Kat did not immediately appear, which was worrying. I donned my battle-monocle and scanned around my lair. I got no flashes of data to suggest something was hiding. My tongue flicked in and out a few times to taste the air.

  “This place is clear,” I said to Jenny, who had backed into a corner, trying to find a spot where she was as far away from the portal to the empty sky as possible, and from which she could see anything coming for her. She had produced a skillet from her knapsack, gripping it tightly with both hands in front of her.

  “You said it was safe!” she accused in a high-pitched voice.

  “It was the last time I was here. I need to find my dungeon sprite and-” the hatch thumped like the scene where the Queen tries to batter her way through an airlock in a certain film.

  “Ok, this is starting to get annoying. Don’t worry, they won’t get past me.” I slithered over to the hatch and touched the metal ring with my snout.

  Kitten-Pounces-On-Red-Dot moved into Death-To-Wasps for the double swat, and a Stick-them-With-The-Pointy-End with my tail caught the fourth. The pleasant sound of gold coins materialising and clinking down onto my hoard helped take the edge off my temper.

  “Stay here. I’m going to find out what the fuck my management team has been up to while I’ve been away,” I growled.

  “Don’t leave me!” she squeaked.

  “Just come and sit on the hatch. They’re not that strong.”

  “Oh great, leaves me here at the top of a mountain, keeps calling me hairy, and now the fat jokes!” I craned my neck round and looked at her with glowing purple eyes.

  “On this occasion, I didn’t mean it like that. But now that you mention it-”

  I dove down through the hatch as the skillet whizzed past my head. I waited on the stairs for it to close, and I heard a thump as she dropped down on top of it. Chuckling to myself, I prepared to advance into the unknown. I was going to have words with Kat when I found her.

  I stamped out onto the floor of the residential level and glared around me. 'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the dungeon, not a creature was stirring, not even a murder-bunny.

  The barracks door was broken open, and there were slashes of blood along one wall. A dead Janglebonk lay in a heap in a corner. My tongue flicked out to taste the air as my tail curled back and forth behind me.

  Fear, with its classic ammonia taste. Rage. Sweat. The too-sweet scent the Janglebonks gave off. All mingled together. I reached in with a claw and scooped the body into my storage. I’d eat it later. This was not an immoral act, in my considered opinion. I didn’t kill it! This was housework, and doing chores had to be good for my karmic balance.

  I investigated the rest of the floor, finding no sign of more monsters beyond some nuggets of rabbit poop that I assumed were partially composed of some of my minions. The big oak doors that led to the guest rooms were locked shut and still intact. I was getting rather irate at this point. They were my minions. Killing them meant that the coins spent on hiring and paying them were now wasted. That was tantamount to stealing.

  I knocked gently on the door with one claw.

  “Oh gods, they’re back!”

  “Shhh!”

  “Shit! Sorry!”

  “It’s me. There aren’t any bunnies left on this floor. Open up!” I called through the wooden panels.

  “It might be a trick?”

  “How can it be a trick, you idiot! That’s the boss!”

  “Those bunnies are crafty! It might be a trick!”

  “You make a good point. Hmm.”

  There was a lengthy pause, during which the fuse on my temper burned shorter.

  “How do we know this isn’t a trick?” came the slightly more intelligent voice.

  “Because, Gledna, if I wanted to break in there, I could already have done so. Is Kat in there?” I called back with impeccable self-control.

  “It knows her name! They’ve evolved! Oh, sweet Karen, we’re all dead!”

  “It’s not… fuck this.” My head swung back, and I smashed at the doors with my crown of horns. Once. Twice. Thrice. I recoiled and shook my head. That door was solid.

  “See! It’s trying to attack! Oh no, we’re screwed. Gledna, before we die, I just want to say I fucking hate you. Your cooking sucks.” I snorted a laugh. It sounded like one of the Dwelvers. There was a smacking sound from the other side of the door.

  “Where did Kat go?” I called instead.

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  “Downstairs with the warriors, trickster-bunny! Why don’t you go find them?” Gledna called back.

  “You guys are gonna be really embarrassed when I get back after dealing with whatever the hell this is. Just sit tight for now.”

  I waited a few moments for a response.

  “Do you think it fell for it? It’s going to go down and get mauled by the Hardprick and that mad Orlic?”

  “Yeah. I heard it move away,” Gledna replied.

  “I’m still here,” I called.

  “Shit! Crafty bunny! We’re so screwed!”

  “It knows your name. Maybe if we offer you as a sacrifice, it’ll let the rest of us go?”

  “Nothing wants to get too close to Gledna. We should use her as a shield to drive them back as we make a run for the boss's lair!”

  I left them to bickering and headed down to the next level. The industrial floor was deserted. None of the crucibles or the smelters was glowing. I rested a claw on the first one, and it was cold. They hadn’t been working for days. That meant lost income. I scoured the floor and found nothing. No terror-bunnies, no trapped minions. It was deserted.

  Muffled thumps and yells were coming from the next floor down. I could hear them through the hatch. I drew in a breath and tapped my nose against the metal ring, then swarmed down it as the thing swung up. As soon as I was through, I leapt off the side of the spiral staircase and circled in the open space of the agricultural level.

  The once verdant fields and modest herds of animals were gone. Craters marred the surface, some of which seemed to be tunnels that vanished into the depths of the soil.

