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Disclaimer: The following story contains nonconsensual sex between anthropomophic adults. If you are too young to legally view such content, or if such content does not appeal to you, leave now.

Ileni

* * *

The male rabbit moved between Ileni and the stage, blocking her view of the two males struggling against each other. "It's best not to watch," he said quietly.

"What are they doing?" she exclaimed.

"Domination. A little game the hunters came up with."

"Why?" Ileni almost screamed. "Why would anyone go along with it?"

"See those grills on the other side of the stage?" He pointed past the joined males. "That's where they cook the losers."

Ileni stared at him for a long moment, unable to believe even carnivores could find this entertaining. She shook her head in silent denial, and her legs suddenly wouldn't hold her weight.

"Yeah," the other rabbit said again, much as he had when they'd first met, but more quietly this time, "me too." Instead of helping her to her feet, he knelt down beside her. Against his own advice, he looked up at the squirrel and skunk on display. "I never thought the end would look like this."

The skunk was hammering away at the squirrel, controlling the losing male with twists of his bushy tail, his own black furred tail raised high to keep it out of the other's reach. The entire audience of predators roared in approval, but none as loudly as those behind the competitors, who had an uninterrupted view of the skunk's shaved backside.

Ileni noticed that his bare skin shone more than sweat could account for, as did the squirrel's. "Are they . . . covered in oil?"

"Melted butter," the other rabbit said grimly.

She looked up at the other captives around them. Most were deer, like in the shaving hallway. There were a few horses, and even a buffalo. Of all of them, only a few mice and chipmunks were as small as Ileni. "How are you supposed to win?"

"You do what that skunk's doing," he answered. "Dominate your opponent." He followed her gaze to the prey towering over them. "I know. Doesn't look good for us, huh?"

They were gathered close together, fenced in by a pen made of a single rope joining a series of wooden posts. Ileni rediscovered strength in her legs when she noticed what level her head was at. A pair of white testicles dangled between a buck's thighs mere inches above the back of her head. If she looked up, her ears would touch them. She was back on her feet before she knew she'd moved. The buck looked embarrassed when she glanced at him over her shoulder; he couldn't back away from her with other shaved captives to all sides and had had no choice but to loom over her while she sat.

A noise from the stage caught her attention. The skunk was thrusting more slowly through the squirrel's rump, and a small trickle of white liquid was trailing down the squirrel's pink groin to dampen the fur covering his genitals. The rabbit beside Ileni cursed and muttered, "Three for three. He should have taken longer."

"Three for three?"

He frowned at her for a moment. "You have three ways to dominate your opponent: first entry, duration, and climax. Whoever dominates two of those three wins."

"I don't understand."

The other rabbit's frown deepened. He was clearly unhappy about having to explain the terrible game's rules. "One competitor or the other always dominates their opponent when they first join. Even if they both do so willingly, their position determines who's dominating and who's submitting. Generally, it's whoever's on top." He gestured at the skunk, who was holding himself fully within the squirrel's rectum after a last, slow thrust. "When they're both male, it's easy to tell who's dominating. That's just the first point, though. Another is given to whoever's dominating during the first orgasm of the contest, and the third to the one that dominates for the longest time between first entry and first climax. That's so that neither competitor will stop struggling until the end."

A male lynx and a female black bear had climbed onto the stage and were pulling the two captives apart. The male rabbit turned Ileni to the side when the skunk and squirrel were hauled off in different directions. He pointed at a mountain lion walking up and down the rows of benches and tables. "The carnivores bet on everything in the competitions, from how long it will take before the captives join to the positions they'll assume, even if blood will be drawn and how much. There are enough details to bet on that there's usually only one winner."

A blood chilling scream made Ileni turn to the other side of the stage, where the grills were. It was cut abruptly short. The other rabbit hastily pulled her attention back to a part of the audience, which was cheering loudly. "That lion, and a few others, go around and check with anyone who thinks they might have won. They write down their predictions before each match and leave them on the tables."

"What do they win?" Ileni asked distractedly. The squirrel's death cries still echoed in her mind.

The other rabbit grimaced again. He pointed to a glass encased room above the highest level of benches. Ileni saw the skunk being led toward it by the lynx. "They get to watch the next five rounds from up there, where the last five rounds' competitors are taken." He sighed heavily and added, "One way or another," under his breath.

That meant the "winner" of a match had to spend five matches in the room with as many predators, who would be eating the last five matches' losers. "I'd rather lose," Ileni said quietly, and was surprised to find that she meant it.

The other rabbit nodded unhappily. "A lot of people don't even try. There is a little more incentive, though. If you win, you don't have to come back for a full turning of the moon."

"And the hunters leave you be all that time?" she asked hopefully.

He snorted an unhappy laugh. "Of course not. They'll be all over you day in and-oh, quick, into the crowd. They've found the winner."

For a confused moment she thought he meant the skunk, but he was pushing her forcefully between bare skinned captives toward the middle of the pin. As if on cue, everyone else began trying to do the same, and bodies began closing in all around her. She lost track of the rabbit and bumped into a tall squirrel, then backed into someone's legs. The throng packed closer together still, until smooth skin was pressing against Ileni from all sides. The squirrel was pushed by the crowd straight into her, and she felt his furry gray sheath against her navel, his smooth chest against her breasts. "I'm sorry," he muttered, trying to back away but only managing to slide his sheath sideways on her smooth abdomen.

She was about to tell him it was all right when someone's elbow pushed her head to the side and held it against a horse's muscular buttock. The horse's jet black tail flicked, and with nowhere else to go with the bodies all around, draped over Ileni's muzzle. She tried to pull away, but that elbow was still trapped behind her head. The horse's rump felt like it was chiseled from warm granite on the side of her face.

The crowd of captives went silent suddenly, and, blinded as she was by the horse's tail, Ileni strained her ears to hear what might have caused them all to freeze as they had.

A sultry, feminine voice was humming thoughtfully. "The mouse there," it said, "and that white-tail. Yes, the perky one."

A moment later the crowd relaxed, seeming to breath a collective sigh of relief, and the captives slowly spread out again. The squirrel backed away from her with another embarrassed apology as soon as he was able, and the arm behind her head withdrew. The horse didn't move, so Ileni stepped away from him, then walked around in front of him to apologize for where her face had been forced.

She hesitated when she was confronted with the largest sack she had ever seen hanging before her eyes, each black pelted testicle larger than her fist. Decorative black tendrils of fur spread out from his broad sheath and genitals in a flame pattern similar to the ones on Ileni's feet, hands, tail, and neck. When she was finally able to pull her eyes up to his face, she found him staring expressionlessly over the heads of the captives in front of him at the empty stage. He didn't seem to notice her.

The rabbit she'd met earlier materialized beside her and pulled her away from the horse with his hand under her arm. "Best to avoid that one," he said, and she noticed that everyone else was giving the stallion a wide berth.

"I've heard he's been here for five years, and he's never lost a match." He rolled his eyes at his own expense. "Obviously, since he's still here. He's merciless in the ring."

Ileni's eyes drifted to the stage. It was still empty, and many of the carnivores were leaving their seats. "Are there no more matches tonight?" she asked hopefully.

He shook his head. "The matches never stop. They're just getting the competitors ready." He scratched the back of his head, one of his long ears twitching. "Sorry, by the way. I didn't get a chance to tell you that the carnivore that wins the betting gets to choose the next round's contestants."

So that's why everyone had crowded together. No one wanted to be easy for the predators to notice when they were choosing competitors.

"You know an awful lot about all of this," someone said, a tinge of accusation in their voice. It was the chipmunk that had been led out of the shaving hallway before Ileni. "How long have you been here?"

Another horse stepped beside them and glared down at the chipmunk. "That's not a question we ask each other," he said warningly. The chipmunk opened his mouth to say something else, but a look from the horse made him shut it again without a word.

At least, Ileni thought the tall male was a horse, but if he was, he was the strangest horse she'd ever seen. Without his fur, it was hard to tell, but his head was covered with intricate black and white stripes, and his mane stood straight out between his ears and down his neck. The carnivores could have found a way to do that for decoration, but his tail was different than a horse's, too, long and thin, with a tuft of black fur on its tip, like a mule's. The strange equine glared at her when he caught her staring, and she turned away hastily.

"Three months," the male rabbit said, and it took Ileni a moment to remember the question he was answering. When she did, she gasped quietly despite herself.

The chipmunk found his voice again. "Then, have you-"

"Yes. Once," the rabbit said curtly, "but that's another question we don't ask here. Just keep in mind, if you're ever chosen, that your opponent might not be completely innocent. If they've survived here long, they're not, and if they plan on surviving the match, they won't be."

Ileni shook her head in disbelief, unable now to look the other rabbit in the eye. Then a question occurred to her. "How have you been here three months and only been in one match? You said the winners only get one turning of the moon before they come back." What she really wanted to know was how he made it through a match in the first place-he wasn't much larger than her-but she couldn't bring herself to ask.

He watched silently as a doe and a gray headed mouse were led up a short staircase onto the stage and to opposite corners. Their butter-soaked skin shone like copper and bronze in the torchlight.

"By avoiding notice," the rabbit answered while the competitors' wolf and fox guards forced them to stretch their arms and legs in front of the crowd, displaying their physique and flexibility. The rabbit glanced at Ileni suspiciously for a moment, then looked all around them to make certain the hunters' collective attention was elsewhere. Then he took a deep breath, and when he let it out, his entire body seemed to transform. His lean muscles softened until he looked almost pudgy, his shoulders slumped, and he somehow developed a small pot belly. Even his face looked slack, and somehow less intelligent.

It only lasted a moment before he straightened, as trim and fit as ever. He gave the chipmunk and Ileni an embarrassed look. "It's a dangerous trick. If I look too much like a slob, they'll just eat me and be done with it, and if other people start doing the same thing, the predators will catch on in no time."

He turned his attention back to the stage, where the wolf was holding the doe bent over and turning her in a circle so the entire audience could see her slit. The rust furred fox on the other end of the stage had just finished doing the same to the mouse, and was now stroking the horrified rodent's sheath and sack, coaxing his member to attention.

"They do that while the audience writes down their bets," the male rabbit explained, "so that everyone has a good enough idea what to bet on."

After failing at fending off the fox's hands, the mouse seemed to be trying his best not to become aroused. It was a futile effort; the expert fox had him fully erect within a few dozen heartbeats.

The two guards hopped off the stage after displaying the deer and mouse for a short while longer. The mouse glanced to one side of the stage, where a smiling weasel had just turned over the first in a long row of hourglasses. Then, biting his lower lip, the mouse started crossing the stage to the doe, who was hugging her arms protectively in front of her full breasts.

"They have until that first hourglass fills to join, or they both lose," the male rabbit explained.

Another female deer stepped beside Ileni, staring wide eyed at the stage. "How long does it take for the hourglass to fill?"

"About six minutes," the rabbit answered unhappily.

"That's nut much time," the chipmunk muttered.

The mouse had made it within an arm's reach of the doe, but he was looking down at her hooves, saying something too quietly for anyone but her to hear. Ileni thought she saw tears dampening the mouse's face.

"Apologizing beforehand," the rabbit muttered. "They bet on that, too."

The strange horse shook his striped head. "They're wasting their time."

The mouse's gaze rose to the doe's face, but she made no response to whatever he'd said except backing up to the very edge of the stage. He darted forward, then, and grabbed her around her middle, pulling her away from the stage before she had time to react. The deer was head and shoulders taller than the mouse, and could have fought him off if she hadn't been taken by surprise. As it was, with his arms locked around the small of her back, she could do little to dislodge him. Her hands just slipped off his slippery shoulders when she tried to push him away.

"He was captured three or four days ago," the rabbit said. "He knows better than her what happens if he doesn't win."

The deer beside Ileni leaned out over the rope of their pen, her fingers clenching around it.

"You know her?" Ileni asked sadly.

