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Chapter Text

If I ever get out of this place, I'm never complaining about cafeteria food again.

Not that the cricket-peppered slop she'd been given was even her main problem.

Sasha paused her methodical strokes of a shard of... something that she really hoped wasn't bone- against the pitted stone bricks of her prison.

Footsteps. Faint. Familiar. Dreaded, but for the sheer mundanity of it. That, and the ever-present possibility that rattled in the back of her mind like loose change; was this the time a toad finally got frustrated from not getting whatever he wanted from her, and finally revealed that the swords weren't just for show?

Heads or tails, she thought morbidly. One more useless 'conversation', or another dark stain on the suspiciously rust-rimed corner of her cell?

Her stomach clenched at the thought, worse than hearing her mom's swerving steps because that meant Mrs. Waybright had slipped into the stage of drunkenness where she got weepy, urgh.

The thick wooden door swung open with a poorly-maintained creak. Yeah, definitely worse.

"What do you want, asshole?" Sasha grumbled, not bothering to look over her shoulder as she scraped out her twelveth tally mark.

Sasha was... adaptable. She'd accustomed to the cold, curling into herself and clinging at her jacket when night fell. To the prickling steel-sting of the chain around her ankle that she just knew was going to leave the most annoying blisters. Even to the objectively terrible food.

She never did quite get used to the helpless realization that nothing she said would help her get out of this place, or find her friends.

Sasha didn’t know what to say. She’d never not known what to say.

"C∷ᒷᔑℸ ̣ ⚍∷ᒷ. I ʖᒷꖎ╎ᒷ⍊ᒷ i'⍊ᒷ ʖᒷᒷリ ⊣𝙹╎リ⊣ ᔑʖ𝙹⚍ℸ ̣ ℸ ̣ ⍑╎ᓭ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ∴∷𝙹リ⊣ ∴ᔑ||. B⚍ℸ ̣ i ℸ ̣ ⍑╎リꖌ ∴ᒷ ⎓╎リᔑꖎꖎ|| ⎓𝙹⚍リ↸ ᓭ𝙹ᒲᒷℸ ̣ ⍑╎リ⊣ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ∴𝙹∷ꖌ ∴╎ℸ ̣ ⍑,” rumbled from behind her, unnervingly glacier-patient.

She ignored him, instead moving on to a new, unmarked brick; even if none of these bozos could read, it was a time-honored tradition to tell the world that Sasha Wuz Here.

She didn’t turn around. He didn’t get the right to see her smothered anxiety.

Armor-stiff footsteps thudded closer to the bars of Sasha’s cell. "I ꖌリ𝙹∴ ||𝙹⚍ ᓵᔑリ ⍑ᒷᔑ∷ ᒲᒷ. G𝙹 𝙹リ, ℸ ̣ ᔑꖌᒷ ᔑ ꖎ𝙹𝙹ꖌ. O∷ ᔑ ᓭリ╎⎓⎓, ∴⍑ᔑℸ ̣ ᒷ⍊ᒷ∷ ||𝙹⚍∷ ꖌ╎リ↸ ↸𝙹ᒷᓭ.”

Boss Toad- she figured he was the boss, all the other armored toads definitely followed his growling orders- hadn't been up here in a while. Not after he'd finally gotten it through his thick skull that no matter how many times he repeated what he said, she couldn't answer him.

Not that she would even if she was perfectly fluent in weird toad-talk, because honestly, screw that guy.

“Ughhhhh,” Sasha languished dramatically at the interruption of her newest display of artistic talent. Tilted her face skyward as if pleading to the ceiling to cave in on her. “Fine, dude, what is it you want to bother me about this time-”

She froze. Her heart crawled up her throat and nearly spilled from behind her teeth as a shocked gasp.

Anne’s shoe. Muddy, laces untied, perched in this armed and armored toad’s hand-

He didn’t flinch as Sasha slammed against the cell door, leg-chain straining out behind her and thin bars creaking under her palms. “What did you do to her?!”

Was she somewhere around here? Had they caught her too- no, if they had, they’d probably bring her up for whatever reason they’d been interrogating Sasha for. This guy certainly seemed the type to lean on gloating and hammer-heavy threats.

And hell, if Anne- where was Marcy? Acid-sweet and smarter than any of these boulder-brains, sure, but she was nice, and it didn’t matter how shrewd she was if she stumbled onto the wrong end of a sword-!

"S𝙹 ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ∷ᒷ ᔑ∷ᒷ ᒲ𝙹∷ᒷ 𝙹⎓ ||𝙹⚍, i ╎ᒲᔑ⊣╎リᒷ. Iリℸ ̣ ᒷ∷ᒷᓭℸ ̣ ╎リ⊣.” Boss Toad’s gravel-fractured voice twinged at the back of Sasha’s mind, well-recognized by now but slightly different-

Ah. He was talking around her, rather than at her. Sasha was familiar with the shade-faint distinction. Jackass.

"T⍑╎ᓭ 𝙹ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ∷ 𝙹リᒷ ∴╎ꖎꖎ ⋮𝙹╎リ ||𝙹⚍ ᓭ𝙹𝙹リ, ᓵ∷ᒷᔑℸ ̣ ⚍∷ᒷ. Bᒷ⎓𝙹∷ᒷ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ╎ᓵᒷ ᒲᒷꖎℸ ̣ ᓭ, ╎⎓ ᒲ|| ╎↸╎𝙹ℸ ̣ ᓭ𝙹ꖎ↸╎ᒷ∷ᓭ ↸𝙹リ’ℸ ̣ ᒲ⚍ᓵꖌ ⚍!¡ ℸ ̣ ⍑╎ᓭ ⍑⚍リℸ ̣ , ℸ ̣ 𝙹𝙹,” he mused, depositing the shoe onto the junk-scattered table shoved up against the wall. "Oリᓵᒷ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ᒲ𝙹⚍リℸ ̣ ᔑ╎リ !¡ᔑᓭᓭ ᒲᒷꖎℸ ̣ ᓭ, ||𝙹⚍’ꖎꖎ ʖᒷ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ n╎⊣⍑ℸ ̣ g⚍ᔑ∷↸’ᓭ !¡∷𝙹ʖꖎᒷᒲ. T⍑ᒷ ᔑ╎∷⍑ᒷᔑ↸ᓭ ⚍!¡ ╎リ nᒷ∴ℸ ̣ 𝙹!¡╎ᔑ ᒲ⚍ᓭℸ ̣ ʖᒷ ᑑ⚍╎ℸ ̣ ᒷ ᒷᔑ⊣ᒷ∷ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ⊣ᒷℸ ̣ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ╎∷ ⍑ᔑリ↸ᓭ 𝙹リ ||𝙹⚍, ╎⎓ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ||’∷ᒷ ᓭᒷリ↸╎リ⊣ rᔑリ⊣ᒷ∷ᓭ ᔑリ↸ ᔑ ᓵ⍑ᒷᓭℸ ̣ ⎓⚍ꖎꖎ 𝙹⎓ ᓵ𝙹!¡!¡ᒷ∷ ⎓𝙹∷ ᔑ ᓵ𝙹⚍!¡ꖎᒷ 𝙹⎓ ᒲ𝙹リᓭℸ ̣ ᒷ∷ᓭ.”

Sasha watched him leave with narrowed eyes, lava-chilled resentment churning.

--

Braddock hesitated by the door to the Tower’s uppermost prison level. Gulped.

This was her penance for drawing the short straw, she supposed. Guarding the cell of a supposedly-warmblooded monster until the Newtopian Night Guard retrieved it in three months’ time, when the Valley was finally accessible.

A monster that, from what Captain Grime gruffly told her, was likely to be aggressive after he’d provoked it- which was why there was to be a guard posted by the cell in the first place.

They’d even caught the thing trying to pick the lock on its chain, clever fingers fruitlessly working some kind of discarded hairpin into the lock after it had given up its frantic prying at the metal seams.

Better get this over with. Braddock lightly pushed the door, and it swung open with an ominous creak.

Dark as a toad-eating monster’s den, the cell was completely shadowed by the pre-dawn gloom. Braddock’s eardrums barely made out the sound of chain links clinking- the only evidence that the cell was occupied that she could sense.

No lunging against the bars. No blood-baying roars.

Okay, just… scoot over here, sit by the table, stay away from swiping-between-the-bars distance…

Braddock froze when the shadow-shrouded creature shifted its chains again. Crept further across the cobblestone floors. Finally sat with a slumped sigh on the wobbly wooden chair propped by the table. Looks like a boring guard job, then. At least it’s safer than what the Captain seemed to imply…

Clang!

“Agh!” Braddock jumped a foot in the air in fright, the sound of the chain suddenly whipping against iron cell bars ringing her head like a struck bell.

Pest-rotted wood buckled and splintered beneath her as she landed, but she was too busy catching her breath and waiting for her heart to slow down after being nearly scared out of her skin-molt early.

"Hᔑ⍑! g𝙹ℸ ̣ ||ᔑ!” the creature inside the cell crowed, its vocalization slithering with malicious glee and… weakly hoarse, as if suffering from disuse. "W⍑ᔑℸ ̣ , ↸╎↸ b𝙹ᓭᓭ bᔑᓭℸ ̣ ᔑ∷↸ ⋮⚍ᓭℸ ̣ ᓭᒷリ↸ ⚍!¡ ⍑╎ᓭ ʖ╎⊣⊣ᒷᓭℸ ̣ ᓭᓵᔑ∷ᒷ↸||-ᓵᔑℸ ̣ ᓭ?”

Still laying in a nest of broken stool, Braddock froze. Sat up, rubbing at a sore spot on her head that would surely grow into a terrific bump.

… The name of the stars is that thing?

Not what Braddock had been expecting, certainly. Long limbs, definitely taller than a toad. Lanky legs bent at the knee where the creature sat- one resting against the cell floor, one raised for the creature to prop its arm on. Feather-silk hair pulled away from its face, with narrow forward-facing eyes and a weird protruding bump on its face and blunt claws on the end of long digits- was it some kind of bird, maybe?

A strange, furred brow-ridge rose as Braddock continued to stare. "Wᒷꖎꖎ, ||𝙹⚍’∷ᒷ リᒷ∴.” The creature narrowed dark eyes at her, shuffling back away from the bars and to the thinning mat of old straw it’d made a nest- bed?- out of. All while never taking its eyes off Braddock. "W⍑ᔑℸ ̣ ᒷ⍊ᒷ∷. J⚍ᓭℸ ̣ - ⋮⚍ᓭℸ ̣ ꖎᒷᔑ⍊ᒷ ᒲᒷ ᔑꖎ𝙹リᒷ.”

That was way too deliberate, too varied of a series of vocalizations- like the toneless, emotionless love-dove cries echoing through the mountains, nonetheless holding a sickle-curved sound of threat.

But these weren’t exactly mindless.

… In retrospect the Captain’s overheard, bitter mutterings about ‘interrogating’ the creature made more sense now.

And the creature’s noises might sound like dove-deep calls sometimes, but it hadn’t tried to call for a partner, or even reach out and swipe at Braddock’s ankles- not that thin little claws like that would do much.

Braddock slowly stood up, opting to try and sit out the most awkward guard shift of her life on a more stable perch.

During her migration around the table, though, Braddock spotted shale-sharp lines of something barely visible in the dawn shadows, behind where the creature turned away from her, its scuffed and worn coat pulled tight around it.

Are those tally marks? And… words?

Hmm.

--

Past Braddock was a liar.

This was the most awkward guard shift she’d ever had.

It had been Percy’s idea, shared with Braddock over a conversation in the mess hall that would have been called ‘covert’ except for the fact that nobody gave damn what they heard in the hall unless Captain Grime was stalking the perimeter like a hovering dragonfly- and just as likely as a dragonfly to grab someone with violence aforethought.

If the creature could talk and write, Percy had enthusiastically illustrated, then surely it- they- could be spoken with.

Of course, that relied on the creature actually cooperating.

Arms as reedy and thin as their voice crossed over the shield pattern on their chest, and the creature glared at Braddock from between the bars. "T⍑ᒷ ⍑ᒷᓵꖌ ᔑ∷ᒷ ||𝙹⚍ ℸ ̣ ∷||╎リ⊣ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 !¡⚍ꖎꖎ?”

They refused to touch the reusable wax writing slate Braddock had… borrowed from the wall that posted rotating Tower patrol schedules. Not like many toads bothered to look at it, anyway. They wouldn’t notice it was missing.

“Um, okay, I…” Braddock dithered. The creature was clearly as intelligent as any toad- they knew how to count, and was writing something on their prison walls. “Do you- do you have a name?”

"O⍑ ᒲ|| ⊣𝙹↸, ∴⍑ᔑℸ ̣ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ⍑ᒷᓵꖌ ↸𝙹 i リᒷᒷ↸ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ↸𝙹 ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ⊣ᒷℸ ̣ ||𝙹⚍ ∴ᒷ╎∷↸𝙹ᓭ 𝙹⎓⎓ ᒲ|| ʖᔑᓵꖌ?” The creature deliberately gestured one of its five fingers skyward, as if they could stab through the stone roof and possibly bury Braddock in rubble. "P╎ᓭᓭ 𝙹⎓⎓.”

… Something told Braddock she wasn’t exactly going to capture any success with this strange monster, and would end up looking like a fool for stealing from the commissary regardless.

“... Maybe names,” she decided, already dragging the wax slate to her and writing out her own.

She flipped around the stylus-scored slate, tapping the words she wrote and then gesturing to herself. “Braddock Henshaw,” she said, slow and clear as drifting snow. Tapped the words and herself again, just to get the point across.

"Y𝙹⚍ ⊣⚍||ᓭ ᔑ∷ᒷ ꖎ╎ℸ ̣ ᒷ∷ᔑℸ ̣ ᒷ? s⍑𝙹ᓵꖌᒷ∷, i ⎓╎⊣⚍∷ᒷ↸ ⎓∷𝙹ᒲ ||𝙹⚍∷ ʖ𝙹ᓭᓭ ||𝙹⚍ ᔑꖎꖎ ⍑ᔑ↸ リ𝙹ℸ ̣ ⍑╎リ⊣ ʖ⚍ℸ ̣ ⊣∷ᔑ⍊ᒷꖎ ᔑリ↸ ʖ⚍ꖎꖎᓭ⍑╎ℸ ̣ ᓭℸ ̣ ⚍⎓⎓ᒷ↸ ╎リℸ ̣ 𝙹 ||𝙹⚍∷ ᓭꖌ⚍ꖎꖎᓭ,” the creature said sardonically. "Wᔑ╎ℸ ̣ , ╎⎓ ||𝙹⚍’∷ᒷ ꖎ╎ℸ ̣ ᒷ∷ᔑℸ ̣ ᒷ- ⊣╎ᒲᒲᒷ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᔑℸ ̣ !”

Spark-quick, the creature slid their arm between iron bars like a striking snake, dragging the slate towards them while Braddock remained frozen in fear and okay, if the thing could move that fast, maybe Grime’s commands to ‘never let it out of the cell under any circumstances’ held more of a dangerous weight than she thought.

The beast briefly looked between Braddock and the stylus as if contemplating where exactly they could stab their toad guard; to Braddock’s surprise, they used the broad end of the stylus to wipe the slate over and scribble out their own contribution.

They slid the slate back over, close enough to the cell-steel door that Braddock worried about being clawed as she retrieved it. But the creature simply watched her, idly twirling the stylus with deft fingers and a calculated glare undercut by deep shadows under their eyes.

Braddock traced a claw over the furrows drawn in wax, each score deep as a death-wound.

“Uh, I assume this is you?” she ventured, holding up the slate to gesture between its new markings and the prisoner.

They sat up straighter, haughty and chin tilted up in what could almost be called a threat display. “[Sasha.]”

They didn’t say anything else, but the thumb pointed imperiously at their chest made their meaning obvious. “Sasha?” Braddock tried, gesturing to the creature.

Relief on the creature’s face was smothered like cinders, but Braddock still caught the obvious slump of a sign that someone was talking to them. Sasha… No clade-name? Pack, city, whatever? Strange…

Wait.

Braddock leaned closer, squinting. Sasha leaned back an equal distance, but Braddock wasn’t focused on them

There, on the wall- the tally marks had expanded, one more added since Braddock’s last shift. So they can count…

What was it that old newt accountant said the last time Newtopia sent someone down for an inspection? ‘Numbers are the language of the universe’ or some spacey nonsense like that?

Well, if it was universal, it was worth a shot.

Sasha stayed stubbornly scowling, but Braddock still caught their eyes sliding unsubtly across the wax slate as she furiously scribbled on it.

Braddock whipped around her slate once she was done writing; the script was tiny, but clear, with the symbol for ‘1’ under a single tally mark, ‘2’ under two tally marks, and so on, all the way up to ‘9’.

Sasha looked like Braddock had offered them curdled cowapillar milk. "U⊣⍑, ⋮ᔑ╎ꖎ ╎ᓭ 𝙹リᒷ ℸ ̣ ⍑╎リ⊣, ʖ⚍ℸ ̣ ||𝙹⚍ ∴ᔑリℸ ̣ ᒲᒷ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ↸𝙹 ᒲᔑℸ ̣ ⍑?” They rolled their eyes inside their sockets, and Braddock shuddered because oh, that’s horrifying.

… Maybe more elaboration. Helplessly, Braddock pointed at the slate still laying on the ground, and waved blunt claws to the prison wall behind Sasha.

Whose eyes lit in something like predatory recognition. "... Wᒷꖎꖎ, ╎ℸ ̣ ’ᓭ リ𝙹ℸ ̣ ꖎ╎ꖌᒷ i ⍑ᔑ⍊ᒷ ᒲ⚍ᓵ⍑ ᒷꖎᓭᒷ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ↸𝙹 ⍑ᒷ∷ᒷ. Mᔑ||ʖᒷ i ᓵᔑリ ⊣ᒷℸ ̣ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ⊣⚍ᔑ∷↸ ∷𝙹ℸ ̣ ᔑℸ ̣ ╎𝙹リᓭ 𝙹∷ ∴⍑ᔑℸ ̣ ᒷ⍊ᒷ∷ b𝙹ᓭᓭ bᔑᓭℸ ̣ ᔑ∷↸ ∴ᔑリℸ ̣ ᓭ 𝙹⚍ℸ ̣ 𝙹⎓ ||𝙹⚍ ᒷ⍊ᒷリℸ ̣ ⚍ᔑꖎꖎ||.”

Spindly fingers dragged the slate closer, and the stylus flew in a few short strokes.

A copy of the tally marks scored into stone. A written digit of one, and then two…

Huh. Twelve. Braddock had only given them nine digits...

Steel and stars, they use the same number system as us.

And if that’s the case…

“Maybe Captain Grime was just going about it the wrong way. How would you like to learn how to talk?”

Their head cocked unnervingly as a hunting heron’s.

… This might take a while.

--

And it did take a while. They started slow. Small words. Pointing and miming and frustrated snarling from Sasha when neither of them could understand the other.

But Sasha was talking to Braddock. With all the grace of a tadpole, but they were talking- picking up Amphibian frighteningly fast, actually.

And canny as a Newtopian noble with their information, if not their words. Information, once they could communicate it, was compared with a feather’s difference in weight between what was to be given freely and what was worth something.

The words and gestures given without thought were… fun, actually. It kept the gray monotony of guard duty at bay, and human-words were so strange, it was like a game in itself to use them.

After being coaxed with Braddock’s own preferences, Sasha now had a favorite color, food, season, all kinds of little facts attached to them that made them out to be, well, more of a person. Only little facts, however.

Braddock, for her part, knew that the only way she would get any real information out of Sasha was to give them something in return.

Forty-nine days after Braddock’s exchanges with the creature started, the admittance that Sasha was looking for companions- there were more humans out there!- was given in exchange for the not-so-sneakily pried-out guard rotation schedule. It wasn’t like Sasha could even get out in the first place, not after the amount of escape attempts Braddock witnessed that were about as effective as attempting to mine iron with an icicle.

But while they were on the topic of lengths of time and numbers and the span of the sun-

Well. It was around the time the mess hall opened for midday meals, anyway.

Braddock spotted Percy, a dear friend and steady presence, easygoing as a midsummer pond, cheerfully polishing off his plate.

He’d been nothing but supportive and curious and a little bit giddy at the thought of being Braddock’s trusted keeper for her attempts to draw information out of the strange monster and maybe even socialize them. He’d know what to do with this.

Percy’s head jerked up as the plates rattled on splintered wood.

Braddock sat heavily on the bench across from her friend, unsure where to start. “... Perce, I think we messed up.”

“Oh- oh no, is Captain Grime gonna be mad we messed up? He hasn’t dangled anyone over the tomato plant in so long, you know he gets tetchy looking for an excuse if he hasn’t…” Percy fretted.

“Wait- no, not like that, I mean like…” Braddock picked nervously at the table, prying up a splinter with her claw. “I think we messed up with Sasha- the creature. I don’t think they’re actually a monster. Or a creature at all.”

“Um, I did see them, and they look pretty scary to me…” Percy croaked softly, a comforting ‘I am here’ twang. “Did something happen up there?”

All careful, furtive metaphor or winding explanation flew out the window like a body in a bar fight. “Percy I think we kidnapped a child,” she whispered breathlessly.

