Chapter Two Hundred and Thirteen - Toadbreakers

The tentacle toad’s tongue whipped out at me, slashing through the air followed by a trail of drool.

Bastion’s sword cut through the air ahead of me, so fast that all I saw was a grey blur through the fog.

The tongue flopped off to the side, the bulb at the end detached from the rest of it.

The tentacle toad croaked in pain and slurped its tongue back, but not before I ran up to it. I planted a foot on the ground just before the monster and shot into the air. It wasn’t a huge leap, just a couple of metres nearly straight up.

My spade came down, point-first, and with one foot riding on the top of the shovel part. That’s how I landed atop the toad, the shovel’s blade digging in right between the monster’s eyes so hard and fast that it sank in to the hilt.

The toad croaked, then burst apart in a huge cloud of mostly fog.

I landed with a stumble, then spun my spade around and started looking for the next tentacle toad.

Emmanuel was fighting one of them, parrying its tongue-strikes with his sword and occasionally scoring a slash against the toad’s rubbery skin. Bastion, meanwhile, was nearby, staring into the fading mists and searching for the next toad to try something funny.

“Over there!” he said, pointing with his sword-tip into the fog.

I glanced that way, and could only just make out a big blotch moving that way.

“I’ll light it up, you get in close,” I said.

“Got it,” he replied.

The fog was starting to clear, bit by bit. It started almost as soon as Emmanuel and Bastion took out the first toad, which made sense. They were the ones making the fog, getting rid of them meant less monsters producing it.

They were big, and their tongues were nasty, but otherwise, the toads were actually pretty weak.

I jogged over to Bastion’s side, careful not to trip over anything. My attention was split as I created nine fireballs in my free hand. “Ready?”

“Go,” Bastion said.

I flung the fireballs towards the lumbering form in the fog, and knew I’d hit something when the toad croaked in pain.

Bastion took off like a bullet, following the trails left by my fireballs with his wings beating to displace the air behind him.

A moment later a big burst of fog filled the area ahead of him. He’d gotten it.

I ducked down a bit and started searching for the next tentacle toad. It was getting easier to see already. With the mist clearing up, I was now able to make out the walls and the pond, and even the rooms where Howard and Amaryllis and Awen were still waiting.

Amaryllis’ light balls, which she’d tossed out here and there, were helping too.

If it wasn’t for those, I wouldn’t have seen the toad leaping over towards the room where I’d been with Howard. “Oh no,” I said.

Was it going to try and attack my friends through the gate?

I heard something go ‘clunk’ and the toad stumbled back mid-leap, then the far end of the cavern exploded with bluish light and the snap-crackle of live electricity being zapped out at something unfortunate.

The tentacle toad exploded.

Right, my friends could take care of themselves.

I spun around, looking for another toad. Instead, I found... nothing at all.

Had that been it?

“Ah hah! Cur! You have been defeated by the one and only Emmanuel Aldelain Von Chadsbourne!”

I found Emmanuel bouncing and cheering, his hooves cracking at the stone floor while he stabbed at the air with the point of his sword.

I looked over to Bastion who was casually wiping his own sword clean with a piece of cloth. “The room seems clear,” he said. “Unless there are any of them hiding within the water. I can’t sense any more danger.”

I nodded, then allowed the notifications stacking up at the back of my head to ping away.

Ding! Congratulations, you have made three (3) ‘Tentacle Toad,’ Level 8 croak their last! EXP reduced for fighting as a group!

Nothing else? Well, I supposed that I hadn’t really used that many skills in the fight, and other than being a bit scary at first, it didn’t really feel that hard. Alone it would have been very tough, but with some help from my friends, it was easy.

“We did it!” I cheered.

The doors leading into the lever rooms opened and Howard and my friends stepped out.

Amaryllis immediately crossed the little bridge in the middle of the room, her stomping steps leading her on a straight path towards Emmanuel. “You!” she screeched.

“Pardon?” the cervid asked.

Amaryllis almost ran into him with how close she stopped. She jabbed at Emmanuel’s chest with the dull side of a talon. “You are an idiot. No, that’s too kind. I know some idiots and they’re quite nice. Clever even, in their own way. You are a buffoon. An ignorant horse.”

“Amaryllis,” I said.

“Not now, Broccoli,” she snapped.

“Miss harpy, I find this behaviour highly irregular,” Emmanuel said.

“Miss... did you not even bother learning our names?!” Amaryllis shouted.

I moved over to my friend and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Amaryllis, it’s okay,” I said.

“It is very much not,” she said. “This twit could have gotten all of us killed.”

“That’s... well, that’s true, but I’m sure he’ll learn his lesson from it, right mister Emmanuel?”

The cervid stood a little taller. “Of course. Putting the lives of others at risk is unheroic.”

“Broccoli,” Amaryllis said. She was looking at me with naked concern. “You know that people can lie, right?”

“Uh, yeah? It’s rude though.”

“And you know that some people, usually clownish oafs, will believe their own lies, right?”

“I don’t think that’s what Emmanuel is doing,” I said. “He’s just, um.”

