Chapter 1
A quarter-full broken mug slammed onto the table, sending stained wood chippings in every direction. A supple girl’s nails carved deep into the man’s neck, tearing through every vein and artery they could reach. He wobbled onto his chair, cradling it as his knees gave way, snorting out a chuckle as he fell to the floor. The man next to him, Nanabuu, wiped the blood from his feet. “Can someone clean this up?”
He didn’t get an answer, the bar was much too busy.
In fact, he’d rather not open his mouth again for a while. The tight little waitress might’ve thought them two were friends. Though they did share the same interest; these miniskirts the girls wore packed with walking in heals, it made cuping a handful almost irrisistable. Nanabuu wondered what it felt like to die so fast, the smile on the corpses face telling he may have landed in the more favorable parts of hell.
The smell of aged vodka and blood coated every inch of the room, creating a poignant stench that burned the hairs in the back of your nose. If you looked hard enough you’d be able to see the wall of flies that surrounded the opened doors, pensive on whether or not the feast that awaited inside was even a good idea. People kept walking in an out for some type of nutrition despite this. Weather it be because of the cheap, yet quality entertainment each patron brought, or that they genuinely enjoyed the food, Nanabuu couldn’t figure it out. He could only focus on the six inch long blue worm that happily swimed inside his hazel drink.
From behind the counter, a four foot tall pitch black labyrinth spider with a large rag obscuring its head crawled from under an open vent with a plate of sizzling meat in its front legs. It briskly scittered onto the table and layed the plate in front of Nanabuu. Pork Ribs -about the size of the spider itself- torn straight from whoever was kept under this place. The hot fumes mixing with the yellow peppers and garlic brought sour tears to his eyes and a sneeze into his arm. The spider clicked its front legs at him, its not everyday he gets to serve a rabbit.
“Join a cult?” He asked, cradling to another patron, “Or are we just trying new things today?”
Nanabuu didn’t give him an answer, just a slight tilt in his neck. He stared down at his meal, saliva building up in the back of his throat. He could swear the meat itself was sliding off the bones with help of the wine sauce. The rabbit absentmindedly reached for his utensils, two rusty steak knives, and began tearing into his food. Other regulars would occasionally look on at the hare in curiosity. He was making the least noise, but still drew the most attention. His clean white fur in stark contrast to his muddy surroundings. Some would bring him into conversation at there table. The knowledge of rabbits being plant eaters called into question more than once. He couldn’t hear any of them, the food was more important. The extra effort it took for his teeth to tear into the peices he cut. The tip of his tounge occasionally catching the poping of hot juices. His throat was burning, but it didn’t look like that mattered.
“Y’mind savin’ the plate so I can use it later?”
Nanabuu looked up from the table and at the spider, then back down at his food. It had to have been there for a minute, but it looks like he inhaled the whole thing, leaving the naked bones to one corner. He clicked his tounge. The taste of the meat was faint, like he had it last night for dinner. He wiped his mouth, coating his hand in sauce.
“Yeah,” the spider sighed, picking up the plate, “that’s what happens when you don’t savor every bite. Funny feeling, ain’t it? But, you already paid. So I won’t complain.” The hare nodded and the spider crawled away, now his ears were sensible to the bar once again. The flies from the doors had rushed to the corpse in a pool of its own blood, coating it like a sentient second skin. Other patrons began to hobble out the door in each other’s arms, burping and singing from their hearts. Spiders large and small made their way through little vents and cracks in the wood with dusters, brooms and buckets of water. Nanabuu doubted this place was ever clean to begin with. Once the last patron was dragged out by their leg, the same masked spider came atop the bar table.
“Sorry t’ keep you waitin’. The misses doesn’t like gettin’ disturbed from dinner.”
Nanabuu let out a sigh and stood to his feet. He stretched his ridged arms and picked up the wooden rifle that sat next to him. “Ah’ don’t mind, friend.” The spider lead him through the wooden vent that he came from and into a cave fit for the spider, not the rabbit. Being seven feet tall meant that he had to trudge through the space in a quick and uncomfortable manner to keep up with the spider. The cave eventually became much warmer, and the rock surface much hotter. The smell of burning flesh mixed with sauce and season invaded his nose and reminded his tastebuds of the meal he had earlier. He had to bite his tounge to focus on not getting a cramp, but his head couldn’t stop thinking about what may be down here. What they might taste like. And if their still alive.
