But instead of looking up at Peter and Richard, it slowly lowered itself to the ground. Its belly hugged the earth. Its shoulders tensed. The fur along its spine rose. A deep growl rumbled from its chest. It wasn't hunting anymore. It was watching.
Peter frowned. "...Richard."
"What?"
"Look at it." Richard followed his gaze.
The leopard wasn't watching them. It was staring toward the hill.
Peter's eyes widened. "It's scared."
Richard blinked. "What?"
"It's scared," Peter repeated, his voice rising with hope. "Look at it! Something's coming."
Richard felt hope surge through him. "A ranger?"
"Maybe!" Peter cupped his hands around his mouth.
"Hello!"
"We're over here!"
"Please!"
"We're trapped!"
Richard joined in.
"Can anyone hear us?"
"Two leopards!"
"We're stuck in the kauri tree!"
Only the wind answered.
The leaves whispered overhead.
Nothing else.
Peter's brief excitement faded into frustration. Peter's shoulders sagged. "...Maybe whoever it was saw the leopards and turned around."
Richard refused to let the hope die. "Or maybe they went to call wildlife control."
Peter wanted to believe him. "I hope you're right."
Then the remaining leopard threw back its head.
ROOOAAARRR!
The roar rolled across the valley.
A second later it released a long, haunting eerie warning call toward the crest of the hill.
Neither man had ever heard a predator make that sound before.
It wasn't hunting. It wasn't threatening them.
It was warning something else to stay away.
Richard leaned forward, gripping the branch so hard his knuckles turned white. "Look at it!" he whispered, almost afraid to speak too loudly. "That's not hunting behavior."
The leopard never took its eyes off the ridge. Its muscles stayed coiled. Its tail lashed back and forth.
Richard's pulse quickened. "I think..." He swallowed. "I think it's standing its ground."
Peter stared. "You mean… It's threatening something."
Richard pointed toward the hill. "Something big enough that it doesn't want to back away."
Peter's heart leaped. "Please let it be a person." He almost laughed from sheer desperation. "Please... let it be somebody with a bloody rifle."
Richard managed a nervous grin. "Or half the police force. I'll take one angry farmer at this point."
Peter tightened his grip on the branch. "As long as he's armed."
For a heartbeat, the forest fell silent. Even the birds had stopped calling.
Then—
THUD.
THUD.
THUD.
A deep, rhythmic pounding rolled through the trees.
Richard's smile slowly disappeared. "...Peter. I hear it."
The pounding grew louder.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Branches shook somewhere beyond the ridge. Something large was moving toward them.
Very large. And very fast.
A lone rider appeared at the top of the ridge.
The white Arabian stallion emerged first, cresting the hill before stopping in perfect silence. Its coat gleamed beneath the afternoon sun, every muscle defined beneath flawless skin, ears pricked toward the leopard below.
Seated bareback was a boy. Dark jeans. An unbuttoned open white T-shirt that snapped in the wind like a hero's cloak. A modern compound bow rested casually in his left hand.
Yet none of that held Peter's attention.
But it was the aura of the rider that stole the breath from the two men in the tree.
Marvin. His shoulder-length brown hair streamed behind him in the breeze. At thirteen, he should have looked impossibly young.
Instead… He looked unnervingly composed. Completely still. Like someone who had ridden into danger a thousand times before.
His blue eyes swept across the clearing once, taking in the tree, the men trapped above, the leopard below.
The Incubus charms and aura radiated outward—an apex predator announcing its arrival. His blue eyes swept over the clearing, locking onto the leopard with cold authority. His handsomeness, usually hidden behind polite smiles on red carpets, now looked feral, sharp, and majestic.
Nothing about him suggested panic. The horse beneath him remained equally calm, as if it trusted its rider absolutely.
For one strange, impossible moment, the clearing belonged to him.
Even the leopard hesitated.
Peter's terror faded beneath a completely different emotion.
Wonder. His exhausted filmmaker's brain betrayed him.
He stared at the boy on the white horse and whispered, "...My God."