  At the foot of the stairs stood a small but valiant band, holding the line and stopping the sea of bunnies from charging up to the higher levels. A few must have sneaked past, but they had built a wall of dead Bugs Bunnies, stacking them like firewood. This meant the bunnies now had an advantage; they could approach unobserved, and were leaping down on my minions with the high ground in their favour.

  Kat! I’d found her! She was a tiny blur, passing through the rabbits as it suited her and only physically manifesting when she wanted to, usually as her letter-opener spilled a uni-bunny’s guts. Harold and Salnia were stalwarts, standing on either side of Simeon and providing the healer with cover. Not that he seemed to need it.

  The Orlic’s back had opened up, panels that looked to be metal on the inside had swung open on hinges, looking almost like stubby wings, and an array of tentacles and robot arms were flickering back and forth. Some had injectors on the tip. These were generally poking into the human warriors, and they either sighed in relief or went berserk when they got jabbed. The ones that caught bunnies mid-air tended to leave smears of dissolved rabbit on the ground when the things went splat right afterwards.

  Steady lines of bunnies were pouring from the warrens in the north. My herds had been destroyed, bits and pieces of the cattle and goats were scattered here and there, but none of them survived. I growled, low and deep. I was going to have to buy them this time; no more cattle rustling, it was bad for the soul.

  More expense. The bunnies had stolen from me. Firstly, by killing at least one delicious minion. Secondly, by slaughtering my herds. And fucking up my agricultural floor. It looked like the Somme in 1917 down there. I curved round, the fighters below were too focused on life and death struggles to have noticed me, but they noticed the streams of fire and acid that fell from my nostrils in long strafing runs

  A string of notifications blurred through my mind as I cut through the horde of adorable bunnies. I am fire. I am death from above.

  The stench of burning fur mingled with roast meat. I cut lines through the horde until the bunnies stopped coming from their dens. I could imagine the pleasant sound of gold coins landing in my hoard, and chuckled at the look of horror I imagined on Jenny’s face as she realised I was committing what amounted to a war crime from the uni-bunny’s perspective.

  I pulled up, careful to stay below the painted ceiling that kept trying to trick me into thinking I had more vertical space than I really did. I began to realise why dragons would be feared and hunted. In a matter of moments, I’d burned or melted a huge swath of the surviving farmland.

  Steaming pools of acid lay in lines next to smoking ruins, filling the air with foul fumes. What remained of the bunny horde was fleeing, scurrying away to their warrens that would be too small for me to fit down. Shit. Well, I needed to deal with something else first.

  I landed with a thump and found a tiny, metal bikini-clad woman suddenly wrapped around my snout. Her arms and legs weren’t long enough to go all the way around.

  “Mmmmfff hrrmmmmfff,” I tried.

  “You’re back! Bloody hell, Bob!” she cried.

  “Hey, Boss,” Harold waved at me with a tired smile. Salnia just glared at me. Simeon waved at me with seven limbs. I reached up and carefully pulled Kat off my nose. The end of two claws scooped under her arms as she dangled in front of my face.

  “I missed you, too. What the everloving hell is going on here?” I said as gently as I could. I was still angry, but the expanse of roast coney around us had mollified my rage quite a lot. Catharsis through murder seemed to be another draconic trait. Kat lunged forward and flying-kicked me in the snout.

  “You stupid, scaly, incompetent asshole!” she shrieked as the flat of her sword slammed repeatedly into the space between my eyes. I reared back to get some space.

  “Jesus, Kat! It’s not my fault you let everything go to shit!” Our heartwarming reunion had suddenly changed course, and now I almost wished I was skulking around in Ankmapak incognito, or having an ale in the Cod with Esme.

  “Where do you think this bunny swarm came from?” she asked acidly.

  “It wasn’t me!” called Harold. He bumped a hip against Salnia, and they both giggled like schoolkids.

  “I’m not pretty willy!” said the Orlic, all his limbs rising into the air. We all turned to look at him.

  “Guilty?” I asked, and he nodded. “Did you leave a door open at the bottom of the mountain or something?” I turned back to Kat.

  “It’s a vertical kilometre of twisted passages and tunnels, dolt. No, I did not. I’m just… hmmm, let me think? Which dickhead was it that brought a minor World Boss that happened to be a uni-bunny into the dungeon as a pet again?” She put a finger against her chin and feigned a thoughtful pose.

  “But how can one bunny breed with itself?” I asked. Salnia snickered but stopped as soon as my glare hit her.

  “On the plus side, we’ve all leveled. A lot. Clearing some more floors will be a cinch. But none of us can deal with Bun-Bun,” the warrior woman added with a crazed smile.

  “How high are you now, Salnia?”

  “Twenty-four! When I go home, I’m going to be queen of Wrigglyriver!”

  “I wasn’t asking about your level.” I glowered at Simeon, whose various injectors tried to hide behind his back.

  “I’m twenty. Got a combat class too. Battletoad,” added Harold happily.

  “Battletoad?”

  “It’s a rare fighter class. Don’t need weapons now. Kiss my fist!” He did just that, with rather more tongue than was healthy, seeing as said fist was encrusted with rabbit bits and blood.

  “Fine. Great.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Kat. I produced a bunch of carrots from my pouch and waved them in one claw.

  “Rabbit stew.” I turned and walked out across the wasteland the battle had left, waving the vegetables in front of me.

  “Here Bun-Bun. Who’s a good wabbit? You want some carrots?” I crooned.