Bunnygirls 2 Read online

  “Are you returning us to the first sleeping arrangement tonight, my liege?” Miffy, a grey-furred bunny girl with brown locks flowing from her head, asked me. She stood next to another furless bunny with cherry-blonde hair, olive skin, and black-furred ears coming out of it. “Pantoufles and I would like to switch our days if you wouldn’t mind. She can join you sooner, and I can have a longer portion of time with you.”

  “What?” I squinted my eyes to think. “You have specific days?”

  “The arrangement would be the same as last time, right, Sir Baron?” Pantoufles tapped her feet in an anxious, unmoving jog. “I don’t know if I can wait that long for my time.”

  “I didn’t have any special order in mind when I did that,” I told them, “I was just trying to make sure we took care of everyone.”

  “Admirable and considerate as always, my lord.” Hopper fluffed the raven black hair on her head as she tied it into a ponytail, letting her white-furred ears curl back up and checking the creamy skin of her cheeks for any smudges in the mirror. “We’ve come to love the special attention from you over the week, and we’re currently working on making it more formal.”

  “I’ve already mapped most of it out!” Tinker said as she brought out some papers with all kinds of tournament brackets and colored lines, with some notes written in Cuniculus. From my limited knowledge, none of them were words, but rather names. “I’ll just be needing a couple more bunnies surveyed for preferences for it, and then we should have something that works for everyone.”

  “Sounds perfect,” I said, heading through the door, “As long as everyone’s happy, I’m satisfied. If Bugs comes looking for me, tell him to wait in the courtyard. I’ll be there shortly.”

  As soon as the door closed, a chatter of times and dates rose up from behind it as the girls gave Tinker their preferred dates and times and wildly discussed the matter. Chuckling to myself, I headed out to my next destination to look over something that had been bugging me. I’d looked it over a thousand times, but I had to look again. Maybe there was something more to be gained that we overlooked. Plus, it gave me something a bit more to do than just twiddle my thumbs now that all of the construction projects were underway. Not to say that it still wasn’t creepy as the devil’s ice-cream truck to visit.

  But, nothing the old Baron ever did was exactly comforting.

  2

  This keep was gigantic, weaving hallways and passages throughout the stone walls of it, with a few structures in floors above ground level and below, all the while curving around to dead ends and jagged passageways designed to keep enemies foreign to the territory lost and confused as they ran through, possibly getting lost and separated for an easy kill. We had fortress guards formerly working for the old Baron, though, and didn’t have to worry about any of that as they mapped the place out for us. Still, remembering all of that was sometimes a bit tricky. It’d be dishonest to say I didn’t need a keep guard as an escort the first couple days as I walked around the place. As expected of Wolves and their general level of information retention, we still got lost a few times. Now I knew the place like I knew the feel of my guns in my hands.

  I saluted a few Wolf guards as I passed them by, Fido and Spot, as I walked down one of the main hallways, taking a few turns to the westmost side of the keep, towards the sea of Thumperton Port. In that section, I came across some elderly former brood sow bunnies who I had reassigned to be cooks, carrying platters of pastries for the breakfast I was going to be a little late for. Round little biddies, hunched over from sitting in the stirrups of the breeding stables of another noble for so long, they were like grandmother’s straight out of a Mother Goose story, with the frilly bonnets with tan-furred ears hanging out the bottom and equally frilly checkered aprons to match the look.

  “M’lord Dragonoak!” Flopsy, the head cook in the back, said as she noticed me. “Would you like a tart? Fresh from the oven, just for you!”

  The name Dragonoak had really stuck to me since I’d made it up near the beginning of all of this. I kept it because it helped me separate myself a bit from the power of the lordship. Lord Dragonoak was the powerful noble, with an entire city at his beck and call. I was still just Hank McCallum, the handyman from Tennessee who wanted to help. Anyone could have been the mighty figurehead of the household if they were in my shoes. Just took a little nutting up and getting the job done, is all.