“Wait, huh?”

“I’ve been talking to them- they’ve been picking up on Amphibian way faster lately.” Though they could still be so hard to understand sometimes, their odd bird-pitched voice making it nearly impossible to tell if they were asking a question or making a statement or anything. “But, uh, we got to a point to some stuff and- Perce, they’re fifteen.”

“That’s… way too young for a toadlet to be away from the camp. Or any parents.” Percy leaned in closer, voice dim and eyes flickering out to the staircase leading to the dungeons.

“They might not have any,” Braddock admitted dully. “Might be different for whatever they are, but they never gave me a clade name, and the only other time they asked me about other humans was trying to dig for if I’d seen their agemates.”

“... Oh. And the Newtopian guys will be here soon for Sasha.” Percy propped his face between his palms, throat-sac puffing. “Man, I hate this job.”

“So do I,” Braddock muttered. Fifteen summers. Which meant whatever kind of weird bird-monster-person Sasha was would grow even bigger, and stronger, but still, it was looking more and more likely that Toad Tower might have collectively stolen an orphaned bird-monster beast-

“Oi! Braddock!” called from the open window that still leaked steam smelling of… something. “Food for the monster you wanted!”

Ah. She’d called in a favor with the cook. Something nice and meaty- most birds Braddock knew of couldn’t subsist on just bugs like toads could.

“I’ll talk to you again later, Percy,” Braddock whispered as she stood. “But before that… how do you feel about quitting this dumb job?” Leaning in closer, she pitched her voice ravine-low. “You and me, and- maybe a human?”

“I always did want to be a bard and travel! You already knew that, though.” Percy reached forward to pat Braddock’s hand, still braced on the table. “But, uh, for the record, if we travel with… someone else, I, uh. Your ugly monster might scare me but I don’t think they’ll eat me. I don’t think you’d let them, at least.”

Oh, he’s a keeper for sure. Percy was- sweet, with a handsome face and a pleasantly serenading croak and a decent fighter when he put his mind to it. Just a few nose-nuzzles between shifts was all they could manage sometimes, but…

Well. No trouble in dropping by his family for a blessing to marry him, if they were already traveling, and he wanted to.

“I look forward to it!” Braddock grinned, trotting off to pick up the food-favor before Cook yelled at her for wasting his time.

(Day forty-nine of Braddock’s primary shift ended with her seated in her usual spot, far more readily noticing the way bloodrust-brown eyes softened at her appearance, and the subtle forward lean as the creature admirably attempted to remain casual and unconcerned even as they scooted closer to the bars.

“I don’t know what to do with you…” Braddock muttered under her breath.

“Know not… what?” Sasha asked warily, the words still cotton-clumsy in their mouth despite long practice.

“... Nothing,” Braddock dismissed, guilt welling in her throat. She swallowed around it, trying her hand at English, for Sasha’s benefit. “Wait, no. [Leaving soon]. Newtopian rangers [go here in nine days. At you.]”

“Nine days,” Sasha repeated, words as uncanny and cold as water over steel. Their eyes flicked to the cell door, and their fingers tugged contemplatively at their chain.

Stars, they caught on to the time limit fast. “[You need… leaving? Leave. Before nine days,]” Braddock said firmly. “I’ll figure something out then, so just… we’ll all be leaving, then.”

Eyes narrowed, blade-thin. Flicked downward, where Braddock held out the still steaming bowl.

When warm hands, strong enough to snap apart the old bones in the cell Sasha used as stone-writing stylus, touched Braddock’s fingertips to take the bowl, it hit her with all the steam-bursting grace of a rampaging narwhal-worm.

Oh stars, I’m getting attached. Already got attached.

… Braddock just hoped that whatever happened, it didn’t end poorly. For her and Percy, or for Sasha.)

Chapter Text

Ugh. I cannot believe I’ve started looking forward to seeing a toad, Sasha grumbled internally. And a little externally, blowing air between her teeth in the kind of hapless boredom that had become her constant companion alongside the cold and the joint pain from hard floors and an iron-wrapped ankle.

Seriously, joint pain. What was she, sixty?

And even more annoying- the toad she actually tolerated (liked, if she was honest with herself) definitely wasn’t this guy.

“[I have been ╎リ⎓𝙹∷ᒲᒷ↸ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᔑℸ ̣ ||𝙹⚍ ᔑ∷ᒷ ᓵᔑ!¡ᔑʖꖎᒷ 𝙹⎓ talking, cre- Sasha,]” Grime said- even-toned, but about as compromising as a mudslide.

He said something about her talking? Fine, but he wasn’t getting anything out of her on principle.

So instead of asking him to slow down so she could maybe understand everything, Sasha scowled and flipped him off. “[Leave.]”

“[So you can talk.]” His functioning eye narrowed, sinking further into his skull. Weird. “[Well, ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ n╎⊣⍑ℸ ̣ g⚍ᔑ∷↸ will arrive here soon anyway-]”

Wood cracked against stone, and Grime whipped away from Sasha to glare at the intrusion.

“[Captain Grime, sir!]” Oh thank god for Braddock, I’m getting sick of this guy’s voice. Sasha waved cheekily at the she-toad, knowing that Grime couldn’t see her with his back turned. Braddock didn’t react, but she did visibly suppress a snorting snicker when Sasha stuck her tongue out in mockery. “[We have a… problem.]”

“[This problem is?]” Grime answered testily.

Braddock’s throat sac deflated into a nervous gulp. “[You… should look yourself.]”

Both toads vanished, but it wasn’t long before Sasha could hear their voices again- right above her. On the watchtower roof?

Curiously, Sasha peered through the bars facing the outdoors, squinting when the torch-glow vanished as the toads smothered the lights.

It still wasn’t enough to obscure the sunset-stark silhouettes of the biggest animals she’d ever seen.

Whoah. Those are some big birds.

“Say, what are- hold on. [What are that… those?] Yeah, you get the idea,” Sasha called up to the toads just above her.

“[Quiet!]” Grime hissed.

Braddock’s voice, far less obnoxious, followed the Captain’s. “[They are… Herons. Danger. Eats toads.]”

… Eats toads, huh? Sasha considered. Weighed the scenario, and the distance between her captors and the birds.

Wouldn’t be the first time she’d caused some chaos to cover for herself.

Wetting her lips, Sasha tested the air. Felt it blow between her teeth. Whistled, the high-pitched and annoyingly loud kind she’d use to get distracted cheer team members back on track and focused on her.

Two beaks froze, pointing unerringly towards Sasha like compass needles. And towards the Tower. Gotcha.

Sasha had to hand it to Grime, the birds only took a few stalking strides towards them before he blasted a note out on the big horn he carried. “[Close the gates!]”

Just in time, too.

Pale feathers puffed up in frustration as the birds pecked along the tower like investigative finches would a tree, their sun-burning eyes close enough to glimpse from Sasha’s cell.

“Huh, you’re a lot bigger up close than I thought-”

Sasha’s world exploded in a haze of dust and rubble and falling stone that she barely managed to scoot away from as she was flung to her back by the bird head the size of a golf cart breaking through her cell wall!

And whose beak was stabbing right for her-

Yipe!

Sasha swerved to the side on instinct, avoiding the serrated beak just in time to smack a hand down on it, use it as a springboard, up across the blind spot, right down on the other side of its feathered face-

And smash a bowl of rancid prison food right into its gigantic eyeball.

Gurgling in pathetic disgust, the bird shook its head out and pulled away. Its offended glare only served to stoke Sasha’s feral grin higher.

“Yeah! Take that, bird-brain!” Sasha jeered. Now to get out of this place!

Iron creaked, and Sasha wheeled around to face it, ears trained by over a month of listening for the sound of armored footsteps and the rusty groan of metal doors moving-

Warty green pushed her aside, grabbing at the crushing beak-vice that had nearly snapped up Sasha the moment she looked away. Grime?

“O⚍∷ 𝙹∷↸ᒷ∷ᓭ ∴ᒷ∷ᒷ ⎓𝙹∷ [the beast] ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ʖᒷ ⚍リ⍑ᔑ∷ᒲᒷ↸ ʖᒷ⎓𝙹∷ᒷ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ∷ᔑリ⊣ᒷ∷ᓭ ⊣ᒷℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ∷ᒷ- [Braddock!] Gᒷℸ ̣ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ╎ℸ ̣ !”

Sasha nearly jumped out of her skin when Braddock skidded into a kneel next to her, blunt fingers frantically twisting and fumbling at-

My shackle?

Fresh air tingled across Sasha’s skin as the shackle fell away with a rusty clatter. “[Sasha, run! Leave!]” Braddock rose to her feet, a half-wild look in her eye as she glanced out the newly-redecorated cell wall where shit, right, there was still a heron here, sending Grime sprawling to the ground, looming closer, maw gaping wide enough to swallow a toad or a teenage girl whole-

And getting way too close!

Run, run, run! was all Sasha could feel looping in the vivid animal part of her hindbrain focused on survival, and she was halfway across the room before the rest of her senses caught up with her.

The sight of smog-smeared light washing the stone in sunlight it hadn't seen in decades, the smell of rubble-dust, the feel of her own blood pounding in her head and pulsing dim pink adrenaline through her veins-

“[Ahhh!]”

The sound of toads screaming, nearly drowned out by slithering heron shrieks.

Sasha turned away from her escape. Faced the opened maw of her shattered stone cell, shadowed by a monstrously huge predator and the pale visage of a toad that Sasha could actually talk to, who listened to her.

She’d wanted to get Sasha out.

And these lowly creatures, borne of Amphibia’s earth just as much as all other life, loomed over that listener.

How dare they! The thought seethed inside Sasha like arterial lava burning through her veins, a soul-shattering fuschia fury that was bright and taunting and protective as bristling knives.

Sasha turned on a heel, burning a pink-seared scorch mark onto cobblestone floor.

“Hey! Ugly chicken!”

The heron turned away from Braddock. Towards Sasha. Arched its neck and its crest, hissing past the prison-food still dripping down its face.

Sasha’s own feather-fine hair flared in a returning challenge as she dipped low, skidding across the floor where Grime lay half-conscious from the beast dashing him against rocky walls.

Sasha lashed out, grabbing at the blade still sheathed at Grime’s side and lurching to her full height; voltaic pink sparks shrieked defiantly as a crown-fire off the blade as Sasha dashed the point of it against stone, kicking up bright motes of calamitous challenge.

She ignored Grime’s insulted sputtering and Braddock’s shocked gasp, honing onto the heron with a volcano’s death-bright focus and a tight grip on her stolen blade. And lunged.

Heart pounding in time with her rapid footfalls, Sasha coiled her legs beneath her at the crumbling edge of the floor, the revel of fear and rage and calamity twisting her lips into a snarl as she launched herself.

It’s an ugly, graceless jump that her cheer coach would shunt her off into drills for, but it was fueled by desperation and something war-bright and glowing magenta in the corner of her eyes-

The blade slammed home into the turned arc of a feathered neck, and the bird’s screams went straight through Sasha’s clenched jaw.

Her world lurched violently as an earthquake, the heron bucking and flailing as Sasha hung on tight to her blade-anchor, eyes squeezed shut as the feathery neck vanished beneath her knees and all she felt was air-

Oh no.

Blunt, air-stealing pain.

Her eyes flew open and her breath wheezed from her chest like she’d been socked with a bowling ball as she struggled to draw in air past the pommel digging into her gut. But she didn’t let go of it.

The monster’s head dipped once more, and Sasha knew, with lava-lethal certainty, that if it managed to throw her from the back of its neck, she’d end up as a splatter-stain on the Tower courtyard.

The heron whipped its head like a storm-snapped branch, and this time, Sasha was ready.

She twisted with the whiplash force, like trying to land safely from a bad toss, and slammed her feet back down to brace herself on ragged feathers. Palms slick with sweat and red iron gripped her stolen sword even tighter.

Sasha threw her full weight to the side, the sword glowing a violent magenta that caught in Sasha’s heart like a wildfire.

She clung past the sinking body, clung past the ear-rending screams, clung past the wet red spray and the hot taste of pennies seeping into her mouth and nose, and forced the blade even further.

I will not die here!

The heavy, pulling resistance against her sword snapped away, and Sasha felt skin and muscle and nerve-woven spinal cord part underneath her desperate strength.

The heron stilled, swaying.

Collapsed to the ground, Sasha gritting her teeth and bending her knees as she rode it down.

Legs wobbling, Sasha slid down the blood-slick heron’s neck, barely keeping the presence of mind to yank the sword out with her like it was Excalibur stuck in the most morbid stone ever.

Silence. Utter, ruin-echoing silence- not even the dead bird’s mate had stuck around.

An auditorium’s worth of toads stared back at Sasha. Some of them were injured, some not, and most had weapons still.

“[It killed a heron!]”

“Aリᓵᒷᓭℸ ̣ 𝙹∷ᓭ’ ᓵᔑ╎∷リᓭ, ╎ℸ ̣ ⊣𝙹ℸ ̣ ꖎ𝙹𝙹ᓭᒷ!”

“[Don’t ⋮⚍ᓭℸ ̣ ᓭℸ ̣ ᔑリ↸ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ∷ᒷ ⍑⚍⎓⎓╎リ⊣ ʖᔑℸ ̣ ℸ ̣ ꖎᒷ ⎓⚍ᒲᒷᓭ, find Captain Grime!]”

They were also set around her in a rough ring of wary weapons and whispered worries, blocking the way to the exit in a fashion that Sasha wasn’t sure was on purpose but was still a problem.

Captain Grime. Shit.

Chest heaving, Sasha forced the strange toad-words through bared teeth. “[I am leaving. Move.]”

Toads shuffled, rippling like an unsure swamp-current, but ultimately nobody moved, reflective eyes wide behind defensively-clutched weapons.

“Look, you assholes, I just want to get out of here, find my friends, and go home.” Her voice edged up when she abandoned her grasp on Amphibian, shaking at the edges as Sasha stuffed down the rising nausea and the sensation of blood congealing over her face and hair. "So get out of my way, or you're next."

And they would be, she realized- though her hands shook and her bruised stomach roiled at the memory of a life ending at the point of her sword. She didn't want to kill them, but she would if she had to, for her own freedom, for Anne and Marcy still somewhere out in this world; not dead, nothing on this stupid planet would be enough to kill them. Sasha refused to believe it even as the possibility clawed at her mind like ghosts.

Sasha almost dropped her sword in relief when the sea of toads parted, but the moment the path between her and the gate was clear-

They weren’t moving for her.

“[You,]” Grime huffed, bitter and roughly frayed like the snapped end of a rope. “Hᔑ↸ ʖᒷℸ ̣ ℸ ̣ ᒷ∷ ʖᒷ ∴𝙹∷ℸ ̣ ⍑ [the coppers.]”

Coppers- Amphibian money? Who the hell would even be paying a ransom?

“[I. Am. Leaving,]” Sasha repeated, chin tilted up and shoulders squared and teeth bared like fangs in a snarl that tasted like the same blood painting her face- a direct imitation of Grime, because she’d seen how the toads deferred to him, and how he enforced that deference.

Grime’s eye didn’t leave her own, and he held out an insistent hand to his side. “I ᔑᒲ ᔑ⎓∷ᔑ╎↸ i ᓵᔑリリ𝙹ℸ ̣ ᔑꖎꖎ𝙹∴ ᓭ⚍ᓵ⍑ [a dangerous creature to go free.]” The smack of a sword-hilt pressed into his palm from a neighboring guard only punctuated his intent.

Mouth set in a line grim as the curve of an eclipse, Sasha raised her sword. Try me, you warty little-

“[Stop!]” Mauve steel-scrubbed skin and pale hair blocked the way between Sasha and Grime, stubby-clawed hands outstretched as if they could hide the considerably-taller human behind her.

Braddock!

… Shit, Braddock. She’s a guard too!

“[You have to let them free!]”

… Huh?

--

Braddock remained unmoving as she stared down probably the dumbest, most impulsive decision of her life.

Both challenging the captain, and leaving her back exposed to an uncontained human.

“Let them free?” Grime’s voice held nothing but venomous incredulity.

Ranks of toads shuffled away instinctively at his nettle-barbed tone, because Grime was at least a familiar, and sometimes even ineffectual, threat..

Sasha was a different story. The rank-and-file of Braddock’s fellow guards appeared more scared of the human than the slain heron behind them; and by Sasha’s defensive wire-strung stance and darting eyes, they were more than willing to repeat the beast’s demise upon toads rather than avian monsters.

A demise that would remain a moon-blazing memory haunting Braddock’s heart for years to come, she knew.

A comet-tailed leap across the void between stone and bird, a sunset-dark glow coating the stolen sword like poison, pink as a Leviathan war-banner and just as much a herald of overwhelming strength…

And how Sasha earned their steel by killing something bigger and badder than them at an age even younger than Barrel the Brave did.

“Yeah, because I’ll be taking them with me,” Braddock said firmly, unable to keep the frost-shiver of uncertainty out of her voice and all too aware of the unchained creature poised behind her exposed back with a blade at the ready. “They’re my responsibility now. And my clade’s.”

“You are… adopting them.” Grime looked at her like she’d just suggested a rousing game of Bugball where they used bombs instead of beetles.

Yeah, definitely one of the dumbest and most impulsive things she’s ever done.

But it could work, after everything went to shit here and the promise of violence smogged the Tower courtyard. It wasn’t unusual for completely orphaned toadlets to be formally absorbed into another clade, especially if they showed promise in strength or a trade. And it would be a truly grievous insult for a clade-heir to execute or imprison another clade’s ward in peacetimes without conferring to his own family’s council; that he trod on their internal authority within their own clade would probably take precedent over whatever the situation with Sasha was now.

While Grime’s clade- Jago- commanded captainship of two Towers, Henshaw laid claim to a population orders of magnitude greater- that, and Braddock was pretty sure the Henshaw cladehead had some kind of thing against their Jago peers. Captain Grime was shockingly conscientious of not stepping on any toes that could lift up and kick him in the gut, and the Henshaw cladehead definitely qualified.

“Braddock?” Sasha questioned from behind her. “What is… ᓭ⍑╎ℸ ̣ , ⍑𝙹∴ ℸ ̣ 𝙹- ᔑ ᓭℸ ̣ ᔑリ↸𝙹⎓⎓ 𝙹⎓ ᓭ𝙹ᒲᒷ ꖌ╎リ↸, ᓵꖎᒷᔑ∷ꖎ||, ᓭ𝙹… Talking to guards? Or fighting to guards.”

Braddock glanced behind her, eyes drawn to the red-washed face. And then to the sword, still deadly even if it was no longer wreathed with dawn-sharp pink fire. “Oh, drown it all in salt- um, not fighting. Leaving.”

“Are you, now,” Grime considered, brow-ridge raising. But he wasn’t attacking them.

“Uh, we are, actually. Laws never said any wards of the clade had to be toads,” Braddock turned back to Grime nervously, hoping she’d widened an ancient legal loophole enough to squirm right through it.

“And this is a formal claim?” Grime slanted Braddock with an expression that usually was reserved for drunks waving around hammers and the rare idiot who declared that they were going bird-hunting alone.

Which... wasn't entirely inaccurate. Braddock wasn't sure if Sasha was a bird or not, but they certainly were vicious as one, dark eyes glaring out from beneath the splatter of heron-blood that washed a deadly pink in the moonlight.

They were also shaking, eyes wide and expression pinched beneath the damp red mask the dead heron had marked them with.

Braddock wasn't one of the rare idiots who thought they could go out and kill a bird on their own. But she might be one of the even rarer idiots who thought she could tame one.

"They're fifteen. And they gave me no clade name." Braddock gulped, feeling her pores prickle beneath the weight of so much attention from the entire surviving garrison. "So yes, I'll take them and make my own clade stronger for it."

Hopefully the Henshaw Cladehead would accept it. At the very least, Braddock's distant cousin would accept Sasha as a ward of the clade just to tweak at Grime's snout.

As for the Captain's verdict...

Grime's functioning eye narrowed, obviously weighing the pros and cons of letting the creature go free or stepping on the Henshaw clade's collective toes.

Dead feathers rose in the rising breeze like grass, eye-catchingly scarlet and impossible to ignore.

Grime followed the ghostly wind-ripple across the heron corpse. “... It’s certainly a creative way to avoid court martialing,” he admitted. “I’ll allow it. They did kill the heron, even if it was with a stolen weapon. So consider yourself dishonorably discharged for general idiocy and dereliction of duty in guarding the creature.” He paused, waiting for the implication to sink in. Braddock had never been the most politically-minded toad, but even she could read the subtext. “As you are no longer under my direct authority, and thus cannot undermine my direct authority as Captain, I declare that this… Sasha beast is now entirely your problem.”

… Huh. I guess even the Captain has to take slaying a heron seriously, when it comes to this.

“Sir!” Braddock snapped into a salute, taking the offer for what it was. She couldn’t undermine his position by her defiance if she was no longer part of the guard, after all, and for all that Grime could be an influence-sniffing mosquito, he had his own honor. “It was an honor to serve for my time, sir!”

A heron killed in one’s defense was never a debt easily repaid. Braddock knew this was the closest Grime would ever come to a compromise, between the clade politics and traditional toad law.

