It wasn’t far, at least on Garrick’s legs, so it shouldn’t have been tiring. But the sight he saw upon arriving at the spawning pond knocked the wind out of him all the same.

Slaughter.

That was the only word for it.

Fish were swarming about the pond, gobbling up eggs and tadpoles. Adult toads were leaping into and out of the water in formations that looked almost military in their precision, trying to maintain a guarded retreat for the swimming young.

And on the bank across from him, Garrick saw a crocodile with eerily human eyes, watching the battle intently. Its gaze moved to meet his own when Garrick stumbled out of the brush.

Garrick was certain he saw the creature smirk.

“To arms, Garrick!,” Thoop shouted, leaping from his pocket. “I will cover the retreat!”

Thoop was in the water before Garrick could say anything. He supposed this left him to deal with the crocodile. He brandished his sword and took a ginger step in the great reptile’s direction.

“Interesting,” the crocodile said, in a voice with a menacingly feminine lilt. “A true longpaw. We’ve not seen your kind in the Vale since the days of the Painless Queen.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening here, beast,” Garrick said. “But if you are behind this massacre, you will call off your attack this instant.”

“Or taste your steel?” The crocodile laughed. “Better to taste your flesh, monkey. Far more useful.”

The creature leapt high in the air, throwing Garrick’s tactical senses off-kilter.

Can crocodiles jump?

Last second, Garrick rolled to his left and – THWUMP! – the crocodile impacted the mud where’d just been standing.

Sword at the ready, Garrick saw the monster’s hind legs transforming, heard the cracking of bones, the ripping of sinew, from a massive pair of frog-like limbs into something more bird-like, something that allowed it to stand upright like a man.

The entire metamorphosis spanned a fraction of a second, but Garrick’s battle-honed senses took in every detail. Somehow, Garrick knew, he’d witnessed magic like this before.

Shape-shifter, deceiver, cannibal. Vilest of all adepts. Servant of the Winnower.

How do I know this?

The croc roared, and charged Garrick on her hind legs, while her forelimbs instantly grew into something more like lion paws, tipped by wicked claws.

That was her mistake. The move left the doppelganger’s belly exposed, and Garrick seized his opportunity with a broad upward slash of his sword.

The monster’s blood splashed onto nearby leaves, and a bit spattered onto Garrick’s face. But Garrick had no time to regain his balance, because the crocodile spun on her left leg and slammed him with her massive tail.

Garrick flew back several feet, landed sprawling on his back on the moist earthen floor of the forest, wheezing for breath. His sword tumbled from his hand, and Garrick felt a burning pain lance through his left lung as he fought for air. A broken rib or two, almost certainly.

The bipedal croc rushed forward again, stomped hard on Garrick’s ribs with clawed feet, throwing more gouts of agony into his chest cavity. Garrick screamed.

“I’ve never tasted man-flesh,” the croc said, drooling over him, snarling hungrily in the manner of a wolf. “The possibilities…”

“GARRICK!”

Something slammed into the crocodile from behind, knocking her to the side, and Garrick scrambled backwards, gasping for life. Fumbling about for his sword, his eyes fell upon a new horror, a new wonder.

There was Thoop, the meek little toad, skin still glistening with pond water, sitting on the spot where Garrick and the shape-shifting croc had just been. But surrounding the toad, suffusing him, was the spectral form of something much bigger and more menacing, something itself very much like a large crocodile. But there were subtle differences: a long, tapered snout, much thinner than the croc’s, almost tube-like in its dimensions, but still full of sharp teeth; a long dorsal fin running the length of its back, tapering off at the end of a long, thick tail; a bony plate covering its triangular head, with eyes much closer to the top than the sides of the skull. And it was larger than the croc almost by half.

The ghostly form moved then, with Thoop at its center, to place itself between Garrick and the crocodile, who had now reverted to her “natural” (Garrick presumed) shape. Garrick managed to clumsily get his sword back into his hand, and used it to prop himself to his feet. Taking a painful stance, he managed to balance himself stably enough to raise the sword in challenge.

He could see the crocodile weighing her odds, cautiously regarding the man and the sorcery-infused little toad who now challenged her.

“So, little snack, you have claimed a longpaw familiar. This changes nothing.”

“It changes everything, Sythgoryx,” said Thoop. “I am now in the full measure of my power, and there is already Trucekeeper help on the way. You will advance no further along this front.”

Sythgoryx – the crocodile was known to Thoop, it seemed – suddenly rose to her hind legs once more, and leapt into the air. Garrick readied himself for another descending attack, but it did not come. Instead, with the sickening sound of cracking bones and rending flesh, Sythgoryx’s forelimbs transformed into great bat’s wings, and the creature tore up through the low canopy of branches and flew off into the sky with the fleetness and grace of a griffon.

“Is it over, Thoop?” Garrick raised a hand to steady himself against a tree.

“It is for now, friend Garrick.” Thoop’s spectral monster vanished, and the little toad hopped over to Garrick’s wobbling feet. “You can rest now. The Trucekeepers will have a Mender among them who can stitch your wounds.”

Garrick collapsed, his back against the tree, clinging to consciousness against the cloud of agony now darkening his vision. “The children, Thoop? The eggs?”

“Most of them survived. Our warriors fought valiantly. The Thundercroaks are victorious, in no small measure thanks to your distracting of Sythgoryx. My clan is in your debt, Garrick, much to their chagrin. They’ve never seen a longpaw before. They’re quite anxious to…”

Garrick passed out.