  I gave them a polite wave and an enthusiastic nod, rushing past them and snagging a tart in a drive-by platter theft. Absolutely fantastic, the berries that they used for the filling didn’t grow in my world, and they just exploded with a zingy texture in my mouth. I’d been requesting them since I first had them three days ago and was very happy they were here today. You’d have thought that carnivores would have even had anything besides meat in here, but they had pantries full of it. For flavor, I’d been told. I wasn’t complaining about the circumstances that got me these tarts.

  “Durushurs urs urlwurs, Flurpsur!” I said through a mouthful of baked dough and fruity filling. I swallowed my food to speak more clearly. “Save one for me at breakfast! And go ahead and start without me, I’ll only be a minute.”

  “Very good, M’lord!” Flopsy answered obediently. “I’ll let the others know.”

  “Your work can wait until breakfast, sire!” Efrafa, the assistant cook, shouted to me. “You’ll work yourself skinny if you keep this up!”

  “It’ll only be a second!” I shouted back to pacify their grandmotherly worries, peeking down a thin hallway, more like a rectangular hole in the wall than an actual entrance.

  Through the stone passageways of the peculiar entrance, I weaved and turned my way through as the darkness crept over my vision. Darker and darker, the passages weaved into greater places of shadow as I took a flashlight out from my pocket to illuminate the way. Deeper and further down, I walked down a thin spiral staircase, eventually leading down further and further into the dark. The staircase led to another long corridor, with a dramatic atmosphere to match the darkness. Torch sconces lined the walls, with dim fire continually burning in them, just like when we discovered the place. Heading down the corridor, I opened the steel door to enter the large room on the other side.

  Far more lit than the corridor, but still eerie, the room had strange glowing blue symbols written over the walls and the floor, arranged in lines that lead to a point at the back wall. At the center of these magical symbols was a circle of these sigils in a complex array. In the center of the array, a square pillar jutted out of the wall, runes running up the sides, with a square, brass-colored box big enough to fit a blown-up beach ball sitting at the end of it. The box had shapes pushing out of it, lined patterns made with only right angles in strange mazes, each side divided in its own place. Beside the pillar, the table we had moved down here displayed Tinker’s notes, as well as the piles of metal plates that used to be the old Baron’s armor, peeled off once we had the chance to harvest the charms he kept underneath.

  We thoroughly washed the charms afterward, cleaning off what could have been hundreds of years worth of grime caked onto them. But, they were well worth it. As it turned out, the force field that the Baron was using against me was actually a combination of effects from different charms, producing a new effect related to both charms, but separate entirely as well. They would be helping my arsenal immensely, even individually.

  Inside of the back of the chasse, at the spine and the base of the head, smaller metal strips sectioned off square-sized little spaces at roughly the same size as the sides of the brass box on the pillar. Next to the chasse were metal plates with the same maze-like patterns from the box but reversed so that indentations mirrored the maze patterns. The plates were thick, sporting their own set of glowing magical symbols on the sides of it. I picked them up in my hands, feeling the weight of them.

  From what we could gather before, these square plates in the armor obviously hooked into the square. Since scars shaped like mirrors of the patterns on the
slots covered the Baron’s back, it was safe to assume that they were burning into his back. There wasn’t any metal or other machine-like thing inside the Baron’s body, so it wasn’t like some sort of battery pack. A cyborg seemed like a silly thing to consider being real, but then again, so was magic and Rabbit people. There’s just a certain amount of weird you can continually accept when the disbelief barrier breaks. But it wasn’t plugged into anything but his skin and hurting him the whole time. The burn marks were freshly wet, but layered over time, suggesting that he’d been doing this continuously for a very long time.

  We also found the scraps of old, burnt paper in the keep’s library, hidden in the corner with the teensiest bit of writing still available on it, though barely legible. The only word it looked like, according to Tinker, was ‘beyond.’ Ominous, I know. If I was a betting man, those were the remains of whatever notes, writings, or schematics on this room’s functionality or the brass box existed in the old Baron’s possession. Big, cheeky furball wanted this thing kept a secret more than he wanted it maintained, I guess. Even that piece we had was fragile as a dry leaf, so the rest of it was long gone.