Braddock could understand, really. Between playing dumb with the Night Guard about an escaped monster and facing the bitching and moaning from a clade that was looking to cause trouble with Jago… Even shoving a heron-hunter back to their cells or pissing off the Rangers for wasting their time would be a secondary concern in comparison to the sometimes-frictional relationship between toad lords.

Braddock recognized a generous compromise for what it was- after all, she got to leave with her new ward, rather than spend the night in the Pain Room.

“Yes, whatever, now get out of here, and take your new pet, too,” Grime scoffed, a casual annoyance that shifted the attitude of the witnessing guards. “Before Newtopia’s lackeys get here. They’re already so annoying to get rid of.”

Braddock took the irritated dismissal for what it was, backing up beside Sasha. “Hey, Sasha, we… let’s leave. We can leave.”

“[They won’t stop us?]”

“... No, we’ll be safe.” To leave, at least. It’s going to be rough on the road-

“Wait!”

With all the grace of a bowling ball, a shorter toad shoved aside one of the lingering guards, nearly tripping over the piled bags and trailing brown fabric in his arms.

“Percy?” Braddock slid between him and Sasha to take some of his burden before he toppled over- and to keep Sasha from maybe deciding he was a threat. “What’s all this for?”

“Oh for, Percy, what are you doing?” Grime asked testily.

Percy jumped, whirling around to face the captain, his throat-sac puffed up as if trying to swallow the inevitable flood of words. “I… brought some supplies from my bunk for Braddock and Sasha because… because I always hated this job and I’m leaving too and you can’t stop me!”

“I’m not stopping you, fool. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a liability,” Grime snorted. “Get out of my sight already.”

Percy wilted like a dying fern, and Braddock tugged him back. “Of course we’ll have you. Um, both of us?” she amended, quickly gesturing between her new ward and her maybe-partner, who waved nervously as he remembered the creature standing so close to him. “Sasha, this is Percy. Percy, Sasha.”

Sasha’s sun-sharp gaze flicked between Percy and Grime, as if wondering which of them would taste better raw.

Maybe they were thinking that.

They relaxed, lowering the chipped and blood-rusted blade. “Your… companion?”

Sasha knew the words for ally, campmate, travel-companion… that they used the specific term for life-companion, just as they had when mentioning the humans they were searching for, was… interesting. Could they tell somehow? “Yeah, Percy is an ally. He’ll be coming with us.”

“And I brought something for them too!” Percy swept off the dark cloak hanging from his pile of supplies- the same one that was long enough to trip him. “Dunno who it belonged to, maybe a newt? But it gets cold out there this time of year, so…”

Sasha continued to pin him with narrowed eyes like they were considering the possibility of the offered cloak rearing up and biting them.

Yeesh, not one to trust very easily, huh? Braddock sighed quietly, and passed the cloak from Percy to Sasha. Hefted the bag of camping supplies she’d taken from Percy. “Let’s get out of here.”

Toads parted between them and the blown-open gates. With the hood shading Sasha’s face and leaving only blood-threaded strands of stained blonde hair, the cloak hid everything but a spire-tall form and five-fingered hands fidgeting at the leather fastener at the neck.

“Go ahead, Perce,” Braddock murmured. And reached up to pull down Sasha’s hand and tug them along.

They immediately dragged their palm away from Braddock’s with a sticky slither, leaving a thickening red smear on her hand.

But they continued to follow Braddock very close behind as they marched beneath the gates, a towering shadow behind the she-toad.

… The world looked a whole lot bigger from down here, rather than up in the bird-tall tower.

Well, Braddock thought slowly. We have to start somewhere. Stop by some camps, or maybe even find some clade-relatives… Maybe find Sasha’s life-companions, too. Not like we’ll have much else to do if we’re going camp-hopping.

Most toads that weren’t either military or in some kind of agricultural arrangement lived life far more nomadically, traveling in groups and settling in well-trod, sprawling campsites for weeks before splitting up or joining up with other toads for the next stretch of the eternal journey. If they were going to be looking for strange creatures, this was the best way to either find the humans themselves, or perhaps catch snatches of strange beast-sightings from a huntstoad.

One thing was for certain, though. If the Night Guard had a vested interest in these human creatures, it meant Sasha would need to disguise themself somehow to avoid drawing Newtopian attention. Or other kinds.

Some of the more traditional old fart toads still wore battle-masks in combat. I wonder if I can find some good whittling wood…

--

Sasha shrugged her furred cloak higher onto her shoulders, re-adjusting her pack-strap with it.

She, Braddock, and Percy had been living on the road for months, but Sasha still found herself rapidly bouncing between soot-dim boredom and the flash-flare hypervigilance that had her resting a deceptively casual hand on the heronfeather-pink hilt of her sword.

She looked back to see Braddock and Percy already shifting their hands closer to their own weapons- subtle, non-threatening but still bringing awareness to their armaments in a way that was, apparently, polite among stranger toads greeting each other. They must have heard the same thing Sasha did.

An oak-creaking rattle trundled up behind them, the sound barely audible over the whistling wind that scraped across the dry swamp's border.

A wagon, or a cart of some kind. Which meant people- either a good or a bad thing, with little way to tell.

"[Incoming,]" Braddock muttered, elbowing Sasha's hip.

Translation: play it cool. You're a passing toad, not a warm-blooded monster with a scent for blood.

Sasha nodded as she slid down the visor of her toad-faced mask. “[Got it.]” She knew the song and dance.

This was far from the first time they'd run into Amphibians on the road- after months of wandering looking for signs of human sightings, Sasha had been caught out a few times for what she was.

Often it didn't matter too much, beyond weird looks and maybe some uppity newts not wanting the fair-feathered and obviously predatory creature near their fancy silkworm livestock- even though catching the dragonflies that actually were carrying off the worms was Sasha and her companions' job.

Other times, it ended... poorly. For the other toad, of course- a few blade-scars were nothing compared to how Sasha had left the poor idiots who thought they could earn renown and steel by hunting a fur-caped monster. Tying them upside-down under a bridge with the rope-coil she used as a ranged option instead of a toad's long tongue was being nice.

And the less said about the even dumber monster-hunters that went after Braddock, the better. Sasha took her payment in blood, but Braddock had taken their attacker's life when he made the mistake of turning on Sasha and trying his damndest to shove a knife through her visor.

Apparently, being adopted into her clade hadn’t just been a loophole Braddock wriggled right through to block the Tower toads from whatever they were about to do with Sasha. The squat she-toad had very much meant it, in the way that older toads were expected to protect and care for their clade’s wards until an orphaned toadlet could fight their own battles for the family branch.

Sasha… still wasn’t sure how she felt about it. She already had a mom- and even if Mom kind of sucked, at least Sasha knew how to work around her, or get her to leave her alone, or to bend her away from fighting with Dad over some dumb crap that made Sasha’s life between them way too annoying.

Braddock had just pulled her down into a sit, firm and no-nonsense, and haltingly told Sasha to take off her mask in croak-crackled and accented English. Percy’s finger-pads had been gentle even as Sasha heatlessly bitched and moaned at him while he swiped away the blood and bandaged up the deep gash cutting across her cheek. He’d heartily patted her shoulder when he was done in a way that made Sasha flush with mortification, because she felt like a little kid who got handed a sticker after a doctor’s appointment. Embarrassing.

Afterward, those less-peaceful encounters usually meant adjusting something to blend in better. Her clothes, her stance, her voice, her toad face-carved mask. Even how she thought of herself, because a disguise of immersion first had to be a mirror of yourself.

After living with them for so long, picking up odd jobs as guards or more... mercenary work for the copper needed to keep going, Sasha had slipped into thinking of herself as a toad disturbingly smoothly.

And she passed better every time they joined up with another camp, or ran into other travelers, or picked up the same high-volume job a bunch of other toads did.

Turned out non-military working-class toads were pretty nomadic by nature, leaving and joining tiny roach-roving groups of their fellows as they lived. Joining up with one for a bit meant a better campfire, shorter night watch shifts, and battle-tales told over a fire, the details sloshing over the boundary of truthful retellings like the Bog Grog spilling over the rim of their mugs as they regaled their audience.

Sasha listened intently to each one, furiously absorbing as much Amphibian as she could in the hopes that one of these bragging toads might describe an encounter or a repeated rumor of a deceptively strong, long-limbed creature.

… Sasha also might have given in to the temptation to grandstand in front of the fire herself. After she sneaked a Bog Grog on her own when Percy wasn’t looking, too swamped by a pack of toads bribing him to play old song-stanzas and bawdy tavern tunes in equal measure. Sue her.

The other toads were too drunk themselves to care, enraptured by Sasha recounting the bucking heron falling to the ground as she sheathed her sword up to the hilt in its neck. They hooted uproariously and slapped her back in congratulations when she told them her toad-mask was painted crimson across the brow in recognition of the heron-blood spray that washed her face and dyed her hair red as the moon.

Okay, that last one had been a lie. But it just might have made the copper-sticky memory of how it felt crusting over her face a bit less stomach-churning.

… Maybe the more times she told that story, the less scary it would be to remember.

Point was, Sasha Heronslayer, Clade Henshaw, was starting to garner a bit of a reputation among the other Henshaw toads. And that reputation, small and scattered as it was, could just as well be a boon or a bane, depending on who they passed on this road.

“[Hey there, stranger. Where’s this road takin’ you?]”

Not a threat, Sasha mentally dismissed. Just some old guy.

Leaning from atop the slowing snail-pulled wagon, the elderly frog casually continued, “[We’re heading to the Dry Swamp, so I figured I’d ask if we were going the right direction.]”

“[Oh, hey, we’re going that way too!]” Percy brightened, while Sasha suppressed a groan. Oh, star-steel cut her down now- adults and small talk.

“[On foot?]” the old frog frowned, clearly thinking Percy was a few knives short of a full throwing set- and the ridiculous jester’s hat couldn’t be helping that assessment. “[You sure? The place is pretty dangerous even with] ᔑ ᓵᔑ∷ᔑ⍊ᔑリ…”

Eyes squinting with the beginnings of cataracts passed over Percy, to Braddock, and landed on Sasha, who remained relaxed- even if he tried to pull anything, the old coot would be no match for her or her buddies.

“[... Kinda tall for a toad, aren't you? Lanky, too,]” he added, contemplative as a lakefront. “[Sure you ain’t a newt?]”

“[Yes, yes, heard it already.]” Sasha grumbled, voice glass-gritty from inside her mask. “[My parents are more tall. I get it from them.]”

“[Well, that’s fair enough. My granddaughter is] ᔑ ⊣╎ᔑリℸ [too!]” He peered over at them again. “[Say, do y'all want a lift? You get across faster, and if anything nasty tries to eat us, I assume you know how to use those swords?]”

Shit, I forgot how hard frog and newt accents are to understand…

“[I’ve never camped with frogs before, but more arms makes the weight lighter.]” Braddock saved Sasha the effort of arranging her own response. “[Thanks for the ride, too. We should be able to handle any predators that attack us.]”

“[Go ahead and climb aboard, then. You can grab a spot on the roof.]” The old frog reigned in his snail to a full stop. “[Say, what are your names, strangers?]”

Braddock hauled herself up the ladder, perching heavily on the bench-floor. “[Oh, I’m Braddock. This is my companion, Percy-]” she leaned down to haul up the other toad, who squeezed behind her to sit on the roof as directed. “[-and my ward, Sasha. Clade Henshaw, all of us.]”

“[Ah, traveling with the young’uns too? I’ve got my own kids in the back- three grandchildren.]” The old frog’s voice carried over Sasha’s head as she took Braddock’s anchoring hand and settled onto the bench. “[Don’t mind ‘em if they come up to sightsee, they’re a curious bunch,]” he said amicably, a sand-grit undertone of ‘if you try any shit with my kids, I’ll drop you in the middle of nowhere to wither into raisins’ acting as the silent but obvious follow-up.

Ah, three grandkids. Made sense that the old guy offered a nice exchange of services to them despite the fact that rural frogs had the least reason to trust any toads crossing their path- even if the nomadic bands of toads had a bit more of an understanding with their smaller cousin-species, in comparison to the military. Better to have as many swords between your tadpoles and the nasty crap in the desert as you can. Same as how it was better to have wheels and a snail than end up sinking to your sand-quick death or eaten by some oversized ant-lion.

Braddock- you traitor, leaving me to be the social buffer!- scooted over the back of the seat to make room for Sasha, who was left awkwardly sitting on the bench, shoved against the very edge as far away from the old coot as she could manage without falling off the wagon. Because he kept staring at her, blade-wise eyes narrowed thoughtfully as Sasha resisted the urge to reach up and straighten her toad-mask.

He blinked, “[Oh! Right, got distracted. Name’s Hopediah Plantar, nice to meet y'all.]”

Sasha waved half-heartedly, still struggling to make out the tenses and tones behind weird frog-croaks- she’d been around just toads for the most part. This is going to be a long desert crossing, isn’t it…

Chapter Text

Anne had decided rather quickly that she’d take the weird frog creatures over whatever else this crazy place had to offer.

At least the blue frog she’d tried to get help from- they had a hat, and was playing an instrument, surely they could talk to her- was only about half as tall as she was.

The other things she’d encountered in these swamp-washed woods? Not so much.

It still didn’t mean she was happy being followed. Stalked, hunted, whatever. Point was, she’d spent hours trying to slip away from the squeaky ribbits echoing in the moss-stippled forest, and clearly she wasn’t shaking them any time soon.

So, drastic measures. Girl Scout measures.

Anne’s memory and her knots both held true, and the fiber-snap of a sprung trap followed by a weird shriek proved that the snare had worked.

Impatiently, she shoved blade-scratchy grass aside with her improvised spear, jabbing her finger in the direction of the pink creature she’d caught.

“You! Stop following me!” Anne growled, stomping her socked foot for emphasis- and immediately regretting it, no shoe, sharp sticks on the ground, ow.

The pink frog craned their head up from where they dangled, patched hat flopping away from their face. Maybe it was too much to hope for, but…

“A⍑⍑! bᒷᔑᓭℸ ̣ , ||𝙹⚍’∷ᒷ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ- ↸𝙹リ’ℸ ̣ ᒷᔑℸ ̣ ᒲᒷ!” they babbled, waving webbed hands as if to ward her away. “I’ᒲ ∴ᔑ∷リ╎リ⊣ ||𝙹⚍, i ℸ ̣ ᔑᓭℸ ̣ ᒷ ℸ ̣ ᒷ∷∷╎ʖꖎᒷ! i ᒲ╎⊣⍑ℸ ̣ ʖᒷ- i’ᒲ !¡𝙹╎ᓭ𝙹リ𝙹⚍ᓭ! yᒷᔑ⍑!”

Anne sighed, stabbing her sharpened stick into the ground so she could try and pinch away the stress building behind the bridge of her nose the same way Dad did when especially exasperated. Of course it was more weird nonsense instead of actual words.

… Or maybe it was words, Anne realized, looking up from her budding headache.

Her stalker had stopped yelling at her, instead dangling limply from the snare with a suspicious squint. “W⍑ᔑℸ ̣ ’ᓭ ∴╎ℸ ̣ ⍑ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ リ𝙹╎ᓭᒷᓭ? s𝙹ᒲᒷ ꖌ╎リ↸ 𝙹⎓- ╎リℸ ̣ ╎ᒲ╎↸ᔑℸ ̣ ╎𝙹リ ℸ ̣ ⍑╎リ⊣?” And yup, those were identifiable words, behind the croaking undertones and intermittent squeaks.

Still had no idea what they were saying, though. Anne crossed her arms, giving him her best imitation of Mom’s Behind The Counter Business Look. Maybe it was a long shot, but one worth aiming for.

“Listen, whatever you are, do you know anyone who speaks English? Een-glish,” she pronounced slowly, drawing out the word. “Or Thai, really.”

Their look of incomprehension was easy enough to see on their weird pink snout. Well, there’s my answer. Maybe they’ll at least get the hint to stop chasing me after I leave them here for a bit…

Rustle.

Anne froze, ears prickling with the faint shuff of reeds against spiked chitin. She knew that sound.

The thuds of clawed feet and the threatening screech echoing from way too close only confirmed it.

It’s back already? I thought I lost it!

Complain about it later! Anne pushed the thought away, snagged her spear, and bolted, the mantis-monster’s roars nipping at her heels.

And something else, underneath the vivid shrieks.

“W⍑ᔑ- 𝙹⍑ リ𝙹. O⍑ リ𝙹, 𝙹⍑ リ𝙹, 𝙹⍑ リ𝙹-”

Anne slowed, risking a glance over her shoulder.

The frog creature hung in clear view of the monster, climbing up the rope and gnawing at it uselessly. They looked up.

Their scream echoed across the clearing, rattling in Anne’s ribcage.

… They sounded like a person. A really scared one.

Faster than thought and stronger than instinct, Anne ran back, towards the monster. The wood shaft of her weapon creaked as she forced the point of it through the rope, releasing the frog into a fall that ended with them flat on their face.

No sooner had they hit the ground than Anne hauled them up into her arms, pivoted on her toe, and sprinted back into the thick bushes, adrenaline pounding through her skull and legs.

The little frog-guy tucked under her arm clung desperately to her wrist, their heart hammering beneath her hand just as fast as her own was. Can’t keep running for long, gotta hide- there!

Anne’s legs burned with what was probably going to be a real nasty road-rash as she slid into the hollow tree-trunk, but she’d take a few scrapes over nearly getting her arm taken off by the bug-monster again.

Rustle. Thud.

Still pressing the jittering frog-kid to her side, Anne peered through a bark-split crack, the smell of fungus and wood-rot tickling her nose. Her fellow mantis-victim froze, their ragged pants deliberately dying down into quiet, even puffs of breath.

The mantis stalked past them, working its mandibles as it hunted the clearing for movement. Anne held her breath.

Satisfied that there was no prey here, the mantis turned away, forging through the brush in search of new creatures to terrorize. Still can hear it, not yet-

“Hᒷ||, i ℸ ̣ ⍑╎リꖌ ╎ℸ ̣ ’ᓭ-” the frog-kid started, only to be cut off when Anne swung her hand up to cover their mouth that was going to get them caught again, were they deaf?

Anne listened, her whole body vibrating at the slightest sound.

The chirping of small creatures seeped back into the forest, and the stomps and shrieks of the monster didn’t reappear.

Anne turned away, slumping against the rough curve of the tree-hollow, her companion still tucked underneath her arm. “Holy heck, that was close.”

Something wet and slimy swiped across her palm.

“Ew,” she scowled, whipping her hand away from the frog and swiping it across her skirt. “Did you lick me?”

They didn’t answer, instead hopping away to lean against the opposite side of the hollow. Stared at her, eyes wide with apprehension and a sunlit thread of something like wonder.

“Y𝙹⚍- ||𝙹⚍ ᓭᔑ⍊ᒷ↸ ᒲᒷ,” they said slowly, tilting their head and squeaking in the back of their throat when Anne mirrored them. “Y𝙹⚍’∷ᒷ… リ𝙹ℸ ̣ ᔑ ᒲ𝙹リᓭℸ ̣ ᒷ∷, ᔑ∷ᒷ ||𝙹⚍?”

“Yeah, this isn’t gonna work dude. I don’t speak frog,” Anne sighed, sinking further into her moping slump and closing her eyes. The gentle thunk of the back of her head against the hollow was probably a bit overdramatic, but so was everything else happening to her.

As if to punctuate her helpless frustration, her stomach rumbled loud enough that she would’ve worried about the mantis hearing it, if it was still nearby. Great. Anne had almost forgotten just how long it had been since she ate something, now that the granola bars and the snack Mom packed were gone.

Anne cracked open her eyes to see the frog on their feet, eyes trained on her.

They backed away, slowly, like she was a bomb about to go off. Down the log. Out of the hollow.

“Wait- no-no-no, it’s fine, don’t leave!” Anne implored, reaching out to their vanishing form as they hopped away.

Andddd he’s gone. Anne dropped her outstretched hand, fog-choking loneliness creeping under her skin. She hadn’t talked to another person in so long, even if what they said was nonsense to her. The frog-kid was a cute little guy, too- definitely nicer than the blue one, and more likely to actually help Anne.

More likely, but not guaranteed. Anne pulled her knees up to her chest, tucking her body inward and wrapping her arms around herself in a memory-faded imitation of a hug.

“Back to square one, I guess,” she muttered.

Nobody answered.

Guess it was too much to hope that she might make a friend. Or at least find someone or something that wasn’t going to kill, eat, or run away screaming in terror from her.

Almost absently, Anne scratched at the bark at her back. She really should get up and go back to her cave, maybe find her flimsy homemade spear. Definitely find something to eat, because she’d never been this hungry before; the kind of pain-hollowed emptiness that clawed in her gut like a living thing.

She got one of the snares to work, at least- the frog-kid proved that. Maybe if she found a bird or a rabbit pecking around this weird place…

Knock knock.

“Yeek!” Anne squeaked, springing up and away from the sound of something knocking on her log-

Hissed, falling to her knees and rubbing the sore spot where she banged her head on the top of the hollow. Ow.

At the entrance, a faint click-croak drifted into Anne’s shelter.

“Weird little frog kid?” Anne asked incredulously.

