elements on during combat, or they’d burn through my clothes, but they were still great to have. I never remembered to use it, mostly because the guns would do most of the job before my enemies got close enough to hurt me. And now it was even more useful at staying in its sheath until I needed it.
The guns had gotten the full treatment, too. While the cheat bronze was only part of the alloys making them up, it did its work in freeing up a bunch of space for more charms. Any of them that didn’t have silence before were now blessed with it, and pristine did its holy work. I asked Tinker to put the feather charms on a switch, only because the weight of a gun helped control the kick, and my bones and ligaments could only take so much.
Before, the sawed-off had ice, fire, and the full-cup to give it that frost-and-flamethrower edge over other weapons. The fancy new burst and dust charms made the shotgun far deadlier, turning every metal ball into an elemental explosive to compliment the icy and fiery dragon breath of destruction still active while leaving a lingering cloud of burning or freezing dust in the air where the body used to be.
The rifle had already been powerful with the bubble charm magically increasing the caliber and the silent charm already making it the perfect sniper rifle. Burst and ice made the rifle delete sections of a body in a silent explosion of icy mist, and the full-cup schematic we found finally kept it in the active combat rotation instead of the ‘special situation’ bin. And I couldn’t have sung more praise about the pristine charm saving me hours of cleaning, both before this and in future battles to come. It deserved a special mention on this gun. Pristine was the Most Valuable Charm in my collection.
The pistol may have been the craziest of the new weapons. Cheat bronze made up its entire structure, so Tinker used up the whole ten-charm limit to make it into a beast of a weapon. Before the ultimate arcane upgrade, I had the bounce, lightning, and full-cup charms that gave me laser beams that danced around my foes. Now, we had the burst, fire, ice, dust, silent, pristine, and feather charms, making every shot an arcane flurry of chaos. I could augment the bouncing beam of lightning with searing flame or numbing frost, which rippled out devastating energy in a shockwave when the bullet burst on impact with a fleshy surface, leaving a residual vapor that still harmed any in the area the column had been in. It destroyed anything it touched, chaining across multiple surfaces and multiple people, and creating a field of elemental haze in its wake. If it were bigger, I might have been able to bend the fabric of time and space with every bullet with how many charms I might have been able to put on it. It also would have been terribly unsafe.
While I might have asked to redo this with the shotgun, putting bounce and lightning on it instead to maximize the spread of the blast zone, I also choose life over accidentally killing myself when thirty or so metal balls of electrical energy bounced throughout a small area and filled a room to the brim with death. Far too unpredictable to be useful, even if it was like a handheld nuke. These very tunnels we were in would have been a grave for everyone if I fired the hypothetical ‘godstorm gun.’ If anything bounced back in this direction, we wouldn’t even have the breath to say that this was a stupid idea. Maybe there’d have been a situation for it one day, but it wasn’t now.
Tinker was fine crawling in the tunnels, but Hopper was right at the limit of comfortable movement, and I was halfway between a knee scuttle and an army crawl. My navigating technique through these tubes in the ground had my knees dragging since my femurs and hip bones combined were too long to go from side to side, while I kept my chest near the center where the diameter of the tunnel allowed my shoulders to be. These tunnels were not built with a guy like me in mind. Tinker did say they transferred mana between temples and cities, so it made sense that they were more like wires. No less frustrating, but it made sense.
In those roadways, deep within the bowels of the Great Burrows, I reflected on my evolving relationship with magic, which I had been adversaries with for quite some time now. Resentment had built up in my heart since it felt like I was playing chess with a bear who kept destroying the table. I’d have bought a new table, a new chess set, and maybe even suggested a new game to the bear, only for it to not pay any heed to my words because it was a bear. I felt the emotional expense that buying new tables and chess boards was costing me. My psychological finances were lower-middle class, and I couldn’t afford new tables all the time. I was close to bankrupt, which in the analogy meant very, very angry.