  ‘Beyond’ was a dramatic word. It was a word you used for warnings on instructions in the least dramatic situations, not designs or notes on magical artifacts. Unless the full paper was a manufacturer’s manual on creepy sideways pedestals, I was assuming this thing was dangerous. So why would he have subjected himself to the burning?

  If he was sleeping in his armor, why didn’t he just sleep down here where these plates slotted into? Well, it was a little cramped getting here, so maybe he just didn’t fit? But he still had them pressing into him, sleeping on top of them. He wanted them to burn him. Someone who makes a full-body protective charm wouldn’t have been the type to practice casual masochism. They were helping him somehow.

  If I was wildly guessing, I would have theorized that the plates could only be batteries of some kind. They plugged into the pedestal to charge, and then they burnt into the old Baron with that charge. And if that were the case, the only thing that this pedestal could be getting its charge from is the only source of magical power in this place: the defunct mini Mana Crusher we got Tinker out of. That would have explained why he needed a more powerful bunny for his own generator. He wanted more juice for whatever these plates were doing to him. Was he trying to give himself magic powers? If he was, it wasn’t working. He didn’t use them once in our fight. Or maybe it allowed him to use more charms at once through his body like Timberpine was trying to do. Although four wasn’t exactly impressive. I use three on my guns all the time, and Timberpine was channeling two sets of five through himself, making ten on one item. It could have been that Timberpine was stealing that special ability when he was visiting the generator from time to time. But Timberpine didn’t have any of these brass plates to do the burning thing… unless you counted the brass wheelchair.

  He wheeled away on his own whenever others thought that he visited the generator on his own. Was he taking the chair with him to charge it along with fixing his charms? It didn’t have the patterns on it like these things. Was that necessary? Why would the old Baron have them if they weren’t? Maybe it was two different methods of trying to do the same thing, with two different results. What was it doing to the old Baron, then? Was that why he was so much bigger than other Wolves? I was willing to write that one off as ‘alien anatomy’ and leave it at that, but now I couldn’t settle.

  Pfft, all guesses and speculation, no evidence. If I speculated too far, I’d have been guessing in realms of ideas that had no basis in fact, and I’d get someone killed with the misinformation. At any rate, I wasn’t getting any new information out of this thing. But it was important. I knew that. They hid a lot of secrets to keep this thing out of anyone’s sight. I was going to figure out why.

  “Your servants are waiting for you to come to breakfast, your grace.” Bugs, my brown and grey-striped butler that I’d kept from Timberpine’s old estate, made my skin jump as he came in right behind me, holding a torch to guide him through the darkness. I almost dropped the brass plate in my hand, catching it at the last second.

  “What the hell, Bugs.” I gathered myself again, straightening my coat. “Don’t spook a man in a satanic ritual chamber in the basement of a castle with a creepy box and dead villain stuff inside. That’s just begging for some horror movie bullshit to try to kill us on top of everything else. I don’t have that kind of time or patience, Bugs.”

  “‘Some horror’ what, your grace?” Bugs asked me, “I’m unfamiliar with the concept of a ‘movie.’ Are movies terrifying creatures in your world?”

  “Sometimes.” I put the brass plate back down. “Sometimes they’re just bad. Anyway, didn’t I tell the girls to tell you to wait in the courtyard? You should have just had breakfast. I even told the cooks to start without me.”

  “My apologies, your grace.” Bugs bowed. “When I finally got the bunnies in your room to calm down enough to inform me of your message, I knew you would have come here to try to divine more hidden secrets from these relics of a madman. Did you find any such things?”

  “Just some more theories,” I said, turning to head out the door to get some grub. “I was just finished here, anyway. Does your news happen to be the scouts reporting in?”

  “Yes, Toby had just come in a half-hour before.” Bugs hopped along behind me. “His team had spotted an entourage of powerful-looking wolves in a caravan, with some kind of goldenseal on them. I assumed this would be the seal of the Regent character you said the Baron mentioned and tried to find you as soon as I could.”