Encouraged by her fern-soft tone, the pink frog leaned even further in, face pressed close to the rim of the log. “Y𝙹⚍’∷ᒷ ⍑⚍リ⊣∷||, ∷╎⊣⍑ℸ ̣ ? s𝙹 ||𝙹⚍ ↸𝙹リ’ℸ ̣ ⍑ᔑ⍊ᒷ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ᒷᔑℸ ̣ ᒲᒷ- ⍑ᒷ∷ᒷ!” They unclasped their fingers, stretching their arm out close enough for Anne to touch.

“... Uh, why’d you bring back a bug?” And it seemed to still be moving, too, ew.

Anne’s stomach betrayed her once more, and she curled further around herself.

Instead of running away again, the frog tip-toed up to her, and in a bold contrast to their careful steps, they grabbed her wrist, gently guiding it palm-up.

They then dropped the beetle in her open hand, looking ridiculously proud of themself. “T⍑ᒷ∷ᒷ ||𝙹⚍ ⊣𝙹! e⍊ᒷ∷||𝙹リᒷ ꖎ𝙹⍊ᒷᓭ ʖꖎ⚍ᒷʖᒷᒷℸ ̣ ꖎᒷᓭ, ᔑリ↸ i’ᒲ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ʖᒷᓭℸ ̣ ᔑℸ ̣ ᓵᔑℸ ̣ ᓵ⍑╎リ⊣ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷᒲ!”

Anne looked down at where the bug’s antennae twitched at the precipice of her palm. Gross. She couldn’t help her grimace of disgust, but… she got the impression the little frog was trying to help. And they’d left after her stomach growled, then gave her the bug after they heard it again…

Oh! In a mirror-movement reflecting the frog’s own gesture earlier, Anne deposited the beetle back into their hands. As they looked up at her in confusion, she plucked a half-wilted leaf from her hair, holding it up next to her face and miming taking a bite out of it. Vegetables, roots, that kind of stuff!

Round gray eyes widened. “O𝙹𝙹⍑, ||𝙹⚍’∷ᒷ ᔑ !¡ꖎᔑリℸ ̣ ᒷᔑℸ ̣ ᒷ∷!” They stepped in closer, staring at Anne and her example-leaf with a critical concentration that could rival Marcy getting into one of her games. “W⍑|| ↸𝙹リ’ℸ ̣ ||𝙹⚍ ⋮⚍ᓭℸ ̣ ᒷᔑℸ ̣ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ꖎᒷᔑ⎓, ℸ ̣ ⍑𝙹⚍⊣⍑?”

The beetle chose that moment to try and escape its fate, leaping to the side in a desperate flight.

Without even taking their eyes off her, the frog-kid snapped out their tongue, ending the beetle’s escapade and crunching on it like Anne would a particularly crunchy piece of popcorn.

“Whoah, dude, you’ve got some reach!” Anne grinned, sticking out her tongue as far as it would go- a tiny fraction of the extendo-tongue her new buddy apparently had.

Their eyes bulged slightly as they swallowed their snack, continuing to stare. Yellow peeked from between their jaws, their sticky tongue poking out in a way that reminded Anne of the photosets she’d look up online of blepping cats.

She couldn’t help it. Anne snorted. Giggled, uncurling further when she heard more froggy noises; her newfound ally puffed up their throat sac, and they looked even more goofy and cute, with their tongue still sticking out.

The gentle ribbits sounded a lot like laughter, to Anne.

--

“Wow, you really are nothing like Wally said- you don’t even eat people!” Sprig marveled, perched on a stump while the ‘beast’ crunched their way through the fruits of his foraging. “Well, maybe not most of it- you are pretty ugly.”

As if divining his insult through the wool-thick curtain of a different language- which, wow, was nothing like Sprig had ever heard, even from the tax collector gang from the South Tower or that one time a Newtopian passed through town- the creature narrowed their eyes at him.

The moment passed when they bit into a knobbly branch of saltroot- and their face lit up. “O⍑, ℸ ̣ ⍑ᔑℸ ̣ ’ᓭ !¡∷ᒷℸ ̣ ℸ ̣ || ⊣𝙹𝙹↸, ᔑᓵℸ ̣ ⚍ᔑꖎꖎ||. Aꖎᒲ𝙹ᓭℸ ̣ ꖎ╎ꖌᒷ ⎓╎ᓭ⍑. Wᒷ╎∷↸↸↸↸.”

… Sprig had only gone so low as to bring something as gross-but-technically-edible as saltroot because he was worried about how much someone so big needed to eat. But they seemed to… like it? “Okay, so what the heck even are you?”

“B⚍↸↸||, i ℸ ̣ ⍑╎リꖌ ∴ᒷ ᒷᓭℸ ̣ ᔑʖꖎ╎ᓭ⍑ᒷ↸ ∴ᒷ ᓵᔑリ’ℸ ̣ ⚍リ↸ᒷ∷ᓭℸ ̣ ᔑリ↸ ᒷᔑᓵ⍑ 𝙹ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ∷,” the creature slurred around their mouthful of mushrooms and roots. “T⍑ᔑリꖌᓭ ⎓𝙹∷ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ᓭℸ ̣ ⚍⎓⎓, ℸ ̣ ⍑𝙹⚍⊣⍑. Y𝙹⚍’∷ᒷ ᔑ ꖎ╎ℸ ̣ ᒷ∷ᔑꖎ ꖎ╎⎓ᒷᓭᔑ⍊ᒷ∷.”

… Right, fog-flat and toneless nonsense, without even a croak or a ribbit or a threatening scree to help Sprig translate.

Sprig scrunched up his snout in deep thought, undercut by the sound of the creature’s fidgeting feet scuffing up the dirt.

Oh!

Sprig ignored their puzzled gaze as he dug around the bushes, until he found his prize.

Intrigued, the creature leaned further to follow the quick flicks of his stick scoring lines into the dirt. A deeper, drawn out questioning sound fluttered from them when Sprig turned proudly to display his art, tapping between the drawn figures with his stick.

One drawn figure stretched twice as tall as the other, with a scribbled poof on top of their head and that weird shield pattern on their shirt. The other was shorter, with goggled eyes and a slingshot held in one poorly-drawn hand. After a moment of thought, he scratched out representations of Hop Pop and Ivy, too.

Just like Drawsidoodle- the question this time was just ‘What kind of thing are you?’

Sprig circled the three smaller figures. “Frog,” he said, labeling them. He pointed to himself proudly. “Frog! We’re frogs.”

“Frog?” the creature tested, pointing at Sprig.

“Yeah! So what are you?” Sprig asked, pointing first to the creature, and then to the stick figure in the dirt.

“O⍑! i’ᒲ ᔑ- ∴ᔑ╎ℸ ̣,” they coughed, before pointing a spindly finger at the dirt representation. “H⚍ᒲᔑリ.”

“[Hyu-mann,]” Sprig swished the word back and forth in his mouth like he would cowapillar milk that had something slightly off to it. “Weird! But that’s the easy part.”

But the creature was ignoring him, chin propped thoughtfully in dirt-scrubbed hands before perking up and swiping two of their fingers in an odd crack sound.

“Frog, frog, frog, frog,” they pointed out each of the drawings, and then Sprig himself.

Then, to his shock, they circled the representation of him, gesturing between Sprig and his poorly-drawn counterpart with a questioning tilt. “C’ᒲ𝙹リ, ||𝙹⚍ ⊣𝙹ℸ ̣ ᔑ リᔑᒲᒷ?”

“Um, I… You asking about- right, can’t understand what I’m…” Sprig muttered to himself. Encompassed himself and his dirt drawings with wide, exaggerated motions. “Frogs.” Jabbed a thumb towards himself. “Sprig!” We’ll leave last names for later.

“Sprig, ⍑⚍⍑?” The creature smiled, holding out one hand and planting the other on their chest. “Aリリᒷ. Aリリᒷ b𝙹𝙹リᓵ⍑⚍||.”

“Anne Boonchuy. Can I just call you Anne- weird name, by the way, but you’re already pretty weird so it fits!” Sprig decided.

He also decided to take the risk, and slapped his palm into theirs. “Nice to meet’cha!”

Their hand was strange. Summerstone-warm and dry enough that Sprig’s finger-pads stuck to them a bit. Like bird legs, or heck, even scarier- a mammal.

But Anne was so clearly a person, and they saved his life, and they were pretty cool to be around, too. Sprig liked making people laugh, soaking up their compliments and appreciation like dried moss did water. And Anne was nice! They had a contagious laugh, and Sprig kinda wanted to hear it again.

Besides. Nobody deserved to be alone like they seemed to have been.

Well, may as well go three for three on Decisions Hop Pop Would Yell At Him For. Sprig leaned back, tugging the creature until they rose to their feet and he had to stretch his hand up to continue holding theirs.

“Come on! I can show you around Wartwood- most people are kind of small-minded, but once I tell them you’re a plant-eater they’ll probably just glare at you instead of mobbing you.” Sprig paused to take a breath from his dizzying spiral of words and point out where he saw a troop of blunt pitchforks marching through the top of the thick bushes. “Oh, hey, speaking of them, there they are!”

Wait. The townspeople were here. And the only reason they would be out here with full mobbing force… “Uh-oh.”

Anne stood to their full towering height, hands spread low and defensive and oh no, were those weird blunt claws for more than just plucking leaves-

“S-ᓭℸ ̣ ᔑ|| ᔑ∴ᔑ|| ⎓∷𝙹ᒲ ᒲᒷ!”

The familiar forms of his neighbors swarmed around Sprig and Anne; he could barely see his new maybe-friend’s head from where he’d been shoved behind the adults.

And then their head vanished, the creature in the woods toppled like a tied bird.

“Hey- hey, hey wait!” Sprig tugged at the mob and pulled at the flying rope, nearly getting elbowed in the face for his trouble. “Stop! You’ve got the wrong idea!”

But mobs were a long-practiced recreation for Wartwood- hands to his face in worry, Sprig shuffled past the adults, to where Anne writhed against knotted rope and looked up at him, rather than down upon him as he’d quickly grown used to.

The strange round eyes and dry skin and the weird ruddy stains across their face shouldn’t have made any sense but…

Anne looked just as scared as Sprig had felt, caught in a similar snare and staring down blood-bristled death.

A hearty slap to his back yanked Sprig back to himself. “I’m impressed! You caught the monster!”

“Hop Pop!” Sprig backed away, gesturing helplessly from himself to Anne. “This wasn’t the plan!”

“Well not everything can go to plan! You were lucky we got here before you got yourself ate!” Wally called from where he stood proudly by the stake he’d hammered in- and conspicuously out of range of the monster.

Even though Wally was the one who was in the wrong, Sprig almost couldn’t blame him- even pinned down, Anne looked scary, now. Blue-blooming eyes glared at him from above an angry grimace that made Sprig rethink his ‘tall herbivore with possible predator vision’ assessment, and their snarling panic was reverberating and low-pitched enough to make him flinch. “W⍑ᔑℸ ̣ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ⍑ᒷᓵꖌ ╎ᓭ ℸ ̣ ⍑╎ᓭ ᔑꖎꖎ ᔑʖ𝙹⚍ℸ ̣ ? i ℸ ̣ ⍑𝙹⚍⊣⍑ℸ ̣ ∴ᒷ ∴ᒷ∷ᒷ ᓵ𝙹リリᒷᓵℸ ̣ ╎リ⊣!”

“I-”

Right behind them, the forest roared.

Not the forest, Sprig thought dumbly, backing up until he nearly tripped over the breathlessly-still Anne.

The death-red mantis looked a lot bigger when Sprig wasn’t suspended at a ‘human’s’ eye level.

Even Toadstool wasn’t dumb enough to think the mantis formation would work on that thing.

“Everybody run!”

Shrieking frogs scattered like fish beneath a heron’s shadow, like Sprig really should be.

Instead he did the stupid thing, and turned his back on one monster to face another.

Anne’s struggling to get away slowed, their head tilting up to watch Sprig tear up the pegs and untangle the rope with half-wild eyes. “I⎓ ℸ ̣ ⍑╎ᓭ ╎ᓭ ᔑリ𝙹ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ∷ ∴ᒷ╎∷↸- ∴ᒷ╎∷↸ ℸ ̣ ∷╎ᓵꖌ-”

No time to listen to human-babble. “Get out of here!” Sprig cried over the overpowering shriek of the mantis attacking the townsfolk, yanking at Anne’s shirt sleeve and pointing at the path back to the log with the demanding force of the truly desperate. “I’ll distract it!”

They might not have known what he was saying, but nobody sane needed to be told to run when a spined mantis was after them.

Sprig didn’t look behind him after he’d hopped over Anne, focusing all his aim and his farm-raised determination on the monster. “Hey you!”

Smack!

Sprig reveled in the briefest moment of pride at his excellent slingshot accuracy before the immediate regret pounced and dug its teeth into him. “Oops.”

Well, he did want its attention. Just not this much-!

The mantis claw scythed down, too fast, too strong, all Sprig could do was throw his hands in front of his face and pray-

The armor-heavy sound of chitin on leather-tough dry skin snapped against Sprig’s eardrums like a bowstring. He opened his eyes.

It felt like looking up at an arching snake- from behind it, instead of in front of it.

Anne’s limbs trembled against the straining mantis’s claw, but- they were holding off a spined mantis all on their own!

“D𝙹 ᓭ𝙹ᒲᒷℸ ̣ ⍑╎リ⊣!” Anne managed between grunts and panting breaths, eyes flashing.

The world narrowed into blue-misted focus. I gotta do something!

What did he have that could take down a monster…

The rope!

With Anne pushing against the mantis, Sprig went unnoticed as he slipped between its legs, tied the rope to a foreleg, looped around the thorax, a quick swerve to catch the claws in the snare, swing around back to the ground-

Pull!

Sprig’s feet skidded across the dirt as the mantis pulled against him, and no matter how much he dug his feet in the monster kept dragging him towards it-

Warm arms lunged across his own, and Sprig stumbled back into an equally-warm torso as Anne grabbed at the rope from behind him and yanked.

The thud of the mantis falling to the ground shook the earth. It twitched, and did not rise, even as murmuring townsfolk crept around it curiously.

“We- we did it!” Sprig slumped back against Anne in relief.

His stomach swooped when Anne wrapped her arms around him and bounced to her feet, her whoop of victory echoing throughout the clearing and in Sprig’s mirrored grin.

“Well! Now that that’s settled.” Toadstool stood at the head of the congregating crowd, tugging at his vest with a look back at the frogs that told Sprig all he needed to know about which side the mayor would listen to. “Better run out the other monster too. Just to be safe.”

When the townspeople descended upon Anne, torches and pitchforks in hand, Sprig felt her flinch, her heavy breaths shivering across Sprig’s hat as she held him tightly against her rapidly-beating heart.

The world seemed to wash blue, an outnumbered fear squeezing Sprig’s guts harder than Anne’s arms were.

She was scared. And she was just like them, she spoke and laughed and defended him and- and maybe she even had a family somewhere out there, what if they were missing her?

Mind steeled, Sprig pried at Anne’s fingers, wiggling out from her grasp and planting his feet firm as Toad Tower’s foundations, arms spread to block the mob from the monster girl more than twice his size.

“Stop right there!” Sprig commanded, voice salt-sharp and serious as the deadly burning waves Hop Pop pointed out at the southern coast. “Anne isn’t a monster!”

“What kinda nonsense you talking now, boy?” echoed from somewhere in the crowd.

But they weren’t marching forward. They had stopped. “She’s not. She’s just… she’s like us, actually,” Sprig said, immovable. “She’s- she’s lonely, and probably really lost, and she can’t speak Amphibian, and… we should take care of her.”

Sprig didn’t look back. But he still heard the rustle of leaf-litter shifting, and footsteps crunching closer to him. “Uh, Sprig, ∴⍑ᔑℸ ̣ ’ᓭ ⊣𝙹╎リ⊣ 𝙹リ?”

“Oh, sure, and let us get eaten in the night?”

“She’s a plant-eater, Wally. She’s not going to eat you,” Sprig said flatly, still refusing to move from shielding Anne.

“In that case- hey, move aside- ‘scuse me- In that case, I’ll watch them!” Hop Pop shoved his way through the crowd, stumbling as he was deposited next to Sprig. “Both of them! Can’t be any worse than Cousin Stanley, right?”

“... Cousin Stanley was about as pleasant as grubhog shit, yeah,” someone- a distant relative from Ma’s side, probably- muttered.

Toadstool threw up his hands, deeming the whole debacle solidly Not Worth It. “Fine! Have it your way. But if it starts up and eating people, it will be your problem!”

Quietly, Sprig pumped his fist from where he stood behind Hop Pop. Yes!

As most of the grumbling townsfolk trickled out, Sprig fearlessly grabbed at Anne’s hand. “Come on! You can stay with us now!”

Unmoving as the valley’s mountain pass-glacier, Anne glanced down at Sprig, weird furry brows furrowed before softening. “Hᒷ||, ⚍⍑, ℸ ̣ ⍑ᔑリꖌᓭ ⎓𝙹∷ ᓭℸ ̣ ╎ᓵꖌ╎リ⊣ ⚍!¡ ⎓𝙹∷ ᒲᒷ ʖᔑᓵꖌ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ∷ᒷ, ꖎ╎ℸ ̣ ℸ ̣ ꖎᒷ ↸⚍↸ᒷ.”

Oh, right, how to… Hmm.

“Whoahhhhh, Sprig, you didn’t tell us it could talk!” Polly’s exclamation drew Anne’s curious stare; instead of cowering, Polly just propped herself up higher on Hop Pop’s head, wide eyes glaring right back at the strange creature.

“Of course she can! Just, not, y’know, any language we speak,” Sprig explained, sucking his cheeks in concentration as he used a broken stick to play more ‘Drawsidoodle with the weird creature’. “Hey, Anne! Here’s what we’re doing!”

Her shadow swam over the hasty dirt-sketched representation of a house, with little stick frogs around it. “You can live with us!”

“Hmm,” Anne hummed in an odd vibration, tongue sticking out like back in the hollow log. “U⍑, i ⊣⚍ᒷᓭᓭ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷᓭᒷ ᔑ∷ᒷ ||𝙹⚍ ⊣⚍||ᓭ ᔑ⊣ᔑ╎リ?” she said questioningly, pointing from the drawn frogs to Sprig and his family.

Shoot. That didn’t sound like understanding noises. “Umm…” Sprig dithered, before brightening and passing his stick to Anne.

“Home,” he pronounced carefully, kneeling down to circle the house and tap it. He then poked two fingers into the dirt, walking them across the earthen canvas to the house. “Going.”

Anne caught on frighteningly fast, and Sprig couldn’t help but grin when his family’s obvious shock showed in their expressions as Anne played her own round of miming Drawsidoodle.

In rapid succession, she pointed from the drawn frogs to Sprig and his family, walked her own fingers across her palm in imitation of Sprig, and then scuffed a line directly to the lopsided drawn door. “Frog, home going?”

“Yes!” Sprig bounced, nodding furiously. “Anne home going, too!”

He graciously ignored Polly’s snorting laughter at his intentionally awful grammar- and the remaining smattering of curious frogs from the ex-mob who still lingered- and instead slipped his hand into Anne’s unwebbed fingers.

This time, when he pulled at her, she followed, wary and relieved.

“... I’m not sure what you did to befriend a monster, Sprig, but I will say I’m impressed with your bravery,” Hop Pop admitted. “Let’s get you home. All of you.”

Anne either skirted away from the frogs or glared at them- if she’d had feathers or fur besides the nest of it on her head, Sprig was certain she’d be bristling it up, hackles raised.

But the entire walk to the Plantar farm, she didn’t let go of his hand.

Chapter Text

Nine weeks into her stay, Anne was especially grateful the Plantars had taken her in. This swamp-swelling place somehow got way too cold at night, and the temperatures continued to drop progressively every day.

… Which meant the glacier subsuming the mountain pass definitely wouldn’t be melting any time soon. Because that was apparently a thing, explained haltingly to Anne with the aid of gestures, a calendar, and a lot of maps and pictures.

She glanced over to where the calendar in question hung, knowing that if she flipped up one of the pages she’d see furious blue circling the date when the glacier receded in the rising summer temperatures.

She could read the little notes accompanying the dates now. And a bunch of other stuff- mostly having to do with Hop Pop’s cookbook.

Just… months. Somehow the frogs used the same calendar system her own world did, give or take a few days. And if Marcy and Sasha had been zapped here too like Anne was…

Anne almost died her first week here- and there hadn’t been a single sign of her best friends in the forest, or the entire valley; Anne had started looking as soon as Hop Pop let her out of the house with the siblings. Sprig in particular immediately volunteered to be her guide once she explained in halting English-Amphibian that she was looking for other humans dropped here, and despite the frost-nipping worry at her heels, Anne found it… fun, out exploring and playing with him. Even a family trip to the archives hadn’t been too boring with him, despite Anne’s relative uselessness reading the more technical or old-timey books.

But the archives, predictably, held nothing to help Anne get home, or find her friends.

In the previous months, she’d ranged the valley and scoured the swamps so much that her school uniform and shoes were beyond saving, only suitable for scrap and patches. Hop Pop, though, had surprised her. After dinner he’d pulled her aside and twined an evenly-notched string around and across her, tutting faintly with croaks like bubbles popping.