"She's my cousin," the doe whispered. She wouldn't take her eyes off the deer in the mouse's embrace.

After failing to maneuver a foot between the doe's knees, the mouse lunged sideways, knocking her off balance and tumbling on top of her. She kicked a leg out during the fall, trying to stay upright, but when she tried to close her legs again, the mouse was already between her thighs, his arms still holding her waist. She flailed wildly at him, raining blows on his head and upper arms, but he clutched her tenaciously and brought his hips forward. The crowd roared in approval when one punch sent red droplets flying from his lip.

They roared more loudly when his member finally found her groin and he slid home within her.

"Is that . . . Millu?" This was a new voice, quiet and youthful, but masculine. Ileni tore her eyes from the stage to look at the newcomer. It took her a few moments to recognize the young stag that had replaced her on the table in the shaving room. Like all the others, he was mostly bare skinned, now. Nemmy had left the fur on his appendages in splash patterns rather than flames. Only his face was recognizable.

The doe beside Ileni spun away from the rope at the stag's voice and embraced him. "Delver!" she cried. They hugged fiercely, but Delver's eyes were locked on the erotic scene on the stage. The deer in his arms pushed away from him suddenly and turned back to the stage. "Yes, that's Millu," she said shakily.

When he realized that his member had come partially unsheathed, Delver's ears flattened on his head and his hands darted to cover himself. "What is going on?" he muttered despairingly.

The male rabbit sighed. "It's someone else's turn."

"A game the hunters came up with," the strange horse explained gruffly. "Dominate or be eaten."

Delver looked like he was about to be sick. Ileni still thought she might be.

On the stage, the mouse was now thrusting gently in and out of Millu's loins, his slender tail waving behind him like a banner. His hands had moved to her copper breasts, and he had even dipped his head down to suck on one nipple. The doe's resistance had completely faltered. Now she just held the mouse's shoulders and moaned.

"Why does he do that?" Ileni demanded, surprised at the heat in her own voice. "With everything else, why doesn't he just leave her breasts alone?"

The striped equine snorted. "It's to ensure his domination," he said, but the male rabbit sighed and shook his head.

"Sometimes," he said slowly, "the competitors forget that they don't want to be doing what they're doing, in the heat of the moment."

"Millu!" the doe beside Ileni shouted unexpectedly. "Roll over, Millu! You're going to be eaten!"

The rabbit hushed her urgently. "Best not to draw attention to yourself."

But the shout seemed to draw Millu out of her daze. She craned her neck to look past the mouse and her knee at her cousin, then drew a deep breath and heaved herself and the mouse to the side. He tried to use their momentum to keep them rolling, but Millu planted her hands and knees to either side of him, and managed to stay on top. Her glistening tan bottom began bobbing up and down around the mouse's shaft.

"Now she needs to keep going for longer than when he was dominating," the rabbit explained unnecessarily.

Ileni's nose wrinkled, catching a strong, musky scent behind her. Delver was shifting from hoof to hoof, ears flicking furiously in embarrassment. His hands were no longer able to hide the full erection rising from his sheath. The doe had turned again and was frowning at his crotch.

Delver swallowed. "I . . . I think I'll . . . find somewhere else to stand." Before anyone could stop him, he hurried through the crowd of captives away from them.

"Your mate?" Ileni asked the doe, who was still frowning after the stag.

"Spirits, no!" she exclaimed. "My brother."

"Don't resent him for getting aroused," the rabbit advised. "We don't have much control over ourselves when we're young," he said, including all males in his comment.

Ileni didn't know if age had much to do with it; Delver wasn't the only male in the pin having trouble remaining sheathed. But then, the scent of female arousal was strong, too.

"It's not that," the doe said awkwardly, turning back to the stage, where Millu was fending off the mouse's attempts to grab her breasts and roll them back over. "It's just . . . I haven't seen Delver without pants since we were fawns. I never wanted to think of him . . . like that." It occurred to Ileni that much of the female scent was coming from nearby. She marveled at that. How could anyone be aroused in such circumstances? She couldn't feel anything herself above the panic that was pulling her heart into her throat.

Millu and the mouse were both panting heavily, the mouse whimpering between gasps. He tried to match her movements and thrust up into her each time her rump lowered, but there was no doubt she was dominating him. That is, until his dexterous tail curled up between his legs and began searching for her tail hole. Her anus was a moving target that the mouse couldn't even see, and his tail kept twitching when Millu pushed herself down around his shaft, but its tip slid between her slippery buttocks several times.

"If he can double penetrate her, it might not matter if she's on tip," the rabbit remarked.

The mouse's tail finally pressed against the puckering below Millu's tail, and she tensed. The mouse cried out and bucked into her at the same time as shoving his tail through her anus. She screamed, then, and her haunches slammed down against his lap an instant before she collapsed on top of him, his tail trapped in her rectum.

The entire audience of predators were standing on their benches, their cheers shaking the floor under Ileni's feet.

"Did she win?" the doe shouted above the cacophony.

"I'm not sure," the rabbit shouted back. "I couldn't tell which of them lasted longer on top. If they say his tail was in her before they climaxed, though, it might not matter, anyway. He'll have dominated both entry and climax."

Ileni turned away from the stage and made her way to the middle of the pen. She didn't want to know who won. She didn't want to know which of the captives would be cooked and eaten and which would have to endure a month of rape before doing it all over again. What was the point?

"Is it over?"

She stopped, having almost tripped over Delver. He was sitting on his heels, his legs folded together and his erection tucked between his thighs.

Even though the match had finished, she shook her head. She couldn't bring herself to say anything. She barely even noticed Delver kneeling in front of her. Everywhere she looked, smooth skinned breasts and vaginas, buttocks and furry sheaths and sacks greeted her. So she closed her eyes. The scent of arousal was overpowering, but she didn't have to keep looking at its sources.

Dimly she was aware of the audience quieting, of a deep, loud voice declaring that Millu had won the match. Of the mouse's despairing wail. But in the protective darkness behind her closed eyelids, she could hardly believe any of it was real.

As expected, the captives began shuffling closer around her, slowly at first, then more urgently as a winner was brought down to them from the audience. Delver was forced to get to his feet lest he be trampled.

Ileni stumbled forward when a doe's breasts smashed into her shoulder blades. She opened her eyes just as her muzzle crashed into Delver's solid chest. The panicked captives forced the doe to push harder up against Ileni's back, and her body quickly pressed up against the young stage's.

His erect penis was pinned between them. Its length rose up Ileni's abdomen, its tip squishing her right breast up between their bodies. His furry sheath and sack were plastered beside her navel. She could feel moisture on the lower curve of her breast, where the head of his member was probing.

"Please," Delver moaned, pushing against her shoulders. "Please, back up." With the crowd packed so tightly around them, he had nowhere to push her to. "Please, spirits, no," he gasped. Ileni's eyes went wide when she realized what was happening to the buck. "I'm . . . so sorry."

She felt the tip of his penis flare against her naked skin and his testicles rise beside her belly button an instant before a stream of hot liquid splashed up around her breast. He sprayed more stag semen against her, the second, third, and fourth shots as powerful as the first. His balls kept clenching against her stomach long after his spray had dwindled to nothing, and the crowd forced them to endure the liquid dripping between them for some time after his orgasm faded. His erection softened somewhat, but never receded into his sheath.

The scent of Delver's musk smothered all others in the air around them. Every nose Ileni could see was twitching, and the other captives nearby were all awkwardly averting their eyes. The buck's own eyes were clenched shut, his head turned to one side and ears flattened against his skull in humiliation. Ileni, on the other hand, was so stunned that she made no visible reaction to the unexpected shower. She just stared at Delver's furless chest an inch in front of her nose and tried to ignore the heartbeat she could feel pulsing in the veins of the shaft against her bare skin.

When the tightly packed crowd finally dispersed enough for them to separate, Ileni turned away from the young stag and walked back to the pin's edge as though no one was staring at her sperm soaked front. It dripped down her stomach and the fronts of her thighs, spiraling around her knees and calves until it gathered in the tendrils of fur rising from her feet. The strangely striped horse's nostrils flared when she approached behind him, and he turned and blinked at her in astonishment.

The chipmunk beside him caught the scent of the musk a moment later. "What happened to you?" he exclaimed when he saw Ileni. Ileni just shook her head without explaining.

The male rabbit glanced at her from where he stood beside Delver's sister, who was sitting on the ground, crying with her head in her hands. "You'd best find a way to clean that off before a predator notices it," he said.

Ileni ignored him. Unless a squirrel was generous enough to loan her its tail as a towel, she had no way to shed Delver's semen.

The rabbit noticed her staring at the weeping doe. "The next contestants were standing too close together. The predator noticed how much they look alike and thought they would make a balanced match." He snarled and balled his fist as his side, then relaxed it, his shoulders and face going slack. "They're her father and uncle."

Ileni should have felt something at that, horror, anger, revulsion, but she was no longer surprised at the lengths the hunters would go for entertainment. She just stared blankly at the stage in front of her, not really seeing it, not really seeing anything. Without her fur she had been shivering all night, but for the first time she felt cold inside as well as out. Empty. The other captives chatted around her nervously and despairingly, but she didn't bother listening to what they had to say.

It didn't seem to take as long this time for two butter-bathed stags to be led onto the stage, perhaps because this time Ileni wasn't as interested in their arrival. They must have been twins; had their fur not been shaved in different patterns, Ileni would not have been able to tell them apart. Even their full racks of antlers were identical.

This time three carnivores guarded each captive. While they were made to display themselves, Delver returned from among the crowd to share comfort with his sister, his stomach sporting a similar layer of drying semen as Ileni's. The two stags on the stage didn't fight their captors, but somehow managed to obey their demands with a strange, submissive pride. They even managed to make bending over with their tails raised seem somehow dignified.

Ileni's stomach sank. She knew what was going to happen in this match. Both deer were far too calm for any other outcome.

The hunters left the stags in their respective corners. The weasel to one side of the stage turned over the first hourglass. And the bucks, father and uncle to the two deer sobbing quietly in each other's arms beside Ileni, strode calmly toward each other, meeting in the middle of the stage. They spoke to each other quietly; Ileni could make out the sound of their deep voices, but not the words. Then they clasped forearms, and each pulled the other into a heartfelt embrace. It was the embrace of brothers. There was nothing at all sexual about it.

Something stirred within Ileni, something replacing the cold emptiness inside her. It wasn't anger, or at least not any form of anger she had ever felt, but it was a similar emotion, focused where her anger had been formless frustration in the past.

She hadn't seen anyone hug without lust since leaving her home.

Delver and his sister were standing now, watching their elders with unblinking eyes that fueled constant rivers of tears that drenched the fur on their faces. Ileni had never seen anyone look as proud as those two were of their father and uncle.

"We have to help them," someone said, and it wasn't until the others looked at her that Ileni realized it was she that had spoken. She didn't recognize the sound of her own voice.

"There's nothing we can do," the male rabbit said solemnly, sighing.

Ileni ignored him. She couldn't take her eyes off the brothers on the stage, both resigned to die rather than harm the other. "We have to help them," she repeated, loudly enough this time that all the nearby captives could hear. Some looked at her sadly. Others looked away, the fire Ileni didn't know was burning within her eyes scalding them when they saw it. No one said anything.

So Ileni repeated herself again. Or at least she thought she did, but the words that came out of her were, "I'm going to help them." As soon as she said it, she stepped forward and lifted the pen's rope, but before she could duck under it a strong hand landed on her shoulder and held her back.

"Let go of me!" she snarled as she spun, her voice surprising even herself with the acid that it dripped, but the stony face of the black stallion holding her shoulder just stared down at her wordlessly. It was the horse that had been here for years, the captive that had won a match every month for half a decade. He slowly, silently, shook his head.

Ileni growled and was about to attack him when another hand touched her forearm. It was the doe, the martyrs' daughter and niece, but she backed away as though stung when Ileni turned her glare on her.