  “That’ll be his ‘champion challenger,’ come to dethrone the old Baron.” I sped up my pace. “He’ll have no hang-ups about me being the new one, and try to replace me, too. We’ll need to be ready for him. This is the guy the Regent sent to fight the Baron, which means he’s confident the champion could beat him in a challenge.”

  “From Toby’s report, he’s still on the path here.” Bugs informed me. “Could we not detain him before he comes here, so he doesn’t threaten you or the townspeople? Your scouts could sabotage their approach and deal with them before they even defiled your land with their presence.”

  “Nope.” I shot down his idea. “You’re going to tell the scouts to let him and his people right into the courtyard.”

  “Into the very heart of the city?” Bugs tried to catch up to me with his hops to look me in the face. “Is that wise, your grace?”

  “It keeps them all within my sights, on my battlefield, away from my people,” I reasoned, “I want the meeting to start out peaceful, so I can try to get some information out of him. The more we can squeeze out, the better. Plus, I’d like to see my new pack members first hand before I take them from him. They’ll know some good info, too.”

  “Your confidence astounds, your grace.” Bugs smiled. “I’m sure you’ll trounce this ruffian in the twitch of a whisker!”

  “Probably more than that,” I said as we made most of the way out of the dark corridors, “This guy’s whole job is to be the enforcer for the Regent, called in when a powerful noble becomes disobedient. He’ll be prepared to fight well and guarantee victory. I’ll have to be ready for anything in order to beat him.”

  “Should I lay out a tarp in the courtyard, then?” Bugs suggested.

  “Do you have one that could even cover the whole thing?” I asked.

  “For you, your grace, I could come up with almost anything,” Bugs proudly proclaimed, “It’s always a pleasure to overcome the challenges you put before us.”

  “I was kidding, Bugs.” I laughed. “Were you actually going to try to cover the courtyard to keep it clean? That’s hysterical.”

  “What’s hysterical is that you think I can’t do it!” Bugs challenged me. “I’ll have something for your match before it starts. They’ll never touch the stones of your precious keep if I have anything to say about it!”

  “If you can pull something like that of
f, I will personally name you ‘Baron-for-a-day,’” I promised him, “You can use all of my personal utilities, and speak with my authority to pamper yourself as much as you want. Are you in on that action?”

  “Oh, goodness, me.” Bugs trailed behind at the surprise of my offer. “Could I have all of the sweetcane carrots I wanted?”

  “More than you can handle, Bugs,” I assured him, “You’ll drown and suffocate with how many you’ll be getting if you win.”

  “You may come to regret those words, your grace.” He hopped ahead of me, heading out the entrance into the main part of the keep. “My stomach for sweetcane carrots is greater than the sea itself!”

  “You better hope so!” I shouted to him as he bounced out of sight, “I will make sure you literally explode with carroty goodness! You underestimate how many carrots I can get!” I headed out of the entrance myself.

  “Then I’ll die a happy hare…!” I heard Bugs’ echo cut through from somewhere out of my vision. I chuckled. “Even though I won’t…!” Cocky little hare, wasn’t he?

  Heading out towards the courtyard, I was more than ready for some more tarts in the open air. I had to fill up if I was going to win against a baron-killing professional challenger. I just hoped he died properly. Yes, I was still bitter about Timberpine, making me chase him all over the city because he refused to die from being shot. Most annoying noble fight. Easiest one had to be that Manewood guy, who I just tricked into challenging me within a minute and shot once.

  So, from Manewood to Timberpine, how annoying was this champion challenger going to be?

  3

  On the evening of the same day, I had finished up all of my work as well as dinner and now sat in the small wooden chair I had set up in the courtyard, waiting for the champion to appear. With the main tower demolished, the old Baron’s throne room was less than usable, and I needed a place to assemble people for matters of dispute, so I just used the courtyard. The outdoor makeshift throne room worked as well as any at no cost to anyone. It was also where we set up tables as the new banquet hall, also destroyed with the tower, and I liked the easy access to the food when it was ready. Thumperton Port’s been a fairly sunny place, and fresh air did my soul good.