by Simon Archer
“My turn,” Hopper whispered, winking and smirking at me.
Tinker slowly slid back before collapsing beside me, and Hopper turned around, locking eyes with me as she took my entire length within her. While Tinker kissed her way up and down my neck, Hopper moved against me, rocking with more and more urgency as time went on. She wrapped her fingers around the back of my neck and pulled me up toward her, pressing my chest against hers. I wrapped my arms around her waist while Tinker slid up behind me, caressing and kissing across my back and shoulders and sending shivers down my spine. As Hopper’s breathing became more and more erratic, I felt my own pressure building to a crescendo, until I knew the end was close. I grasped tightly onto Hopper, staring into her eyes as it hit me. A small smile flickered across her face as she recognized my urgency, and she moved against me faster and faster, sending me over the edge as she threw her head back and let herself go. We climaxed together, her cries masking my grunts, until I fell back, and she collapsed on top of me. Tinker shifted beside us, and when she looked at Hopper, Hopper pulled her in closer for a kiss before collapsing her head against my chest. As for me, I laid there, trying to steady my breathing as the carriage rolled on.
10
“Report,” I spoke to Snoopy, one of my Wolves on the scout team, coming back in the night from his mission. One of my arms rested on my leg as I leaned over by the fire, my butt firmly in a groove on one of the logs we set up next to it. My other arm was attended to by Hopper, who decided to change up the gold lacing on my coat. Tinker laid by my feet, balancing her feather hammer, a block of steel half the size of an oven with a shaft, on her nose as a game. She had just gotten it to balance almost perfectly.
It’d been a little over a week since we had left Thumperton Port. Like Wildheart and his former goons had suggested, Thumperton Port really was on the outskirts of the nation, and we hadn’t run into another city, town, settlement, frontier town, village, or even another building anywhere the whole time we had traveled. Hell, it took two days of travel before the swathe of stumps from the old Baron of Thumperton Port’s apparent war against trees had disappeared, and the shade of great oaks and evergreens finally graced us. I forgot how much I missed that smell.
It’d been a month since I’d gotten a whiff of that, back in my world. What I didn’t get back on my world was the blue tint to all of the foliage. All of the leaves were almost teal like I was wearing special glasses or something. Honestly, it threw me off when I looked at it for the first few days. Thankfully, I had plenty of time to adjust, and plenty to distract me when I didn’t want to look at it. While the view of the new trees took some getting used to, some sights you never get sick of.
Not long after that, our scouts had found the greater Jackalope territory, where the Mana Crusher was supposed to be, and we tucked ourselves away from prying eyes. The temporary camp we’d set up in the forest a couple hundred or so yards more than two miles from the city bustled with the sounds of Wolves talking as they worked. A week was a long time to be cooped up shoulder-to-shoulder with fifteen other people, and they were all happy to stretch their legs a bit. Even the couriers were more than busy zooming between tents as they traded all kinds of tools and things between them, making sure everyone had what they needed.
“Regular patrols, sir.” Snoopy saluted as he gave the report. “Ten groups of six, all elite grunts, every square acre section is swept at least once every half-hour in circular patrols.”
“That’ll make it hard to go in quietly.” I popped my neck with my free hand. “Did you see any charmed weapons?”
“Only one or two for a squad, sir,” Snoopy answered, “Usually given to the leader of the group. They make these shimmering waves come off the weapon heads.”
“Hopper, how well would you say the combat training’s going for my boys?” I turned to my personal outfitter. “Would any of them have a chance with an elite one-on-one?”
“They’re doing remarkably well, my lord.” Hopper pierced the coat with a needle tied to a string of golden thread. “They’ve been picking up most of my tricks and tips I’d been coming up with fairly fast. Still a little slow on the execution, but they’re still leagues ahead of where they were before I started. I’d say it’d be close, and the elite might have a bit more experience under his belt to give him the edge, but your boys would come out on top more often than not if they keep their heads about them.”
“Tinker, how many charms were you able to make?”