"It's all right," the doe said, sniffling. "They know what they're doing."

Delver stepped beside her and nodded, wiping at his tear soaked face. "They're ending it the way they choose," he said hoarsely, "not the way the hunters want."

Ileni wanted to hit them both. "That's exactly why it's NOT all right!" she shouted. "They deserve to live more than anyone!" The male rabbit and chipmunk were hushing her urgently, and most of the captives had moved as far away from her as the pen's confines would allow. She ignored them all, shook off the horse's heavy hand and made for the rope again. His thick arms wrapped around her and pulled her back, and though she clawed at them, yelling, and kicked at the stallion's shins, his hold on her didn't relent.

"What would you have us do?" the striped horse nearby demanded angrily. "Storm the stage? Fight off the entire audience? We're outnumbered fifty to one, a hundred to one. The carnivores would kill us all."

"THEY'RE GOING TO KILL US ALL ANYWAY!" she spat at him, struggling against the other horse's grip. The six predator guards were returning to the stage, pulling the brothers apart while the audience muttered their disappointment. The first hourglass had run out.

Knowing exactly how tall she was, Ileni threw her head back with all her strength. When her skull connected with the stallion's huge testicles with a solid crack, he grunted and let her go, staggering backward. She hadn't taken a single stride away from him, though, before the chipmunk, striped horse, and rabbit all tackled her at once, pinning her to the ground. They held her securely while the predators on the stage led the two stags to the grills on its other side. They pinned her arms to her sides, held her ankles together, and even kept her face pressed against the ground to keep her from head butting them. A part of her mind panicked at being so completely trapped, remembering the wolf pack she had encountered a few days and an eternity ago, but the rest of her knew that time was running out for the brothers, that she had to do something NOW.

But she couldn't. It had taken three males to stop her, but she could no more escape them than move a mountain. "WHY ARE NONE OF YOU SCREAMING!" she screamed in a final, furious outburst, not aware of the words' meaning, only that the question was more important than any she'd ever asked. Many hunters in the audience turned their attention from the grills to the scene unfolding in the captives' pin after hearing her piercing cry. She shook with raw emotion under the males holding her against the ground and knew that too much time had passed since the deer brothers had been led from the stage. She hadn't saved anyone. "Why is no one screaming?" she asked again, this time in a raw whisper.

Her only answers were sobs from the captives around her. The rabbit, chipmunk, doe and buck were all crying openly. Even the strangely striped horse had tears in the corners of his angry eyes. Many of the other captives nearby had lost their fragile holds on their own emotion after seeing Ileni fight so hard to rescue the twin stags. Only the veteran black stallion appeared unaffected, once again staring stonily at the empty stage with no expression. He showed no signs of being hurt, though Ileni knew she had hit him hard enough to cause permanent damage.

Ileni didn't move from where she lay when the males finally released her. The rabbit and the chipmunk grabbed her by her armpits and hauled her to her feet, a thick coat of dust and dirt clinging to the sticky cream that still covered her from her breast down. Setting their jaws and wiping tears from their eyes, they half carried her into the midst of the crowd as the captives huddled together once again. Ileni glared straight ahead at nothing, unable to look at those who had prevented her from at least trying to help the stags. She knew they thought they were saving her from making a fatal mistake, but she hated them for it all the same.

The rabbit and chipmunk somehow smuggled her into the midst of the tightly packed crowd, but not before she saw four carnivores being led to the pen from as many directions in the audience. Given the last match's results, that many hunters had been able to predict the same number of factors correctly. A cougar, a mountain lion, an orange fox, and a gray furred bear were all led to the front of the pen by a pair of coyotes.

The cougar, a lightly built male, turned to the coyotes while the others inspected the captives hungrily. "There was a particularly vocal one at the end of the last match, a female, I think. Do you know which that was?"

One of the coyotes nodded and stepped over the pen's rope. "A rabbit, I think." At his silent gesture, the captives on the edge of the huddled crowd stepped aside, staring timidly at the ground, until Ileni stood exposed before the predators. The male rabbit and chipmunk were suddenly nowhere to be seen.

"That's what was making so much noise?" the cougar asked incredulously. Ileni looked him straight in the eyes, and he took a surprised step back from her glare.

The coyotes laughed. "Yeah, that's the one," the canine inside the pen said. "You want it?"

The cougar licked his lips, taking in the dirt and semen smeared all over Ileni. "Yeah," he said, nodding. "Yeah, this next round should be fun."

When the coyote reached for her, Ileni snatched his wrist and bit his forearm as hard as she could. He shouted in surprise and backhanded her with his free arm hard enough to send her sprawling, but the blood dripping down her chin made up for the bruise forming on her cheek.

The other coyote was there in an instant, kicking her hard in the gut before picking her up by her ankles. He thumped her head on the ground for good measure, and by the time Ileni's vision stopped swimming she was being carried down a torch-lit stairwell to a small chamber beneath the stage. The coyote tossed her unceremoniously beside a large vat that sat over a small fire. The butter inside it overwhelmed her sense of smell.

Strong hands lifted her to her feet, and a female grizzly bear began cleaning her with a dry, abrasive sponge, scraping the semen off her breast, abdomen, and legs. Ileni was still too dizzy to resist, though the sponge was rubbing her skin raw.

Three other captives were in the cell as well, receiving similar treatment from other large hunters, and Ileni was surprised and dismayed to find she recognized them all. One was the black and white striped horse with the bristly mane. The second was Delver, the buck. The last was the black stallion.

Ileni gasped when the grizzly poured butter from a ladle over her shoulders and began rubbing it into her back, arms, and chest. The oily liquid was almost scalding hot, and the bear seemed determined to make certain it soaked permanently into every inch of Ileni's skin. Ileni stared down at the tops of her pale breasts as the bear's hands seemed to turn them into polished gold, thick fingers rubbing the liquid butter into her nipples until they turned from pink to a fiery red.

The others were being buttered, too, broad shoulders and thick chests reflecting the torchlight brightly. They had all been built like statues before. Now they were being polished.

The bear worked slowly over Ileni's ribs and back, down her waist to her hips. She yelped when strong fingers followed a stream of butter between her thighs and rubbed it into the folds of her sex, as firmly as the bear had worked on the rest of her. The bear cuffed her when she made the noise, then calmly went about soaking her outer labia with the hot liquid.

After Ileni's vagina was thoroughly buttered, the bear forced her to bend over and poured the liquid over her exposed bottom, massaging it into the soft skin around her tail.

She looked around the crowded cell for anything she could use to defend herself, but there was nothing. The other captives weren't going to be any help. Delver was clenching his eyes shut while the two wolves rubbing butter into his skin worked his member erect and oiled it as well. The other two were raising their arms and spreading their legs before their captors did so for them, and Ileni got the distinct feeling the black horse wasn't the only one who had survived his share of matches.

Ileni looked behind her at the huge kettle of butter and the small fire burning under it. She didn't think she was strong enough to push the large bear into it, or that it was even hot enough to do more than anger the grizzly. She would just have to wait.

She had to grit her teeth to endure the bear's thumbs when they spread her buttocks and worked the butter into the back of her groin. She looked back at the grizzly when the fingers went away; the bear was trading the ladle for a strange tube hanging from a rack on the wall. She stepped beside Ileni and dipped one end of the slender tube into the vat of butter, then grabbed Ileni by the back of her neck when, beginning to suspect the tool's use, she began to straighten. The bear squeezed a small bladder on the other end of the tube and held Ileni bent over with her paw around her neck.

An indignant shout pulled Ileni's eyes to Delver, who was bent double the same as she was. She couldn't see what the wolves were doing behind him, but she could see the erection rising from his white sheath almost glowing amber, the wolves had washed it with so much butter.

She forgot Delver and shouted her own indignance when something parted her slippery labia and barreled through her vagina. A moment later hot liquid filled her womb and gushed out of her around the tube the grizzly had inserted into her loins. The tube slid out of her and was quickly replaced by the bear's thick finger, probing the inner walls of Ileni's sex. A short moment later the bear shoved the tube back inside her, sliding it out slowly this time while trickling a stream of hot butter from its tip. The bear swirled a finger inside her again, and this time seemed satisfied that every inch of her inner tunnel was coated with the oily liquid.

Ileni wasn't surprised when that tube slid beneath her short tail, but she still cried out at the pain of its forceful entry into her rectum. It felt so much like a male's orgasm when it spewed its load of butter that tears of combined anger and terror blurred her vision as too-fresh memories haunted her. The sudden emotions vanished swiftly, though, washed away by the emptiness that kept returning within her.

The bear stuffed her finger into Ileni's tail hole, slid it in and out of her several times, and with a grunt of approval hauled Ileni upright by the neck and began rubbing butter into her thighs and calves. Ileni's fists clenched at her sides while the bear smeared the small streams drizzling from the rabbit's slit and anus down her inner thighs around her legs.

The bear circled her studiously, rubbing in a few drops that were still visible on her forearm before turning her attention to Delver and the two equines. The predators were done with the horses shortly after the bear finished with Ileni; the young stag took slightly longer since he wasn't as used to this treatment as the other male captives were. Ileni couldn't help but notice that all three were fully erect, unable to resist their own arousals when their captors massaged the lubricating oil into their members.

Ileni took them in with a quick, calculated glance each, and was amazed at how calm she felt. Delver was about as well endowed as Sophan, but the others. . . . The striped horse's erection was half again the size of the stag's, its skin like shining obsidian. The veteran horse's shaft, in turn, dwarfed the other equine's, though it was of a similar shape and equally black skinned. Ileni knew that if the stallion managed to subdue her in the match, she wouldn't have to worry about being cooked and eaten. His phallus looked longer than her forearm and thicker than the length of her slit; the pairing alone would kill her.

A slap against her rear startled Ileni, and she didn't move until the bear hit her bottom again, her paw smacking wetly on Ileni's soft skin. She was herded out of the cell ahead of the other captives, and she heard several embarrassing remarks from the hunters following her up the staircase.

The audience cheered as she was led around the stage to the small set of stairs leading up onto it, the bear guiding her to the far corner. She didn't even consider making a break for it. The only exit from the huge chamber she knew of led to the shaving hall and was at the top of one of the walls of terraced benches. Slippery as she was, now, she still didn't have a chance of reaching it without being caught.

The grizzly pulled Ileni's arms out to her sides by their wrists and turned her, displaying her upper body to the crowd. She lifted Ileni's left leg out in front of her and circled again, forcing Ileni to hop on her other foot. Then, as expected, she forced Ileni to bend double and pulled the hare's tufted tail straight up between two fingers away from her crack. The crowd roared in approval as her sex was displayed, though the cheer was for the other captives on the stage as well, each being forced through the same motions.

Through it all, she tried her best not to look at the pen of captives at one side of the stage, but the male rabbit's despairing gaze pulled at her. He was watching her unblinkingly with tears in his eyes. The thought occurred to her, though, that he watched as she was made to present herself to the audience as well. That was a bit unfair; he didn't show the slightest arousal. But still, a glance over her shoulder told her that he didn't avert his gaze when her rump was facing him.

The grizzly let her stand up and stepped away from her, hopping off the edge of the stage without a backward glance.

The weasel beside the stage nearby flipped an hourglass over and met her eyes, licking his lip hungrily.

Unlike the previous matches she'd seen, there was no hesitation this time. Almost as one, the two horses crossed the stage with long strides, the black veteran toward Delver, the striped one toward her. He reached out for her without a word with speed that belied his size, and she just managed to duck under his shining arm before it wrapped around her neck.

His other arm was waiting to catch her around her middle, though, and he tugged her up against himself, lifting her feet off the stage floor. Her bottom flattened his erection up against his muscular belly, its length lying along the crevice between Ileni's curved buttocks. She could feel his furry sack against her vagina.