Richard glanced at him.
Peter never looked away. "Richard..."
"What?"
"Look at him."
Richard did.
Peter shook his head in disbelief. "The horse... the bow... the hair..." His voice became almost reverent. "He looks like he walked out of Middle-earth."
Richard blinked despite himself.
Peter pointed with a trembling finger. "That's Legolas."
There was genuine amazement in his voice. "That's exactly how I've always imagined the Elf Prince."
Richard stared at Peter for one incredulous second before smacking him on the shoulder. "For God's sake, Peter! We're barefoot in a bloody tree!"
He pointed furiously at the leopard pacing below. "There's a man-eating zoo animal trying to climb up here, and you're casting your movie!"
Peter opened his mouth.
Richard cut him off. "Forget The Lord of the Rings for thirty seconds and yell for help!"
Peter winced. "...Right."
He cupped his hands around his mouth. "Help! Down here! We've got a leopard!"
---
The rolling hills of the Waikato region stretched before Marvin in a canvas of emerald green and gold. He galloped across the uneven terrain, the pounding of the Arabian's hooves masking the wind. Without breaking pace, Marvin nocked an arrow, drew the string to his cheek, and let it fly.
Fifty yards away, a large field rat bounding through the tall grass was pinned to the earth.
In the realm of Demons and Devils, hierarchy was forged in blood. The warmongering races lived for slaughter, consuming souls on endless blood battlefields. As an Incubus, Marvin belonged to a different caste. His kind relied on seduction, manipulation, and the harvesting of lust. But survival in the Abyss required pragmatism. Even a demon of pleasure had to master the arts of war. It was a statistical certainty that if you spent centuries seducing queens, an armed king was eventually going to kick down the bedroom door.
Archery was the preferred discipline of his kind, offering lethal distance and required precision.
Marvin's skills with a bow rivaled the high elves of Moroccan. His spatial awareness, sharpened by enhanced senses, allowed him to calculate wind speed, trajectory, and target velocity in a fraction of a second.
Unlike the elves who lived in harmony with the forest, an Incubus viewed the natural world through a utilitarian lens. Animals were not kin; they were calories. The aesthetically pleasing ones might be kept as pets, but ordinary beasts were merely unfortunate when an Incubus crossed their path.
Within twenty minutes, Marvin had felled seven rabbits and a dozen New Zealand rats.
The size of the invasive rodents on the island was staggering. New Zealand had long struggled with plagues of rats, particularly in forested suburbs and agricultural belts. Having evolved with no natural land predators, they grew fat and fearless, thriving in urban alleys and natural environments. The government initiated eradication programs, but the creatures were highly adaptable.
Due to their diet of wild grains and the constant running required by the hilly terrain, the meat of these giant rats was tender and packed with dense protein. Marvin had hunted a few earlier in the week, butchering and barbecuing them over an open flame at the estate. Even Gordon had praised the meal, unaware of its origin.
Marvin reached over his shoulder to pull another arrow, intending to chase a fleeing pack of voles over the next ridge, when he pulled back on the leather reins.
The Arabian reared slightly, snorting in protest. Marvin's ears, tuned to a frequency sharper than human hearing, caught the frantic sound of men screaming for help. The terror in the voices was raw.
"Interesting," Marvin murmured. He returned the arrow to his quiver.
Hunting oversized rodents was a pleasant distraction, but it lacked stakes. He dug his heels into the stallion's flanks, spurring the horse up the steep incline to investigate.
Cresting the hill, his sharp eyes took in the chaotic tableau in the clearing below.
Two disheveled men clung to the high branches of a Kauri tree. Prowling at the base were two fully grown African leopards. As Marvin's horse broke the skyline, the larger cat stopped pacing. It turned, yellow eyes locking onto the rider, and bared its fangs in a low growl that carried over the wind.
Marvin offered a predatory smirk. "Hunting leopards is far more entertaining than hunting voles."
From high in the tree, Richard spotted the rider first. "Oi!" he bellowed, waving both arms. "Don't come any closer! They're leopards! Turn around!"
