by Simon Archer
We spent nearly a week following their tracks. The local trappers we had hired insisted that this was normal, but I hadn’t the time for a pagan pilgrimage. My men were hungry, and we were ready to go home. And I should have let them. What I wouldn’t give to see anyone, even a redcoat, in these woods, just so I knew that we weren’t so far gone from the land I called home. After a long while, we all doubted that the trappers had even kept the trail we were supposedly tracking and not wandered us to our deaths.
However, the beasts were eventually sighted, thankfully. The group was indeed as massive as we’d feared, at least a few dozen in size, maybe more. General Armstrong had resisted the militia size I’d suggested, but we had almost brought too few men to handle them. The trappers rounded us out, though I admit I did only think of them as fodder for their teeth.
Our first strike cut the pack’s size clean in half, though their counterattack did leave two dead in the battle and three more from their injuries. I hadn’t counted the number of trappers lost, and I still don’t quite count it towards our casualty count overall. This is their life, after all, and we were helping them out in their livelihood. They should have been thankful for the chance for such an abundance of their trade.
As the beasts fled, we followed, determined to wipe them off the face of this earth for putting us through this sluggish agony just to find them. The second strike was almost as successful as the first, cutting the group in half once again, this time with no dead. Their meat was gamy and tasteless, but the satisfaction of victory spiced the meat to vengeful perfection. I found it a perfect irony, the hunter fed upon by the greater hunter. Such is the way of nature. Such is the way of hubris.
The trappers had helped us clean their hides to wear as a ward to the cold, and we had begun to create little plays about our enemies, the mutts of the wild, and how we, the few, the courageous, had come to vanquish them. It was a celebration bought with the sweat of the brave and the blood of the monstrous. Had the pagan spirits of the natives become slighted at our display of their righteous defeat? Were these wolves owed the human respect of burial that they had not earned, that they had forsaken by attacking us? I would have them make their case now, but the case still stands that paganism damned us without cause. We were merely caught in its net.
It was the third strike upon them that fate found suitable to bestow its curse. This time, we had wiped out all but one, a final dog who had the nerve and the wisdom to run. We would not be robbed of our total victory so easily, and I took many of mine to give chase while the trappers finished the others. The beast was tired now. It could not run far from us, though it strived with every limb to escape. When we lost sight of it, the blood of its wounds led us right to it just a half a day later.
Sin against sin upon its head, the blood led us to the scene of its heinous crime. A drying pool, a smeared trail, and a necklace with an ornately etched stone as its jewel told us that the beast had found and slain a person, taking its kill to a place to safely eat it to replenish its strength. Though we thought it could only be a pagan native, the taste for the blood of men would only drive the creature to madness. Our quest was more sacred than ever, now. The beast had to die.
A crueler and more gruesome sight, my eyes have never beheld, when we found the cave where the beast hid. And no more had we than now to vanquish it. It was starting its next meal, a woman no older than forty years, though she looked like no native I had seen. The glutton had already found and eaten a fairly large hare, discarding the bones, only leaving the ears strewn on the ground as leftovers, and yet it still looked starved to the bone as it gulped down its first few bites of the poor girl. I felt no pity for it as I told my men to show no mercy to it. Every last soldier I had brought fired their weapon simultaneously to take part in its demise. The magnitude of all of our power threw it into the cave, and we believed we had won against.
That was when I witnessed the power of abominable sin upon the earth. The act was so evil that it lashed back upon his form with a spiteful boiling. The legs kicked in every direction, directions that any normal limb would have been barred from. It was stricken with a disease by its own malice, suffering as its shoulder bloated and its back contorted. The wounds it had suffered before bled out like geysers, and its hateful existence swelled within it. If this was part of God’s judgment upon it, I would have only prayed for it to be more thorough.
The cracking noise mixed with its howls scared my men stiff. I wish I could say I was different. We had all saved powder for only one shot each, and I had unwisely let my men relish in their overkill. When the fear had released its grip on me, I told them to prepare to burn it. We would cleanse it and the disease from the face of the earth.
But its truest sin may not have been in consuming the woman. Many a beast has slain a man and woman who only wished to be alone in a lover’s embrace. Perhaps the woman was a witch, and the mutt caught a malefic infection from her putrescence and black magic. Perhaps the giant rabbit was her demon familiar in obtuse animal form, though it did her little good against the predator. In a way, this baleful wolf may have been a righteous punishment upon her.
No, the truest sin was in its communion with the devil himself, who bestowed power upon it. The enemy of good must have taken the disease and twisted it, placing a demon inside of the body of the creature to give it a new shape with the black magic’s power. Its boiled flesh became toned muscle, its forepaws became clawed fingers, and it rose to two feet, rising taller than any man and a half. The birth of a Wolf Man, upon my honor and sound mind. I couldn’t help but wonder to myself if such a change occurred to Adam and Eve upon their consumption of the apple. Were we some pure part of nature before the corruption gave us hands and a chest?