A few days later, he’d passed her a warm-woven yellow farmer’s shirt, far too large for any frog.

She had told him her favorite color was yellow during the word exchanges and language practice over the dinner table.

She also might have teared up a little bit, because she’d just learned what the family shrub was and that Emma Plantar- not a frog!- was on it. That, and panicked Hop Pop a little bit when she started apparently ‘leaking’. Sprig climbed her like a tree to hang onto her like a living backpack and awkwardly pat at her cheek, and then Polly started retching exaggeratedly about how gross humans were…

Both inside the Plantar home and out in the valley wilds, ‘the siblings’ slowly became ‘my siblings’.

Almost more than anything, Anne hoped, fervently as whispered wishes pressed into a polaroid under her pillow, that Marcy and Sasha had found friends and connections and security in numbers and safety the same way Anne had. They’d find each other again and they’d be okay.

But until then… No matter how hard she tried, Anne couldn’t get past the talon-shearing mountain range that clawed at the sky and caged her in like a pacing beast.

Anne afforded one last narrowed glance at the calendar, as if challenging it to move a bit faster, and then turned her attention back to the stove and the eggs sizzling on an old iron pan that was probably older than her mother. No matter the world, every kitchen submitted to the Boonchuy Cooking Authority.

The door to the first floor bedroom creaked open in a rusted song that was as familiar to Anne as breathing. “[Anne! You’re awake early today!]”

“Hop Pop! [Morning greetings at you!]” Anne returned, the Amphibian address still feeling bubbly and weird, like- heh- a frog in her throat. She’d had to get used to over-expressing to push her point across the gradually-lowering language barrier- apparently flat human faces weren’t all that easy to read for frogs.

Hop Pop’s cheeks puffed out in grinning pride. “[Hey! You- okay, that was almost a croak, but still!]”

“[Thanks! I have been…] Shoot, uh… practicing, so… [I have been doing it more,]” she amended, unsure how to make up for her minimal- but growing! vocabulary.

Still easier for her to learn than Thai, oddly, which left her with a swampy squirming feeling in her gut.

Anne scarcely was able to turn back to her current project- no salt, which made cooking surprisingly hard- before a rising yell shrieked down from the upper floors, ending in a now-familiar splat-thud sound of a small amphibian body hitting the wood panels.

Sprig! Feet planted firm, Anne raised her heavy cast-iron skillet like a poised weapon- dish-side up, of course. No need to waste good eggs.

“[It’s happening! It’s- oh, Anne! Hi!]” Sprig cut off, springing up to stand on the table and peer at her lowering skillet before snapping back to lightning-struck attention. “[It’s still happening though!]”

Anne’s newfound best friend saluted the sky with a little wooden panel like it was a sword. “[It’s below the] ⎓∷𝙹⊣ ꖎ╎リᒷ! iℸ ̣ ’ᓭ h╎ʖᒷ∷↸ᔑ|| [soon!]”

“[Oh for- c’mere boy! Raise the alarm!]” And with Sprig perched on his shoulders blaring out long, spiking deep-tone ribbits that oscillated across Anne’s ears like a passing fire truck, Hop Pop was out the door before Anne could blink.

The… warning? Alarm. That doesn’t sound good.

“[Um… do we follow?]” Anne asked hesitantly, setting her skillet back down with a careful clank.

“[Oooh, do you not- yeah! Follow them!]” Polly bounced out of her bucket, only to remain suspended in the air between Anne’s hands like a wayward soccer ball. “[Hey!]”

“Explain it to me, please?” Anne asked- in English, because Amphibian was hard on her throat in the rime-dry weather.

Not waiting for an answer, Anne dropped Polly on her head as she jogged out the door, not even wincing at the now-familiar tug of webbed flippers tangling a firm handhold in her curls. “So what’s the- uh, ꖎ╎リᒷ- ⎓∷𝙹⊣ ꖎ╎リᒷ? h╎ʖᒷ∷↸ᔑ||? HP and Sprig seemed…”

“[Freaked out? Yeah.]” Polly didn’t seem very concerned, though, which told Anne all she needed to know about how panicked she should be. Hop Pop and Sprig could both be really dramatic sometimes… “[Hiberday is when it gets suuuuper cold, and we freeze solid! Someone vanishes every time, though.]”

Nevermind. Amphibia was just like this, and everyone who lived here had a broken panic meter. Which Anne should have figured out the minute she learned that Amphibian had several different variations for a single word meaning ‘vanish under unknown circumstances’- kidnapped-vanish, poisoned-vanish, ran-away-vanished, eaten-vanished…

Kinda hard to tell between eaten-vanished and kidnapped-vanished for this one, though. Like Polly had mashed together a weird gurgling portmanteau of the variations. “Oooh, right, frogs- you guys are cold-blooded, no wonder you don’t do well in this weather!”

“Cold-blooded?” Polly parroted back at her. “I know cold- weather? And blood. What is it?”

Polly caught on to English shockingly fast, but just as many word combinations tripped her up. Same as the rest of the Plantars- Amphibian had a lot of unique words in comparison to simpler combined English words for some concepts. The translations rarely were one-to-one, as frustrating as it could be sometimes.

“I… hm. Best way to phrase it… [I form my own heat]?” Anne plucked Polly from her hair as the frog-crowded plaza came into view, holding her snugly at her side like a football. “Kinda like, uhhh… [As? Like a bird has heat.]”

“[Ooooh- Wait, are you a bird?]” Polly tapped at Anne’s arm suspiciously.

“Nah, I’m something else,” Anne corrected. Her host family and the townsfolk knew what a human was by now, though a lot of the townies still addressed her as ‘creature’. Which was the term for the myriad of things that could eat people- because there were a lot of things in Amphibia that would eat people.

Anne still wasn’t quite sure how she felt about the address, but at least none of them actually believed she would eat them, despite the sharp-toothed title. It was almost… affectionate? Like a quirky nickname. Frogs were weird.

Anne stopped in her tracks at the edge of that weirdness in action. “Uh, you guys… doing okay?”

“Anne! Polly!” Sprig and Hop Pop wailed in unison, breaking their tearless mourning over each other to latch on to her legs.

“[Possible-farewell, Anne,]” Sprig sniffled dramatically.

Polly wriggled out of Anne’s confusion-slack grasp to land gracelessly into her grandfather’s. “[Possible-farewell, Hop Pop!]”

“[Possible-farewell, family,]” Hop Pop intoned tearfully, grim as a soldier marching to war.

“Uh, guys, what the heck are you- are you, uh, going somewhere?”

Hop Pop stepped back at her incredulous words, brow-ridges furrowed. “[Dang it, maybe doesn’t translate…] We are telling you goodbye when- uh, for? [No, wait, that’s not- Aha!] We are telling you goodbye if you are vanished.”

If I’m- oh. Oh! Cloud-bright boldness rose from her chest and pushed her lips into a beaming grin. She could help! “Well, nobody’s vanishing, because I won’t let you!” Anne propped a leather-wrapped foot on the fountain rim, hardly even feeling chilled stone through the thick calluses that developed after her shoe finally died an ignoble death via quicksand pit. “I don’t freeze, so I’ll guard everyone in the town!”

“[That’s right!]” Polly gasped, loud enough to draw the attention from Anne to herself. “[She makes her own heat! Like a bird! Or maybe even] ᔑ ᒲᔑᒲᒲᔑꖎ!”

Sprig’s snout scrunched up as he looked back up at Anne. “[Really? That’s gross, Anne.]”

“Says the guy who ate his own shed skin in front of me,” Anne quipped.

Slime-damp hands pressed into the skin of her calf before Sprig violently and dramatically yanked them away, shaking out his webs like he’d been burned. “[You are warm! Ew!]”

“You little- [Do not disgust-croak at me!]” Anne hooked her arm underneath her friend, pinning his squirming body to her side as she knuckled at his hat.

“[A-hem!]”

Both Anne and Sprig froze at Hop Pop’s sweeping and loud ribbit- the ‘pay attention!’ kind that reminded Anne of her mother whistling through her fingers to call Anne back when she wandered too far at the playground as a child.

Anne dropped Sprig- or at least tried to, since he refused to release his slimy clutch on her arm.

He dangled stubbornly from her elbow as she snapped it up in a salute, and she ignored him because she was the mature one. “Right! [I’m on the guard, Hop Pop!]”

He eyed her critically, but mercifully made no comment on how she was just horsing around with his grandson instead of paying attention. “[Well, I translated for the rest of the town. We’ll all meet here tonight, when Hiberday starts.]”

Anne scanned the plaza, noting that a lot of the frogs were already dispersing to go about their business with ecstatic hops in their already-bouncy gaits- news of averted possible-doom would do that to anyone, she supposed.

“[Right!]” Anne followed after her own family, thinking Guard Thoughts; the protective flood-swell at the thought of her froggy host family vanishing in the middle of their hibernation itched at her fingers and tightened at the back of her eyes, sharp and stormy.

She’d need to rummage around her stuff for equipment at home. Maybe cannibalize the rain jacket in her bag to tie around her feet- the leather wraps like Hop Pop wore worked well enough for her in this weather, but once it started getting snowy there would be problems. Definitely take the mantis-claw scythe from the tool shed- the new one, that was way too tall for a frog but perfect for a human teenager-

Something hard and cold-edged banged into Anne’s knees.

Ow! Swearing under her breath, Anne pinned whatever tripped her with a riptide-vicious glare.

And froze, still as the frogs she’d been following home. Because they were frozen solid.

Crud, Hiberday came early! How am I gonna move everyone- oh. Anne’s panicked line of thought froze in a glacier of surprise as she tested the weight of Hop Pop’s ice cube. Frogsicle. Thing. “Huh, this is pretty light, actually.”

Okay, this… this is doable. Now where the heck did everyone else go before they got frozen…

--

Okay, so maybe Anne got bored. And thawed out Sprig. Who… ran out of steam really quickly, after they’d made beautiful snow-day memories using the townies’ ice cubes- which, hey, it wasn’t like the townsfolk were using them, at the moment.

“[Leth go of m’ ton, Powy,]” Sprig mumbled from around his extended tongue, frozen stuck to Polly’s ice cube when he tried to drag her closer with it.

“Yyyeah, okay, I’ll- I’ll pretend I could understand you around that.” Anne scooped both the Polly-sicle and Sprig into her arms, careful not to pull on delicate skin that froze Sprig to his sister. “Hey, doesn’t Toadstool have some kind of old-timey jacuzzi thing? We should totally use that.”

“[Wath a- a ‘yacuthi’?]”

“Like a really, really hot pool,” Anne explained, assuming that he was asking about the jacuzzi, because she really couldn’t understand much of what he was saying. And then kicked down Toadstool’s door, none too gently. “You two stay here in the manor, I’ll go drag everyone here to keep an eye on them while you defrost yourself.”

It would be safer in the manor for everyone- this was Anne’s chance to prove to the frogs again that she could help, especially because she still felt… kinda bad for how the tax collection went. The toads hadn’t even respected her in the first place, and it had become increasingly clear to Anne they viewed her more as an attack-spider than a fellow officer. There was no respect with regard to the townsfolk, either- just bullying.

While Anne may have gotten her arm broken- and had to deal with Hop Pop’s frankly anxiety-inducing levels of fussing, because warhammers of that size were meant to do a lot more damage- she did get to participate in her first Wartwood recreational mob! Nothing made her feel welcome like being gleefully handed rotten vegetable-ammo once she showed how far away she could nail Toadstool with one.

Also, when they melted after Hiberday, the townsfolk would soak Toadstool’s stupid fancy carpet. Because seriously, screw that guy- Anne swore he oozed grease instead of a slime coat like any other respectable amphibian.

Anne snagged her scythe on the way to the plaza, conducting a quick head count on the frogsicles clustered around the founder’s statue. Everyone seemed present, save for-

Fear howled across the snowy air, stark as a bird’s shadow. A full-throated danger-call that clawed at Anne’s instincts as sure as any frog’s.

Sprig!

No time to think, just grab the weapon and go, snow spraying up behind her heels like the wake of a sea-storm, breath spilling steam as she sprinted as fast as her legs could take her, the manor, that came from the manor-

Anne’s feet tore an angry furrow into the snow as she skidded to a halt.

An arc of white fur. Huge. Beady eyes meeting Anne’s in an implicit threat. Her little siblings, snared in its maw with Polly’s ice coating as the only armor that kept the creature from crushing the two frogs between jaws lined with frost-sharp fangs.

“Hey!” A snapping call, a challenge, a gauntlet dashed in the face of one of Amphibia’s few truly apex predators. “Sprig! Polly!”

That same predator took one look down at Anne, tiny and defiant and blazing with the mirror-sharp determination that moved people beyond logic and instinct and survival.

The weasel turned in a wind-twist of white fur, and ran. With her friends still in its mouth!

No thought, no reaction, only action, drawn from a heart-deep well in Anne that had no room for doubts, because every living soul on Amphibia was born from the sea and all that drifted and swam in the fated currents connecting everything belonged to Heart.

Anne hauled back the mantis-clawed scythe, thinking back to the videos she’d seen of people at one of those axe-throwing game places.

The moment the sky-blazing scythe left her hand as she threw it, so too did the roar of the sea in Anne’s ears, leaving her with only the faint rain-patter of ‘where did that thought come from?’

And then even that was swept away as the simple farmer’s scythe sank haft-deep into a house-wall close enough to clip the scurrying weasel’s nose, quivering as the strange blue smoke faded from its blade.

Angry eyes and even angrier hisses whirled away from the thrown weapon that had cut its whiskers, facing the little creature who had thrown it.

Huffing for breath after her chase, Anne realized, belatedly, that throwing away her weapon had been a really dumb idea.

No weapon, okay, I just need to get them out of its mouth, not them not them not them-

Through the dragon-clouds of her heaving breaths, Anne stared down the weasel as it snarled low in its chest, lips pulling back to show ice-pale fangs.

The ice trapped between those fangs creaked.

No time- too far away to reach!

Desperation just on the edge of panic buried itself in her heart, gentle as a strike of lightning; and just as lightning grounded into metal spires-

“Drop it!” Anne commanded, shoulders squared and finger pointed threateningly like she’d caught Domino chewing on a plastic bag.

In the corner of her mind not swimming in adrenaline, nearly drowned by the blue-faint crackle of static in her hair, Anne heard her own voice layer over itself, like sheets of sliding ice and almost like the tonal folds of frog-words but way, way different.

The thought was too close, too real, all it would take was a twitch in the wrong way and the ice would crack and fangs would descend and the thought wrenched Anne’s stomach painfully to the side-

The weasel’s fur stood on end, frost-brushed by the faintest blue light diffused by the ice and snow all around them.

Slowly, like a rusted trapdoor, the weasel’s jaws opened, dropping Sprig and Polly like they were covered in lemon juice and venom, like eating the prey was suddenly, painfully unpleasant.

Sprig, still holding the Pollysicle, hit the snow face-first, legs akimbo and flailing in weak swimming motions.

For the final time, the giant weasel fled, this time in search of easier prey.

“Sprig!” Blue snow-light faded as Anne nearly tripped over her own feet.

One hand on each flailing leg, Anne hauled her best friend out of the snow like a particularly bright weed. Polly still dangled from his hands- though that might just be his cling-pads frozen to her frosty surface.

“[Ooh, you’re so… ʖꖎ⚍ᒷ||. Blue. Bꖎ𝙹𝙹𝙹𝙹. Should I be blue too?]” Sprig’s words meandered and tickled at the back of Anne’s mind like the snow that started to gently fall once more- for a given value of words. Some of it sounded like it’d be nonsense even in frog language.

“[Uh, what?]” Anne tried, the Amphibian awkward on her cold tongue.

Sprig’s snout turned in an addled frown, one side rising higher than the other. “[Aw, it’s gone. Poof!]”

“... Yeah, I definitely shouldn’t have thawed you out,” Anne sighed. Adjusted her hold on the siblings so they were held in her arms like a particularly large load of laundry. “Let’s head back. And, uh, stick to one place for the rest of Hiberday.”

And maybe figure out what the heck that was. Anne’s eyes hadn’t deceived her- the thrown scythe had glowed, a blue as deep as her heart, as an abyssal ocean floor-

Maddie. Maybe she would know. Or heck, the Newtopian eggheads supposedly made an obnoxiously rigid study out of everything, so if Anne’s first choice in Maddie didn’t have answers, maybe they were in Newtopia.

They’d be going there anyway to investigate the music box and search for her friends along the way anyway.

Maybe, if they were lucky, one of her friends was already there.

--

The Newtopian pilgrimage, Hopediah decided, was a lot quieter once the kids got the leaps out of their system. Oh, they’d find room for more, trouble-magnets and rule-flaunters that they were. But in the meantime, Anne teaching them how to play- and then blatantly cheat- at human card games kept them occupied.

Leaving Hopediah with nothing but the peace of the open road, punctuated only by rattling wheels and Bessie’s occasional chirps…

And, as of now, a few fellow travelers, headed over the Dry Swamp as well.

Strength in numbers was one of the most effective ways to keep oneself safe, so extra helping hands on the journey could never go wrong. Doubly so if those hands held on to something sharp and pointy; non-military toads might be just as martial in nature as their enlisted peers, but there was an age-old and unspoken accord that could be met with them. Exchange of goods and services, long travels and routes with caravans- those were things they understood- they were more reasonable (and far less dictatorial) to interact with, and could be met on even footing.

So better a few nomads than military toads, who anyone with sense avoided for their health and sanity- though this was perhaps the smallest camp-band of toads Hopediah had ever seen. Frankly he thought this trio of toads was just this side of thundering fools for trying to cross the swamp with so few people and on foot, but he was far too polite to say it aloud. For now, at least.

Though these toads were an odd bunch even beyond the kind of stonecarved practices that defined most of their clades. Namely, their very tall offspring. With her very familiar accent, bark-scraped words echoing through the slits of the mask carved to resemble a toad’s face. And even that was shrouded in shadow beneath a cloak-hood, wisps of feathery blonde hair the only thing escaping concealment.

It wasn’t until a gauntleted hand rose to wave from beneath the layer of sun-seared wolf’s fur- somewhat shy, and even more awkward, than expected from such a taciturn young toad- that Hopediah connected the strange accent, the stilted speech, the towering height, and most damnably the five fingers… “Oh! You’re [a human!]”

The Henshaw child tensed, claw-gloved fingers curling mid-wave.

And then startled, jumping almost as high as Hopediah did when the fwagon trapdoor cracked against the roof.

“[A who-]” Anne froze, stiff as a frog under the shadow of a hunting dragonfly. “Sasha?”

Basalt-scraping tension and the dagger-shadow of vigilance fell away from the toad- human, rather- on the bench as she whirled away from Hopediah to stare at the back of the wagon, mouth agape. “Anne?”

Visor flipped up and exposing an unmasked- and indeed very human- face, Sasha Henshaw scrambled over the back of the driver’s bench to Anne’s outstretched arms.

Hopediah couldn't help but smile himself, seeing Anne’s sky-splitting grin only widen when her apparent friend collided into her. “[Sasha, you’re alive! And in- what are you doing here?]”

The Sasha girl didn’t respond, thoroughly ignoring her guardians’ questioning croaks in favor of pulling Anne up past the roof-hatch before they both fell back inside the fwagon. “[Looking for you! I can’t believe-]” She dissolved into sputters, thick brown curls catching in her mouth as she and Anne tried their level best to smash the sides of their faces into each other, Anne’s sun-scoured cheek crinkling up the nasty-looking gnarled scar on her friend’s own face. Some kind of human affection? “[... The shoe- thought you were dead.]”

“[And I thought- it was so long, and I didn’t see any sign of you in the valley- ack!]” Anne wheezed as Sasha pulled her fully out of the roof-hatch, neither of them letting go of the other the entire time.

“Anne! I know you’re happy you found your friend, but be careful!” Hopediah scolded, eyeing where the tangled girls rolled a bit too close to the fwagon roof’s edge. “You two can catch up in the back while I have a chat with our company.”

Sasha narrowed her eyes at him, untrusting, while Anne threw back her head and groaned dramatically. “[Fine, Hop Pop. Have fun with the good old days or taxes or whatever it is adults talk about in each world.]”

“Oh, we don’t pay taxes!” Percy, the male toad, interjected helpfully. “Mostly because we don’t have a mailing address.”

… Somehow Hopediah shouldn’t have been shocked the toads spoke human English as well, but it did say something as to just how long they’d been with Anne’s friend.

“[Tax evasion. I can respect the hustle, dude,]” Anne commended, un-wedging her arm from where it was pressed between herself and Sasha’s leather armor to shoot Percy a wink and what she called a ‘finger gun’. Grabbed at Sasha’s free hand once she’d finished the gesture, heedless the way the other human’s pointed expression softened at the contact. “[C’mon!]”

Bright and bubbly as sulfur springs, the pair of human children tumbled back down the ladder into the fwagon’s interior, greeted by the wood-muffled shouts from Polly and Sprig.

Soon the chatter behind the trapdoor faded to a babble-bug buzzing- the easily-ignorable sound of a group of children all trying to talk at once over rapid-fire words in both Amphibian and English.