His muscles started to become stiff, his head began to throb in anticipation of a migraine to the smell, that, or he was going to pass out. The land must’ve been giving out favors because that was when the cave started to widen out. When he could, Nanabuu jumped to his feet and stretched the soreness away. The feeling of relief was washed away by the smoke rising in between the gaps of his toes. He stifled a scream an resorted to hopping from foot to foot. The spider scittered about the room for a bit until it came back with a peice of parchment in his front arms. “Take this, don’t lose it.”
The rabbit nodded and grabbed the small slip, watching the spider as it crawled up the side of the wall and into a vent he wouldn’t of hoped to fit in. So he was alone now? Had to make his way through hot rocks without getting cooked alive, just to get a job?
Yup, this was worth it.
He couldn’t feel his feet anymore, so that was one thing off his mind. Now he had to get rid of the smell. He searched the room, lightly rubbing his hands against the walls when his wrist brushed against a thick lining of spider silk. Gross, but it’ll work. He wrapped the silk around his mouth and nose, glueing his ears to the back of his neck. He could think clearly, but had to be mindful of the lack of lack of air. Probably should’ve tried making holes - notes for tomorrow.
He’d have to find some kind of mirror by the time he made it back out of this place, because he was sure most of his fur would’ve been charred off. The silk became more like putty, giving him periods to get tufts of air into his lungs, and remind him that he was in an underground oven. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t feel his fingers, meaning he had to check to make sure none of them had fallen off. He almost stepped on a baby spider, apologizing as it hissed and scittered away. Around that time everything was starting to get wet and steamy. Muffled voices filled the many rooms that he had passed. Not spiders. Rabbits. Humans. Birds. A couple of those. They all sounded very distinct. Everyone sounded like they were putting up a fight, before everything went quiet again. The cave opened one last time and the rabbit stopped.
There was no path. No walkway of any kind. Just a trench that didn’t seem to have a bottom, just burning orange clouds of soot and brimstone. Ahead of him was just a wall of darkness. No sign. No hint of any kind on what to do next. All he saw were the billowing clouds below. The waves of heat completely melted the silk mask, trailing down his rigid frame like candle wax. Dozens of palm sized embers snowflaked upwards into the wall of darkness above. He saw no other way. No spider offered to help. Pretty rude. Who knows, he might not feel it.
So he jumped.
He kept falling. And falling. At first he was speeding towards the firey pit below. Now it was a crawl. Soon it didn’t feel like he was falling. It felt like the flames could sustain his weight and he could walk. Like the very fire itself didn’t want him to be burned, so he helplessly floated above it. It felt annoying. Not being able to fight against something that probably wasn’t even alive. Minutes turned to hours, to days. As he slowly spun with his back facing the flames, countless arms and legs of varying sizes fell onto or past him and into the fire. He would’ve felt sorry if he didn’t feel jealous. There had to be a trick to this. Did the fire want him dead? Did he have to cut something off to fall?
In his thoughts, he didn’t notice the flames cool ever so slightly. Something quite impossible for someone’s nerves who needed immideate healing, but he noticed something else. He turned to look over his shoulder, staring into the eyes of an eight eyed face the size of a house emerge from the fire. Mouth splitting open to let out a low echoing screech. He wasn’t sure what this colossal spider said, but he was sure it was directed at him. Spider legs grabbed the rabbit like a pair of tweezers, careful not to crush him, and pulled him in.
The spider wrapped him in a cocoon, laying in a bed of similar thousands among thousands spiraling to the top of the cylinder room. His head was free, as were many others, which meant that they were alive like he was, and squirming just as much. He could feel the awkward motions of prisioners struggling to get free, their screams of terrow muffled by the silk. His eyes peered over to a light-brown towering aracnid form that was crawling about the ‘shelves’, probably the one that brought him here in the first place. His ears twitched to more familiar sounds; a knife cutting something, and deep feminine grunts. He turned his head to see a female human carving a short sword through her restraints. She was successful, slipping her hourglass form onto the corpse littered ground beneath her.