Marvin glanced up for only a heartbeat.
The warning barely registered.
'Yes... they're leopards,' he thought. 'I'm aware.'
He gave the white Arabian a gentle squeeze with his knees.
The stallion surged forward.
"Mate!" Richard shouted again, panic rising. "Don't be an idiot! They'll tear you apart! They're fast and they can climb trees!"
"I said be careful! They're fierce!" the voice from the tree shrieked again, cracking with panic.
Marvin blinked, amused by the warning. 'Isn't it obvious that most felines can climb wood and run fast?'
Above him, Peter clung to the branch so tightly his knuckles had gone white.
Even now—even with death pacing beneath him—his filmmaker's mind refused to stop working.
The white Arabian thundered down the hillside. The rider's loose white shirt snapped violently in the wind, the open fabric billowing behind him. His long brown hair streamed back over his shoulders while the compound bow rested effortlessly in one hand.
For one impossible second, Peter forgot the leopards entirely.
God…
That's the shot…
That's exactly the image…
Legolas…
Not an actor pretending to be an elf.
The real thing.
If someone had painted an Elven prince riding out of the First Age, this was what it would have looked like.
'He looks like the Elf Prince,' Peter thought, a hysterical bubble of awe piercing his panic. 'Legolas in the flesh.'
"If I had a bloody camera..." Peter whispered in disbelief.
Richard smacked him across the shoulder.
"Peter!"
The sharp slap finally broke the spell.
Peter blinked. Right. The leopards.
Below them, both cats abandoned the tree at once.
Their attention shifted instantly to the charging horse.
One peeled left. The other disappeared through the grass on the right. Silent. Fast. Working together.
Richard felt his stomach drop. "They're flanking him," he breathed.
"They're actually hunting him..." Peter whispered.
Both leopards accelerated, circling through the tall grass to strike from opposite sides.
"Oh, no..." Peter gasped.
"Look out!" Both men shouted together, their voices echoing across the clearing, bracing for a massacre.
But the rider did not panic. Marvin's control over the stallion was absolute. A subtle squeeze of his knees sent the Arabian veering sharply, slipping through the narrowing gap between the two leaping predators and ruining their attack.
The stallion thundered up a rocky embankment and launched from the crest of an exposed boulder.
For a heartbeat, horse and rider hung weightless.
Marvin released the reins.
Trusting the Arabian completely, he twisted at the waist. His right hand flashed to the quiver, drew an arrow, and nocked it in one smooth motion.
The first leopard recovered almost instantly. With a furious snarl, it sprang again, jaws stretched wide as it lunged for the horse's flank.
Twang!
The bowstring cracked.
The carbon-fiber arrow blurred across the gap and disappeared into the leopard's open mouth. It tore through the roof of its palate and into the base of its skull.
The roar died before it could escape.
The leopard went limp in midair, its body carried forward by its own momentum before crashing into the dirt with a heavy thud.
The second leopard, maddened by the death of its mate, burst from the grass on Marvin's blind side. It launched itself toward his leg, claws spread wide.
There wasn't enough time to nock another arrow.
Marvin didn't even try. A laugh escaped him, sharp with the thrill of the hunt.
Leaning low from the saddle, he swung the compound bow like a short staff. The reinforced riser smashed into the leopard's jaw with a dull crack, knocking its head sideways in midair.
Before the animal could recover, Marvin twisted the bow, looping the taut string across its throat.
Then he pulled.
Not with human strength.
With a violent jerk that no ordinary body could have produced.
Crack.
Bone gave way.
The leopard's neck folded at an impossible angle before the rest of its body slammed lifelessly into itself.
Marvin reined the Arabian into a sliding stop, the dead leopard hanging from the bow, Marvin holding the 150-pound carcass with the bow like it's nothing.
Up in the Kauri tree, Peter and Richard were struck speechless. They stared down at the young man on horseback, mouths hanging open in shock. The display of violence had been so skillful, precise, and efficient that their brains struggled to process what they had witnessed.