"Why are you doing this?" she shouted at him, loudly enough to be sure the captives in the pen could hear her as well. "You know there's only one end to these games if you keep playing them." She didn't give him a chance to answer. He was keeping her doubled over with a hand between her shoulder blades and his arm under her lap, so she bent further, spread her legs slightly, and punched his genitals with all her strength.

He grunted in pain and almost lost his hold on her, but kept her rump against him with both hands on her hips. "I want to prolong that end as much as pos-" he snarled at her, but was cut off when, without his hand on her back, she swung up and smashed both fists into his muzzle, knocking him back and sending her sprawling. Her hands bore cuts from where they'd hit his teeth, but the blood on them wasn't hers alone.

Ileni ignored the cheers and laughter from the audience and looked across the stage at the horse and buck as she rolled to her feet. They were a tangled, wrestling mass of arms and legs, tumbling around on the stage, but it was clear the stallion had the upper hand. He was intent on dominating the younger male, whereas Delver seemed to be struggling just to get away.

She ran toward them, but a hand around her shin pulled her legs out from under her. She kicked at the striped horse's forearm and slipped free; had his grip been any lower on her calf, he would have caught the fur tendrils rising from her ankle, but fortunately her bare skin was too slippery to hold onto.

The stallion was lying on top of the young stag now, but Delver was on his back and had his hands under the horse's armpits, keeping the larger male from lowering himself enough to slip his member underneath the buck's sack.

Back on her feet, Ileni dashed toward them, leapt, and kicked the side of the horse's black head with both feet. Incredibly, he barely seemed stunned, and when Ileni landed sprawled between the two males, he just tried to shove her aside.

An instant later, before the stallion had a chance to dislodge Ileni, the other horse crashed into all of them, almost carrying them over the edge of the stage. For a time it was all Ileni could do to keep her head from being bashed in by the others' frantic elbows and knees. More than once, something-hand, hoof, tail, or otherwise-slipped down her belly or between her buttocks, but she always managed to squirm away before anything caught an edge of her slit or her tail hole.

Eventually the two horses became absorbed in fending each other off, and Ileni and Delver were able to slip out from under them. "We have to stop them," Ileni said, watching the two horses wrestle each other across the stage.

Before she could make a move to that end, though, Delver's hand caught her upper arm. She looked at him, and found him staring forlornly at a spot on the stage beside her, refusing to meet her eyes. "You're . . . the only one I have a chance against," he whispered, his voice sounding almost in pain.

Ileni hadn't expected this from the young deer, but she acted before she had time to think, before Delver had time to move. She lunged at him, her shoulder catching his collarbone and knocking him on his back. Then, without thinking as she straddled his broad chest, she slapped the stag's face angrily and shouted, "None of us has a chance if this goes on!" Delver released her arm and stared at her with wide eyes. She had seen that expression in the past, but never before had it been directed at her.

The deer was terrified.

Anger making her blood boil, she snarled down at him, "You are a disgrace to your father," then rolled off him and ran toward the horses.

Once again the black stallion had the advantage, and he was dangerously close to entering the striped horse. Both equines were on their sides, facing each other, and the black had the other's leg up over his waist, locking his elbow under the other's knee. Once again, he only needed to shift their respective angles a bit before his tip could find the striped horse's tail hole. As it was, the striped one's large testicles were draped over the stallion's sheath, the length of the larger horse's black penis sliding against the other's buttered groin behind his scrotum with its tip protruding out beyond the striped horse's bottom. The black stallion lifted the other up a little and brought his hips back.

Ileni grabbed the stallion's feathery black tail and tugged at it sharply. He whinnied in startled pain, but didn't loosen his hold on the other.

"We . . . have to . . . join . . . before the hourglass fills," the striped horse growled through gritted teeth, tendons visible in his neck, so hard was he struggling against his opponent.

"It's too late," Delver said, catching up with Ileni. "We've run out of time." They all looked to the side of the stage and saw the last grain of sand fall. Delver looked like he was regaining a measure of resolve, but the striped horse was completely stunned. The black stallion, on the other hand, appeared as nonplussed as always. He untangled himself from the other equine and sat up, staring ahead at nothing.

The weasel watching the four of them from beside the hourglass had his own erection in one hand. "Wait a moment," he called to the hunters that were getting ready to climb onto the stage. At a gesture, they all gathered around him and began a hasty, whispered conversation.

Ileni kept her eyes on the huddled predators to make certain none of them more than glanced at the stage. "When they come for us," she said in a voice so low even she had trouble hearing it, "We have to fight them. Don't let them separate us."

"Are you insane?" the striped horse whispered harshly, but Ileni didn't have time to waste explaining.

"As soon as we're able," she went on swiftly, "we head to the grills."

"Why the grills?" Delver asked.

"They need fire to cook their meat. I intend to burn down this stage." And the entire stadium with it, if she could find a way. They needed to force the hunters out if they wanted a chance to escape.

"It won't work," the striped equine said, getting to his hooves.

She ignored him again and turned to the stallion sitting in front of her instead. "Can we count on you to help?"

Before he could answer, a female lynx jumped on the stage, but instead of approaching the four of them, she turned her back to them and faced the crowd. "It has been decided," she shouted loudly, "that due to the unique conditions of the match, the prey will receive half a glass's further time to achieve first entry. All bets as to time before first entry will therefore be ignored." She hopped off the stage to a roar of cheers, and the weasel turned the first hourglass back over.

Before Ileni could so much as register the sudden turn of events, the horse sitting before her swept her feet out from under her with a lightning fast kick. He had her ankles in his strong hands before her back hit the stage and was suddenly lying on top of her with her body bent double beneath him, her feet to either side of her head. For an instant his member pressed against her middle. While his sheath rested on her mound, his obsidian penis was so immense that its broad tip nestled between the breasts Ileni's own knees were squeezing together. She reached for that shaft with both hands, thinking to hurt the suddenly aggressive horse, but he leaned one forearm over both of her ankles above her head and caught her wrists in his other hand and effortlessly brought her arms up to join her ankles in his grasp.

The stallion brought his hips back, his mammoth erection sliding down Ileni's belly until its round head lie on top of her upraised slit.

"Don't," she began, but had to swallow when he leaned down over her, his powerful torso lying against the undersides of her stretched legs.

He brought his head down and whispered into her ear in a surprisingly youthful voice, "They cannot be stopped."

With those words the stallion entered her, and she screamed shrilly. Her pelvis felt like it would crack around his girth, yet only his tip was within her. He did not thrust so much as he pushed his hips slowly and firmly forward. His second push made Ileni's scream raise in pitch and volume, a clearly evident bulge apparent between her upturned thighs. The third push cut her scream off entirely, and she found she couldn't breath. He didn't stop bringing his hips forward until the tip of his penis met her cervix. Ileni was suddenly immensely grateful to have been filled with slippery butter earlier.

The stallion stopped then and let go of Ileni's legs, which wrapped instinctively around his waist, ankles locking over the root of his black tail. He kept holding her arms above her head, though. No longer bent double, she found she could breathe again, if only in tiny, pained gasps. She looked down at the thick bulge that stopped just below her navel, panting open mouthed.

The black horse slid out only an inch or two before pushing forward again. His legs tensed, the muscles in his thighs and buttocks straining under his copper skin, and Ileni's cervix parted around his shaft, the pain of this extended violation making red sparks flash in her vision. She opened her mouth to scream again, but no sound came out. She managed to moan when his member's tip hit the back of her womb, and knew she had to have passed beyond delirium at what she felt happen next. The stallion paused again, gathering his strength, and trembled with the effort of his fifth push, nostrils flaring. A membrane like a second hymen at the back of her womb tore, the new wave of pain making her jaw clench and eyes bulge, then the huge penis was shoving through an extended internal tunnel that shouldn't have existed, its girth stretching the virgin walls wider than should have been possible. The horse's erection burrowed under Ileni's abdomen. Her breath caught when it crept below her sternum and diaphragm and nudged her lungs to either side. An inch farther, and she finally felt the stallion's furry sheath brush against her stretched labia.

Ileni was getting dizzy from holding her breath, but inhaling increased pressure around the shaft lodged in her chest, making it press painfully against the insides of her ribs. Each of the horse's heartbeats shook her entire body as the veins spiraling around his erection pulsed. He waited, though, until she started seeing more flashes of light in her vision. When her eyes began rolling back in her head, he reached down and twisted her nipple sharply. She gasped a deep breath in shock, and something in her ribcage loosened with an audible pop. Ileni could breathe freely again, and though her loins burned painfully around the stallion's penis, a tension that had been building in the rest of her body vanished.

She bit her lower lip to keep from screaming again when the stallion began moving inside her. Thrusting now rather than merely pushing, his first motions were small jabs that never withdrew beyond her womb. He cupped her breasts in his big hands, squeezing rhythmically, her slippery nipples sliding around the pads of his palms provocatively. Ileni's hands were free to do as they would, but they just lowered to comfort the cylindrical bulge in her belly.

Shortly after the stallion's lunges became more dramatic, carrying him out beyond her cervix before he barreled through her again, the striped horse put a hand on his shoulder. "The three squirrels," he said cryptically when the stallion glanced at him.

The horse on top of Ileni snorted and grimaced in distaste, then scooped Ileni up and sat back on his heels with his legs slightly spread beneath her. She winced and cried out with each movement, the erection within her tugging painfully at her ribs and lungs. He lifted her up with his hands under her rump until little more than his tip was inside her. Then she felt the other horse settle himself against her back. His arm circled her waist, and the broad head of his own sizeable penis grazed her left buttock before nestling against the wrinkled star of skin under her tail.

Before she could object, the stallion began slowly lowering her, his fingers pulling at her soft buttocks to help her sphincter stretch around the other horse's tip. She could only whimper as she was double penetrated further, the butter within her rectum making such an act possible, but helping no more than that. The second horse's entry was as gradual as the first's, but without the pauses. Ileni could barely hear the audience's roars of approval over the ringing in her ears as the two equine penises filled her. It took both males pushing down on her to lower her around their erections, the black with his hands on her waist, the striped holding her shoulders from behind, but after a long struggle two sheathes pressed up against her groin. Both horses panted with the effort of so fully piercing Ileni. She forced herself to take slow, deep breaths, focusing on that effort instead of her pain and helplessness.

The stallion lifted her up again, then thrust up into her. The horse behind her waited until the larger male pulled out before doing the same through her rectum, his shaft thick enough to push her slick buttocks wide outward beyond her anus. They slowly developed a rhythm, one thrusting up into her while the other pulled out, but as large as the black's shaft was, her loins were always filled up to her cervix, making her grip the erection lunging through her anus all the tighter. She would have climaxed a dozen times over before this point, but her internal muscles were flattened and stretched so much that they couldn't contract.

She didn't notice Delver standing beside them until the young stag spoke. "Please," was all he said at first, until she slowly looked at him between the horses' shifting chests. He looked down at her pleadingly, but she didn't notice his eyes. The buck's shining member stood fully erect inches in front of her muzzle, and after she turned her head it shifted slightly closer as he shifted his weight. "You've already lost," he said, sounding like the words were being wrenched from him against his will, "but only one of us has to die. . . ."

"If you ask permission, you're not dominating her," the striped horse groaned, slowing his movements to give himself breath enough to speak. "If you really want to live, pry her jaws open and stuff yourself down her throat."

Ileni waited for the buck to do just that, but he ignored the horse. "Please," he repeated, holding his shaft in a hand and aiming it toward Ileni's face. "I just want to live."

It seemed more impossible to her than what was already happening, but somehow Ileni found the strength and will to speak, if only in quiet, strained grunts. "This . . . is . . . not . . . living."

Delver swallowed. "It's the closest to living that's left for us now." He took a small step closer, bringing the tip of his phallus near enough that Ileni could stretch her neck out and kiss it if she wanted to. He stopped before it touched her nose. "You're the only one who can save me from the grills." Then he said it again. "Please."

