Bo waited until he couldn’t hear even the faintest scrape of a jackalope’s paw in the tunnels near his prison, then wolfed down one Meat after another. He was careful not to trigger another overload, because he still didn’t know what his second infernal visage was. Adding a third seemed like a bad idea.
You worry too much about inconsequential things. Get us out of here before the death bunnies return and hack us to pieces.
“I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” Bo said under his breath. “You heard the two they sent to check on us. Their leader wants to feed us to the tree.”
I don’t believe they said you had to be in one piece for that.
“Point taken,” Bo said. “We’ve got another problem on our hands.”
Now what?
“I can’t see a damned thing,” Bo muttered. “There’s not a speck of light in this hole in the ground.”
The pitmaster felt around as he stood, careful to check above his head and to either side as he got his legs back underneath him. He found the warren’s ceiling about a foot lower than he was tall, which forced him to stoop his shoulders and bend awkwardly at the waist to avoid dragging his head against the earth above him. The chamber he was trapped in was, as near as he could figure, about teen feet on a side, with a five-foot ceiling. A single passage let out of the room, and there was no door to prevent the pitmaster from walking right out.
Bo wasn’t sure what to make of that. The jackalopes might have figured he was too weak to escape and just dumped him here to wait for the red tree’s pleasure. Or they might’ve thought the pitch-black maze of their warren would prevent a human from getting very far.
“I’ll show them,” Bo whispered.
When he was a kid, Bo’s father had dragged him off to a barbecue competition in a tiny little town south of St. Louis, Missouri. On their way home, they’d swung by Meramec Caverns and took a tour. The guide had joked that if anyone became separated from the rest of the tour, they should put their right hand on the cavern’s wall, then follow it around until they came back to the surface. While Bo wasn’t sure that would work here, the trick had gotten him through more than a few corn mazes during his teen years. He figured it wouldn’t hurt to try, anyway, and so dragged his fingers along the wall as he put one foot carefully in front of the other.
As Bo wandered through the darkness, he couldn’t shake the sensation of life moving all around him. His fingers tangled in hair-fine roots, and more than one earthworm fell out of the ceiling to wriggle through his hair before sliding down his back and onto the floor. The pitmaster heard the jackalopes’ voices in the distance and wondered if they really were far off or if it was some trick of the dirt walls muffling the sounds.
He equipped his cleaver, just in case.
In one particularly narrow section of passage, something grabbed the right side of Bo’s head and gave it a rough yank in the same direction. His neck popped and cracked like a fistful of bubble wrap. Bo grunted in surprise and lashed out with his cleaver. His arm didn’t swing more than a few inches before it smacked into the wall, though. There was nothing on that side of him.
“What the hell was that?” he wondered.
Bo switched the cleaver to his left hand and reached up to gingerly probe that side of his head. He fully expected to find some sort of jackalope trap embedded in his skull. To his horror, the pitmaster found something long and curving jutting out of the earth and into his head.
“Shit,” he muttered. “I think I just got a jackalope lobotomy.”
You don’t have any injuries. And that doesn’t feel like a foreign object.
It took Bo a moment to swallow his panic and examine the smooth, hard, curved object on that side of his head. He leaned back a little and the dirt pitter-pattered as it fell to the floor. His fingers probed the length of the strange object and found a sharp point at its far end. Bo switched the cleaver from his left of his right hand to examine the other side of his head. He found the same thing there, and let out a bitter chuckle.
“That’s my second visage,” he said. “I’ve got horns.”
Hooves, pig legs, and horns? Why, Bo, you’re turning into a regular devil.
Bo didn’t really want to think about that just then. The phrase “you are what you eat” had bounced around his head a lot when he was a kid. He never turned into beef jerky, bubblegum, or popcorn, though, so had long since doubted it was true. Now, though?
Those minotaur lizards had horns. Bo had eaten the meat from them to heal himself. And now he had horns.
Bo didn’t like this turn of events, but it wasn’t like he could do anything about that problem. He shook his head, grumbled when his horns raked the earth on either side of the passage, then continued his search for an exit.
The darkness played tricks with the pitmaster’s perception of time, so he didn’t know how long it’d been since he’d left his cell when he ran into a jackalope—spear first.
“Dammit,” Bo cursed. His supernaturally enhanced Constitution absorbed the worst of that blow, but not all of it. He felt a couple inches of spear slide into his side, and then the cold rush of wind when the jackalope ripped its weapon free.
“You’re supposed to be in your cell!” the jackalope shouted.
“I woke up, there wasn’t a door,” Bo said. “Figured I’d take a little walk. Get some exercise.”
“Turn around,” the jackalope said. “We were sent to fetch you for Bloodwhisker. It’s time for you to meet your fate.”
Bo couldn’t see a damn thing, and there wasn’t much room to wield a slashing weapon like his cleaver. It was hard to tell how many of the murder bunnies were here, but he thought he could hear at least two. With no way to target his attacks, Bo didn’t like his odds in a fight. The rabbits could back away from his blind swings, then stab him from safely out of reach.
