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It was easy traveling in the forest for me, once I cast a black magic spell that let my naked footpads stride on the surface of the water. Every ounce of metal weighed me down ten times as much as normal, but with my strength it was still easy to run and leap. The rapids made a spray that I sloshed through like mud- I was getting to the part that I knew well.

When I got to the end of the long river I ran joyously towards the rainbow I saw that caused a thunderous echo through the area. I jumped down the high waterfall and landed in the spray. It bore me as if I had landed in a thick syrup, my paws spread wide to ride the thundering white foam right to the bank, where I tumbled several times to cancel out the last of the gravity from the fall, my feet hitting the earth ending the spell.

The forest was now behind me, and the raft-boats that the mortals of the Rabbit Lands could be seen downriver. I walked along the sandy banks and marveled at the border between the forest and the rabbits. They had done an amazing job of clearing the dangerous wood right up to the plateaus that bordered their land. The river from the forest cut its way into thousands of smaller rivers as it fell from the waterfall, and the rabbit spirits split it further so that it supported a huge sculpture of grasslands.

I hid myself from the river-folk, and went out in the direction of the temple of the death worshipers, instead. It was easy to follow the river's most northern branch and follow it all the way to the high pyramid that stood alone among no other settlements. It was sun-white, the color of my fur, the color of dead bones. No mortals ever came here, and if they did, they wouldn't be able to enter inside of it. Instead, they only came if they wished to die a quick and painless death.

I climbed the sheer surface and cast a crude paw rune at the top to move the capstone aside. As it turned, I slipped in the triangular opening it made and tucked myself into a ball while I slid down a chute into the greeting chamber of the temple.

"You have come far, sibling. Tell me, what has brought you to the Rabbit Spirits that deal death in exchange for pay?"

I stood up regally and growled out, "You know full well why I am here, Bolro."

The rabbit spirit leaped into the air, out of the shadows, and landed in front of me. This was the rabbit that had adventured with me before, helping to clear a town of giants.

He was dressed in simple black armor that allowed him to move freely, and it made no sound as he danced around me and called out, "Princess Akiko, my favorite customer! How much gold do you have for me this time? Did you bring anything interesting?"

"Calm yourself, Bolro," I growled again, as commanding as I could.

"Never!" He laughed as he threw politeness aside and chose to throw his arms about me instead. I hugged him back, my anger dissolving as it always did around him.

"Alright, Bolro. The pay's big this time. I'm not even paying you- my father is." I was honest with the full-blooded spirit, because I knew I could trust him. "But there's dragons again. Oh, and you get to order people around if you want."

"That sounds AMAZING," his eyes lit up as he held my hands and my gaze. "Where are we going?"

"To the fortress of Tiger Mountain."

"I'm in, Princess," he teased as he let go of one of my hands and shook the other one as if I had offered it to him to seal the deal. "You just point me at the problem and I will kill it dead."

I giggled and took my paw away. I knew he was good for it, no matter how childlike he acted.

"Shouldn't we clear this with the head of your order?" I grabbed him by the paw once again as he went to leave up the exit stairs.

"Oh, that. Yeah, okay," he said as he turned back around and went towards the passageway going down. "I guess that's required or whatever." He tied his ears behind his head in his usual fashion as he descended into to stone chute.

As I followed him, I saw into the training chambers of the strange warriors. This is what I was truly after: they were masters of stealth like no other beast. They could not just hide from sight, but also had developed ways of hiding their noise, their scent, their impact on the surfaces they walked on, their spiritual energies, even figuring out ways to appear cold to the heat-sensing nose of the dragons. No matter how hard I tried, I could not keep my eyes focused on any of the training rabbits. They were fast, and wore that black armor that made their outlines fuzzy somehow.