We did everything that we could to slay the demon again. Those who had managed to break free of fear soon enough to load their muskets fired them again, but the devil had still cursed the creature with skin like a rhino. Our bullets angered it, giving it cause to rush us with the intent to butcher and maim. It sunk its teeth into one of the privates in the front before another sunk a bayonet into its neck. A beast of demon magic didn’t care for our mortal weapons and swiped the boy to an early grave in a crushing blow.
The horror did not end there. The young private who fell to the bite did not stay down. Just like the wolf before it, he convulsed with boils and cracking, growing hair on his body and a snout upon his face. Now there were two of them, and the first had not quit its assault on us, continuously biting us without rhyme or reason and increasing its number.
By the slimmest luck scrounged from all corners of the globe, the Wolf Men were not gifted with the minds of men in their curse. They had jumped to tackle many of us, not witnessing the cliff behind us. By their curse, however, they were still given dexterity beyond measure, clinging to the cliffside before the fall took them to their deserved rest.
As they climbed back up, the men ran into the cave, fools as they were in their fear, and I would not abandon them to the beasts. With my indignant prodding, I mushed the men into a spirited sprint before the Wolf Men caught up to us. As death would be preferable to becoming another in the infection, I was to make sure that no more among us fell to their teeth. We couldn’t slay the wolves in time to stop them before they were brought into this world, but we were able to keep ourselves from joining their horde, and that would have to be enough.
The panic played tricks on the younger privates, and even my more seasoned soldiers. I had heard and saw nothing, but my men demanded to find a woman in the tunnels whose voice they had heard. One of them said they even saw her, though I doubted it heavily. Even if they were right, I thought it might be another black magic trick, and another witch lived within these mountains. They still wanted to find her, in case she was in trouble, as she sounded frightened. I decided that if we were to die today, we would die together. Maybe these caves would serve as a labyrinth, too complex for the Wolf Men to find the exit again as well as us if we were to become Wol
f Men ourselves. If we found her, maybe we could have asked for a cure in exchange for something, though I liked that even less.
They had followed us into the caves, and I had mushed my men ever harder, pushing them through the passages until we came out the other side of the mountain. None of us looked behind, pushing through the forest as their heavy breaths followed. Only by God’s grace did we lose them, and we were forced to make a camp out of the items on our backs. And we are still stuck in this wilderness. But we survived without becoming one of them. And that’s what matters.
We were not prepared. We still aren’t prepared, and the Wolf Men prowl. This is not just a waking nightmare. Such darkness does exist in this world, and it still hunts for us now. As we are whittled, they are grown. They’re stronger than us. They’re faster. Their hunger is greater than their will to avoid pain or death. They will not stop until we are all dead or one of them.
But we will survive. We will slay them and their cursed father. I refuse to give their disease any more to infect. The fear ends tonight. My conviction stands firm! The animals of the wilds have always been stronger, faster, swifter, sturdier, and fiercer, but humanity has triumphed all the same. We continue to triumph, even to this day, and every day that we live. As prey, our victory is won in every second that they have not taken us. As predators, we will bring them down with our superior minds and loyalty to each other.
Their numbers may be of our brothers, but their leader is only a sinful wolf. A vicious brute without a pack will only be that. The initial battle was its victory, catching us off our guard and forcing us to hide. That was only by the devil’s luck and hand, not its own cunning. In time, the way to victory will be shown to us. Are we not soldiers? Sons of Liberty? The crown hunts our dear America and wants to feast on our corpse like a dog, and yet we resisted still. Just like them, the beast will be shot down like the dog that it is, for our survival, our fallen, and the good of all sacred life.
I, William Earle Knight, solemnly swear upon my own life and my rank as captain of the Continental Army to rid the world of this abomination. If I am to succumb to it, let my life be taken by my own hand, lest my soul be damned with my body. I only hope that the souls of my comrades have left their bodies, so they may not suffer any more than they must. God rest them, and God help us on our holy mission.
22
“So close, Will.” I closed the journal. “So full of hope in the beginning. Full marks in effort, but not quite enough. These Wolf Men are like cockroaches. Guess I’ll clean this up for you while you’re resting.”
I suspected it. I felt it. My intuition picked up on it. I didn’t want to believe it. I wore layers anyway. I might have needed to consider a helmet, too. But there it was, plain as day. Wolves weren’t born; they were made. And they weren’t native to the Great Burrows, but an invasive species we helped bring in here. This alpha was born from a wolf who ate an innocent bunny who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and came in with another bunny who was in the same boat, maybe even looking for the first one. The time dilation meant the second had been waiting years for the first to come back before deciding to search herself. Young and impulsive, she came in, then ran off when a bunch of scary apes and some giant monsters came in. Her speed would have carried her off before anyone even knew she was gone.
Left alone, Captain Knight and his company were picked off while the werewolves grew with every man they bit. Then, being the only one left, the captain finally found a group of Rabbits, got some magic help, and fought back. He managed to get most of them, but not without heavy casualties, but the first one, King Steve, Mr. High Emperor Gillek Wraithmane, must have survived as one of them. If eating bunnies helped their brains, maybe bunny magic gave them brains in the first place. It could have taken a while before King Steve started his new empire with his new brainpower. Maybe a number of the werewolves from the original group survived to become the new heads underneath him. They could have told him about the muskets from the other world.