Ileni remembered what Sophan had told her when she'd begged him not to rape her. Words had no magical power. Delver's pleas had no more likelihood of making her save him than hers had had of making the cheetah leave her alone. Yet, if he wished, the young deer could do exactly as the striped horse advised and take her forcefully. Instead he stood there, waiting for her to give him permission to do what he thought he needed to in order to survive.

He said, "Please."

Ileni watched his face from under her eyebrows and slowly opened her mouth wide. Still, he only stared down at her, even with her permission unwilling to do something he knew she wanted so little. She closed her mouth again and watched him watching her, and then, unable to believe her own actions, she leaned toward him and placed her lips on his round tip, directly over the small hole in its center. Still he did nothing but stand perfectly still. Ileni's body was being jostled terribly by the horses' abuse, but she was able to keep her muzzle steady on the end of Delver's phallus. She parted her lips and let her tongue glide over his smooth skin. The combined flavors of butter and his salty sweat weren't as bad as she'd feared, though she almost pulled back when she noticed a hint of his bitter pre mixed with the rest. She closed her eyes and lips and swallowed, resting her nose on the moist flesh her tongue had just left, then, with as deep a breath as she could take with the black stallion raging between her lungs, she took Delver's penis into her mouth, teeth grazing his skin and locking behind the smooth ridge of its head. He moaned as her tongue roamed around his tip, pressing against the eye in its center and exploring the subtle cleft of its underside. His hand fell on the back of her twisted neck, rubbing her gently.

The striped horse grunted and filled Ileni with a thrust that almost made her bite Delver's member. "You just let her dominate first entry, whelp," he said huskily. "If you don't take the initiative now, you'll be making her do this for nothing."

The deer just stared at him, his eyes clouded by the sensations Ileni was giving him. "What do you expect me to. . . ."

Without a word, the striped horse let go of Ileni's arm, which he'd been pinning to her side, and slapped the buck's rump with a resonating smack. Delver jumped forward in surprise, his erection crashing into the back of her mouth with enough force to toss her head back, making her gag painfully. Delver tried to pull away from her, then, but the striped horse held his hands behind the stag's bottom and the back of Ileni's head, pushing them together until her nose pressed against Delver's lower belly, his shaft plunging down her throat.

"Now grab her ears so that there's no confusion." Delver did so, his hands shaking as they closed around the roots of Ileni's long ears. He moaned as she instinctively tried to swallow his erection, once again unable to breathe.

"Start humping," the striped horse ordered, his hands falling to Ileni's breasts. He followed his own advice, sliding out of Ileni's anus and once against matching the black stallion's movements within her, which had grown swifter and even more forceful. "Just . . . make sure you last a while."

Delver tentatively did as he was told, Ileni's teeth dragging over his skin as he pulled back slowly, withdrawing completely from her throat and letting her gasp a much needed breath through her nose before pushing himself down her throat again. His hands clenched around her ears as he repeated the process, but Ileni was barely aware of it. Her extremities were going numb. All she could feel was her insides, burning with a fire that threatened to consume her. Arms once again trapped at her sides inside the striped horse's grasp as he reached around her to pinch her nipples, she held her hands to the bulge in her belly, ever moving beneath her skin. She watched the decorative splash of white fur rising from Delver's sheath as his pelvis moved toward and away from her open muzzle.

Lost in a sea of mixed pain and pleasure, Ileni's mind struggled to keep its grasp on reality, no matter how horrifying that reality might be. Unable to see anything except Delver's lower stomach and the horses' shaved, glistening chests out of the corners of her eyes, it would be easy to forget where she was, what awaited her after the three males were finished. The thunderous roars and howls of approval bellowed from every direction, sounding more like a storm of wailing spirits than voices, as though the afterlife had sent an army to claim her. Not long ago, had she been tortured as she was now, Ileni would have welcomed the oblivion of death. Something inside her had changed, though, a new desire to live ignited when Delver's father and uncle had embraced, so she focused on staying conscious through the rape rather than letting the abuse fade to obscure corners of her mind. She made herself wiggle her numb fingers and toes to make certain they kept working, that newfound love of life even now striving to make certain she found a way to survive after the three males had finished with her.

After reaching two orgasms already in a single evening, Delver's staying power was apparently much improved from when he'd been unable to contain himself while the crowd of captives had held him pressed against Ileni earlier, and though they were now hammering up into her body in a frenzy, the two horses showed no signs of reaching their peaks, either. Unable to see the hourglasses being flipped one by one beside the stage, the rabbit lost track of how long they were thrusting through her open muzzle and stretched mound and tail hole before the buck finally used her ears to pull her firmly against him, his soft sheath sealing around her lips while his fuzzy testicles pulsed against her chin. She could feel his thick seed pouring down her gullet while he moaned above her, but his erection was far enough down her throat that she couldn't taste more than the pre that was already coating her tongue. It seemed like the buck would only have to push another inch or two into her before the stallion raging through her womb and impossibly extended vaginal canal would be colliding against the other male's spraying tip with every lunge. Delver held himself fully within her for so long, letting her instinctive swallows massage him to the beginning of his afterglow, that she came close to suffocating once again, unable to draw a breath past his heated length. When he finally let go of her ears and slid out of her, whimpering a helpless apology, she felt a patter of liquid fall on the crown of her head, and thought he must have had one last squirt of semen left in him. It wasn't until she drew enough ragged breaths for her vision to clear and she could see him scrubbing his eyes as he backed away from her that Ileni realized that the buck's face was so drenched in his tears that the excess had dripped from his chin to land between her ears.

The young stag sat a safe distance away from the ongoing orgy, facing away from them and hugging his knees to his chest, while the two horses renewed their efforts against the bunny between them. No longer needing to help her hold steady so that Delver would have a stable entrance, they bounced Ileni ruthlessly between them, too far lost in their lusts to show any consideration for her well being. She gritted her teeth and panted breaths along with the rapid rhythm they set, inhaling deeply each time the black stallion's shaft withdrew from between her lungs, only to have the air driven forcefully from her chest with each of his enormous member's returns.

Moments after Delver finished, the striped horse behind her rose up from his knees and pushed her forward, every movement wrenching the two penises terribly within her body as he forced the larger stallion onto his back without complaint. His paws sliding down her body from her breasts to her buttered hips, the striped horse squatted behind her with his hooves to either side of the other male's straightened thighs. His thumbs traced the two curved spikes of white fur that made their way down from her tail to her anus, spreading her slippery cheeks as wide as he could so he could see the top arch of her stretched sphincter around his thick erection while she gasped tiny, rapid half-breaths. The stallion's larger member was barely moving now within its rabbit sheath, her cylindrically distended belly pressing against his own toned stomach. Blunt fingers dug into the sides of Ileni's rump an instant before the striped horse began moving within her again, his pace swiftly increasing to brutal force, the full thrusts at least twice as rapid as when they'd all been upright. Unable to draw a full breath, what should have come out as agonized screams escaped her lips as a long, broken whine, and she wrapped her arms and legs around the huge male underneath her despite herself, clinging desperately to the rapist that was currently dealing less pain to her than the other. The black stallion held his arms almost comfortingly around her shoulders while his large genitals, spread to either side of his swollen sheath in his prone position, slapped up against the edges of her stretched mound as they were hammered from behind by the striped horse's own pendulous sack. Each thrust from the vigorous male behind Ileni made four equine balls pound against her bottom with enough force to bruise her bare skin.

Fortunately, the striped male's new position and hastened pace seemed intended to help him reach his orgasm as quickly as possible. He only battered her rear for a few dozen seconds before grabbing her slender waist and barreling fully through her tail hole, his entire body shaking with exertion as he held himself within her, testicles rising up against the inner curves of her bottom as they sent stream after stream of his semen into her rectum. Her body gripped his shaft so tightly that his sperm was forced to escape around his girth in powerful spurts, showering his scrotum and lower belly in a fountain of white each time his genitals tensed. Panting deeply, the big male pulled out from between her buttocks before his orgasm had completely passed, quickly turning away from her so that his equine penis would shoot the last of his seed onto the wooden stage.

No sooner did the striped horse leave them than the stallion beneath Ileni rolled them over so that he loomed over the exhausted rabbit, planting his hands beside her ribs to keep from crushing her while the other male's seed flowed out of her collapsing anus and down her backside and tail to pool beneath them. With her lithe legs still wrapped around his hips, he slid slowly out of her, past her cervix, and didn't begin pushing back in until only his broad head was wedge within her mound, his rump far enough away from her own that her legs had fallen to the stage to either side of his knees, unable to keep their grip around his solid frame. After slowly sinking back into Ileni until his soft sheath was sealed around her opening again, he held himself deep inside her, taking a long, deep breath while she struggled to gulp down any air at all with his shaft lodged deep inside her chest. Then he repeated the process, staring blankly the entire time at a point above the bunny's head. Ileni squirmed, pushing her hands weakly against his broad biceps, spending the last of her strength in a useless attempt to push him away from her. As he continued his slow pushes and withdrawals, she let her arms fall limply to her sides, her battered body trembling beneath and around the stallion. Her passionate wish to live hadn't faded in the slightest, but the three other captives' treatment had left her in a confused daze, the chamber's ceiling seeming to spin to either side of the horse's eclipsing chest. She focused all her efforts on matching her breaths to the large male's movements, on staying conscious, but the roar of the crowd of predators surrounding them seemed to keep getting quieter, and her peripheral vision was blurring further with each of the stallion's slow lunges.

A part of her mind wondered why he was taking so long to finish. Maybe he was trying to make the match last as long as he could to delay the moment when more of the captives would be selected to go through this. Ileni knew he wasn't holding himself back for her sake; she wanted to live, but to live without the fading pain he was giving her.

She didn't know how long his methodical attentions continued before he began to move quickly again. She wasn't aware of any transition, either; one moment he was pushing into her with almost meditative deliberateness, the next he had her soft rump in his hands a foot off the stage's surface as he bucked frantically in and out of her, his fist-sized testicles hammering against her abused tail hole as his strong fingers squeezed and spread her butt cheeks. She realized dully that she must have blacked out, but already the stallion above her and the arena around them both were swirling beyond recognition in her vision. The horse was grunting loudly in his surprisingly young voice with each of his lunges, his mane and tail whipping from side to side in the few moments of Ileni's visual clarity and further dazing her, but he showed no signs of fatigue or approaching climax.

Then she was on her knees, her upper body slumped against the stage while the stallion humped into her from behind, his strong hands on her hips the only things keeping her rump in the air. As before, she was unaware of being moved to this position, and had no way of knowing how long she'd been blacked out. The horse's grunts now sounded strained, and when she noticed the occasional low whimpers mixed in with the guttural noises, she finally realized why he hadn't climaxed yet. He couldn't. When Ileni had head butted him in her struggle to rescue Delver's father and uncle, she must have done more damage than she'd intended, and the striped horse's assault on her tail hole couldn't have helped, as his own sack had battered the other male's testicles with every lunge. The black stallion's groans were noises of pain, not of ecstasy; he must have been struggling just to stay aroused, let alone to climax.

Ileni couldn't summon enough energy to be concerned, though, neither for the male still raping her or for herself. With the side of her face plastered against the wooden stage, she was staring dully at Delver where the young buck still sat facing away from them, his antlered head bowed so that she couldn't see his face. She watched the tanned skin of his back as the arena faded around her once again, until the color of that skin was the only thing she could see. That color seemed familiar, somehow, like it belonged on something other than the stag's shoulder blades and spine. In her mind's eye, as the predators' cheers, the captives' tears, and even the powerful phallus coursing through her insides vanished from her awareness, that tan color took a different shape. It changed from the gleaming surface of smooth skin to waves of wind blown fur as it stood and turned to face her with a sharp toothed grin.

"They've sent us a real prize this month, haven't they, Challim?" The mountain lion's voice came slowly, his mouth working in slow motion to form the sentence, as the words were dragged through Ileni's memory. "Go ahead and deal with the formalities so we can get it home to the family." In the arena, the black stallion didn't notice when the small female beneath him tensed her entire body for a brief moment.

