Monster Breeder

111. New Warren, Part 2 (Cottontail)

“Aren’t you supposed to be keeping watch?” I ask.

“Please. Spindle has tripwire alarms set in every direction for several hundred meters. Nothing can get close without us noticing—”

*Ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling!*

“Oh, guests~! Mwah ha ha ha!!”

“You can make bells too? Even though they’re metal?”

“Erm, Spindle may have purloined some of Miss Goblin’s silverware and fine china.”

The Webling extracts herself from entertaining her customers and rings a different bell to signal The Parlour is temporarily closed. The two of us make our way toward the activated tripwire, her with complete calm and me walking on pins and needles.

Our opponents are a group of six Dire Wolves following the scent trail of Fuzzy folk leading to the Hut. They spot us, see they outnumber us three to one, notice neither of us looks intimidating, and revert to humanoid form. I honestly can’t believe they don’t find Miss Spindle as scary as I do, but she does lack Alex’s impressive height.

“Is this all that’s stopping us from taking Fuzzy Field’s whole food supply? A scrawny Webling and a petite waif?” a wolf man says.

“Now we can starve our enemy by denying the Ogres any mice or bunnies to eat,” a wolf woman agrees.

“Kill the Webling, but I want to play with the cute little thing,” another wolf man instructs.

I turn to Spindle and see she’s just standing there on her spider legs, unmoving. “Um, Miss Spindle, aren’t you going to do anything about them?”

Bunnies and mice, including Bonny and Chrissy, have noticed the commotion, and are gathering behind us to spectate the fate of the New Warren.

The Wicked Weaver shrugs her blue-skinned shoulders feebly. “You’re the highest-tier monster here. Spindle hoped you’d protect her.”

“That’s not funny!” I say, my gaze distracted by the slavering wolves stalking towards us. I’ve seen Spindle take down two separate third-tier threats, if not single-handedly. She’s the farthest thing from helpless I can imagine.

She studies her nails and the minute runic writing on each. “You’d better do something, Cottontail. Our lives depend on you.”

Right, something, yes, right! I doff my top hat and reach inside. My hand plunges far deeper than the volume of the hat should allow before my fingers close around an object. Retrieving the mystery item, I pull it forth to reveal… a metal hoop?

Upon closer inspection, the hoop turns out to be three stacked rings in my grip. I try pulling them apart to reveal the four of them are interlinked. Wait, weren’t there three before? I push them back together and they seem to be a single metal hoop again. Pull them apart, and there are five connected rings this time.

“Wolves closing in…” Spindle reminds me.

“Oh, yes! Umm!” I toss the rings at the wolves in a panic.

Several of the Dire Wolves dodge on instinct, but one is too bemused by the situation to evade—or he considers diving out of the way of a harmless toy beneath him. Regardless, the middle of the interlocked rings falls on his head like a ring toss game. I didn’t even mean to do that, and it landed perfectly!

He looks down at the set of linked rings with a skeptical eye, the extra hoops dangling uselessly, then turns to his companions and laughs. “You all tucked your tails and ran when the bunny threw me a new collar! Hah! What a bunch of morons.”

The other wolves glare at him for mocking their caution. Then they turn their ire on us for embarrassing them. They growl as one.

“Aren’t you supposed to say something in this situation?” Spindle wonders.

“W-what?” I’m confused, and then a distant memory of what she’s referring to surfaces. “Um, A-Abra…C-Cadabra?”

The interlocked rings revert to a single metal hoop and the wolf man’s severed head falls to the ground with a thump.

“…”

“Marc?”

Marc’s body collapses in a pool of blood.

“T-they killed Marc!”

“Oh, my God Beast! What the fuck?” I scream.

The wolves are closing in and reverting to their beast forms. Terrified and in shock, I dig through my hat for anything I can use and pull… a glossy-smooth and shiny carrot. Frustrated with the useless vegetable, I throw it into the air to get rid of the thing.