Hopediah sighed. “Eesh, lungs fit to compete with a narwhal-worm on those three. Anyway! You two, pull up some bench- clearly we got some stuff to talk about.”

Wood creaked beside Hopediah as Braddock sat next to him with a heavy thud. “So. One of Sasha’s friends?”

“Well, I don’t see any other humans around here,” Hopediah observed. “But, yes. She scared the skin off the town when she first showed up, but we took her in. Though I gotta ask, how’d a human end up with toads of all people?”

“That’s… kind of a long story.” Braddock itched at the seams of her claws where they met finger-pads. “W- they were at the South Tower, originally, and I don’t think the military knew what to do with them, but… Apparently the King has been sending out the Night Guard to escort any of these ‘endangered animals’ to Newtopia, and was offering a pretty hefty weight of copper…”

--

“So… You’re here too- sorry, it’s just, I kinda worried I wouldn’t find you after so long searching around as we traveled.”

“That’s right! I’ve been meaning to ask- you’ve been on the move a lot, and went to a lot of different places, right? Have you seen any sign of Marcy?”

“... No. I was hoping you might have, because if both of us ended up in the valley at first, Marcy probably did too?”

“Oh, hell, just- Sasha, is she alone out there?”

“...She- she must be fine. Has to be. I mean, you survived this swampy death world so far, right? I’ll bet you she's like, reinvented the computer or something.”

“Heh, that- that does sound like something she would do… It’s just… She needs someone to watch out for her, and I know we need to head to Newtopia to figure out stuff about the box-”

“Wait! You’re heading to Newtopia!?”

“Shh! You’ll wake up Polly and Sprig! But- yes? Where were you going?”

“We didn’t have a destination in mind, frankly. Look, Anne, you cannot go into that city without a really good disguise. I can pass as like, a weird newt adopted by toads, but you’d stick out like a sore thumb- it’s too obvious you’re human!”

“Wait- why are you trying to be so… toady? Nobody in Wartwood cared I was human! Well, after they realized I wasn’t actually a monster. Or going to eat them.”

“Well duh, because that place is in the armpit of nowhere! Listen, you can’t be seen as a human especially in Newtopia because their king has a bounty out on any humans; and I don’t care if he said any humans have to be completely unharmed, there’s no way I’m trusting him.”

“Oh my god. And Marcy’s still out there- we have to find her.”

“No arguments there. At least if there’s no talk of a human brought to Newtopia, she’s safe from that.”

“Okay, so just- sneak into the capital pretending to be newts, find someone who might know something about the box, while they’re doing nerd crap we can go out and find Marcy… somewhere in the entire country… Oh no.”

“Y’know what? One of the toads I’ve talked to at the campfire did military service with the city, he said they have these massive birds they ride. Way faster than a snail. Better vantage point… We should totally take one.”

“Sasha. You are going to get arrested doing that.”

“Eh, I already got arrested once, they couldn’t hold me. I bet I could bust out of Newtopian nerd prison easily enough.”

“Wait, you what- how did you- I know you’re not asleep!”

“Oh no, I suddenly have nosy-friend-induced narcolepsy. Goodnight.”

“Sasha.”

Chapter Text

For what felt like the hundredth time, Olivia sighed and snagged the hood attached to the coat that wrapped around the creature’s waist, tugging it- or rather, they- back on track.

Though they drifted back to Olivia’s side easily enough, their curiosity remained unfettered, babbling off doubtlessly-inane questions and pointing out the tapestries and carvings emblazoning the castle halls with the hand not currently occupied with the crutch they hobbled on.

Just as well they didn’t fight Olivia when she pulled them back in step with her. The Palace Guard was rather more… twitchy, than their urban counterparts.

The City Guard, by contrast, had probably seen weirder things in the drunk tank alone than a gangly mammal breaking their leg on the stairs. And as Stewardess of Newtopia’s land and its creatures, Olivia had been the first newt they called. It wouldn’t even be the only time some animal got into the city and had to be patched up before being sent on its way.

But this… was not an animal, Olivia had deduced quite quickly. Their clothes and shoes were well kept and clean, and they held a writing utensil in unwebbed fingers to write down what looked like nonsense.

And, most damnably to Olivia, they had not reacted poorly to the doctor’s treatments. Animals did not know that they were being helped. But this creature hadn’t panicked or lashed out when the cold numbing cream was slathered onto warm skin, or when the cast was applied, or even when their bone was set- a discomfiting experience even for an Amphibian.

They’d even taken the bitter white anti-inflammatory pills without prompting- even if their resigned expression turned comically disgusted after they tossed back the medication into a blunt-toothed maw. They were familiar with the process and purpose.

However, they were not familiar to Olivia, or… anybody else, really. If the Steward had no idea what manner of beast this was, then only one other person might.

King Andrias’s breadth of experience spanned a thousand years and a dozen wars, so surely he might know what the creature might be, or where they came from, or perhaps even what they were saying.

Even now, their song-lilted vocalizations were too deliberate and enunciated to be an animal’s utterances- those were words.

Hm.

“Ahem,” Olivia’s faintly polite throat-click stopped the creature in their tracks- ah, right, she’d not actually spoken to them much, only around them. That ought to be rectified. “Do you have a name, creature?”

“Do you… have?” They stumbled through the words, their imitation oddly flat and frankly disturbing, like the ripple of a ghost in grave-waters.

“... Let’s try again,” Olivia started over. Small steps. She pointed to herself, speaking slowly. “Lady Olivia Neurergias.”

“O⍑! r╎⊣⍑ℸ ̣ , リᔑᒲᒷᓭ, ↸⚍⍑,” the creature muttered to themself, before imitating Olivia’s gesture with a flourish. “Marcy Wu!”

“Ah, be welcome under my House’s hospitality then, Marcy Wu,” Olivia dipped her head politely, and equally politely nudged the creature’s outstretched hand back to their side with gloved fingertips. Why a strange creature that spoke not a raindrop of Amphibian used country frog handshake greetings was anyone’s guess. “Do please follow me. And don’t touch anything,” she instructed, turning on her heel to push aside the crowding Royal Guards with a simple slanted glare.

Though Olivia did have to pull the creature along by their tied jacket like a pet dwarf-spider a few times, they still managed to arrive at the throne room without the creature breaking anything. Including their leg, again.

With the throne room doors safely sealing them inside, Olivia took a brief river-slip of a moment to compose herself. She bowed, sweeping an arm to the robed king- even if it was a bathrobe. “King Andrias Leviathan.” Best keep it simple, with the language barrier.

“W⍑𝙹ᔑ⍑⍑⍑⍑,” Awe clung to Marcy like static as they took in the throne room, enough so that Olivia swore her hair would stand on end. “O⍑ ᒲᔑリ, ||𝙹⚍’∷ᒷ ᔑ ʖ╎⊣ ⊣⚍||! aリ↸ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ- 𝙹𝙹𝙹⍑, ╎ᓭ ℸ ̣ ⍑╎ᓭ ᔑ ‘ℸ ̣ ᔑꖌᒷ ᒲᒷ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ||𝙹⚍∷ ꖎᒷᔑ↸ᒷ∷’ ↸ᒷᔑꖎ? o⍑ ∴ᔑ╎ℸ ̣ , ᓭ⍑𝙹𝙹ℸ ̣ , ╎⎓ ||𝙹⚍’∷ᒷ ᔑ ʖ𝙹ᓭᓭ ⊣⚍|| ⍑ᒷ∷ᒷ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷリ-”

The creature managed to outpace Olivia even with their crutch as they hobbled over to the throne’s base. Their race came to an abrupt halt, however, when the peg of their crutch caught on a stray carpet-loop, and Olivia cringed to think of what damage they would do to themself now-

With a speed that reminded Olivia quite vividly of her King’s reputation as a warrior blessed by Heart’s blue swiftness, Andrias moved.

The creature was… remarkably unphased, dangling from Andrias’s pinched fingers by their shirt like a killapillar scruffed by its parent. “O⍑, ⍑ᒷ||, ℸ ̣ ⍑ᔑリꖌᓭ! s𝙹 ╎ᓭ ||𝙹⚍∷ ⎓╎∷ᓭℸ ̣ リᔑᒲᒷ Leviathan 𝙹∷ Andrias 𝙹∷ King, ╎ℸ ̣ ∴ᔑᓭ ꖌ╎リ↸ 𝙹⎓ ⚍リᓵꖎᒷᔑ∷ ∴⍑╎ᓵ⍑ ╎ℸ ̣ ∴ᔑᓭ, ᔑリ↸ ╎⎓ 𝙹リᒷ 𝙹⎓ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷᒲ ∴ᔑᓭ ᔑᓵℸ ̣ ⚍ᔑꖎꖎ|| ᔑ ℸ ̣ ╎ℸ ̣ ꖎᒷ- o⍑! i ᓵᔑリ ᓵᔑꖎꖎ ||𝙹⚍ ‘d∷╎ᔑᓭ ╎リ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ᒲᒷᔑリℸ ̣ ╎ᒲᒷ!”

“Uh,” Andrias managed- the best one could do in the face of such relentless lightning-strike nonsense. “What have you brought me here, Lady Olivia?”

“A… well, to call them a creature would be inaccurate, though they’re certainly not an Amphibian, but this Marcy Wu was brought in by the city guard after breaking their leg. They called me in, thinking they were a stray animal that had made its way inside the walls.” Olivia smoothed the front of her scale-stitched gown surreptitiously. “As you can see, they do not speak any tongue I’ve ever heard of, and I was planning to petition for your vast experience in hopes of placing where this creature belongs.”

“Pff, if you’re trying to call me old, you should just say it to my face!” Andrias chortled, setting Marcy down on his upturned palm and offering a finger to steady them when they wobbled on uneven ‘ground’. “But yes, I can certainly help! I certainly don’t know how to speak to them, but their general appearance and shape is familiar to me, from my family’s oldest archives. The reports called them ‘hominēs’.”

“H𝙹ᒲ╎リᒷ… ⍑𝙹ᒲō… ℸ ̣ ⍑ᔑℸ ̣ ᓭ𝙹⚍リ↸ᓭ ꖎ╎ꖌᒷ ⍑𝙹ᒲ𝙹 ᓭᔑ!¡╎ᒷリᓭ, lᔑℸ ̣ ╎リ… o⍑!” Marcy released their prodding grip from Andrias’s hand, the rapid snapping their fingers dry-sounding enough to make Olivia wince. Jabbed a thumb at themself insistently. “Yᒷᓭ! t⍑ᔑℸ ̣ ’ᓭ ᒲᒷ! h⚍ᒲᔑリ- ∴ᒷꖎꖎ, ∴ᔑ╎ℸ ̣ , ᔑᓵℸ ̣ ⚍ᔑꖎꖎ||, hominēs!”

“So if you know what they are, do you know where they belong? Or perhaps if they need further aid from the Steward's House?” Olivia cut across.

“I do not, actually, I’ll have to investigate further with the Leviathan archives. But until then…” Andrias flitted his brow-furrowed gaze from Olivia, to Marcy, to the walls and windows of the throne room, before finally settling. “I would be more than happy to shelter this… Marcy, in the castle. Keep them safe until we know more about where they came from and where they belong, yes?”

“Quite generous, your majesty. What are your plans going forward?”

“I’ll send out a wave of messenger mosquitoes to put out a reward for bringing any individuals of this… likely-endangered species to my attention.” Andrias stood slowly, mindful of the wobbling creature in his hand. “Our specialists in the Night Guard will handle actually fetching any of these… hominēs that are found. They can be trusted to handle this task with respect and treat them with dignity, I assure you.”

Olivia nodded, pondering to herself. Indeed, the Night Guard were best known for their capability as rangers, handling things that required more… finesse, than the army’s unwieldy hammer was capable of addressing. Plagues, organized crime, dangerous aggressive animal attacks, and admittedly more than a few historical cases of political assassination before King Andrias restricted who the Night Guard actually answered to- the Crown, and little else.

They also, rarely, served as very effective undercover guards for Newtopian nobles or Amphibians in protective custody. They were trained to be able to work independently outside of the direct command of their higher-ups, so of course they were the most sensible option to look into Marcy’s cause.

Still, as Andrias began to stride away, he had to stop and hold Marcy in both hands, as they nearly teetered over the side of his palm to look back at Olivia.

“Lady…?” Marcy’s pitch-ended voice drifted down to Olivia, hesitant.

They sounded… very small, when they were not rambling like a flooded river fit to burst from its own shores.

“Go on, dear,” Olivia encouraged, meeting Marcy’s eyes and making a gentle shooing motion that worked on animals and supposedly small efts alike. “King Andrias has held the peace for a thousand years, after all. You will be safe here, I promise.”

Her gentle tone and relaxed smile must have convinced them of something, at least; they nodded slowly, and scooted back to where Andrias’s calloused palms cupped them and kept them from toppling down to the ground.

Olivia bowed first deeply to the king, then again far more shallowly in Marcy’s heightened direction- High Steward to Royal Guest. She turned away smartly, marching out the door in prim, even steps to where she knew the Guard were doubtless clustered by the door.

While she reassured the guards that there was no need to worry about the strange mammal-creature that had caused so much trouble down in the city, Olivia thought nothing more of the strange guest she left in King Andrias’s capable hands.

After all, what safer place was there in the world than the heart of Newtopia Castle?

--

Marcy slammed her fist into the sliding stone door in front of which she knelt, unable to truly stand with her crutch gone and the panic swelling in her lungs and choking out her breath with salt and desperate tears.

“Let me out!” Thud. “Come back!” Thud. “Please!” Thud, curled hands smarting and scraped raw where she beat on the thick granite in the hopeless desire that someone would hear her, come down the stairs, and get her out of this vast windowless room, dark with overgrowth and creeping sea-shadows.

Panting, Marcy braced her stinging hands against the floor. Nobody was coming, she knew. Because the salamander king had put her here on purpose. Stupid! Just because the alien newts had set her leg and the big salamander was nice to her, she’d let them carry her off to this- this horrible basement prison!

“Just like Duke Velthomer breaking hospitality. Lured the knights into his castle with friendship just to trap them…” Marcy shivered, tears blurring the shadowed outline of her hands as she pressed her head against the ghost-cold stone door. Unlike the knights from her game, though, she’d been left alive.

The rust-rasp of metal, the rattle of dry leaf-litter.

Marcy froze. Turned around, slowly, until her back was to the door.

A pair of round, yellow glows haunted the darkness beneath thick ferns. And they moved. Towards her.

Oh no. Marcy clawed at the wall for support, mindless of the way rough granite chipped at her fingernails because she had to get up, even if it hurt because she had to put some pressure on her leg in order to stand, and the painkillers wore off a while ago-

Panting, cringing against the wall, Marcy looked up to face the basement-lurker.

It… wasn’t attacking her. Or even coming any closer, now that the mushroom-lanterns fused to the doorframe illuminated its hide in a lifeless blue wash.

Bonsai-branched antlers tilted as the… living bush, best Marcy could call it, peered at her. Stepped closer, slow as an uncurling fiddlehead.

Marcy huddled back further, heart pounding, as a massive paw reached to her, because this was it, she had to jinx it thinking she’d been kept alive-

But… the bush-creature wasn’t attacking, when Marcy dared to look at it once more. Its mossy hide rippled, and from one of its fingers, a single stem sprouted. And grew at an alarming rate.

The moss-furred creature simply… waited, patient as an old oak.

“Is this… for me?” Marcy hazarded, pointing at herself with shaking and scraped fingers.

Insistently, the paw pressed further into her personal space.

And Marcy… took it. Reached forward, careful to pluck the flower at the stem, instead of pulling up wherever it was rooted in the creature’s paw.

Green sparked as it snapped off, faint and wispy as woolen static. Huh. Valerian, looks like. I never knew they came in blue though…

“Um, thank you,” Marcy demurred, unsure of what to do with the flower-cluster.

Seemingly satisfied, the… mossman, she decided to call them, retracted their paw, and sat heavily on its thick haunches. Now that she knew they weren’t looking to eat her or anything, Marcy looked closer at them. The mossman was quite large, nearly a head taller than her even when sitting down. Root-like claws buried themselves in the basement floor that had long eroded into dust and dirt, and even in the dim light Marcy could see them working their claws further into the sandy soil. And around their neck…

“Oh,” Marcy realized quietly, shoulders slumping. “You guys- you’re a prisoner too, huh?”

The sad little grass-whistle, humming with loneliness, was all she needed to hear to know the answer. How long had they even been down here? Far, far longer than Marcy had. Centuries, the smell of the dirt and the wilt of the alien plants and the movement pattern of the dead, windless air told her.

At least she hadn’t been chained up like some kind of animal.

“Hey, can- can you come here, please?” Marcy kneeled, waving the mossman towards her. And nearly drew blood from her tongue as she bit back a yelp of pain, ow, leg, ow. But through her grimace, she managed to make her offer. “I’m- I’m not sure how much I can do to help, but- maybe I can get those off of you?”

She still had her lockpicking set in her pocket, after all- she’d needed it to break into the storage room to release the dogs for the dance party in the hallway yesterday. Which felt like a distant memory, now. Anne… Sasha…

Marcy’s vision swam with green foliage as the mossman approached, sniffing at her hair through… actually, she was pretty sure they didn’t have an actual nose, and was just testing her scent through the dozens of little gaps between their leaves. Right.

She went slow, letting the mossman see what she was doing, but it still flinched when she grabbed onto the old steel banding around their neck. “Shh, stay still,” she murmured, fishing her pick-case out of her pocket and flipping it open.

It was nowhere near her speediest record. Or even her best work- one of the picks nearly broke in the lock. But soon the manacle split open, and clattered to the ground loud enough to set Marcy’s teeth on edge.

Unable to stop herself, Marcy reached out to brush her fingers across the wilted band of greenery around the mossman’s neck. “You really were here a long time…”

They crooned, like wind rustling lush grass.

Dozens more echoed, from all corners of the basement, and soon an equal amount of eye-glows followed those voices.

Eyes wide, Marcy bit back her curiosity and instead tried to observe silently, watching the freed mossman- the one who gave her the valerian- dig their root-claws further into the sand. Marcy watched the thin line of raised dirt travel from Valerian to the new mossman, stopping at the stubby, turnip-thick claws of the other creature; and Marcy swore she saw that line glow faint green, like a wire of chlorophyll.

Oh! Is this how they talk? Like Pando, the gigantic aspen colony-tree. All a bunch of roots linked to each other, and grown from each other.

As one, they all turned back to her as the roots retreated- one even sat on their haunches like a bear, scratching at the chains at their neck with a hind paw broader than a shovel.

“I’ll- I’ll get to all of you, don’t worry,” Marcy reassured, gripping her picks in a dirt-streaked fist even as she struggled to rise. It would be cruel, to leave them chained up like this.

The Mossman pressed closer to her, and, ignoring her squeak of surprise, lowered themself to push a leaf-layered shoulder underneath her arm in a clear invitation to carry her.

Gripping a fistfull of shrubbery, Marcy froze. The last time she trusted someone she didn’t know to take her somewhere when her leg wasn’t working landed her here, but… Somehow, the distant and dread-stalking anxiety felt off, like a puzzle piece jammed in the incorrect slot. Like she was peering into the dark, knowing there was something there, but unable to see it.

Marcy almost let go of the Mossman when strange purple flowers sprouted between her hand and the Mossman’s bent back, curled petals and odd patterns like nothing that existed back on Earth. They were still so droopy, though, colors faded and leaves yellowed at the edges as the chlorophyll retreated.

I wonder when the last time they saw the sun was… Marcy’s stomach dropped at the thought, and the vicious downdraft of a question that followed. How long will I be stuck here without seeing the sun?

The flowers retreated back into the Mossman, making way for the new wave of gentle white blooms, equally alien to Marcy as the last ones. Somehow they made sense, though, tickling at her nose and her mind. :New-root. Not-threat-not-poison. Uncut, chain-splitter, help, not burn. Broken trunk, carrying you.:

“... Yeah, okay. Thanks.” Marcy scrambled inelegantly onto the Mossman’s back. Gripped their undergrowth-covered branches with both hands as they rose, and wow, they were actually… kinda tall.

Marcy looked back at the door, the light pinned to its frame growing dimmer with every step the Mossman took. She wasn’t getting through it any time soon, she knew.

It was a small relief, at least, that Anne and Sasha weren’t here- hopefully somewhere a bit safer. And yet, Marcy wasn’t alone.

One thing was certain. Once she figured out how to get out of here, she wasn’t leaving alone.

--

A week- or, a week-ish, time was hard to track down here, away from the wind and the sun- after Marcy had been imprisoned, the other prisoners emerged from their false reef-shadows to investigate.

Marcy woke up to her mossy bed jostling her, and out of shortly-ingrained reflexes she grabbed on to the longer, tougher branch-spines that erupted from the shoulders of the Mossman who liked to act as her resting place.

After picking the locks on all their collars, the Mossmen were never far from Marcy- not that she could go very far in the first place, with her broken leg. She got the impression they were a bit lonely, to reach out and accept someone so alien into their root system, like a massive oak root making contact with thin, foreign mycelium strands.