She'd heard elders from her village say that when someone dies, all of the important events of their life flashes before their eyes in the time it takes them to draw their last breath. She supposed they must have been right, because only one event in her life had been truly important, and instead of flashing through her awareness in a single instant so that other memories might make themselves known, it was taking its time, using the entirety of her last breath to force her to relive every vivid detail.

A second tan shape materialized beside the first, forming the body of a male mountain lion that could have been the other's twin as it spoke. "Young rabbit, you have been chosen by your village to serve for thirty days the needs of the Redcave clan in exchange for our protection and blessings, as agreed upon in the Pact of Crater Mountain made between our peoples on this very peak twenty-seven years ago. Have you been made aware of the services required of you by the Pact?"

Standing in a beautiful blue dress hand stitched by her mother with her back to a sheer cliff that dropped hundreds of feet into the multicolored waters of a vast volcanic crater, Ileni nodded. On the stage in the predators' Domination arena, her head twitched against the smooth wooden planks beneath it.

"And do you agree to perform said services to the best of your abilities without complaint?" the phantom feline went on.

In the arena, the rabbit's mouth opened to form the word, "No," while her memory showed her lowering her eyes submissively to stare at her snow-covered feet and whisper, "I do so agree."

"Then as of this moment," the mountain lion said while his twin grinned broadly and reached forward to grope Ileni's modest bust, "your thirty days of service begins."

"Now let's see just how well this little morsel can serve," the first male said as he grasped the rabbit's buttock through the fabric of her dress and pulled her up against him. She could feel his soft sheath swelling against her abdomen above his plump balls pressing against her navel as his fingers squeezed around her breast and rump savagely, claws extending to pierce the protective cloth and dig into her pelt. He dipped his head and clamped his teeth around the dress over Ileni's shoulder, and with a single instant of swift motion, yanked his hands and muzzle away from her to tear her beautiful dress into three shredded swathes of fabric. He let the blue tatters go, and the wind carried them fluttering down the cliff face toward the lake below.

The nude rabbit hugged her arms around herself and shivered in the sudden wash of frigid mountain air, but the mountain lion wasted no time in pushing her onto her back and pulling her wrists above her head, her arms a mere foot away from the cliff's edge.

"Wait," Ileni began, terrified of the feline's aggressiveness, but the rest of her plea was transformed into a gasp when he closed his mouth around her cold-stiffened nipple, batting at the small nub with his coarse tongue.

The other mountain lion, standing beside them with his hand cupping and squeezing his own genitals, shook his head as he watched his brother reach a paw down below Ileni's stomach. "We've made a deal, your tribe and ours, and you have already agreed to fulfill your part." A memory flashed through her mind of Sophan molesting a male deer while her voice overlapped the mountain lion's words-"I'll make you a deal. . . ."-but then she was on the peak of Crater Mountain again, and the mountain lion was still speaking. "There is no going back now, little rabbit."

"Please," she whispered between her panicked breaths, and one corner of her mind. The male looming over her rested his palm over her mound, his fingers tickling at the back of her slit while the pads of his hand massaged the velvety fur around it, and she was surprised to find herself growing warmer under his touch.

The feline standing nearby smiled down at her, and she was astonished to see a touch of sympathy in his eyes. "Don't worry, you'll enjoy it if you just relax. Your kind always does."

Ileni was too distracted to be offended by his words as the mountain lion on top of her moved his muzzle to her other breast, releasing her wrists to caress the saliva-drenched fur of the first mammary with his free hand. One finger of the paw between her thighs pushed between her folds, and she arched her back at the rush of unexpected pleasure that washed over her. That digit slid in and out of her twice before a second finger joined it, then a third, and Ileni had to bite her lower lip to keep herself from moaning in bliss.

Lost in her memory, the rabbit was unaware of the stallion above her gripping her waist tightly and shifting their positions once again, standing upright and carrying her with him, his erection lodged deep within her until he was confident enough in his balance to begin moving her. The horse never realized that the reason her body gripped his tip so much more tightly now was because her lungs were fully inflated with her subconsciously held breath. As he began lunging into her again, he used his hold around her slender waist to lift her away from his pelvis and drop her back against it with every thrust, her nearly hairless rump sliding moistly up and down his shaved and buttered abdomen while her limbs and ears dangled limply, legs, arms, and head swaying underneath her with the stallion's movements.

All Ileni saw was the mountain lion shifting himself on top of her, moving his hand away from her damp groin and looking down between their torsos to line himself up. With her arms free, she pushed against his chest, shaking her head and whimpering, "Please, no," as tears soaked the fur around the corners of her eyes, and for a brief instant, she was in a moonlit forest, grasping a gnarled root as a cheetah held her legs above a carpet of pine needles, spreading them and bringing his hips forward between her thighs. Then she was back on the cliff with the tan-furred male above her, the cheetah forgotten. All she was aware of was that no matter how good her loins felt after the mountain lion's attentions, she didn't want her first time to be like this.

Ignoring both her words and her attempt to push him away, the feline grinned down at her and said, "Mmm, I think it will serve very well." Watching their groins, he pulled his hips back, giving only that brief motion to warn her as he prepared to impale her.

In a desperate, instinctive attempt to escape, Ileni brought her knee up between the feline's legs. Her thigh connected with his crotch, and while the impact was mostly harmless, it surprised the male enough that his entire body jumped forward instead of only his hips. Knowing that she had to get out from under him, she kept her leg moving after it connected with his rump, using her hands on his chest to propel him up past her head as she performed a clumsy backward somersault.

It was only after a moment of confused vertigo and weightlessness, only after her hand reached out and clutched the edge of a large rock, only after she heard a brief yell and a sickening crunch far below her, that her panicked thoughts reminded her that the rim of Crater Mountain waited mere inches behind her head.

A moment of near silence followed, the only sounds to reach her ears being her frenzied breaths, the scraping of her toes against the cliff face, and the whistling mountain wind. Then, once she managed to pull herself high enough to see over the lip of the boulder under her hand, the second mountain lion was standing before her, his mouth agape in horrified shock.

"You killed him," he whispered.

"Please," Ileni sobbed, trying to find enough purchase in the smooth stone to lift herself to safety.

"You killed Simal."

"Please, help me."

He walked forward until he was looming above the struggling rabbit, then bent and picked up a large black rock from the snow in front of her. "You little cunt." His voice was devoid of emotion, but the face that had shown a spark of kindness but a moment ago was now twisted into a snarling mask of fury. "You killed my brother. Now you ask me to help you." Still, his voice was a dull monotone. Dead. Swallowing past the lump in his throat, he raised the stone high above his head, and Ileni almost let her precarious hold on the boulder go in her fright. But then the mountain lion stepped back, his face no less ferocious, and set the volcanic rock back in the snow where he'd found it.

"No," he said, still backing away from her. "You broke the Pact. You revoked your part of the deal. You'll die, sure enough," and he turned away from her without a second glance, stalking down the white slope with his fists clenched at his sides as he continued to growl, "but not until after you've watched the Redcave clan feast on every last rabbit in your village."

On the stage, the stallion grunted in an agonized whinny, his eyes going wide while he continued to ravage the unconscious rabbit.

On the edge of the cliff, Ileni was blinded with tears, sobbing a mantra of "No, no, no, no," as her feet scrambled for purchase against the icy stone. With a tremendous heave, she managed to pull her stomach up over the edge of the boulder, her fingers clawing at the ground in front of her as she lifted herself away from the precipice. Then her fingers closed around something smooth and round. She scrubbed at her eyes with a forearm as she pulled her legs up on top of the boulder that had saved her, and once her vision was free of tears, saw that she held the black rock that the surviving mountain lion had almost brought down on her head.

She looked down the mountainside and saw him nearing the edge of the vast pine and redwood forest. . . .

The stallion whinnied again, and shoved Ileni's limp form down around his shaft as hard as he could, plastering her slick rump against his thighs and lower belly.

. . . With a final, feral scream of "No!" that echoed like thunder through the mountain sky, Ileni threw the stone toward the tan shape below her that was already blurring again behind a veil of fresh tears. . . .

The black horse trembled, then shouted in pain as his injured testes finally sent a river of frothy semen coursing up through his shaft and into the rabbit's violated chest cavity.

. . . She was unable to see the stone as it arced down the mountainside, but she easily heard the wet crunch it made as it struck home. It shouldn't have been able to reach the male, as far away as he was. It shouldn't have flown in the right direction, as much as Ileni was trembling. . . .

As the pool of sperm turned into a lake between Ileni's lungs, unable to escape down around the stallion's thick phallus, the pressure forced the air out of her chest, and she finally released her long-held breath.

. . . But it did fly far and straight, and after she'd scrubbed her eyes again and stared down at the forest's edge where she'd last seen the mountain lion, his body was lying in a crumpled heap, wind-blown snow already trying to cover his limp form and to hide the red stain beside and beneath his head.

The stallion staggered, almost falling backward as his tortured orgasm continued, and once Ileni's lungs had completely deflated and the growing flood of his seed had no more of her impossibly extended vaginal tunnel left to fill, the pressure finally forced her secondary canal to stretch enough for the tide of sperm to gush down around his length. The waterfall of creamy liquid that poured out around his sheath and clenching genitals to splash around his hooves was tinged with red, the horse's wounded balls filling the rabbit with more than just his sperm. The roar from the audience of predators reached a new volume as the large male fell to his side, carrying the skewered female down with him, his muscular frame quaking against her limp back as he hunched his hips against her, as unable to bring his orgasm to a close as he had been to start it.

While lying motionless with the trembling male pressed against her back, the memory that Ileni had been shielding from herself for so long finally rose to the forefront of her mind. In a way, she felt fortunate to have been molested so often over the past few days; the lesser pain of her constant rapes had distracted her from her unbearable guilt.

She had run from Crater Mountain as soon as she recovered from her shock, not bothering to check to see if either mountain lion was still alive. Her only concern was to get back to her village in time to warn everyone that she'd failed in her duty to them all, to convince them to flee before the Redcave clan discovered their murdered kinsmen. But she hadn't realized that many more mountain lions had been waiting, hidden within the trees' shadows around the peak of the mountain while Challim and Simal dealt with "formalities." Throwing that deadly stone hadn't given her the time she thought she'd need to get her family and friends to safety.

By the time she returned, nothing but tattered, half-eaten corpses remained to greet her.

Ileni was aware of hands on her shoulders, pulling her away from her fellow captive, though even the pain of the huge, ebony phallus finally pulling messily out of her body only came as a distant discomfort. At the same time as those hands closed around the back of her neck and her unshaved tail and lifted her high above a predator's head, somewhere else a warm, gentle paw stroked against the back of her elbow.

While the three exhausted male captives were escorted from the stage and her body was presented to the roaring horde of carnivores as a shining trophy for their depravity, Ileni turned slowly, deep within that somewhere else, and stood motionless, too stunned to make a sound.

"Hi, Ileni." He was smiling.

"Andrin. . . ." How could he be smiling?

Her childhood friend reached forward and caressed the side of Ileni's face, his smile deepening slightly. "You don't look quite like I remembered," he said, and she realized that her naked body was as furless here as it was in the arena, being rotated limply above that faceless predator's head for the audience's cheers. Andrin lifted his stare to her eyes. "But some things even they can't change." He was nude as well, but in his full pelt of gray fur, he looked natural. Unashamed. Perfect.

Ileni swallowed a sob and fell forward into her friend's arms, which caught and cradled her smoothly. He knelt with her in his embrace, caressing the side of her face with his own, and saying nothing for what seemed like an age. Then, when the hunter carrying her limp form over his shoulder stepped off the arena's stage toward the terrible grills, Andrin whispered in her ear, "We've missed you so much." She realized that shadowy figures stood behind him, half hidden behind the haze of this somewhere else, at the same time as she noticed his tears mixing with her own between their cheeks.