She slumped down on all fours, digging her nails into the gelatinous floor and looked over the edge, catching her breath -and balance- as she almost fell off. There had to be a hundred shelves filled with hundreds of thousands of cocooned prisoners. She was about twenty stories up, below was the glowing pink bubbling cauldron of which the giant spiders were being drawn to. She stood upright, licked her lips, twirled the short sword in her hands and-
“Hey. Pssst! Friend!”
In one motion the human grabbed the tip of her sword with her fingers and flung it back, the satisfying sound of steel piercing bone filling her ears.
“Alright, but don’t you need this?”
She cocked her head to the side, curious if she even heard that or the heat was making her delirious. She turned around to see a snow-white hare with his heart pierced by her blade, the cocoon slowly filling with blood. He was looking right at her with crimson, pupilless eyes. Contempt. That’s all she saw. He wasn’t even trying to fight the fact that he was going to bleed to death. She then noticed he kept on nodding to her sword. She hummed to herself, skipping over the imprisoned souls and pulled the sword out.
“What are you? D’you not fear death?”
It came off more as a concern than a demand. He was bleeding. A lot. He never even looked down at his wound, never taking his eyes of hers. Smiling. The human scratched her sword across her bare back in confusion, then used it to cut the hare out. He reached out and she pulled him to his feet, now towering over her at probably 7′3′.
“Thank you. Yer mighty kind.” Nanabuu beamed, shaking her hand and putting his other on her shoulder, shaking her entire form. The human accepted this, still perplexed on how he wasn’t dead yet. He stopped shaking her and went to walk pass, only to be blocked by her. The human stood on her tippy toes, on his toes, to try and peer into his bleeding chest. “Lookin’ for somethin’?”
“You can’t have a heart,” she huffed, stepping down, “you’ve bleed too much.”
“I do so have a heart,” the hare sighed, putting his hands in his pocket, “you just missed it.”
Her pupils dilated.” I don’t miss.”
“Well,” he stepped passed her, lightly patting her back, “this time you did.” Nanabuu sat on the edge of the shelf with his thumbs in his jean pants pockets, taking in his surroundings. Yep, The Cauldron. Miles and miles of endless stelagmites jutting hundreds of feet into the air. Spider webs the size if small towns, and at the bottom, a sea of bioling acid. That’s what the hooded spider said, so this must be where the ‘misses’ was. The blunt side of a blade tapped his shoulder and he looked over it to the human.
“You lookin’ to get out of here?” She offered, laying the sword over her shoulder. Now that he got a good look, this human wasn’t all that bad; supple assets, short brown hair, peachy skin despite the many cuts and bruises. Short short black jeans and a tube top. Clearly she had no mindset for armor, and he could respect that. The rabbit never wore a shirt in his life.
He shook his head, “Nah, I got business in this place.”
She sat next to him, short sword held between her thighs. “So do I. I’m killing Meggallia.” The mention of the name dripped of bloodlust, teeth grinding and chipping into the boiling waters below. Nanabuu almost put this woman off if that name didn’t sound familiar. He reached into his pocket and unfolded the parchment to read it, immideatly putting it back.
“Uh,” he sighed, rubbing the back of his head, “Shouldn’t someone like you be more focused on gettin’ outah’ here?”
“Why,” she snapped, gripping her sword by the blade, blood from her fingers trickling down to her legs. “I want to kill her. That’s why I’m here.” She took the blade from her thighs and drove it into Nanabuu’s, the rabbit’s eyes bulging from shock and his hands balling into tight fists. The woman took the blade out and calmly laid it on her legs. “Did you feel that?”
“Yes,” he gasped, covering the wound with both hands. “Why did you do that?”
“Making sure you weren’t immortal,” she shrugged, standing up, “I hate immortals. Meggallia is immortal. I hate her. I’m going to kill her.” She was about to jump again, but Nanabuu grabbed her by the back of her top.