“I’d just finished up inventorying them.” The genius alchemist kept her focus on the hammerhead above her. “Including the ones I made on the way over, we have seventy silence charms and thirty-six ice charms. I got them attached to all the melee weapons and the improved muskets already, so that’s sixteen silent spears, sixteen silent hammers, eight ice spears, seven ice hammers, three combo spears, thirty-two silent muskets, fifteen ice muskets, and three combo muskets, making one hundred weapons total. With sixty-four soldiers here, that’s seven with silent spears, seven with silent guns, nine with silent spears and muskets, seven with ice hammers and silent guns, eight with ice spears and silent guns, one with a silent hammer and musket, fifteen with silent hammers and ice muskets, and three with combo spears and muskets.”
“Can you make sure that gets doled out how it’s supposed to?” One of my eyes twitched as I tried to follow along with Tinker’s string of numbers and pairings.
“Already done!” She held her gloved finger underneath the pommel of her giant hammer, keeping it gyroscopically balanced on it as she got herself up to perform some balancing tricks with it.
“Do we know what’s going on at the Crusher itself?” I asked Snoopy.
“We couldn’t sneak through undetected,” Snoopy answered, “You wanted to retain the element of surprise until we were ready to strike.”
“Therein lies the rub.” I rubbed my neck at the same time as I said the word. “We could probably take out most of those elites without being spotted, but if we don’t know what we’re up against inside, we’d just be tipping our hand without a real plan of attack. The stooge knights were saying that it’s rumored to be decked out to the max. I’m not getting us slaughtered without an actual chance of surviving, or rather with a chance of all of us surviving if I can help it. We need more intel.”
“Boss, we found something.” Scooby came up to us from his team, having just come back from their own reconnaissance mission. “It’s not much, though, but it looked like that one book you had before.”
In his hand, he held the crumpled remains of a journal, with red spots surviving the burnt edges that curled the edges out. Tiny pieces of it crumbled away as the Wolf’s meaty paw handed it to me. Grabbing it from him gently in my free hand, I tried my best to open it up just as carefully with only my fingers. Despite all of the decay and damage, I could still tell that this was one of Captain William Knight of the Continental Army’s journals. It was a longshot, by far, but if he had stumbled upon this structure before it was the Mana Crusher, we could have used all of the knowledge that survived to the present.
“Where did you find this?” I tried to multitask both hand dexterity and conversation.
“We stumbled into one of those underground places, like the one we were guarding a month or so ago,” Scooby reported, “Previous to our own serendipitous determination of the amassment location, the precautionary and convoluted mechanisms delineated for maintaining the secreted status of said arsenal by the autochthonous proprietor had been compromised, empowering another investigation to derive the orientation without complication, but not without the unfortunate inaptitude to arrest the destruction or pilfering of any practicable resources.”
“Someone looted and torched the Hunter’s cache you found already?” I summarized Scooby’s vocabulary cloud, still struggling to open the journal.
“Yeah, that. What did I say?”
“If I didn’t do it, then it could have only been the Wolves.” I had no progress on the journal’s
safe reading. “It makes sense. All of these muskets you had when I got here had to come from somewhere, and with bunnies being eaten and Wolves being stupid, that leaves few options besides the caches.”
“Do you need help with that?” Snoopy asked me, pitying my lack of success at operating a book.
“Hopper, do you know when you’re going to be done with my sleeve?” I looked at my skilled couturier. “I’m not rushing, just having to admit that reading this old book will have to wait until all of my hands aren’t being held up in other engagements.”
“I’m still making the proper adjustments, my lord.” Her needlework purposefully slowed down as I asked her. “These things take time if you’re willing to exercise your patience. Even if you have other matters to get to, I’ll have to ask that you wait until I’m finished with this delicate and enduring task. Such is the way of sewing.”
I’ve seen her rework a velvet blanket into a dress fit for a presidential ball in less than a minute because she wouldn’t bother to grab some clothes just off the bed. In no way was time or effort an obstacle in any sewing challenge for this little bunny. I suspected sorcery.