“Fine,” Bo said. “Just don’t stab me again. It stings.”
The jackalope poked Bo with its spear again. Not hard enough to do any real damage, but the threat was there. Satisfied that he had the upper hand on his foe, the jackalope snorted and said, “You’ll walk ahead of us. Try anything, and we’ll stab your spine full of holes. You only have to be alive when we deliver you. Nobody said anything about walking on your own.”
“I get the point,” Bo said. “I’m not in a fighting mood.”
You’d better be. As soon as we get to this motley group’s leader, you need to pull his head off and destroy the spawn point. We have a lot of work to do, and no time to be messing around with jackalopes.
Bo totally agreed with Barbie, but he wasn’t sure he could fight his way out of this mess. The jackalopes had bows powerful enough to take him down. If a bunch of them drew a bead on Bo in the dark, the pitmaster would be dead long before he could kill them. He needed to find a way to see in the dark.
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Try eating some owls. That might work.
“You’re hilarious,” Bo muttered to Barbie.
“Shut up, human,” the jackalope behind him grumbled. “Bloodwhiskers said nothing about your tongue. I’ll cut it out if you’re not quiet.”
“You talk an awful lot of shit for a guy who stabs people in the dark,” Bo said. “Why don’t you take me up to the surface and we’ll have a fair fight?”
“Fair? Like the way humans ran over rabbits on the road?” the jackalope asked.
“In our defense, you guys had a bad habit of darting under our wheels,” Bo said. “But I get your point. It wasn’t cool of us to run over your people. And I’m sorry about that.”
“You will be,” the jackalope said. “Bloodwhisker told us how you killed his family. That’s half the reason he’s giving you to the tree.”
“What’s the other half?” Bo asked, trying to hide his eagerness for information. The more he knew about what the jackalopes had in store for him, the better his odds of survival. If he could just see, this would all be a lot easier.
“The Crimson Forest will win the coming war,” the jackalope said. “And when it does, we will be rewarded for giving it one of its first victories.”
“Oh yeah?” Bo asked. “How’s that?”
“It needs this hex,” the jackalope replied. “Giving its champion to the forest will secure our victory here.”
Bo didn’t like the sound of that at all. He lost track of the number of narrow passages they’d passed through as they talked, the twisting, turning course they’d taken through the warren. But in the silence that followed the last tidbit of information the jackalope gave to Bo, he heard something change. The muffled voices grew louder, and what he’d taken as simple conversation became more sinister.
It was a chant. A long, complicated string of alien words that made absolutely no sense. The vowels and consonants seemed jammed it together in a nonsense pattern that repeated itself every few seconds.
I think we're almost there. Wherever there is.
Bo figured the devil was right and braced himself for whatever would come next. Most of his cards required him to see a target to use them. Blind as he was, Bo had no defenses, and no offenses, against the monster rabbits. If he got his hands on one of them, he could do something, but they probably all had spears or bows and wouldn’t come anywhere close to arm’s reach. Best to wait it out and see if he got an opening.
“Our sacrifice has arrived,” a stern, rumbling voice proclaimed. “You look much healthier than when I last saw you. You must have some tricks up your sleeve, human.”
Bo flexed his naked arms and shrugged. “I don’t have any sleeves. But I bet I could make some of out of your fur.”
The jackalopes hissed and jeered at Bo’s threat. They knew he was blind, and that they had all the advantages over him. Bo felt truly helpless. None of his cards would save him. His only way out of here was the weapon between his ears.
Oh, no. We’re doomed.
“Your sarcasm will get you nowhere, human,” the jackalope, whose voice Bo recognized as belonging to Bloodwhisker, said. “My new ally has need of you. Or, at least, it needs your core.”
Bo felt a faint breeze blow across his forehead. It carried the smell of countless furred bodies. The jackalopes’ rich, pungent smell was inescapable. They were still muttering and chattering to one another, and Bo figured he was standing in an open chamber, maybe fifty feet across.
He was way too far away from the rabbits to do any real damage to them before their bows and spears finished him. It was time to get to talking.
“You know that gross old tree is full of shit, right?” Bo asked. “I was up real close and personal with that thing and saw what has in store for all of us. If you think making a deal with this monstrosity will save your people, you’re wrong. You’ll just be the last snack that goes down its gullet.”
“You’ll be one of the first,” the jackalope replied. “Witnessing your death is nearly enough for me.”
A spear poked Bo in the back, forcing him to step forward or risk kidney damage. The pitmaster grumbled at the sharp jab but didn’t complain. These rabbits felt humans had wronged them, and in some ways, they were right. Humans had killed an immeasurable number of rabbits before the world changed. Many of them were dumb accidents. Others were to fill human bellies. Still others found themselves turned into clothing. The rabbits had some justification for grinding their axes, but Bo believed there had to be a better way. An eye for an eye just mad everyone blind.
“Look,” Bo said. “I know the tree promised to eat you last. And I know you really, really want to kill me. But there’s another way for you, Bloodwhisker. For me, too. We can both walk out of here today. Your people can have a future, and so can mine.”