“Hold on, now.” He groaned, slowly rising on his twitching leg. He was trying his best to not cough up any blood from his chest wound, and to stay as upright as possible. The slightest sign of weakness, and this girl wasn’t hoing to stop until he was in peices. It would’ve been so easy; just nod and let her go to town. But he needed money, and he was desperate. The land forbid she could see that too. “I may be coming off a little loose, but I’m not sure that’s a bright idea.”
The girls lip twitched and she pulled her sword up tyo the rabbit’s Adams Apple, an inch away, even on her toes. Her eyes started to travel down his form. This rabbit was beyond peek condition. Veins were straining against his skin even though he wasn’t flexing. She saw muscles she didn’t even knew existed. Her lips puckered and her head tilted to the side, catching eye of his weapon. A cold sweat trailed down the hare’s back as he expected the most unpleasant situation. The sword came down and he winced to the sound of his rifle harness being cut.
Oh, that weapon.
He went to grab it, but the girl was too swift for him. Now, she had both her and his weapons occupying her hands, and she oggled them both. No doubt imagining the possibilities of such an arsenal.
“Please,” the rabbit sneered, getting the girls attention, “That ain’t a toy. I’d like it b-”
The gun went off, the recoil almost knocking the girl of balance. She looked back to see the rabbit has toppled over, a hole in his head, not moving. She looked back at the rifle, trying to figure out how it worked. She took a step towards the rabbit and pointed the gun right at his torso. Nine more ear splitting bangs echoed throughout the cauldron, and the girl had thought she’d gone deaf. She snapped at her ears and waited for the ringing to stop, disappointed that the gun had stopped working for some reason. She dropped it next to the rabbit and turned to leave.
“Boring. You’re boring.”
She caught eye of three colossal spiders that heard the blast approaching her way. She lightly tapped her blade on her kneecaps before taking off to a sprint, gracefully leaping off one shelf and landing on another hundreds of feet away, dozens of spiders giving chase.
When he was sure she was out of earshot, Nanabuu stifled a groan as he rose to a seat, drenched in his own blood.
“And you’re odd.”
The girl was far out of sight by that point, but that just lessened the possibilities of her interfering. He couldn’t even imagine it; just what kind of hell can a woman like that come from? Or any of these people? Did they not have lives to live? Loved ones? A hobby? How can somebody live like this like it was normal? He asked all the questions to no one, while grinding his teeth, pulling each bullet from his torn body and pocketing them. They were still usefull; A little dent didn’t ruin the material.
“...Well, guess ah’m a hypocrite.”
Didn’t matter how clean he looked before walking into that bar for dinner, he was one of them now. And if Odd did make it out of here, she’d never leave him alone. He needed to do this. He needed protection. And he was more than willing to deal with it.
He jumped down, landing on a rock that had yet to recede from the acid, cringing a bit as the rock cracked slightly from his fall. Now he was faced with a new problem: how exactly was he going to find her? Every rock looked the same no matter where he looked. In a sense, he was back to square one. Something in the back of his mind told him that this shouldn’t have been so difficult - a thought he cursed at. It wasn’t his fault the spider was vague. Heck, he probably couldn’t believe Nanabuu made it this far.
Skating atop the boiling sea was a palm sized Raft Spider casually nipping at anything and everything that hadn’t completely dissolved. It had been tracking a tasty trail of blood that led him to a rock hill that came out of the acid. It drank the river of blood all the way up to a giant white furred rabbit. It screeched joyfully, but not loud enough for its potential source of food -for years to come- to hear it. It lept onto the giants pants, quickly crawling up to the delicious slab of abs, and stopped at his pocket. The spider twitched, it’s mouth clicking without rhythm, and fell back to the rock, writhing, silk spilling from its abdomen, splashing back into the acid water.
Nanabuu’s ears twitched and his head snapped behind him. Nobody there. Maybe just one of those cocoons slipping into the acid. He turned back, and a woman was holding his heart.
His throat closed from the sudden sensation. Despite being in the hottest place he’d ever known, he couldn’t ignore a cool sensation wrapping over his body. Followed by a numbness. But the rabbit still towered over the woman.