“Can I borrow the arm inside in the meantime, then?” I found pulling the arm out from the expertly fitted jacket difficult from my current position. Not that I was trying hard; her hands were soothing as she practiced her craft. “I don’t want to make it harder for you if you’re having to avoid piercing my skin while you work, and it’s looking like I need two sets of digits for this task.”
“Though you are my lord and master,” Her hand slipped over past my elbow from holding my forearm as a steadying brace, “and you are entitled to your opinion in all matters over me, I am still gravely insulted that you believe that your arm would be a hindrance to my process.”
“Gravely insulted, you say?” I let out a chuckle. “Oh dear, that’s not good at all.”
“How could you be so rude, sir?” Tinker looked over to us, still balancing the hammer on her nose. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Ashamed, I say. Shame.”
“I know that we’re not supposed to say anything bad about the bunnies, boss,” Snoopy gave a quizzically wolfish eye to both bunnies in question, “but I’m still confused. Are they allowed to be so upset with you like this?”
“This isn’t upset, Snoopy,” I informed him on the foreign concept of subtlety of emotional expression. “You will know when they’re upset. I still have bones.”
“Also, if you’ll allow me to be so blunt in answering your previous request,” Hopper’s hand settled right underneath my tricep, massaging the muscle with her fingers “No.”
“Are we allowed to refuse him like that?” Larry whispered over to Scooby.
“If I actually wanted or needed my arm back, I’d have it.” I turned on my authoritative father glare. “Just because you’re all equals under me doesn’t mean you can start disobeying or ignoring me because of another’s perceived example. However, this does show that if you really do want or not want something, I’m willing to work with you.”
“Does being equals with the bunnies mean we’ll have to do that whining thing you do with them eventually?” Scooby questioned, to mine and the rest of the group’s confusion. “You know, whatever it is you’re doing in your chambers with them, with all of the whining and squealing. Can we refuse that? I don’t want to do that.”
He looked at me as if he had no idea he was subjecting everyone in earshot to the horrible imagery he’d just invoked. Apparently, according to the faces of the other Wolves as well as the girls, I was the only one suffering from the psychic hell unleashed by those words. My screams for mercy stayed in their cranial prison.
“I’d sooner peel off my skin with a fork than ask any of you for that, please never ever mention it ever again.” I blinked away the foul picture for my mind or all of my memory. “That’ll be a rule for the whole household, even. No one requests that to me unless they’re a bunny.”
“Absolutely, sir.” Scooby and all of the Wolves nodded enthusiastically.
“Oh, um, Hopper,” Tinker’s hammer-balancing faltered as it fell off her face, landing on the ground in a very light thud. “If he’s not using it, could I maybe look at it, too?”
“By all means!” Hopper’s fingers danced back over to my elbow, still pressing into my meaty tissue where they could. “It’s not my arm, and there’s plenty to go around.”
Tinker lifted her legs to squeeze into her spot on the log between Hopper and me, placing her hands on top of my bicep, her fingers rippling in waves as they surveyed my muscles. She gawked at the apparent marvel that was my arm and its properties.
“How did they get so big?” Tinker poked at the flesh of my arm, “It’s just so squishy, and yet so firm. Everything about you is so big and firm, like your arms, and your chest, and…” She was lost in a moment of her own invention, and I assumed I was involved, or at least partially in the picture. She shook her head to return to us. “Do you have a special diet or something?”
“Well, Tinker…” Hopper motioned with her head for Tinker to lean in as she whispered into the alchemist’s bunny ears on top of her head.
“Oh, right,” Tinker giggled, “Hyoo-man.”
“What’s hyooman, boss?” Snoopy asked above my shoulder, “It sounds good. Can we have some?”
“No, you may not,” I sternly rebuked the menu option, “In fact, no human, man, woman, kid, children, boys, girls, none of that. No Rabbits, but that should be obvious. Also, no Wolves. Is that something you’ve had to do before?”