The rabbits’ scent grew stronger in Bo’s nostrils. It was sharper now, an acidic rage wrapped up in the musky aroma.
“You kind is full of lies,” the jackalope replied. “The tree has shown us what the future holds. It will unwind the damage that has been done to this world by the Grail Chain. The Crimson Forest will return us to the way we were before we changed. We will be at peace at the end.”
“I know that sounds good to you now,” Bo said. “But I don’t think you want to numb your pain at the cost of your people’s lives. And there’s no guarantee the tree isn’t lying. The monster had trapped a bunch of gnomes when I found it. It was using them somehow, had them trapped in an endless nightmare.
“It’ll do the same to you. It’s not offering freedom. It’s just a different kind of slavery. But I swear to you, help destroy this thing, and my people will never raise a hand against you again. I’ll help you find and settle a hex of your own to run as you see fit.”
“Bring him to the tree,” the jackalope roared, but Bo heard the faint quaver of uncertainty in its words. He was getting through to the deadly rabbit.
Bo didn’t wait for the spear to jab him in the back. He took several steps forward and felt the ground change beneath his hooves. Raw dirt gave way to tangles of knotted roots. His knees bumped into the rough, slick bark of the tree, and Bo stopped. He reached out with one hand and found the thick trunk was shorter than he expected. It was only a few feet tall, and it mushroomed out into a strange, bowl-like formation lined with sharp tines.
“Ah, there he is,” an alien, twisted voice said. Bo wasn’t sure he heard it with his ears or his mind. “You have done well, Bloodwhisker. Kill him, that I may drain his core and seize this hex as my own.”
The jackalopes’ whispers intensified, and their scent took on a bitter, acrid note that sent tingles of dread running down Bo’s spines. The monsters were scared.
Not of Bo. They feared the tree.
“If the tree was strong enough to protect your people,” Bo said, desperate to get through to Bloodwhisker, and drew a hand of cards, “then it wouldn’t need you to do its dirty work.”
Do not screw this up.
Hog’s Hop, Danger Spice, Webspinner, Severance, and Hackstorm flashed through Bo’s thoughts.
Bo would get exactly one shot at this. He had to time it perfectly.
“Your lies hold no power here,” Bloodwhisker shouted. The creature’s clawed fingers hooked in the pitmaster’s hair and jerked his head back. “Now your core will feed the great tree, and the end of this madness can begin.”
The pitmaster felt something cold and thin against his throat.
“Sorry,” Bo said, and activated the Hackstorm.
The attack was unarmed, but it was still shockingly powerful. Bo’s enhanced Strength and the card’s magic combined to smash three things in rapid succession.
The jackalope who’d brought Bo to the tree had gotten a little too close and was instantly pummeled into the dirt with several broken bones and a badly bleeding nose.
Bo’s fist took a massive divot out of the tree, which was really more of a plant-shaped lump of weird alien meat, and showered the closest jackalope spectators with gritty viscera that would have made smash comedy genius Gallagher very proud.
A third strike shattered Bloodwhisker’s arm in five different places and brought the jackalope to his knees.
“Stop him!” the tree shrieked.
The pitmaster had no time at all to put the last piece of his improvised plan into action. He grabbed his captor’s broken arm and held tight to its wrist. With his other hand, he grabbed the jackalope by the throat and shoved him down into the dirt. Bo was much, much stronger than the smaller murder rabbit, and had no trouble manhandling the monster.
“This is over,” Bo said.
“Do it then,” the jackalope gasped. “You took everything else from me. Finish me.”
Do it. Now. Follow the breeze through the jackalopes and find your way to the surface while they are still stunned.
But Bo still believed there was another way, and he wasn’t about to give up on it just yet.
“The tree wants to use you,” Bo said. “But I want to work with you. Together, we could do a lot of good.”
“Like what?” the jackalope said through its sneer.
“Rip that tree out by its roots,” Bo said, “for starters. There are some evil elves not far away. We’ll knock them out of the picture next.”
“Do not listen to this fool,” the tree roared. Its voice rattled the earth and froze Bo in place. He felt like the eye of Sauron had just swung his way. “Have your people kill him. Let us be done with this.”
“Think about it,” Bo said, shaking off the tree’s commanding presence. “If it can’t save you from me right now, then how will it save you from anything more dangerous?”
“Kill him!” the tree commanded.
“How can I trust you?” the jackalope asked.
“Because I could have killed you six times by now, and you’re still alive to doubt me, Thomas,” Bo replied.
“Why would you trust me?” the jackalope asked.
“I’ll give you a chance to prove you’re not an asshole,” Bo said. “I’m sorry for what happened to your family. I didn’t mean to kill them. I was in a big damned hurry to stop some devils from wrecking the world.”
That is not a very fair characterization.
“How would I ever prove that?” the jackalope asked.
“By not having your people kill me as soon as I let you go,” Bo replied.
He released the jackalope’s wounded arm and took a step back. He held his hands high overhead and waited to see if he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life.