I passed by some that were training with weapons, and was frustrated to realize that my innate senses could not hear them at all, even when the weapons should have been clanging together. I only sensed the spark that the two metals made as they clashed together. In the next chamber we passed, they were merely eating, but even something about the way they sat on their knees and ate was threatening. I swallowed hard as I glanced down at Bolro, who for all the world acted like he never worked a day in his life. The next chamber was echoing with explosions as they practiced avoiding spells by having balls of flame hurled at them. My companion waved jovially to a couple of them, and they waved back, smiling, in mid-air as they leapt to avoid a barrage. I giggled at the sight despite myself.

As we reached the bottom of the tunnel, I smelled the scent of their heavy incense. The smoke transported me straight back to the first time I hired a rabbit out of the pyramid, and they sent me away with Bolro to get him away from the place. He was well-liked, he just didn't fit in with the dour atmosphere of the place, and everyone but him seemed to notice it.

"Hey, Dad guess who's here," Bolro called to the Grand Rabbit Spirit. My father would have smacked him smartly if he addressed him in such a way- I'd seen it before.

"Bolro! Don't show off in front of your friend," the Grand Rabbit spirit droned in his low voice. He sighed deeply and scratched his huge belly as I looked on, shocked that he was so willing to throw tradition aside with his greeting in return. "Please tell me you're taking him again," he grumbled to me as he opened one sleepy eye. He was perhaps three times as broad as Bolro, and had an air of calm control that bordered on insane laziness.

"Your...." I choked for a moment before throwing my shoulders back and doing what I came down to do. "Your Grace, the Grand Master of Hares and Rabbits, The Reaper of Souls and Destroyer of Nations. Please grant my Father's request of Bolro's service."

"Your Father?" he seemed disturbed by this for some reason. "He's not paying me, is he?"

"No, just Bolro."

"I could give you some," Bolro poked his head out from behind the Grand Master's throne to surprise his father from behind.

"Gah! Nooo," he looked around the room nervously, "That's alright. How long will he be gone for?"

"Possibly as long as last time or longer."

"I'm going to a FORTRESS, Dad," the rogue's eyes were shining as he said this, almost as if it were everything he ever imagined. "And guess what's gonna be there maybe?"

"Is it Dragons?" The old spirit didn't even make eye contact as he asked the question.

"No, DRAGONS," Bolro said as he threw his arms into the air, and then cleared the room in a single bound to stand next to me and gesture grandly. "It's going to be dragons at a castle with a princess!" The way he said the last word made me smack him smartly on the back of the head.

"Finally," the old spirit said as the echo rang past his throne, "I've been waiting for someone to do that for ages. Bolro!"

"Yeh-yes Master Reaper?" he said cautiously as he rubbed the back of his head and looked at me with a hurt expression.

"Give her Father a discount for that."

"For what, her smacking me in the brain?"

The spirit scratched himself thoughtfully before answering simply, "Yes."

My facade of regality was quickly breaking down in front of the pair. I sighed and put my paw on Bolro's shoulder. "I believe that means he accepts our proposal, Bolro. Thank you, Grand Master," I bowed low, throwing my cloak aside and putting my hand over my heart.

"Don't you get cold wearing that?" The large spirit coughed and his small pink nose twitched rapidly as he waved a thin trail of incense smoke away from his whiskers. I started to shake silently, wondering if he was testing my humility or truly didn't care what I thought. I knew the answer well enough about my snickering accomplice.

"I do not fear the piercing of metal, nor the fire of dragons, nor the cold of the void, Grand Spirit," I said in a way that I hoped sounded impassioned rather than bitter. "And I have even less fear now that I know I have a fine companion. I thank you." With the last word, I rose with a twist and walked away gruffly.

"She means you, go with her," the huge rabbit said to his son before I heard a noise of realization and a quick shuffle behind me, as Bolro caught up with my pace and helped me to exit up the pyramid, waving goodbye to his fellows as he left.