The only response she could manage, though, forcing it past the lump in her throat, was, "Why?"

He pulled back, then, to gaze unwaveringly into her eyes again. "You were the only one of us to make the right choice, Ileni. You brought the twisted pact that enslaved us to an end."

"But-" She choked back a sob. "But because of what I did. . . . Because I didn't let them. . . ."

Andrin shook his head, holding her cheek in his hand again. "We all were always running in the wrong direction, Ileni. When your only defense is fleeing, then fleeing is all you'll ever do." His thumb brushed a tear away from her face. "That day was the sum of all of our lives. It was the only end that could have come after the course we'd chosen. If we'd have fought back like you had, some of us may have survived."

"But it's not. . . ." She had to pause again, her spirit blinded by sorrow while her body was handed to a grinning, overweight hyena with a stained cleaver in his paw. "It's not fai-"

Her words stopped short when Andrin pulled her against him again, cradling her head against his warm shoulder. "When all you ever do is flee," he said, his voice quiet with sad resignation, "you don't get to decide what 'fair' is." His free hand stroked up and down Ileni's smooth back while he held her head close. "None of that matters, any more, though."

Carrying her limp, dripping form by the ears, the hyena strode happily up to a pile of decapitated heads that used to belong to the captives that lost their Domination matches. All Ileni felt, though, was her friend's warmth and affection around her. "Ileni," he whispered into her ear "I'm sorry it has to happen like this, but there's only one more ordeal you have to go through before you can finally join us." Looking over his shoulder, Ileni recognized the faces of her parents smiling sadly, but supportively, at the two of them. Then the hyena lifted her form out in front of himself and, without any preamble, pulled the bloodied cleaver to his side.

Andrin's next words, though quiet, were neither warm nor comforting. They weren't sad or resigned. They were laced with cold steel.

"Teach these predators how to fight."

The limp rabbit opened her eyes.

The cleaver swung toward her neck with enough force to fell a small tree.

The rabbit caught the weapon's blade between her palms and rocked back in the hyena's grip from the force of his swing, her arms locked with the blade's edge kissing the decorative white fur left on her throat.

For a brief moment nothing happened, both hyena and rabbit lost in their own stunned confusion as she dangled under his hand. Then she turned her head to glare into his wide eyes, the cleaver barely grazing her neck.

"Thank you," Ileni said, and with a deft motion of her hands, twisted the cleaver's handle out of the hyena's grasp and into her own. An instant later the arm holding her by her ears was twirling through the air in a spray of red, and the hyena was falling to his knees with a lethal gash ripped diagonally across his considerable stomach before her footpads touched the ground.

As soon as she landed, Ileni sprang toward the nearest predator as the female wolf reached for a butcher knife from the table beside her.

The wolf was too slow.

* * *

Sophan leaned heavily on his staff, gasping for breath and cursing humans, his ancient ancestors, for ever inventing guns. He'd only made it a few dozen steps this time before he needed another break to rest his bandaged leg. Letting the side of his face lean against the edge of the top of his makeshift crutch, the cheetah fought back frustrated tears. Even if he knew where to find the arena where Ileni had been taken, it would take him all night to reach it at the rate he was moving.

He didn't know why he cared so much. Whether or not she'd traveled with him for two or three days, Ileni was just another rabbit. He'd taken advantage of plenty of lapins on his trips between ruined towns, as well as nearly every other member of a "prey" race he had come across, and had left them all to whatever fate had in store for them. For most, that was running for their lives from predators like him until they were caught by one with an appetite for more than forced intimacy. Until this night, though, he'd always assumed the different races were completely different species, that it was simply the natural way of things that he should hunt prey as all natural predators did, whether the hunt led him to an animal on four or two legs. He never ate anything that was able to talk to him, speech being the only real factor that separated his sexual victims from his edible ones in his mind, but prey was prey, whatever function it served. Yet now he knew that despite appearances, prey and predator weren't different species at all, that they were all descended from the ancient humans that so many tribes had turned into myths and fireside tales.

In the end, though, lineage didn't make a great deal of difference. Their shared ancestry wasn't why the cheetah was aimlessly hobbling his way between Chicago's metal skeletons.

Forcing himself to stand upright, Sophan took a pain-laced step and began limping forward again, hoping to stumble across someone who could point him in the right direction. He couldn't go back to ask the Seer; even if he survived the climb back up the flying fox's tower, the Seer wouldn't help him in what he saw as a suicide mission, so Sophan would have to make do with the ruins' other inhabitants. He'd managed to find his way back to his staff where he'd dropped it in his mad flight from the coyote that had shot him, but after following the coyote's tracks for only two blocks, the other male's faint paw prints mingled in the dirt with those of many other anthros. In the moonlight, even Sophan's sensitive eyes quickly lost the coyote's path.

He limped on, wondering how so many tracks had been left on all the roads through Chicago's ruins while he hadn't come across a single other person. It didn't take long, though, for his thoughts to return to Ileni. He still couldn't figure out what gave him such a strong need to rescue the little rabbit.

Sophan was almost ready to take another break when a shadow flashed through the moonlight at his feet. A moment later, the Seer landed in front of him, flapping his wings swiftly to slow his descent before he dropped the last foot to the ground.

Determined not to let the winged fox think he was giving up, the cheetah decided he could keep walking for a while yet before he needed another rest. "I'm not turning back," he growled through clenched teeth while shouldering past the smaller male.

"I wasn't going to ask you to," the Seer said calmly, folding his wings behind him as he turned to stride beside Sophan. "Though if you're headed to the arena, you may want to turn to the right, at least. It's only three blocks away."

Sophan turned wordlessly into a narrow street as the fox advised, scanning the tall, fragmented brick and metal walls ahead until he saw the shadow of a long building surrounded by a wide swathe of empty ground a thousand or so feet in front of them. Already running out of breath at the slow pace he was moving, he forced himself to limp even more quickly, managing to pant out, "Have you decided to help, then?" as he hobbled along.

"Yes." The fox gave no more explanation than that.

The injured cheetah had only taken a few dozen steps when a whirring noise above them made him look upward. A large, round shadow was blotting out the stars to one side of the moon, moving slowly toward the ground where another narrow, ruined street intersected the one on which they were walking. Once he was able to make it out more clearly, Sophan recognized Cill's traveling relic, and moved toward it with renewed vigor, the Seer striding easily at his side, evidently unsurprised to see his friend returning so soon.

They had almost reached the large, metal egg when one of its doors slid up its curved frame, and a young, feminine voice exclaimed, "That was amazing!" The voice wasn't Cill's, but the raccoon-wolf crawled out of the flying artifact a moment before a slender ferret girl ran around the front of it to shift her weight nervously from foot to foot beside the older female, wringing her hands in front of her. "Next time, will you show me what all those glowing lights do, maybe even let me fly it a little? I know it must be complicated, but I learn things really fast. I think I already figured out how you made it go faster; it was that knob beside the row of glowing blue symbols, wasn't it?"

The words fell in a torrent from the excited ferret's muzzle while the two males approached, and she was rapidly asking about how to make the relic tip from side to side when the Seer said, "A nearby maybe, I take it?"

"Oh, this one's no maybe," Cill answered, smirking down at the rambling girl as the ferret finally noticed the others and stopped talking in the middle asking how high the relic could fly. "She's already manifested."

"Really?" the Seer asked, and Sophan thought he could hear genuine excitement in the fox's voice. "What's her gift, then?"

Instead of answering, Cill just pointed behind the two males. Sophan kept walking without looking over his shoulder, ignoring the fox's gasped, "Telekinesis!" He didn't know what the word meant, but he didn't have the energy to care.

"Oh! Sorry, didn't know it was happening again. Don't worry, I can usually control it. I mean, it's been a long time since I hurt anyone, and they would've been okay if they were just paying attention." Without pausing to take a breath, the ferret waved at Sophan as he walked past the two females and said, "Hiya, I'm Paps." When he didn't answer beyond glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, she shrank behind Cill and whispered up to the older female, easily loud enough for Sophan to hear, "He looks angry."

Normally, Sophan would have been delighted to meet such a cute female, even though she didn't look quite old enough to mate with, judging by the flatness of her furry chest, but as exhausted as he was, as much pain as he was in, he could barely muster up enough will to do more than keep walking, let alone be polite. He was pretty certain if he stopped limping forward now, he wouldn't be able to start again.

"Ileni?" Cill asked after watching the cheetah's determined progress past the flying relic.

"The arena," was the Seer's equally simple answer.

"Then it's a good thing I brought help."

"Um, what's the arena?" the ferret asked, and it took Sophan a few moments to realize they were all following close behind him.

"You'll find out soon enough," the Seer said. "We may need you to use your ability, though. You say you can control it?"

"Sure, if I concentrate. You know, most people think I'm weird because of it. I was really surprised when Cill didn't run away when she saw me using it to take a bath. I thought it was because she was blind, at first, when I saw her eyes, but you can really see, can't you, Cill? I don't think I've ever met anyone who wouldn't be scared if they saw a pond jumping out of its hole to give a girl a shower-"

Paps's ramblings were cut off by a familiar clap of thunder that made Sophan's eyes widen and his blood run cold. It was muffled, as though coming from underground, but clearly came from the arena. After a brief pause, the cheetah began hopping forward as quickly as he could, no longer even using his wounded leg. An instant later, more thunderclaps shook the air around them, and continue to sound as they made their way to the arena, growing louder with every step or hop they took.

When Sophan dropped his staff and tumbled forward, he was saved from landing on his face by Cill and the Seer each catching one of his arms and hauling him upright. Paps snatched the stick up as it bounced on the hard packed dirt, but Sophan didn't ask her to return it to him; he was able to move more quickly with the other two anthros half carrying him. He wanted to tell them to just leave him and help Ileni themselves, but couldn't coax the question past his panting.

By the time they reach the large open space in front of the long building, a stream of predators was running out of its large, open doorway, paying the four of them no more attention than to yell at them to get out of their way. The hunters didn't even notice the mist clinging to the Seer's ankles and spreading along the ground as he and Cill helped Sophan into a broad hallway, they were in such a hurry.

"This usually happen at the arena?" Paps asked, keeping close behind the three older anthros to keep from being swept along with the rush of predators.

"It's a first, as far as I know of," the Seer said, and with his ears so close to the fox's muzzle, Sophan was able to hear the other male mutter, "and it's been a long time coming," under his breath.

It didn't take them long to reach the end of the wide hall, where it opened into a scene of chaos. They found themselves on the upper rim of what Sophan could only thing of as a huge, rigid, stone and metal bowl, tiers of benches and tables lining its edges to every side of the burning wooden stage on the large strip of flat ground at the bowl's center. Hunters were dashing in every direction, many with knives or guns in their hands, and the chorus of gunfire was deafening. On one side of the blaze, a large roped off pen held a milling mass of shaved anthros, all of them cringing away from the heat that Sophan could feel buffeting his body even as far from the burning stage as he was. On the bonfire's other side was a tangled mess of bent and broken metal. The cheetah couldn't begin to guess what that was supposed to be.

Amidst the chaos, he couldn't tell what it was the hunters were shooting at until Cill pointed at a streak of bronze, red, and white moving impossibly quickly up the rows of tables on the far side of the Arena, dashing in swift, random seeming spurts. "There!" the raccoon-wolf shouted unnecessarily.

It was in a brief moment when the shape was changing directions that Sophan was able to recognize her long white ears within the blur of movement. Shaved as she was, and covered in splashes of red, those ears were the only way he could tell it was her. "It's Ileni," he breathed, unable to believe his own words even as they escaped his muzzle. The rabbit was leaping from hunter to hunter, making her way toward the upper edge of the enormous bowl, and everywhere she went, a predator fell. Every now and again light from the inferno in the middle of the arena glinted off of the blades she held in each hand as they ended the lives of the hunters unfortunate enough to be in her path.