It was cold down here, even with her hood up at all times, so they let her use their moss-insulated bodies as a bed away from the bone-chilling stone; Marcy also noticed that moss crept across her socks and clothes as a second layer of insulation, and knew it was at the Mossmen’s behest. Food wasn’t exactly something provided by their mutual jailer, but the Mossmen knew what flesh creatures needed, and their downright magical ability to grow plants extended to fruits and vegetables too- even if they were strange, and definitely not of Earth.

Between the less-than-ideal diet, the lack of sun (cold, cold, like dead air and ghosts in a blizzard-shadow), and her hobbling attempts to find an exit in the sprawling basement complex, Marcy could feel herself weakening.

So when the Mossmen cluster stirred, twigs rattling in an aspen-shaking alert-new-presence echo, Marcy bolted upright, slid off the Mossman’s flank onto one leg, and paid very close attention.

What else was down here, besides her and the walking trees?

A faint whine in the back of Marcy’s ear, like sitting too close to an electrical outlet. Like the circuit-trace leading from light, to the wall, to the ground-

Faint, lightless glowing, like a moon jelly in the aquarium darkroom, belled upward from the floor, not a few yards from where Marcy stood.

And it kept going. And going. Until a translucent sea-shadow beast with free-floating eyes and nervous systems loomed larger than a school bus, like the spookiest offspring of a sea slug and a jellyfish.

“Oh, crud,” Marcy said dumbly. “You’re uh, you’re a big one, aren't you?”

Its gigantic… head? Place where its eyes were? Tilted, in a blatantly curious way. And the Mossmen didn’t seem afraid of it at all, or even surprised to see it here…

It gurgled at her, something akin to a swarm of hagfish being flushed down a storm drain.

“Um… Hi?”

Its response sounded like an attempt to unclog that storm drain, gone terribly, messily wrong.

“Right, figures you don’t speak anything either- but, um. My name is Marcy, if it means anything to you,” Marcy waved sheepishly at it.

As she did, the dotted pink lights under its gelatinous hide blazed brighter, now a green as curiosity. Rather than make those… sounds again, it dipped lower, approaching Marcy with a casual water-ripple of its hide. Like a fish, floating sedately in winter-still waters.

Marcy stood frozen as massive floating eyeballs swiveled first from the Mossmen, who were still peaceably going about their lives as normal, and then to her. It did not touch her, though, or attempt to vocalize anything once more. Instead, one of the light-tipped tendrils, as thick around as one of the Mossmens’ forelegs, slithered in front of Marcy. And then split in two. Again, and again, and again, until Marcy felt like she was staring at a sea anemone big enough to swallow a person.

So of course Marcy tried to touch one.

The feelers- because that’s what they had to be- flinched away from her hand, the light that laced through them flaring the red-orange of imminent pain and warning.

“Yipe!” Marcy pressed back against the Mossman behind her- the fish-shadow’s limbs could move fast! “Okay, okay, don’t touch, that would be bad, got it.”

The forest of jellyfish-stinging tendrils extended from the Shadowfish to where Marcy was plastered against a Mossman's flank, but none of them touched her. Instead, they swayed and fluttered at her hands and face, like- like how Sasha and Anne would waggle their fingers at Marcy in a wave when they split to return home after school.

Oh! Hesitantly, Marcy raised both her hands, taking note of how the weird anemone-like cilia retreated more slowly this time before she could touch them again. Wiggled her fingers right back at it, mirroring the creature’s odd wave-flicker motions as best she could.

Bioluminescent green light curled in the Shadowfish's transparent mesoglea, a pleased comprehension that extended all the way down to its tendrils.

:Fellow creature,: it acknowledged, seeming to hum even though Marcy heard nothing. :Notthief notkelp-beast notshadow-swimmer. What who when is it?:

Whoah. Definitely different from the Mossmen. Wider, more thought-catching, more… present, like reading the lightning in an approaching storm rather than puzzling out the ancient history of a tree-ring’s spaces. Still not words, though- more like she was catching raw radio waves, and… interpreting them, somehow, as words and feelings. Maybe because these… shadow-swimmers- Shadowfish? Were animals, while the Mossmen were plants.

Fellow creature... It felt like something more significant than just categorizing Marcy as another living thing. Equally significant…

The green is back again. Heatless green sparks between her fingers and casting a glow from her eyes, a net of static that caught everything Marcy touched-saw-felt-smelled. Hopefully the glowing eyes and silk-thin arcs of electricity that traced to her hands didn’t mean she’d gotten portal-irradiated or something like that when Anne opened the box.

:Many-long since new stolen-people here. Notshadow-swimmer trapped how long?:

Faint viridescent light, and Marcy resisted the urge to scrub at her eyes. The tickling feeling of the green traveling from nerves to brain to eyes was weird!

She never got a chance to tell the creature that she was kidnapped and imprisoned here, too.

:Green, green, green.: The Shadowfish’s bioluminescence lit up the brightest radioactive green Marcy had ever seen, the toroidal spin of the line-patterns mesmerizing in the intensity of the Shadowfish’s discovery. :Three-green planet-worldpower in you. Lightpath-skinpattern like shadow-swimmer but big, bigger, world-big. Notshadow-swimmer speaks same lightpower, same as threelight-rift stealing shadow-swimmer from home-sea.:

“I’m… is this about the green light? I noticed it too, but, um, I don’t think it’s like what you guys do…”

:Riftlight-power in you, Calamity in you, touches all worlds all planes all states-of-being. Thief’s weapon-power not in webbed hands. In fellow creature, in fellow stolen-people! Ally!: The Shadowfish’s head sloped long and low in a oilslick-shimmer bow. :Guest-swimmer. Friend-of-the-pod.:

Well, that didn’t clear up much. Calamity? Something about the way the Shadowfish emphasized it, on more wavelengths and dimensions than Marcy could parse, put the hairs up on the back of her neck. It was weird, this reaction. Like being inside a mirror-box- you look in any direction, and all you see is yourself.

The Shadowfish crooned, and Marcy gasped in awe as the ceiling lit in an impossible subterranean aurora. There’s so many of them! None of the emerging Shadowfish were anywhere as large as the one she was talking to, but the smallest was tiny enough to be cupped in one hand.

The glow from the Shadowfish all swimming around her and investigating a new pod-guest with the feeler-wiggling greeting only cast a darker shadow in the storm-deep core of Marcy’s mind.

The feeling of be-welcome-guest-swimmer… Marcy longed for her friends. Even with her fellow prisoners it was still so arctic-dark and cold and lonely down here, so much that she nearly gasped from the breath-stealing pain of it.

My girls… I miss you. I hope you’re okay. I hope we’ll be together again.

Please.

Chapter Text

One month in, and Marcy saw-smelled-touched-thought with the green ‘riftlight power’ just as easily as she breathed, or wiggled her own fingers. Could use it on purpose, after enough practice. Like level grinding, but more mentally- and physically- taxing.

Two months in, and she’d explored every corner of the basement she could. It took a lot of hacking at plaster and wiggling her leg around, but Marcy managed to discard the cast. She still felt like she walked on uneven ground when she tried, wobbly and painful; the bone of her shin near the surface felt… bumpy, knobbly like old oak branches.

Not good. Very not good.

But… workable. Survivable. The Mossmen helped her in place of a crutch or a wheelchair, and while the Shadowfish could not touch her with their bio-acidic makeup, they lit the way to the darkest untrodden corridors in their shared prison.

Even then… the palatial expanse of the basement held no cracks that Marcy could find. The Mossmen refused to tread near the brackish water that pooled in certain rooms of the basement’s perimeter- something about ‘dead water’. The Shadowfish would accompany Marcy further, not minding the water (or the coffins, yikes), but once they reached the furthest borders, not even their slip-shimmer intangibility could pass through the coarse panels that layered the basement edges.

All of them warned her away from the gigantic cogwheel-carved door burrowed in the deepest part of the cavern. Marcy couldn’t open it anyway, but there was something terrible behind that door, she just knew it, in her bones and in the green Calamity energy nested in her ribs. An abomination of the mind, corrupted by time. A death-that-will-not-die.

Creepy, sheesh.

Three months in, despite not being able to talk back to them the same way, Marcy understood the Mossmen and Shadowfish fluently- not just her brain interpreting the green-lit root-touches and electromagnetic waves as words, but emotions and sensations and something that almost felt like memories.

Like tasting her own words on her tongue, and scenting the air for their same matched translations in humming roots and blooming flowers. Hearing the bright colors that traced songs of meaning that told as much a tale as any musical. And Marcy swore she could feel the electromagnetic ghost-hum from the Shadowfish now; a sensation that should by all rights be far beyond the human sensory scope, tracing from the tiniest nerve-tips in her fingers directly to her brain.

Marcy was a bit oblivious, sure, she could see that- even if she got embarrassed sometimes being coddled, but it was either that or being ignored.

So she might be oblivious, but she was also a straight-A student for a reason. Whatever was going on with understanding the Shadowfish and Mossmen shouldn’t be possible, because it didn’t take her long to figure out they didn’t speak any verbal language, let alone any Earth ones! No matter how frequently she poked at the green sparks she apparently made and used, Marcy couldn’t come up with any explanation that wasn’t magic.

It was like she was pulling the meaning directly from the Shadowfish and Mossmen’s ways of communicating rather than just understanding it the same way she would a half-learned language. And it was always, always with the green spark-tracery lighting the back of Marcy’s own eyelids or flickering from her fellow prisoners to her fingers.

Strange and definitely unnatural, subconscious observations of colors she should not be able to hear and conversations she should not be able to taste. But Marcy knew what it felt like, and now that she was aware of this… odd green energy that let her observe and translate phenomena beyond human perception, she could try and reverse it.

Hopefully the Fish calling it ‘Calamity’ was just a weird alien metaphor, and it doesn’t actually hurt them if I actively use it on them…

Time for some experimentation.

Calm. Like a lake mirroring the moon, arranging the green-spark threads of her own speech into something more like her fellow creatures, and then grounding it in whoever she wanted to talk to like lightning.

The calm was easy as gliding ice- but in a frostbitten, numb way. So much of Marcy’s usually-overwhelming feelings seemed numbed and distant after the months down here- by the monotony, the darkness, the cold, even with her alien companions as company.

Tying the lightning-snarled fiber of her weird green Calamity energy was… less easy, but still doable…

One of the smaller Shadowfish eeled towards her from the eaves of one of the many halls, uncaring of the junk and trees it passed through.

“Oh, perfect! Hey lil dude, I was wondering if I could try something, get you to understand what I’m saying too-”

:Thief comes! Swim-hide to shadows under sea-shelves!: The Shadowfish’s glow flickered in nerve-knots, laced with green fear and red warning-threat. :Friend-of-the-pod flee-follow!:

There was only one person they could mean.

Marcy’s heart beat fast enough that she felt it in her trembling fingers and pounding like a headache that made her even more light-headed than usual; she rocked to her feet as quickly as she could.

Oh no.

--

If the Night Guard failed to return with one of those- humans, apparently, not hominēs, according to some very cranky toads- then they were a significantly more slippery and dangerous species than he anticipated.

South Toad Tower had been rubbled, from what the Chief Ranger relayed to Andrias from their subordinates. Poked full of more holes than a caterpillar-infested broadleaf. The Tower captain was particularly gruff and taciturn, and only snarled that the human the rangers arrived to transport was gone, so if the rest of the newts didn’t want to get put to work hauling Tower wreckage, they better leave him in peace.

Of course, that was about the only consistent thing Andrias could parse from the witness reports he’d read. The human swayed a few weak-willed guards into letting them go like a bog-witch would with cordy-spores. The human called their fellow avians to their rescue, feeding poor toads to the little blonde demon’s relatives before a spat over who got to eat the prey resulted in a dead heron.

The human, bathed in red by the moon and by blood, striking a heron down with a sword of blazing death-pink fire.

That, Andrias believed- to an extent. The Wit-vessel was here, so Strength and Heart were still out wandering wild.

The toads had found Strength’s vessel… and promptly lost them. Typical.

A troubling, and continuing, development. If the Strength-vessel caused that much mayhem, and the Heart-vessel was still nowhere to be seen, not even by the specialists in the Night Guard…

Well. Never hurt to check his own Calamity-holder was still in containment, even though the Core reported nothing of note to be seen through its security cameras. Only the barest of indications the human could use Calamity’s Wit at all, and certainly not in the way it was meant to be used.

Eft’s dexterity tricks of killapillar’s-cradle and zapping the Mossmen and Shadowfish like a child would after shuffling their socked feet across carpet- done with arcing green electricity rather than string or mundane static, but still weak.

That nobody in the collective could understand the odd speech- and sometimes crying- from the human meant nothing; the Core’s examination and projected models of the capabilities of any subject it observed was impeccable, honed through many minds and many millenia.

Still. Best for Andrias to see for himself.

At the bottom of the stairwell, Andrias opened the door to a star-stricken wreath of glows.

Wide, honey-soft yellow from the Mossmen, clustered as an oak-steady honor guard. The Shadowfish, a chill deep-mist glowing with angry pink along visible nerve-chords, rolled before Andrias like an acid fog.

In the center- the human. Tiny, eyes watering and face more washed-out than Andrias remembered, limping backwards one step at a time behind the alien animals that surrounded them.

And their eyes were blazing green, their voice venom-sweet and manyfold, a fearful echo of what Andrias remembered from meeting them in the throne room. “D𝙹リ’ℸ ̣ - ↸𝙹リ’ℸ ̣ ꖎᒷℸ ̣ ⍑╎ᒲ ℸ ̣ ᔑꖌᒷ ᒲᒷ!”

Mossmen hissed like splintering branches. Stone-block floors snarled and cracked with tree roots prying apart the aged fractures; the floor rippled, slowly, above the growing plant life. A warning, but a damn good one.

Andrias took a step back, before one of the roots bit at his steel-armored boots.

A Shadowfish- one of the older ones, truly massive- eclipsed the Wit vessel and the Mossmen through a water-wavering oilslick film. It split at the head, and kept splitting in four cardinal directions until nearly the entire beast was a peeled-open false mouth big enough to swallow a giant salamander whole.

Andrias took another step back. The Shadowfish were passive beasts, true, but it didn’t mean he trusted the animals, especially with such… unexpected new behavior.

Concentric bioluminescent filaments spun bright as the neon Calamity-powered circuits of Andrias’s childhood, searing his eyes with the dawn-dark spirograph of a truly vehement Shadowfish’s intimidation display.

Absolutely not.

The heavy stone door slammed shut, leaving Andrias in the darkened stairwell alone.

< ADMIN_CORE: Wit-vessel is alive, and organic readings indicate they still hold the full power. Personal examination was sufficient (No thanks to you, craven-) >

Well, as alone as he could be.

Andrias winced against the burgeoning headache. The most pronounced personalities of his ancestors within the Core rarely fought, as merged as they were- whatever individuality was left was just an imprint of the Leviathan’s vast lifetimes and accumulated intellect, of course. But he swore he could feel them elbowing around to grab at the crown-link’s primary feed.

< ADMIN_CORE: Leave it. Shadowfish and Mossmen subjects are observed to be… rowdy, in centuries-long increments. Insignificant beasts aside from their utility to the empire. >

So be it. Andrias was better off focusing on the vessels that were out of his reach, rather than the one that was.

--

Marcy shivered against the moss-warm flank of her valerian-sprouting companion, tugging at the grown vines offered for her to hold as she attempted to breathe through the dregs of the worst anxiety attack she’d had in months.

He already took her here the first time. And the other prisoners had made it clear they were taken because of some… use. Pulling back souls and stuffing them back into bodies, gentle green chlorophyll extracted and refined to heal the thieves’ wounds…

Wherever King Andrias might have taken her, if that was what he was down here to do, it had to be worse than where she was now.

“... Thanks, guys,” Marcy muttered, resting her head against the curve of the Mossman supporting her where she sat.

:Much-many-welcome. Friend-of-the-pod small, new-hatched, far from home-sea,: a Shadowfish trilled- one of the smaller ones, younger and less ponderous than the bus-sized behemoth that preferred to lurk near the ceiling.

Far from home. Right. Maybe they know… Marcy gulped, shivering deeper into her hoodie. “I… it’s good to hear that. But, um, I was wondering if you could help me with some questions, and… maybe we can help each other out even more.”

Calamity crackling behind her eyes, Marcy breathed in, and out. It didn’t matter how different human brains and communication worked, she’d make herself understood.

--

Dear Jo-

Sorry for neglecting you, It’s just been a lot this past few weeks, and not much has really happened anyway. Same old, same old basement life, you know? Until today.

I think I burned out my voice some, speaking to both the Fish and the Mossmen at the same time, but I’d write here anyway, because this is BAD.

I finally could talk to the other prisoners, and I got better answers than the weird vague implications I could kinda feel the vibes for earlier. They call the salamanders the ‘thieves’, which makes sense, because they were stolen from their homes for the salamanders to use them.

They aren’t even from this place! They’re from whole other planets. Conquered planets, because oh yeah, did I forget to mention? That’s what the thieves do! It’s an evil empire straight from the books but it’s real, and the Mossmen and Shadowfish planets were only just a fraction of what the thieves have wrecked!

We have got to get out of here. ALL of us. These guys are dangerous, and we can’t trust them. I was already dumb enough to.

Anne, Sasha, I’m coming.

--

Getting everyone out of the basement that held them prisoner for god-knew-how-long was a lot easier said than done.

But difficult puzzles- games, boxes, riddles, escape rooms- were a snap for Marcy. The impossible ones just took a little longer than usual.

Marcy roamed the borders of the gigantic basement like a gray shadow- running her hands over cracked walls, stretching out to scent the air with green sparks like a snake’s tongue. Searching. Testing. There had to be a flaw in this prison she somehow hadn’t found yet.

And she would find it. Pry it apart from the finest of hairline cracks, with her own stress-chewed fingernails if she had to.

The salamander king- Andrias, thief, once by force, once by deception, scion of those who trapped her in the rigid crystalline matrices of a green stone when she should be the reflection of a wild and lightning-wreathed hurricane, as the mind was a shadow of a thunderstorm-

His visit shattered the remaining ash-cold numbness frosting her thoughts, making her sluggish and slow with monotony and sunless months. The steam-hiss of reality seared at her fingers, sparked at Wit, a thawing flood of emotions that had faded in the endless days in the basement.

Marcy was scared. And angry, and worried for her friends, and far more consciously aware of her camaraderie with her fellow creatures.

“Hrmmm,” she grumbled, as the Mossman that often offered to be her crutch stopped at yet another inconspicuous looking corner.

Marcy gestured between the moon-glow of a Shadowfish next to her and the smooth slate-slotted panels that lined the basement’s furthest borders. “Can you phase through here? There’s a little chip in the corner, maybe…?”

Her question was answered as her Fish companion for the day- a weird mash of a sea slug, squid, and crawfish- stared at her expressionlessly while managing to appear thoroughly unimpressed despite its lack of face. The cheliped it poked at the panel simply… slid right off. Like two wrong ends of a magnet meeting.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” Marcy sighed, skidding down the Mossman’s flank to sit in a dejected slump.

The main entrance was obviously out- it was the first thing Marcy tried when looking for an escape route. But poking along every seam and corner of the basement that must span beneath the entire palace was equally unfeasible, and that was if there was a crack Marcy could find in the first place. If she continued to search inch by inch, Andrias would surely be back from what her companions had scared him off from-

Wait. Inch by inch. Sensing- testing, informational intake beyond the normal, and that included sight and touch and-

Marcy rapidly snapped her fingers, green sparks showering down from them as if she was striking flint and steel. “No, okay, I’ve only done it on one target, but maybe like an area of effect?”

She snapped again, with both hands this time, the stim grounding her and keeping her focused- even though she couldn’t help but snicker at the Shadowfish attempting to emulate her, because it looked weird and frankly kind of disturbing when one of the Fish did it.

“Okay, okay, focus, Marcy,” she recited. Closed her eyes, and reached out, like endless fingers of static grounding in every surface around her, further and further away.

The faint smear of condensation, damp stone- still solid. Plant roots burrowing deep but halting at the solid sheet of basement under-layer that seemed to be made of… some kind of space-grade alloy? Weird. Breezes, fainter than could be felt, whispering through cracks, one wind-slip at a time.

Marcy followed those air-echoes, to square repeating panels with odd silver backing beneath the surface layer of stone. And then… more wind-movement, the flutter of abandoned cobwebs. The reflection of light, invisible rays still caught and mirrored by-

Marcy’s eyes flew open, green fading from them. Holy- mirrors! The entire basement is lined with mirrors, I just couldn’t tell because they were facing away from me!

And if one of the mirrors was facing an empty space, with cobwebs and even the dimmest light, a hallway…

“Some cultures believe mirrors can summon spirits… or ward them off…” Marcy’s eyes slid to the curious Shadowfish, who had been mirroring the flicker-patterns of green behind her eyelids as she expanded Wit’s net of perception. “Hey, mind getting the rest of the pod? And the root-system? I think I know our way out.”

Hallways lead places, after all.

By the time the Mossman with her carried Marcy to the far end of the basement, where the sealed hallway was, the entire pod lit the room in an impossible daylight aurora, and the Mossmen rumbled like splintering branches.

Marcy stood in front of the thin panel, behind which their escape tunnel laid.