“Some of the weirder nobles do that.” Larry, on Snoopy’s team, sneered his nose up at the thought. “They insisted it kept them pure of any lesser creature’s influence.”
“Though they probably still ate bunnies, I’d imagine?” I gathered from Larry’s nod that I was right. “Of course. Pure as a muddy puddle’s pond scum. Can one of you help me with this? Please be careful.”
Scooby took the Hunter’s journal in his claws, like tweezers, holding the edges of the covers open as my personal bookstand while I flipped through the dying pages as carefully as I could. Very few pages had survived, and no words had remained unfaded on any of them. I scanned every last one for anything remotely legible on it, though I had to squint my eyes, and could only read the scattered, sparse passages and phrases of the late Continental Army Cpt. William Knight:
“… lost another three men today…”
The next page:
“… two more… their widows can’t even…”
And the next one:
“… another five just… layers worn… happen to their souls? Will they still go to heaven if…”
A few destroyed pages between, and then:
“… just me and my lieutenant…”
And another after that:
“… the only one left… wants to give up. How can I fight them? When they took Lt. McCreedle, I… rations are low…”
Another page again:
“… low on powder… fashioned a bow out of… broken my traps with their terrifying… am I to die out here? Where even…”
The very last page was by far the most preserved, though the phrases are very patchy across the page, and was also the most foreboding. I suspected that the others were part of a journal, but the care to make these letters legible made it clear that it was special to him, and it needed to be read:
“My name is William Earle Kn… The brigadi… has to get this be… damnation. Armstrong, if you find this journal, keep the troops away from them for… sent us out to… can afford to lose a few cows. No beast hunt is worth… were no bears or any earthly creature in the Good Lord’s creation. They are an unholy… corrupted by sin primordial… suffer another moment. They didn’t… mercy, please.
Read this very care… stronger than you can possibly… faster than… Don’t bother trying… cannot catch any…over your scent with the blood of… not expose your… Never, under any circumstance… your loss only gives… If one of
your men… quickly, you can catch… kill them before… extra powder in your muskets… bayonets are use… good men, brave… taken by…
That makes me the last. Good luck, and may God have mercy on us both, General Armstrong. There will be none for you when I am dead.”
“Do you know what it says, boss?” Snoopy pulled me back into reality as I finished reading. “Your face got all crinkly. And it’s so soft-looking. And mushy. And patchy. Why does your flat snout have hair, but your head only has those two lines? Are you a hairless hare or a fuzzy one?”
“I’m a special breed, all my own.” I gestured for the book to be taken away.
“Anything useful in the book?” Scooby closed the book up again. “I can’t tell if you’re happy or not. Rabbit facial expressions are so hard to read, and yours are worse than that.”
“Nothing about the Mana Crusher or anything we need at the moment.” I stared into the fire. “Maybe it’ll help us later. With how much everything’s faded, anything I can learn from it is just speculation. For right now, it’s just ancient history.”
Speculatively speaking, this King Steve, if he was real, was a busy boy back then. Somehow, he may have managed to make it to my world and cause enough trouble for farmers in the Pennsylvanian countryside to get the Continental Army to send a hunting party themselves to deal with him. Who knew how he got there, or why, but I was guessing it was the same way he brought himself and William’s hunting party back here.
All conjecture and it didn’t tell us much about anything immediately useful, but it would have told us that he was dangerous and resourceful, even back then. And it might have suggested that the Regent and King Steve weren’t as chummy as they wanted everyone to think, what with the Regent’s bubble keeping portals from popping up. That’d have directly stopped King Steve’s expansion plans, whatever those may have been. Why would he have been traveling across worlds in the first place, if it really was him? Was this him trying to build that empire of his, with resources from another world? Maybe that’s where he got muskets and other technologies? Why would the Regent want to stop that? Why take the risk in fighting the best Wolf that’s ever Wolfed if it’s just to cripple the empire?