As the four of them watched, stunned, the shaved rabbit reached the highest tier of benches and tables and paused, crouching low and looking up at a large, glass encased box straight above her. An instant later, a vertical streak was all they could see as she leapt twenty feet into and through the box's floor. Sophan had only a moment to see her explode through a hole of splintered metal beams and a shower of crushed brick before the box's windowed wall was painted red. One more moment, and that window shattered as the limp form of a male cougar soared through it, the rabbit riding his body down to the floor beside the pen of captives, some hundred feet below the glassed-off room. Her feet on the hunter's chest through their entire plummet, she darted toward the nearest carnivore as soon as she drove the cougar into the ground.

Wherever the rabbit went, hunters fled, but when they felt there was a safe distance between themselves and her rampage, many of those with guns turned to fire on her. It dawned on Sophan that some of the blood on Ileni might not belong to the predators. "Come on," he growled, and pulled the two anthros holding him down an isle between the benches and tables toward the nearest shooter.

"Paps," the Seer said as they descended the bleachers, "we need you to-"

"Don't worry," Paps said, and for the first time, she didn't sound at all happy. "I know what you need me to do."

It took Sophan's mind far longer than it should have to understand what happened then. Without further warning, he saw his staff twirl straight toward Ileni as fast as the rabbit herself was dashing about the arena and crash into the side of her head, cutting short one of her leaps toward a cringing alligator. The impact knocked her out of the air, slamming her head first into a table with enough force to make the solid wood explode around her. When the dust cleared, Ileni wasn't moving.

No one had bothered to tell the ferret who they were there to save.

Sophan and the Seer both shouted "No!" at the same time, but where the winged fox turned to grip Paps by the shoulders and stop her from delivering a second blow, Sophan wrenched himself free of Cill's grasp to sprint down into the heart of the bowl as quickly as he'd ever run, the agony in his calf going completely unnoticed. Already, though, a wolf and the lucky alligator were cautiously closing in on the rabbit, the canine holding a long knife in front of him. Sophan had no chance of reaching Ileni before they did, but his mind had stopped recognizing impossibilities, and he kept running. He reached the bottom of the bowl, his eyes never leaving the two carnivores.

The wolf reached Ileni, prodded her with a hind paw, and grinned. He gripped his dagger with both hands, blade pointing down at her limp form.

When the wolf staggered backward, the blade flinging from his hand as his palm moved to his shoulder, Sophan thought at first that his will alone had lashed out and struck the canine. Then, as he crossed the arena floor beside the burning stage toward the captives' pen, he saw the male rabbit that held a small gun in one hand pointed at the wolf. A long, burning wooden board was in his other hand, and a female jackal lie crumpled at his feet with blood pooling around her head.

The rabbit's next shot caught the wolf in the stomach, and the canine doubled over to lie in a crumpled heap beside Ileni. His third shot, though, did nothing; Sophan could see him pulling the gun's trigger frantically as he leveled it at the alligator to no avail.

Someone shouted "Get the meals under control!" while the alligator swiftly picked up a bloodstained cleaver from the wooden splinters in which Ileni had fallen. By the time he raised it above his head for a killing chop, though, the male rabbit had finished bounding from table to table and tackled the reptile, carrying them both into the stairs beside them, where they tumbled in a tangle of scaled and bare-skinned limbs down to the arena floor.

Sophan was running past the rest of the captives as a female deer and a chipmunk ducked under their pen's rope and tried to go to the male rabbit's aid. They only made it a few paces, though, before they were intercepted by half a dozen hunters. Sophan had no trouble darting through the small fight that ensued; many of the predators were moving toward Ileni to finish her off, and none thought to stop him.

A short female black bear reached her a second before he did, but his swift punch to the bottom of the ursine's chin took her completely by surprise, and she fell in an unconscious heap on top of the dying wolf.

Before Sophan could check to see if Ileni was still breathing, someone yelled, "Get away from her!" from behind him. He spun just in time to see the male chipmunk that had been outnumbered beside a brave doe but a moment ago rushing toward him with a hand-length knife in his fist.

"I'm on your side!"

"Like hell you are." Sophan tried to hop backward when that knife darted toward his crotch, but tripped over the fallen bear, twisting on his injured leg. He screamed in agony when the chipmunk's pilfered weapon stabbed deep into the side of his left buttock, his fall wrenching the knife out of the smaller male's grasp.

Landing half upright on his stomach on top of the black bear, Sophan pulled the knife out of his rump with a feral roar while the chipmunk tried to wrest it from his hand. The cheetah managed to flip himself over at the same time as grabbing the chipmunk by the neck with his free paw, only to find a tall male coyote raising both of his furry fists to bring down on the chipmunk's head. Throwing the shaved male to one side, Sophan lunged forward with the little dagger, sliding it neatly between the coyote's ribs and shoving the surprised carnivore backward.

While the equally surprised chipmunk got to his feet next to the table below Sophan, the cheetah had a brief chance to take in what was rapidly becoming a true battle. The rabbit, deer, and chipmunk had only been the spearhead of the captives' unexpected resistance. The six hunters that had tried to subdue the two anthros rushing to the rabbit's aid had quickly been overcome themselves by an angry tide of normally submissive prey, but the main body of captives was now trying to fight off the carnivores left in the arena, who had all apparently been emboldened by Ileni's collapse. Near a doorway in the wall below the shattered window-walled room, a small group of shaved captives were fighting their own small battle, but with the predators' attention mostly on the larger group of prey, they were having more success.

Sophan had just enough time to see the male rabbit limping away from the alligator's torn carcass, the bloodied cleaver looking huge in his small hands, before a female leopard said, "Don't worry, I've got it," from behind him and leapt over his head toward the recovering chipmunk, her claws extended. Without a conscious thought, he grabbed the other feline by the ankle, and as soon as she slammed down against the bench beside the chipmunk, the smaller male assaulted the side of her head with a barrage of punches until she stopped moving, then looked uncertainly up at Sophan while nursing the knuckles of one hand with the pads of the other.

The cheetah held the bloodied knife out for the other male to take, handle first, and said, "Go help the others," he growled. "I'll protect Ileni."

The chipmunk snatched the weapon out of his hands so swiftly he almost cut Sophan's fingers. He hesitated, then, looking tempted to give killing the cheetah another try, but turned back toward the struggle on the arena floor after waving the knife threateningly. "Don't think this makes up for it." Then he was lost amidst the fight's chaos.

Sophan took one more moment to scan his surroundings to make certain he wasn't in any immediate danger. Thick, white mist rising between the struggling anthros throughout the arena was evidence of the Seer's presence, but he couldn't pick out the winged fox, Cill, or Paps from the many combatants. They weren't his highest concern right then, though.

Assured everyone else was too busy to try to kill him, he began to kneel beside Ileni's form, but toppled onto his side at twin stabs of pain in his calf and buttock, landing next to the motionless rabbit on the broken table's splinters. Until now, he hadn't had a chance to see how badly hurt Ileni was. Aside from the swollen lump on her head below her left ear, at least twenty shallow cuts marred her bare skin, but most weren't deep enough to cause concern. Her worst injury was two holes in the sides of her right breast, and Sophan could tell after seeing his own injured leg when the Seer had bandaged it earlier that the holes were from a gunshot wound. Her chest was moving shallowly, but twin rivers of blood were flowing from each hole, making her other wounds seem inconsequential.

Sophan reached across her body to cup her injured breast in one hand, surprised at how weak he felt all of a sudden. It took most of his effort to cover the two holes in her breast with his palm, pressing the bare-skinned flesh slightly against her chest. Panting with exertion, he slid his other arm under her back and pulled her close to him, trying to lift as much of her weight off of the table's sharp splinters as he could. Once her back was against his chest, he was better able to stem the blood flowing out of her mammary, pressing the pads of both hands against the wounds.

He breathed into the red-stained fur of her neck, nuzzling the side of her face with his own, too tired to feel any surprise that his tears were drenching the fur between their cheeks. He rocked her limp form as he would a frightened cub, when it was he who was struggling to choke down his terror, the battle around him forgotten while a single thought consumed him. It was simultaneously a shout of defiance and a desperate prayer.

I'm not too late. I'm NOT too late.

His senses blurring, Sophan thought that the Seer's fog must have been rising around them, barely aware that while he held Ileni's life within her breast, his own was flowing down his legs and tail. The wound in his bottom was bleeding heavily, but the twin holes in his calf, mirrors of Ileni's own, had been letting his blood escape freely ever since he began his descent down the long flights of stairs of the Seer's tower. He shouldn't have been able to stay conscious as long as he had, but as he wept against the rabbit's neck, he finally began to understand how he had.

He finally knew, as sobs shook his frame and mists not of the Seer's making escorted him into darkness, why he had needed so desperately to save her.

* * *

Cill walked into the small room with a calm smile on her muzzle, but Alan's frown remained unchanged.

"They both should live," the winged fox said curtly from where he sat between two cots, an unconscious cheetah and rabbit breathing quietly on each.

"That's good to hear," Cill said, but her smile faded when she saw his expression. "Something on your mind, Alan?"

He saw no reason to try to curb the accusation he knew was in his voice. "Did you know?"

"Know what?"

"That Ileni would be captured when you left them, for starters. Or that Sophan would be shot. Or that Paps would nearly kill Ileni when we brought her to the arena."

"I thought you were supposed to be the Seer," Cill said with a smirk.

"Don't toy with me, Cill, not now. Did you know?"

"How many times do I have to tell you, no future is set in stone." The raccoon-wolf stepped beside Ileni's cot and held her hand against the rabbit's forehead. "All I ever see are probabilities, chances."

"Then what were the probabilities that everything would happen as it did? Or more importantly, what were the chances that Sophan and Ileni wouldn't have made it?"

Cill moved to the cheetah's side and checked his forehead as she had Ileni's. "Slightly less than the chances of what ended up happening."

"But-"

"Listen, Alan, of all of the foreseeable possibilities, of all of the future's branching paths, only one would have seen more surviving refugees in the tower than there are now, and that branch was one neither of us had any control over." Those refugees were the many captives who had survived the arena's battle. They healthy ones were scattered throughout the Seer's tower while those who had been injured rested in rooms similar to the one holding Ileni and Sophan. The rebels, as they were now calling themselves, would not have been able to win their fight against the predators that outnumbered them without the help of Alan, Cill, and Paps, and when they realized that in the battle's aftermath, they accepted Alan's offer of shelter in his tower, albeit begrudgingly and with no little suspicion, given their reinforcements' more carnivorous lineages. Alan didn't blame them, and as long as none of them became openly violent, they were welcome in his home for as long as they chose to stay.

"As for bringing Paps in as I did. . . ." Cill went on, shaking her head and smoothing the fur below Sophan's rounded ear. "Had she not acted as she had, Ileni would likely have killed every hunter that didn't flee that building before she could reach them. All of the captives would have gone free, but not by their own hands." She looked up and met the fox's glare with a gaze just as intense. "Their freedom had to be earned, Alan. Had it been handed to them, they would never have learned the need to fight for it, and they all would have found themselves recaptured by any hunter fast and strong enough to subdue them. Now, though, they have a chance. Now that they know that predators aren't invincible, that they can be beaten, they might be able learn to live their lives without fear."

A silence stretched between them, and Alan looked down at his feet crossed on the floor in front of him. "And how great is that chance, then," he finally asked, "that they'll survive the battles that await them to be able to live those lives?"

"Not great at all," Cill whispered, her own white eyes downcast. "But far, far better than they were just a few hours ago."

Alan let another silence grow before he nodded, stood, and headed out the doorway. "I'll go check on the other wounded."

Cill waited soundlessly a long time after the Seer left, watching over the wounded heroes, before turning away from their sleeping forms as well. She stopped mid-stride, though, in the middle of the door's threshold, looking straight ahead yet seeing nothing in front of her.

"And so one teacher awakens," she said, "yet the students go untaught. Learn they must, and from no other, found must be the teacher's brother, for teachers must be brought together, lest all be for naught."