It was now getting very worried. As if the behavior it had shown up till now was not enough of a warning flag, the monster had begun to simply stick sticks into its mouth a few times and then just kinda leave them embedded into the ground at random angles here and there, always leaving a mark on any nearby trees to tell it where it had laid the sharp twig.

After putting those twigs there, it just… left. It just went back to its little cave and just stayed there. And it stayed there for the entire night that followed, sleeping quietly until morning, and then getting back up and doing all of the previous nonsense again like it was some grand, masterful scheme.

Now, what had worried the great protector was not that the actions were alarming, but that they were obvious idiocy. The monster was a moron, capable of only bits of intelligence here and there. What was concerning was that it had ended up being wrong about the creature being a threat and had wasted its time.

The past few days had taught it that the monster was no threat, just an annoyance. And so it wandered off to do other things, leaving the human-shaped snake-person to dick about and do other stupid things.

It would likely be dead soon, anyway, and by its own hand, more than likely.

Oh, how it would eventually come to regret thinking all of that….

…

Three days. It had been three days of preparations and setting the traps, and now she had finally set everything up perfectly. All of the hardened, sharpened, chemically-coated twigs were in place, and it was time for her to make good on her vow from many days ago after one of those damn hornbuns broke her ribs and looked at her with pity before scampering off into the forest.

Back then, without saying a word out in the open, she had sworn to herself that she would exact a petty, brutal revenge upon all of the hornbuns. She would make them wake up for every day of their lives beyond that point and live those moments of waking life with nothing but the most dreadful of fear etched into their tiny little brains.

She would make them rue the day that one of their number chose to mock her, that they would suffer and die and scream and know true pain! She would become the bane of bunnies, slaughterer of rabbits, and enemy of the small and fuzzy everywhere!

Well, maybe some of that or none of it was true. Regardless, it made for a good story, and that would be what she would tell to others in the future if she was able to.

And she had indeed set up all of these stakes for a reason, though not merely to commit mass genocide on the hornbuns. After all, she was after them as well as bigger game.

She could now stuff a hornbun down her throat rather easily, which she both thanked and detested the new game-like world for making a reality. But, while her supposed ‘favored food’ or whatnot was whole, live prey, she was interested in seeing if she could bag something beyond another mere hornbun.

After all, there were deer here, though they were clad in green-tinted fur and had no antlers regardless of whether they were male or female. They were bigger than she was, though, and far less flighty than a hornbun. Plus they moved in groups, and she couldn’t exactly risk her own life by taking on multiple at once.

Those coated stakes were her preparation for her new hunting strategy. She had spent days setting them out and memorizing where they were and what directions they were facing, and it was now time to test and see if it would work.

If she could make it work with the smaller and nimbler hornbuns, then the larger green deer would almost certainly fall for it just as easily, if not more so. As she walked out into the forest, she decided to be stealthy at first, draw a bunch of the tiny bastards together, and then make some noise.

“It’ll probably be like trying to herd house cats, but hey, there is a first time for everything. And with all the stakes I’ve set up, at least one of those fuckers is gonna get hit…. Right?”

…

Hopping along, the hornbun avoided the rustling of the vegetation a fair bit away and moved in the opposite direction of it. The noise wasn’t big enough to signal a true threat, and so it wasn’t that concerned and took its time.

As it rounded a tree, it noticed that it was now face-to-face with literally dozens of its kind, all messing about and doing typical hornbun things. Suddenly the rustling picked up in intensity, and the hornbun bolted away from it along with the rest of its kind.

The rustling only kept getting closer, and remarkably whenever the hornbun or its fellows tried to move to the side and break from the herd, a new rustling motion would herd them back in with the group. Despite it being fast, whatever was hunting the hornbuns wasn’t as much of a concern as the hornbun should have thought.

After all, it was likely just curious, otherwise it would have struck out at it by now. The hornbun kept moving forward, but it soon noticed something alarming.

More and more of the gathering of moving hornbuns had begun to drop out of the rush to flee. It was weird, as they normally could have kept moving for quite a bit longer.

Suddenly, the hornbun felt a sting on its side. It chastised itself as it spared a passing glance at what caused the pain.

It was a twig, so it wasn’t anything worth being alarmed abou-….

Then, it fell over and skidded to a halt. It was alive but weak, and it couldn’t do much more than twitch occasionally.

This scared the hornbun, and it soon found out what was after it and its kind. A figure emerged from the foliage with a line of hornbuns being dragged behind it on a rope, their legs broken and their bodies just as weak as its own.

The titanic creature showed its teeth and reached down and broke the hornbun’s leg and then tied the broken leg to the rope and dragged it and the rest of its captives away. The last thing it heard before it passed out was a line that it could not understand in a tongue that was as alien as it was twisted.

“Damn I’m glad I found this rope. Makes this whole thing so much easier!”