This time, the Dire Wolves are wary of me and follow the projectile with their gazes. At the height of its arc, the carrot begins plummeting point-first at a surprising velocity—plunging into the upturned eye of a wolf.

“Ahhh! Fuck! My eye! My fucking eye!” the Dire Wolf screams as she stumbles to the side and tumbles into one of the larger spike pits where she’s promptly skewered.

“You’ll pay for that!” the wolf man who wanted to ‘play’ with me roars.  

Scared out of my mind, I dig through my top hat to bring out… a very angry scowling grey-furred rabbit with a bite-divot in one ear.

Shrieking at the sight of my father’s deranged soul bound to an animal, I throw Peter away—coincidentally in the direction of the closest lunging Dire Wolf. Peter shoots through the air like a missile and goes for the throat. His bunny teeth dig trenches in the canine’s jugular, sending high-arching spurts of blood into the sky.

“Ahhh!!!” I scream again. This isn’t going like how I imagined!

I reach into the hat in desperation to search for something less lethal and pull… three tri-colored balls? I blink stupidly at the spheres. What are they for?

“Goodness, Mistress Cottontail, stop killing them already! Spindle wanted a few prisoners for funzies.”

“I-I didn’t mean to, oh!”

Looking up, I see the Dire Wolves have gone from overconfident, past anger, to land on scared shitless. When one of them turns tail to run and falls into another spike pit, the last two fall prostrate before us to beg for their lives.

A whoop of celebration goes up from the gathered Fuzzy Folk who saw me kill four Dire Wolves on accident. I'm sure a retold version of my 'victory' will be spread among all the New Warren within the hour.

Spindle snaps her fingers, and a pair of purple thread nets are flung from hidden traps to fall on the surviving Dire Wolves, entangling them. The Webling then produces a pair of nooses from behind her back that she casually tosses onto the prisoners' necks. "Lead them into camp, bind their hands, and tie them to a poll. If they struggle or shift, the nooses will choke them. I'll deal with both later."

Bunnies come forward to herd the captured predators to temporary holding.

“You’re not going to corrupt them, are you?” I ask.

“Of course not, creating corrupted monsters in our base may cause indirect harm to you and Alex’s harem. Spindle was expressly forbidden such naughtiness. Having a bit of fun with prisoners of war, on the other hand… Mwah ha ha ha!”

“You’re, um, really good at the evil laugh, Miss Spindle.”

“Thank you, dear.” Spindle turns to me next. "Now that you've properly established your power to the Warren, commanding obedience should be much easier. They'll leap at your word."

"I don't want to command anyone. Sometimes I wish we could all just get along," I say, thinking of the incident with the yellow warbler. That situation could’ve been fun for everyone if he’d just asked nicely.

She nods. "A noble sentiment, certainly. The crown is heavy, as they say.” She’s closer than I realized. Spindle lays a hand on my shoulder, and another cups my cheek. “Perhaps you need some relaxation most of all, Miss Sweet Treat."

"I-I couldn't p-possibly..."

"Please, allow this humble servant to see to the Warren Mistress's needs. Perhaps a massage?” She puts a hand on my chest. “Spindle could rub scented oils into your new, tender breasts.” She grabs my ass. “Or she could fill this needy hole with her spider cock.” Her fingers trace the contours of the bulge inside my teddy. “Or, maybe, the Headbunny desires to sample her Webling maid's honeypot."

“M-M-Miss Spindle…” I’m shaking like a leaf, my resistance quickly eroding.

*Ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling!*

The Wicked Weaver releases me. "There's that thrice-cursed alarm spoiling Spindle’s chances of satisfying her sweet tooth again. Oh, well. Anticipation is a subtle but savory spice. She can only hope Alex will deign to give her release tonight. Or perhaps Spindle should remind Alex that denial is all part of the fun as well. The possibilities are endless!”

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