But magic, like the bear, was a part of the nature of the world I was in. Bears didn’t listen. They didn’t know people words. Their only language was the language of power. Who was I to expect that this majestic creature would bow to my whims, and what right did I have to throw an internal tantrum when it didn’t do as I wished? That hate was doing neither of us any good. I believed that we could have brokered a peace, now that magic was on my side again, and finally made a bit of sense.
If you were going to have cheated in this game, I at least appreciated that I could have benefited from it in a way that my enemies haven’t been. They could have kept their nasty monster powers and sadistic methods of capturing mana. My enchanted guns were more than enough for me. So long as there weren’t any more surprises around the corner, we were fine. From this moment onward, magic and I were in a truce.
“How much further ahead?” Hopper asked Tinker, our field guide, for an update as we moved through the passages, “We have to be close, right?”
“Sh!” Tinker quickly shushed her, “Also, yes, just around this corner.”
Around the corner, the tunnel led to a dead end, in accordance with what my eyes were telling me. But I was friends with magic now, and willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Plus, Tinker wouldn’t have made such a rookie mistake as choosing the wrong passage when she’d already memorized the map.
As we approached the wall, Tinker lifted up the green charm, pressing it against the doorway. A flash of light, the same color as the glowing charm, slashed the doorway from top to bottom, cracking it open as the earthen door slowly widened, revealing the back of an elite Wolf, who had turned around to see what was going on behind him as he guarded his post.
A quick pull of the trigger from my pistol, already out of its holster as soon as I spotted blue trimming on the armor and fur on the vertical, and the elite’s head disappeared into a wisp of smoky black and red. I already loved this pistol. Hopper grabbed the body as we pulled it back in, keeping it from falling loudly and alerting anyone. Crisis averted, we pressed onward, looking into the interior of the generator complex to see what awaited us.
The dome above us sunk into the ground, the bright shadow of night cut off in a smaller dome just a dozen or so feet above us. The tip of it was missing in the original design, but the obvious Wolf add-on of steel and wood covered the opening. The base of it, very far down from where we were, had to be longer than a football field. A football field might have fit inside if the dome was
on top of it. Filling this overturned bowl in the dirt, a wall of stone, thick as gravy, circled around, cut off just a couple feet away from where the dim light met the false horizon.
Upon the walls, intricate carvings of ancient Rabbit history flowed around the side, ribboning along the stone in rows that stacked all the way to the dome’s bottom. The style had the ancient Egyptian caricatured lack of concern for portraying depth of vision or more than just the side of any face front of the body, but also the Greek obsession with making sure everyone knew just how attractive the bunny women were and how jacked the hare men’s musculature must have been. Given that this was Rabbit historical art, seeing the ancient artist trying to give a hare pecs and a six-pack was just strange. The detail was amazing, and in some cases, explicit, showing all of the different ancestors that bunnies and hares had throughout the centuries.
Inlets replaced the spaces in the walls for elites to patrol as they passed through the passageways in the walls to another inlet, just like the ones we had opened the tunnel into. At ground level, dozens upon dozens upon dozens of elite Wolves wandered the stone floor in patrols, passing by each other like waves in two rivers that flowed against each other and parallel. No nonsense occurred in the march as every eye stayed forward, every musket and spear stayed at the ready, and every row of marching Wolves stayed in file as they twirled around the center.
Mirroring the spaces inside the walls were balconies stapled to the side, covering parts of the historical art, the construction of which was about as fine of the woodwork as you’d have expected from Wolf additions to anything, to say not quite at subpar. A series of ladders and stairways connected them between each other and between certain spaces, radiating the kind of faith in their structural integrity as I might have had in the safe consumption of a gas station sandwich. The Wolves walked on them consistently enough that I regained some trust that I could have done the same if I needed to, but there were enough ways to traverse the entire chamber that I could have avoided it just as easily. Elites patrolled the balconies just as they did for the grounds, with no-nonsense or relaxed postures at any time.