I smiled as we slid down the pyramid easily together, looking back and having trouble remembering details about the encounter. The incense, or some other magic, kept me from recalling exact details about what the inside of the pyramid really looked like, or what the training really entailed. For his part, Bolro looked sadly up at the temple as he left, then put on a smile that was too convincing to be faked and hopped off towards the river.

"What are we waiting for?" He shouted back to me, but I had already turned the correct direction and was waiting for him to catch up.

"We're not waiting for anything. We have to go into the Bear lands before I return home."

"Home? That's a strange word to hear you use," he said, catching up to me easily and pulling his ears behind his head with a black headband. "But okay. Kiera's coming with us again?"

"You're sharp as ever, of course she is."

"So, does that mean there's lots of magic involved?"

"I don't think so. I mostly wanted her to be around because you two are the only ones I trust on a mission with me."

"You better, after last time. What did that thing end up being, anyways? It wasn't a real dragon."

"No, Kiera told me later that it was some kind of giant armored cat that Kyrameha had been breeding."

"A cat? Just like you. Sorry about the whole neck thing, then."

I laughed as we cleared a jump, shaking my head at his attempts to make me angry. After the first week or so of trying to hit him with a spell flame after meeting him, I gave up and learned to laugh with him. I landed and took a second to breathe as I waited for him to fall from the great height that he jumped suspecting that I would try to attack him.

"Hey, you didn't try to hit me. It's just not like old times without it," he laughed as he flew off with a secondary leap that left behind a flurry of rabbit hair.

"You know I rode and ran all the way here, Bolro?" I called up to him as I ran across the plain. "Please slow yourself! Let's walk!"

He continued to make smaller hops that seemed to capitalize off of the large leap that started him off, getting a little lower each time until we were running side by side. He still didn't slow himself.

"Bolro!" I shouted, refusing to slow down before he did, and finally stopping dead in my tracks.

"I see it, too! Hey, what are you doing?" He shouted back at me with this second sentence, and we regarded each other with equal parts confusion for a moment before an explosion of water came in a vent of steam between us, throwing up a geyser from deep below the earth. Bolro had started to go off course from north-east and was winding his way towards a small patch of weeds that grew from a river-bank. His outline became hazy as he splashed into the water in a sloppy dive, throwing great gouts of water to fall in madly criss-crossing patterns of ripples, without ever making a sound. I shook my head at the unnerving sight, blinking, as everything became still.

"Bolro? Bolro?" I ran, gasping, up to the silent bank to find the black-armored rabbit holding a nearly-nude human in a choke lock, his face gradually turning purple as the slim spirit turned his own struggles into momentum against him in the water.

The rabbit calmly stayed underwater until the position was open for him to shove the human under the surface instead, and came up without a gasp, brushing himself off and pointing at me.

"Hey, Akiko. Why didn't you dodge that magic?"

"How was I supposed to know that was going to happen? Who was that?" I gestured to the sputtering human, dragging herself away from the edge of the river.

"Oh, I don't know." The rabbit grabbed onto the human by the arm and stared her in the eye. "What're you doing casting spells from underwater, huh? You some kind of weirdo? One of those humans that thinks rabbits shouldn't be here?" He brought his face as close as physically possible by the last words, his left eye nearly digging into the eye of the captured woman.

"Yuh yuh yuh yuh-"

"You think you can just take out a rabbit and not have them notice you? I mean, her, apparently she doesn't notice people, so I guess you could have taken her out-"

"I, I, I, I-"

"You what? You shouldn't have? You're right. Look at this tattoo. Clearly a spirit hunter. Why do you people keep coming out of the forest? It's not like we usually travel on the mortal plane. I just think that it's fun- I mean, we like to hunt punks like you."

"Wuh, well-"

"Shut up! I'm done talking to you!" He threw the captured human at me, and then gave me a huge smile and nod, as if he had perfectly broken the prisoner.

I sighed and threw them onto the ground. "We don't have time to deal with spirit hunters right now. Let's get out of here."

Bolro lowered his face and looked the sad creature in the eye again, saying in a low voice, "You got lucky."