Did they force a bunny to cooperate with them to make the portals? That must have been how they fished out all of the other Wolves from our world. He just spent his time hopping from place to place, country to country, kidnapping people and taking them back here, feeding them some bunnies, and expanding his conquering force over the world until he had all of it. Hell, that portal-hop hunt might have been where some of the more recent werewolf legends came from. Both people and wolves, even dogs, would all be victims. Was the male-only stipulation a misogyny thing or a mana thing? Did it not work on women?
Could all of that have been one of the things that they forgot? Maybe this really was about losing Wolves. They had a limited supply, and Rabbits didn’t turn, so it was more than likely that they’d completely forgotten how to make more. They might have even forgotten that portals moved to other worlds. That might have been part of why they’re trying to remember so damn hard. This all might be part of what they all forgot. They’d only be operating with half the information, constantly looking for more pieces to save them.
One question: how did the Blood Moon fit into all of this? With Wolves being extraterrestrial to the Great Burrows, it was more than likely bunny related. Contextual guessing led me to think that the Blood Moon amplified bunny mana and helped stimulate the Wolf brains as they ate them. That was what had these nobles so antsy about getting their hands on bunnies, and why the Mana Crusher was so damn important. Now that I was thinking about it, the Mana Crusher must have been new technology. They were trying to get a maximum effect so that someone, probably the Regent, could have attained mutant godhood.
No matter what the truth was, that generator had to go.
“Lord Hank, look at all of this!” Tinker hobbled over with a pillar of papers up past her head filled with diagrams, Paw-Paw’s notes, and her own, all being pulled out as she reviewed them. “Processes for metal work with oryctolagium, more charm designs, and a special schematic that lets you double up on enchantments!”
Looking around myself, I hadn’t even realized that I had stumbled in the way of several bunnies helping to organize the papers and documents stored by ‘Preymeister’ and by Paw-Paw. They diligently worked around me as I scuttled out of the way in my embarrassment.
“Anything on a building that could be the Mana Crusher?” I asked her, “Possibly an architectural blueprint, so we have some idea of the layout? Secret entrance? Original purpose?”
“Yes, and sir!” She dropped the pages into a flurry of paper, pulling out one giant one, practically as tall as her. “First, the floor plan blueprint! This, Lord Hank, is our most likely candidate for the Mana Crusher’s old purpose: the holy ground of the ancient Rabbits. From the notes I found, the Grand Temple of the Ruby Moon was the cultural hub of worship for the Moon Goddess and works to help channel mana throughout all the other temples. How does it do that, you ask?”
She stopped explaining to stare at me expectantly.
“Oh, um, how does it do that?” I stammered out, “I ask.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you asked, sir!” She pulled out another giant diagram from the pile on the floor. “This, right here, is the tunnel network that spreads out underneath the very ground beneath our feet. They connect, interconnect, and spread out for miles around.”
“Like between here and the Grand Temple?”
“Mhmm, and not just there!” She pulled out a few other pieces of paper, laying them out on the floor to show a giant web of tunnels.
From big circles to small, the tunnels had lines and jagged squiggles weaving between them, many connected to each other, with a few outliers here and there with one or two. The two locations with the most connections were obviously the place marked ‘Grand Temple,’ and the other marked as ‘blah blah blah voice.’” My Cuniculus was still a little rusty. No, wait, it was “House of the Voice.” That sounded ominous and important, but also another problem for another day.
“Are these big ones around here cities?” I pointed to some of t
he larger circles.
“When you compare it to the maps, I’d say they are.” She pointed to certain locals as she designated them. “If that’s the case, we have the Mana Crusher, here we are in Jackalope, Thumperton Port is way off here, and these little places dotting around here can only be those caches the Hunter left behind.”
That was a mixed bag of feelings dumped on me, mostly good. The tunnel network was an amazing asset if we could have used it. A secret way to travel between cities and towns was more than I could have hoped for. Even at Hopper’s greatest unlocked potential, she was only one girl. If the cities could have gone safely and quickly between each other without having to call her every time, we’d strengthen every city I had by leaps and bounds with every new city I added. The exponential growth meant I could have focused on laying a good foundation for the peace I was working toward without having to sacrifice tactics and strategy on the battlefield. To think, we’d been walking over all of it this whole time without realizing it.
And the history. The Rabbits had a massive society, it looked like, spanning across the continent, thriving off this culture of Moon worship, living as one giant system of metropolises and temples before they were abandoned. I was in awe at what could have been one of the greatest marvels I’d never see, that no one would ever or had ever seen. Then the Wolves decided that it was their right to just take it all for themselves since no one could stop them. Now all of that history was lost. We might have never known about what things were like before this, besides little snippets from one of Captain Knight’s journals or whatever survived the Wolves’ book burning. It churned my stomach. But there was still more to learn, and Tinker did amazing for finding all of this out.
