King Kylo gazed down onto the snow-covered peaks and valleys, searching for movement. It was his domain, even though some dared to challenge his rule.

  There! The scar-covered, horned bunny, his greatest foe, dared to question his supremacy and skills as a hunter. He had known for months where its nest was, the entrance hidden and protected by the moving walls of ice of a pesky spirit. Why that heap of ice and boulders decided to protect those long-eared jumpers, he didn’t know. Maybe they were worshippers who fueled its power like those blumen Bae told his sisters about did with theirs. That must have been it! The enormous slow-moving ice-spirits were bunny-gods! That’s why they protected them. The big, horned bunny was probably a paladin.

  It wouldn’t matter. He finally had every tool needed to sneak into their sanctuary. His sister proved to be more useful every day that passed. He would never have expected it after their first encounter. He needed to remember to feed her well. She would make a great minion for his budding kingdom one day.

  He followed the bunny’s passage over the endless stretches of unmarred snow with his eyes. It advanced with tentative hops that disturbed the peace of the powder, ears flinching at the faintest sounds.

  It would be in vain. Thanks to Kylo’s sneaky runes, it couldn’t hear nor see his approach.

  He slowly prowled closer. His paws made no sound. His body cast no shadow. Only the subtlest displacement of wind betrayed his passage—a momentary hush of snow settling where none had fallen. He had waited for days for the bunny to wander beyond the reach of its protector.

  But then the mountain moved.

  Kylo froze mid-step. Had a stupid spirit sensed him? He hadn’t realized that it was there until it changed its position. They were so hard to make out when they remained still. The snow bunny paused on a ridgeline. Its fur haloed in a sudden sparkle as the sun broke over the horizon. It looked around before jumping out of the leopard’s sight.

  With a sound like distant thunder, the mountain between them stirred—animated stone and ice, a moving glacier crowned with wind. It loomed up on titanic limps, deceptively fast due to its massive size. Had it detected him? Kylo wasn’t sure. He watched its form coalesce from rock, snow, and ice, walking vaguely in his direction. Where it moved, a blizzard followed. He was about to bolt using his airwalk runes when it changed direction and walked past him.

  He trailed the bunny again, pleased that the improved sneaky runes worked as they should. He definitively needed to feed his minion well. Who knew what else she would come up with to upgrade his powers?

  The bunny had gotten out of sight, though. It wouldn’t matter. It would be easy to stalk past the other ice spirit and into the bunny’s cave using his sneaky runes.

  He found the entrance, a dark hole in the wall—a hidden cave under the massive slumbering body of another living mountain.

  Carefully, he walked under the massive sheets of ice, watching for a reaction that didn’t come. Sooner than he would have expected, he found himself in the dark.

  Darkness wasn’t a problem for a superior being like him with his superior eyesight. What was a problem was the fact that the hole got narrower and narrower the further he advanced.

  He snorted in annoyance before using his new size-changing technique to shrink until he was about the same size as the bunny he followed.

  The cave seemed to breathe around him. The air carried the scent of minerals, melting ice, and wet fur, stinky fur. He followed the scent trail through the forking tunnel until he arrived in a big chamber covered in glowing moss.

  Movement flickered in the corner of his vision. Soft and low behind the columns on the other side of the hall. He crouched, stalking closer until he remembered that his prey wouldn’t see him anyway, thanks to his runes. But what was that?

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  He froze mid-step. Lots of bunnies were jumping all over the place, none of them the horned one. He blinked, not believing his eyes. So, that was where they came from! None of them was the horned bunny, though. No. Those were young bunnies. Kittens.

  He watched them tumbling and playing around, unaware of his presence. Fools, he almost snorted. He could slay them all before they became aware of what was happening. But that wouldn’t be right. It wasn’t the way of the hunter to kill everything in sight. It was a perfect larder, though. He could come here every time he wanted. Good! He would wait for them to grow and fatten up. They would feed him and his sister for years.