She placed a hand on the surface, green humming at her palms and sliding between the grooves of her fingerprints. Chemical composition required a lot of concentration, and she couldn’t do it for anything too complicated, but if she could feel it…

All she had to do, was push. Like moving all the furniture two inches to the left, but on a way, way smaller scale.

The things a girl learns to do while watching the Shadowfish eat bones a few too many times.

Slate weakened. Cracked.

Marcy’s legs also weakened, wobbling like her knees were jelly, and she gasped for breath as if she’d been running a marathon up a mountain range.

She wiped the cold sweat off her brow- cold sweat, a tingling sensation at her fingers, oooh, that was just pain she wasn’t feeling yet, of course Marcy overshot her powers by messing with chemical bonds and would be paying for it later- but stayed standing.

Marcy took the heaviest, sturdiest branch she’d found- a Mossman’s shed antler- hefted it back as far as she could.

Swung.

Sliding slate cracked. And just behind it, echoing faintly, so did glass.

I was right!

“This is our way out- whoa-h-!” Marcy teetered backwards when the weight of the antler became a bit to much for her-

Squeaked, as she was scooped up by the hood of her moss-stippled sweater and deposited on a Mossman’s back, still gripping the old oak antler in her white-knuckled fingers.

Bear-thorn paws scuffed at the ground in preparation, like a charging bull.

Marcy had just the presence of mind to duck, flattening herself as far as she could into the Mossman’s back as it charged through the weakened wall headfirst.

“Don’t forget- the mirrors, get rid of them,” Marcy managed between hacking, dust-scraped coughs.

With the sound of mirrors breaking a glass-shattered symphony behind her, the Shadowfish roaring overhead through the cleared hallway like a rolling storm, Marcy clung tight to her mount as feeble wooden doors were knocked down, mirror-barriers cracked-

And a trapdoor flipped open.

Light.

Marcy gasped, eyes watering, because it was so bright. But she refused to close them against the glare.

Sun, through the window. It was warm up here, even in an unoccupied guest room, open-air windows spilling in sunbeams that illuminated hanging dust-glitter and traced a square of light on Marcy’s chest where it hit her. The dry, stony smell of well-worn roads, and rain-damp trees, and the sky sprawling out so wide that Marcy wanted to comb her fingers through the clouds-

Marcy bit down on her lip, hard, to stifle the sniffling sobs that crept up her throat and choked her. Just… the breathless vertigo of being out. It was almost overwhelming, with Calamity singing in her eyes and ears and the back of her throat and the tips of her fingers, just how alive the world was.

One of the Shadowfish among the many rapidly filling the room warbled, patterns of danger-orange and apprehensive purple bioluminescence flickering.

Faintly, layers of stone and giant salamander-sized hallways away, Marcy could hear the bustle of people moving, marching, chattering.

The world was alive. So were the thieves. And they scared Marcy, but she didn’t want to fight them even if they didn’t make her heart freeze with the possibility of being caught now that she’d tasted the sun again after so long. Which meant-

We gotta move fast.

Marcy wiped her nose and eyes across her sleeve. “Al-alright. Okay, we can do this.” Layered Wit across her tongue and hummed in a multi-fold harmony, gathering the attention of her fellow escapees both in the room and down still in the hallways. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

--

There was... a slight problem with Marcy’s escape plan.

Namely, the castle was huge, concentric circular hallways making it difficult to navigate even without the chaotic shrieks and rumbles of her companions.

“Hᒷ||, ⊣ᒷℸ ̣ ʖᔑᓵꖌ ⍑ᒷ∷ᒷ! iリℸ ̣ ∷⚍↸ᒷ∷ᓭ!”

... And without the armed castle guards who, from what Marcy could gather from the green threading she cast from them to her, thought they were chasing a bunch of monsters breaking in, rather than prisoners breaking out.

Marcy turned away from the guards to focus ahead, stress-sweaty hands gripping tighter on the mossy back of one of her companions-

Oh crud, corner, corner, coming up way too fast-!

The Mossman skidded to the side in a panicked turn, branch-clawed paws scrabbling against waxed flooring with a sound that set Marcy’s teeth on edge-

A brief moment of weightlessness, before the impact of her back against flawless tile struck the breath from her.

… Ow.

Muffled stomps and footsteps clattered down the hall, ringing in time with the fear and adrenaline still thrilling in Marcy’s veins.

She wobbled to her feet, shaggy bangs shading her eyes still not enough to obscure the patrol barreling right for her, thorn-conch spears pointing unerringly at her and the Mossman behind her.

Mind blazing, Marcy gauged her companion- still getting up, mounting them and running would still be too slow. The guards- not a fight she could win, and those spiked spears were meant to hurt, not for a clean death-

Her back bumped into something soft and sliding. She gripped the quilt-thick fabric in shaking fists.

The moment the guards slowed down as they neared her, Marcy yanked, hard.

Tassels fluttered as the heavy tapestry gently blanketed the guards like an embroidered cloud- and tangled like spider-silk as their spiny spears caught on the threads and their blinded flailing knotted the thick fabric around themselves.

That should distract them for long enough, Marcy thought decisively. Whirled around, shoes squeaking on the polished floor-

Stopped. Stared.

That’s a Shadowfish, Marcy thought distantly. Multi-eyed, aurora-threaded depictions that looked so much like the pod she was a guest in; the painted creatures slithered between coral-snarling black spires that evoked the same jagged cadence of her Shadowfishs’ green-interpreted conversations.

And next to the Shadowfish, charred silhouettes of Mossmen sprouted from the bottom, the burnt skeletons of trees stark against orange fire painted with a wild hand.

Backing away slowly, Marcy craned her head up.

Her eyes traced across the prong-crowned form of the salamander king Marcy had been naive enough to briefly trust, his clawed hands holding up the carefully-painted depiction of the same music box that Marcy and Sasha had convinced Anne to take. Passed over the vivid orange eyes like comets glaring down at the scene.

Landed on the center focus. On the airborne castle that hovered like a merciless star raining down spears of sunbeam beneath it. On the gentle curve of a planet she knew so well.

On three figures, green and blue and pink, tall and tailless and four-limbed and humanoid- no, not humanoid, human- and standing defiantly beneath the castle in the face of bolts of tri-painted lightning.

In the face of the mural that managed to loom over her like an arcing dragon despite its inanimate painted nature, Marcy felt very, very small.

That’s Earth, she thought numbly. And- that’s the Mossmen and the Shadowfish at the bottom there, already on fire. The thieves conquered whole other worlds, stole them from their homes…

Merciful as a descending sword, the realization buried itself into Marcy’s heart. We’re next.

The mural rippled as if underwater.

Marcy jumped, startled, as the Shadowfish rivered between her and the wall, eyestalks rotating to her as it passed.

It slowed, crunching up like an accordion about to turn itself inside out. :Friend-of-the-pod, flee. Thief approaches!:

Punctuating the Shadowfish’s intent, distant thumps of very large, very fast armored boots echoed down the hall.

“Oh, crud.” Marcy abandoned the terrible painted prophecy- it wouldn’t come true, it shouldn’t, but first she had to get out before she could warn anyone- and bolted, grabbing the shed Mossman antler to use as a crutch to support her ever-present limp. Her rear-guard trailed behind her, warbling encouragement and the promise of enemies corroded down to bone should any of them hurt her.

She’d never get out like this!

If you can’t find an entrance, make one! Marcy stumbled to a halt at one of the outer walls, sensing free-skirling breezes and the heat of the sun warming stone-

White-spark flashes lashed across her vision as she smacked face-first into the wall, sending her sprawling to the ground.

… Ow.

The thunder of footsteps neared ever-closer.

Marcy didn’t bother trying to stand. Instead she slammed both palms into sea-scoured marble, pushing so hard she swore she could feel the individual grains.

There was none of the silk-touched precision that she’d used on the mirror backing in the basement. Wit’s green lightning arcing from Marcy to the stone was more of a battering ram than a scalpel as she grabbed at the chemical bonds and shoved, hard.

“C’mon! This way!” Marcy panted through the migraine-sharp pain that brought cold sweat to her brow and flashed across her vision, red-black-red.

When the Mossman charged through the wall, it was through crumbling, soft limestone rather than unyielding marble.

The Mossman shook themself off like a wet dog, and bent down to where Marcy sprawled. She was unresisting as they scooped her gently onto their back, their root-fingers whiskering at her hands with a susurrus of :Burnt-sapling, plant-in-new-soil. Rest, fellow creature. We carry.:

Marcy didn’t remember much of the flight out of the city. The fibrous crackle of Mossmens’ green-power running wild. Lots of yelling, and pounding thud of Mossman paws on cobblestone roads beneath her.

Looking up from where she slumped on the Mossman’s back, utterly spent, in time to see the city gates, forced to remain open by the acidic touch of the Shadowfish that refused the thieves any space to touch the controls, pass behind her.

The sun on her face, wind in her hair, freedom trailing behind her as bright green ribbons, Marcy did not look back on the gleaming coral city.

--

“Your Majesty.”

“Ah, Lady Olivia! My apologies for the wait, I’m afraid the Head Ranger kept me longer than I expected.”

“Yes, I assume he did- I am not blind, Your Majesty. I saw the one who gave me quite the mess to clean up. And quite a few other animals. What is going on?”

“Ah, yes, Marcy. It turned out this creature was aggressive and dangerous after all.” A thunderous, exhausted sigh. “It’s not your fault, Olivia, it’s mine for bringing something so deceptively wild into the heart of the city.” Shuffling paper- old reports from a Toad Tower. “I’ll have the Night Guard track them down- they already know of how dangerous these creatures can be when provoked, given the destruction they reported at South Tower.”

“...Surely those reports were exaggerating about how dangerous these… humans, are? Toads are not exactly known for downplaying their… hunting tradition tales.” Primitive practices, truly. It would not be shocking if one of them got the mind to earn their steel by killing something more exotic, like one of sweet Marcy’s endangered kind.

“You saw the destruction wreaked in my very castle, didn’t you? They even did something to enthrall the animals I was… holding for Newtopia U’s zoology program.”

“... Just so, yes, the damage was… significant.” Olivia had a gift for polite understatement, but this strained even those talents.

“You did your duty well, Olivia.” Reassuring, soft, with an edge of heat. “But some things fall under my purview as King rather than yours as Steward.”

“I understand, Your Majesty. By your leave.”

“Of course.” Doubts.

I believe I shall call in one of my favors with the Head Ranger. He should take care not to harm the creature in the tracking efforts, if I have anything to say about it. Marcy did seem quite young, after all.

It is important to treat endangered species with care, and to treat people with care. Marcy… seems to be both.

--

It didn’t take Marcy very long to realize an immutable, impossible-to-ignore truth.

A good truth, though. Moth-gentle and storm-sharp in equal measure.

Now that she was actually out in it, Marcy realized this world the music box took them all to was beautiful. The kind of fantastical realm that would have been perfect for adventures, if not for the pain-pitted experience that hammered in that this realm was not a fantasy where the kings were good and the innocent were not jailed and where it wasn’t a horrible, dangerous mistake to bring a portal-creating artifact to an empire of conquerors with their eyes on Earth-

No, this world’s beauty had little to do with any kind of fantasy, Marcy realized as weeks of living wild in it flew by. It was too real to be a fantasy! She had to avoid the amphibious local species at all cost, of course, but there was so much more to this place than them!

Marcy could understand why most of the Mossmen wandered off on their own to live in freedom, only leaving a couple remaining with her- the forests were thick and lush, crawling with vines and trees and flowers that Marcy brushed against with Wit. Some to figure out what was safe to eat and what was poisonous, but mostly just for the hell of learning about this world’s nature.

The nights were equally full of life too, if a different kind. Glow-bugs ranging from the size of her fingernail to the size of cars, mirror-splintered constellations of the stars reflected in wide rivers, an illuminated darkness that was still so much brighter than the pit of the castle basement.

The Shadowfish stayed incorporeal and below the ground under Marcy’s feet during the day, but at night they emerged and swam under the lava-hammered red moon, bioluminescent ‘conversations’ aurora-bright as opposed to the dull oilslick-sheen they’d been dimmed to, down in the basement. And she stretched out her own vibrant green glows in response, sketching arcs of lightning between her hands in an unsung conversation.

It felt right to. This Calamity energy was like a muscle, it had to be used to get stronger- that much was obvious to Marcy early on, once she figured out what the strange not-magic she held in her lungs was. But what she only realized now was that she’d been trying to flex sky-spanning wings in a cramped, windless tomb. The basement might have seemed enormous to Marcy, a teenage girl, but she should have been able to sear her feathertips with the highest layer of ozone.

(So much was taken from her, by the thieves, by the massive temple-circuits dug into the earth. By her own stupid decision get her friends to open the box without even preparing them for what could be out there.)

Out here? Marcy could really feel Calamity, natural and free.

Marcy had likened it to being inside a mirror-box, once. The aspect itself was undirected, without intent and a conduit, whether made of crystal and wood or flesh and bone.

And then the moment you looked further in the infinite space of self-reflecting mirrors, you saw something else. Calamity, the Shadowfish called it, this writhing twist of lightning and ripping winds Marcy felt under her lungs more acutely every time she used it- it may not be able to think but it could move, inescapable as a storm-swell being chased by a hurricane.

Marcy looked into the mirror-box and saw a force of nature.

Sky. Wit. Calamity. You. All of it was the same damn thing, the breaths of a sleeping planet inhaled into her own lungs. The atmosphere of a world and the mind of a living being. The… the Wit of it, which was now Marcy’s.

She stopped questioning where this knowledge came from, not after she’d spent so much time actively and passively using it. A facet of her Calamity was about comprehending. Watch the world around you. See how it moves, how it is, how it was.

It didn’t matter that whatever sensory information Marcy gathered was impossible for humans, or most living beings at all to perceive. It didn’t matter that she sometimes didn’t even know where some of this knowledge even came from- she still knew how to pick out patterns and connect the dots of the data points she had.

The fact that the same unfathomable comprehension whispered the history of conquest Amphibia-the-planet had witnessed in its skies, and that the invasion shown on the wall was as true as the arc of the setting sun… Well, that had Marcy more than a little freaked out, even two weeks on the road. Just because she absorbed a lot of impossible information from her surroundings, past and present, and could weave it into comprehensive truth with green-stitched threads of Calamity energy- she had weird dimension magic, not miracles! Anything about the future was impossible to know, and there was no way one teenager could stop an entire alien invasion by herself!

She needed to find Sasha and Anne first. Make sure they were all safe. And then do whatever they needed to keep the music box, exactly the same as the one on the mural, away from the castle.

Not all star-stung nights could be as peaceful as Marcy would like, though.

Just as the sun began to set, a tiny one-eyed Shadowfish, no larger than Marcy’s palm, nearly careened into her from the lengthening shadows.

:A thief near!: it fluttered anxiously, calming momentarily as Marcy wiggled her fingers at it in a Shadowfishy greeting, only to turn itself inside-out with worry when the rattle of wheels rumbled through the chirps and chitters of all the bugs saying goodbye to the sun.

Knew I shouldn’t have walked so close to a road.

:Danger-scout. Small-thief-pod, other shadow-swimmers underground-asleep-torpor.: The tiny Shadowfish drifted behind Marcy, squishing itself into her hood without touching her. :Worry worry worry, just self and friend-of-the-pod.:

… The rest of the older Shadowfish were ‘sleeping’ incorporeally underground right now, leaving just Marcy, the recently-hatched Shadowfish, and a Mossman digging in their roots for the night.

Maybe it was best to scout out things herself, both for actual safety and to reassure the tiny swimmer with her. “Alright, stay quiet, I’ll go check it out.”

It was unlikely a cart would bother to bully its way through swamp-thick vines and trees away from the main road, but it couldn’t hurt to check.

Marcy grabbed the shed Mossman antler she’d kept to use as a cane. The butt of it dug divots into the soft dirt as Marcy kept herself low, creeping to the road and eeling through the sunset-lengthened shadows; her bad leg certainly didn’t get any worse after she’d escaped the basement, but the wrongly-healed break still made its presence known in her day to day life.

Snake-silent, Marcy pushed aside broad leaves, just enough to give herself a peephole view of the street.

Worn but well-kept wagon, obviously civilian. Stolid draft-cross snail, definitely not the armored beetles or birds the newt-thieves favored. Two drivers- probably newts, too tall to be the shorter toad or frog aliens Marcy had seen sometimes, close enough for her to hear… English?

“Are you sure you understood the book? Hop Pop wouldn’t even let me touch the reins until I’d listened to him read it out loud, and it took ages.”

“Yes, Anne, I was listening! And c’mon, driving a snail can’t be any harder than riding one of the tarantulas at a toad camp.”

“Okay, so maybe Bessie won’t try and eat you if you mess up, but I’m still supervising! Bessie is a respectable snail who needs a specific touch.”

“Yeah, okay, Miss Frogworld Driver’s Permit. I’m just saying, the more people to spread the watch rotation around to, the better prepared you are for an ambush-”

English- not newts- no way.

There was no thought, no strategizing, no wit to it- Marcy just shoved aside the branches hastily, hearing and seeing nothing but her two best friends- they’re alive they’re alive they’re not caught they’re alive- as she launched herself towards them-

And promptly caught her tattered sneaker on a raised stone, landing face-first in the dirt right in front of the snail.

“Whoah! Wait, is that-”

“Oh my god, Marcy?”

Ow, Marcy thought, shooing away the concerned Shadowfish hovering around her head as she gathered her hands underneath her.

She pushed herself upright, and saw-

Anne barreled into Marcy where she knelt, and it was all Marcy could do to squeak past the crushing grip around her torso. “Marcy, it’s you, we were so worried-!”

Shaking with adrenaline, Marcy pushed away Anne because I need to see her face, I need to be sure.

Brown eyes, deep as a dream, looked back at her.

Anne’s face wavered as if underwater as Marcy’s eyes swam with tears. She reached forward with trembling fingers, fluttering them around Anne’s humidity-puffed hair in a nonverbal greeting, because suddenly all her words flew from her like leaves ripped from trees by autumn storms.

Marcy jumped when Anne’s fingers caught her own, and she pulled Marcy’s hands close to her own chest in concern. “Marcy, are you- where were you?”

Where was- oh, crud. “We- I was- come on, we can’t be seen in the middle of the road-!” Marcy struggled to her feet, her improperly-braced bad leg buckling beneath her.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when another set of arms caught her, pulling her close. “Sasha?”

“I knew you were alive,” Sasha’s words were confident, but her tone… Marcy couldn’t see her face, with her own view hidden by where she was pressed into the dark fur wrapped around Sasha’s shoulders, but her friend’s voice wobbled dangerously.

Marcy whispered back, “I knew you both were too.”

In response Sasha simply draped an arm around Marcy, the trailing fur cloak tucking her close like a condor's wing.

Between Anne and Sasha… Marcy hadn’t felt so- so cared for in a long, long time, even back on Earth.

Anne’s fretting drifted over both of them. “Your hands were freezing- let’s go back to the fwagon, get you warmed up.”

Marcy nodded weakly at Anne’s suggestion. It felt stupid, but after so long she felt like she forgot how to talk to other humans.

… It’d been so long. She didn’t want to let go, even for a second.

“Y’know what, okay, hold on.” Muscled arms dipped under her knees and behind her back, and Marcy squeaked as Sasha hefted her into her arms. “... Shit, Mars, when did you get so light?”

“An underground vegan diet,” Marcy joked weakly, finally finding her voice again.

“An underground- ack!” Marcy jerked her head around to see Anne swatting at a gelatinous glow-flashing creature. “What is that!”

“Stop that!” Marcy cried, green Wit power chasing her words like a rolling thunderstorm even as she couldn’t do much more than wiggle weakly in Sasha’s tightening grip.

Both of them froze as if lightning-struck. “Hey little guy, can you go tell the rest of the others I’m okay- I found my root system! My pod!” Marcy couldn’t keep the glee out of her voice.

The Shadowfish flickered green once, and vanished into the ground.

“Um, Marcy, what the heck was that?” Sasha’s voice vibrated against where Marcy was held, undercut by the faintest magma-rumble like the squat toadlike thieves Marcy had come upon once at a bustling campsite.

“That was a Shadowfish. Um, I hope you don’t mind if more of them show up,” Marcy explained, sinking deeper into the furnace-warm heat of her friend. “They’re- they were prisoners too, for a really long time. We escaped together.”

“Wait, escaped?” Anne’s face leaned around to search Marcy’s, her hand reaching out for her own again. “Who did this to you?”

Marcy took the outstretched hand, never wanting to let go even though it made the walk back to the wagon a bit awkward.

“Did the toads get you too?” Sasha asked casually, the edge of tightness unmistakable.

“... It wasn’t toads. It was in the big city- their king. I landed right in the middle of it, and they took me to see him, and- and then. The basement.” Marcy gulped. She had to pass on her intel as soon as possible, no matter how much she wanted to just sink into her friends’ arms and not wake up for days. “Guys, I have some really bad news about this place. We can’t let anyone on this planet know about the music box.”

“... Anyone?” Anne said with trepidation. “Marbles, what’s going on with it?”

A shuddering breath. “It’s- it’s the king, his whole kingdom, this place-

“King Andrias Leviathan knows what the music box is, and he’s planning to use it to invade Earth.”