My bi-colored eyes could have rolled all the way out of their sockets. Bolro had learned to respect mortal lives more after he met me and learned that I was half-mortal. We left the spirit hunter behind, hopefully to be found by the river-folk that were loyal to the rabbits, but I tried to explain to Bolro why we couldn't step out of pace. He quickly started to respect my wishes as he held onto every word of the story.

"Wait, your mortal mother got put into an artifact? I thought only spirits could be captured like that."

"She doesn't have the usual human protection, just like me."

"I see. So where did your Dad go?"

"I do not know, I swore not to follow him. Nor do I wish to know- he showed me enough courtesy letting me run off for a week to gather you and Kiera."

"That's one way to think about it. Where are we staying tonight?"

"At the old human village we were at before. My father was wondering if you had a short road you could use."

"Yeah, I have one that will help us into the forest, but the bear lands are crazy well protected from stuff like that. Just like Tiger lands." He pointed at me purposefully with these last words.

As we continued to run into the forest, the path started to clear of trees, almost as if we were going out of the forest again. A shiver ran through me as I noticed the trees were starting to stand in perfect distance from each other, and looked around to make sure that Bolro was close to me. When he saw this, he bowed and held out his hand. I didn't resist taking it, and his smile faded as he led me on at a slower pace.

Short roads cut through the realms above, not the realms above, and I could hardly stand to be there. If my grandmother tried to walk this road, she would be destroyed by the woods in minutes- as for myself, I only felt the road grind against my bare paws, every grass blade trying to slice me. I merely fought tears as every light filtering through the leaves burned my fur like a brand, every bare breath of wind blew the chill of death straight into my bones. I fought every second to hold my breath, but eventually had to open my mouth and drink the air into my lungs, forcing a clenching cough out of me as I gagged on the solid-feeling ether of the place.

Not soon enough, we walked out of a huge archway woven of straw and reinforced with stone.

We arrived in the village I just abandoned two nights before, now swarming with people going about their daily chores. I gave a quick nod towards the central loghouse, and he nodded back. I blinked, and he was no longer next to me, but on the roof, going through the center smoke hole. I shook my mind quickly of the confusing sight, and gave a leap across the tree branches to drop down there myself, hopefully going just as unnoticed.

Three me greeted us, one a boy of only about ten, one a man that could be old enough to be a father, and one that bore a long white beard. Bolro was bowing to them respectfully as they stared on, and I did the same. The old man clapped his hands happily and ran to greet us.

"Bolro! Bolro!" He shouted, as the two of his younger fellows stared at us and cowered. "I can't believe you have returned," the old man started to touch our shoulders and faces as he said once again, "Bolro... you two never aged since you left, just like the other spirits. But you are so much like us."

Bolro shook his head and patted the old man on the shoulder, saying, "Yeah... good to see you, too...." and trailing off lamely as he gazed into the old mans fading eyes.

"It's been fifty suns since we were here last," I whispered to the rabbit.

"What? No wonder Dad wanted me to leave so bad," he frowned as he looked over at the other two. "those two were born since then, huh? Nice to meet you," he waved and smiled as harmlessly as he could, but the two of them only seemed to register his thoughtful frown, and continued to act as if we might pounce on them at any moment.

As I looked around the room during the light hours, I saw that a new painting had been added, to the third side of the house. On the first side was the foundation of the village longhouse by six families; on the second side was the image of the gathering of all the local tribes, where they formed an alliance and gained the use of small magics for storytelling and ease of lighting fires. And, on the third side, was now a painting showing two white figures and a black figure beneath them, forming a triangle around something that looked like a dragon.

"Hey, this is us!" Bolro went over to the painting to examine it closer, and then said excitedly, "This is me!" and smiling hugely as he pointed to the skull-like white face that stood out against a black halo that must have represented his strange blurring armor. He gestured at it, and then his own smiling face, back and forth, until I nodded in confirmation.