  Content with his logic, he continued. There was only one other exit the horned bunny could have taken.

  He passed through the crowd of his future prey, evading their chaotic jumps with silent grace until he reached another tunnel leading further into the mountain. It was even narrower, but his flexible bones made it easy to squeeze through.

  There was the horned bunny! He watched it sitting in the center of another chamber, oblivious to his presence. The bunny-king. The ice spirit’s paladin. He felt like one of the assassins from the stories Bae told him when they were both bored.

  He liked those because they were sneaky like him, silent killers, even though they were a bit dumb. What kind of idiotic hunter didn’t eat their prey? Well, he would be a real hunter, an assassin-hunter. But this prey had made fun of him too many times to just kill it without it even being aware of him. Walking close and crushing its neck clad in invisibility was too easy. That wouldn’t do.

  He waited until the bunny turned around and faced him. Then he let the veil of invisibility peel back like melting ice, revealing his sleek feline shape.

  The bunny’s eyes opened wide. Its head whirled from side to side, looking for an escape route, but it was too late. The only way out was at Kylo’s back. He slowly stalked closer, savoring the fear of the trembling bunny. Then the bunny’s eyes turned silver-blue, and its horn started to glow with mana.

  The distant roars of the mountain rang through the cave’s silence. The walls began to shake. Kylo knew it! This annoying bunny had a pact with the spirit. But the spirit was too big to enter. It couldn’t help the bunny in here.

  A frost ray burst forward from the bunny’s horn, freezing Kylo’s paws to the ground. It looked at him, almost smug, before it crouched. He saw its legs tense to gain momentum and launch itself toward Kylo’s chest horn first. Kylo felt pleased. Would it give him a real challenge? He pushed back with his ice control against the elemental magic binding him in place. There was more resistance than he would have expected. The mountain groaned again. He felt an immense will pushing against his connection with the mana surrounding his paws. Alarmed, he pushed back harder. He could feel the mountain trying to suppress him while its bunny minion started to blur in his direction.

  But Kylo kept a cool head, feeling smug, too. The spirit was too far away, its power diluted with distance. Kylo knew that, sooner or later, he would break free, but the bunny would reach him before that. He growled in anger while the bunny started to fly. Well, at least in the air, the direction of its movement was fixed. He still had his superior flexibility and body control to protect himself. Stretching himself to his limit, he ducked out of the way. The bunny made a surprising yelp as it flew past, impaling its horn into the rocks behind Kylo before falling to the ground in a daze. For some reason, Kylo’s control over the ice that covered his paw returned almost instantly. He snorted before stalking over to the dazed bunny. His teeth broke its neck with a satisfactory crunch. The mountain started to cry.

  Ignoring the wailing spirit, he picked his prey up, made himself invisible again, and walked back to the exit into the great cavern. For some reason, hundreds of eyes stared at him. He let the dead bunny wall in surprise. What was this? Was his invisibility failing? He needed to have another word with his sister.

  For some reason, none of his future prey darted away. Instead, some came closer to sniff at the dead bunny at his feet, uncaring of his presence as if he wasn’t there. The realization hit him. His invisibility worked fine, but it just applied to him, not the prey he carried. That annoyed him. He couldn’t take the bunny with him. The enraged mountain would detect it. He left it behind and stalked between the curious bunnies toward the exit. This larder was useless.

  He froze a few steps before reaching the beginning of the tunnel. A thick ice sheet covered the exit, barely letting any light filter through. The pesky spirit had trapped him.

  He snorted in annoyance. He wondered what the spirit was trying to achieve. By trapping him in here, he would finish off the rest of the bunny god’s followers to nourish himself. The petty spirit was dumb. He would miss Bae and his sister, but he had all the food he could need. The spirit would need to let the bunnies out to forage. He would sneak out then. He snorted, shaking his head like Bae did sometimes when she encountered someone stupid. Maybe he could take a nap until then.