“A dimwit? A doofus? No, he’s neither of those,” Amaryllis said. “That would imply that he’s merely a simpleton of some sort or another. Simpletons are fine as long as they stay far away from me. This man, this cervid, is a jackass.”

“I am no such thing,” Emmanuel said.

I shrunk back a bit. I didn’t like hearing Amaryllis talking about someone that way, even if she might be a little bit right. Emmanuel was... a bit of trouble. “Mister Emmanuel,” I said as I turned his way. “What you did was irresponsible and endangered all of us. Bastion and I had to step out to save you, which meant splitting up our group. That’s dangerous on its own. And it meant leaving Mister Howard behind. He’s a brave fishperson, but he’s not a fighter.”

“Yes yes, shall we move on?”

I blinked, then spoke with a bit more force to my voice. “Mister Emmanuel,” I said. “None of us are going to move on until you explain to me why what you did was wrong.”

The cervid reeled his head back. “What? What sort of requirement is that?”

“A really simple one. You did something that I think all of us agree was wrong, and dangerous. That kind of stuff happens sometimes, sure. I’ve done dangerous things before that I probably shouldn’t have, but I try to listen when my friends warn me about them later. I just want to make sure you understand.”

Emmanuel crossed his arms. He didn’t look very pleased with things, but a glance over my shoulder showed all of my friends staring at him. “I suppose what I did wrong was... moving in without warning you all?”

“Yes, and what else?” I encouraged.

He looked like he'd just chewed into a lemon. “I... perhaps shouldn’t have put you at risk?”

“Not just me or my friends, but yourself too. Did you hear what Howard said about the fog?”

Emmanuel glanced towards Howard. “No?”

I sighed. “He said that it left, on its own. If we just waited a little bit we wouldn’t have to fight at all.”

“I suppose that would have been the... less brave but... perhaps least dangerous path to take,” Emmanuel admitted. “It doesn’t do for a knight to put his charges at risk when he can avoid it.”

“That’s, uh... close enough, I think?” I looked to Amaryllis for confirmation.

“I still think we should kick him out,” she said.

I turned to my other friends.

Bastion was the first to reply. “He’s serving as a great object lesson, and in a low-risk, but not riskless, environment.”

“Um,” Awen began. “I think Mister Emmanuel could probably use a bit more time with Broccoli.”

“Huh?”

“Because he’s a little bit bad at making friends and being... nice. So, maybe we can keep him with us for a little bit more, as long as he’s learning?” Awen said. She didn’t sound entirely sure, and she hugged her crossbow close for comfort as she spoke, but I think I understood what she meant.

Howard just shrugged. “I don’t rightly know. Never expected to see toads in that fog. Might explain a few things. Some folk will be glad to know. Otherwise, whether or not the cervid stays is out of my hands.”

I tapped my chin. “Fine. Mister Emmanuel, you can stay with us, but I really expect you to try a little harder to remember that your actions can hurt others, alright?”

The cervid smiled and nodded. “Of course!” he said.

I didn’t have much confidence in that smile, but, well, I was willing to give him a chance. “Alright.” I gestured to the door at the end of the room. “Shall we continue then? Howard, is there anything we should know about the next area?”

“Just a corridor,” the fishman said. “It’s a little tight at first, but it’ll bring us to the main cave. The next floor’s just around the corner after that. Looks like a little village.”

“A little village?” I asked.

“Like Insmouth, but not quite. Very old, and everything’s rotten out. No point in gathering much from there, unfortunately. Occasionally, we'll find a nice trinket there, but not enough to make a job of collecting them. Not when the second floor’s the way it is.”

“That sounds ominous,” Awen muttered.

“Aye, the second floor’s not for the faint of heart.”

We formed up a bit as we moved out of the first floor. I ended up with Amaryllis walking by my side while Bastion and Emmanuel ranged out ahead.

“He’s going to be trouble again,” Amaryllis said.

“I know,” I said. “But just because someone is troublesome that doesn’t mean they’re not a potential friend.” My shoulder bumped against hers. “Let’s give him one last chance?”

She huffed, but it was a huff that agreed with me, if only reluctantly. “You’re far more patient with people than I am.”

“I know. If I wasn’t I don’t think we’d have ever become friends.”

She snapped her head around. “I am nothing like him.”

“Hmm,” I said before tapping my chin. “I don’t know. Noble, full of ideas about how things should be. Very rude.”

She huffed very mightily. “I am not that bad.”

“You’re not that bad now,” I agreed.

“Nor was I ever that bad,” she said.

“Eh, I don’t know.”

Amaryllis shook her head. “Well, you’ve certainly improved a little too. You’re not nearly as irritating and stupid as you once were.”

“Really?” I asked.

She nodded. “You seem to be getting less dumb. Slowly. Exceptionally slowly. I suspect that in a few decades I might even consider you to have an average amount of common sense.”

I laughed, and she joined me with her own birdy whistles. I even heard Awen giggling away behind us until I reached back and pulled her closer. The corridor was hardly so small as to require us to be split in pairs, and I wanted to have all of my friends close.

We were about to face another challenge, which was the best time to keep one’s friends close!

***