Said woman only came up to the rabbit’s pectoral, the figure of every young boys fantasy, if not a bit more sizable than average. She wore a tight fitting silk dress that left nothing to the imagination, but could still be allowed in public. Her pure white skin in stark contrast to her wavy obsidian locks that covered the right half of her face. She looked up at the rabbit, curious as to how he was still alive.
“Are you some sort of fiend? I’ve delt with your kind before. But you don’t look native to hell.” Her voice was breathy, the rabbit half-thought this woman was trying to seduce him. His heart still throbed in her hand, yet she lacked the desire to crush it before him.
“I’m...lookin’...for Meggallia...”
He could still talk? And what is that ungodly accent? She reached up with her free hand and grabbed th e bottom of his chin, studying his visage like an art piece from a foreign land. His body stood strong without its heart and great loss of blood. His wounds would have rendered any mortal dead five times over, and nothing. Even the cold chill of death on the surface could not extinguish the warmth within. Well, he certainly got this far on his own, by means she could not quite understand. The least she could do was entertain the vermin.
“I am Meggallia, chairman of this realm. What business to you have, rabbit?” The rabbit reached into his pocket with a twitching hand and hardly had enough strength to hold out a folded peice of paper. She squinted her eyes at it, hummed, and placed the rabbit’s heart back in his chest, sealing the whole. Nanabuu let out a relieved gasp that knocked him on his feet and onto the rock. “You’re the rabbit I’ve heard about, aren’t you? New to Wulf’s Stalking, yes? I’m surprised you still have your organs.”
Meggallia walked atop the rabbit’s body, her toes pinching every muscle they stepped on. Twisting. Pulling. He though she would tear his skin right off. She sat on his chest -a more pleasant feeling- and ran a finger down his cheek, in his mouth, circling his back muscles, then grabbed his face, pulling it to hers.
“If you so desperately need a friend to rely on in a place like this, I’m going to need a form of assurance that I won’t have to worry about you in the future.”
Nanabuu couldn’t pull away. Any attempt he made looked like a toddler flailing in their parents grip. He didn’t know what to say. What could a woman like this even want? A sex slave didn’t sound unappealing in the slightest, but he was sure she would take it a step further, raking his mind so she’ll be the only thing he could think about. That’s the last thing he wanted. Anyone else would’ve jumped at the chance, but the rabbit still wanted to live. At least somewhat.
“I can work,” Meggallia loosened her grip. “Any odd job you can think of, I’ll do it.”
Meggallia couldn’t hold back a giggle. Oh, how many times had she heard that one so far? She could almost picture this rabbit’s mangled body laying in Wulf’s Stalking’s cobblestone allys in a weeks time. She jabbed a finger in the rabbit’s left eye and he fell still. Meggallia exhaled deeply as the veins in her wrist began to glow a deep purple, stretching all the way to her finger and into his eye. The rabbit’s natural crimson tint slowly darkened and she jerked her hand back, the wound sealing immideatly.
“Oh,” She rubbed the juices from his eyes in her fingers with interest. Perhaps she did have a job for this one.
“Dogs?”
Nanabuu sat in his usual seat at the bar, the hooded spider on break and having the rabbit for some conversation. He itched his face thinking about it. He hadn’t lived in this county that long, maybe a week or so. The folks here are nothing if not hostile, and they probably hadn’t tried anything out of principle. The last thing he wanted was to get on their bad side.
“Sounds like it’s gonna get noisy,” the spider clicked his front legs together, “when do ya set out?”
“Soon.”
“Ya don’t sound excited. ”
“I ain’t.”
“Hold on,” the spider scittered back behind the counter and pulled out a dark brown bottle and a large cup, filling the cup about half-way and sliding it to the rabbit.
Nanabuu sat up from the table. “I ain’t a drinker, friend.”
“I know, that’s Apple juice. Sweet. Tart. Put a smile on your face. Drink up.” Nanabuu actually smiled at the spider. A genuine show of thanks as he downed it. The spider tapped the bottom of the drink to get the rabbit’s attention once more, “Take it.”
Nanabuu stopped drinking and wipped his mouth, he wasn’t even halfway done yet, and he was offered it free. He stood from his seat, reached in his pocket and laid out ten golden misshapen bullets.
