Toad

Alice could only stare as the huge brown toad labored to fully emerge from the murky depths of the underground lake and finally clambered on the soft and muddy ground surrounding it; its wide, webbed feet displacing a mudslide of dirt and water every time it moved.

Despite its squat body shape and somewhat short limbs, the monster was incredibly bulky, standing over three meters in height and more than twice that in length.

It possessed two round, bulging eyes as big as a car’s rims, its orange retinas cut in the middle by thin, horizontal pupils.

Behind the eyes, like overfilled abscesses or tumoral growths, she could see two thick bumps of flesh that protruded from its head, just over the round openings that were its earholes.

Its rough and warty skin hung loosely on its body as if the creature had lost some weight or, worse, if it had molted and decided to keep wearing the old dermis over the new one.

The young woman gagged when she saw the numerous, ragged holes in the toad’s outer skin, each one twitching and squirming for the tadpoles they contained, holding them like a decomposing corpse held maggots.

Before she could prevent it, a surge of vomit spilled out of her mouth, streaming down the curved mushroom’s cap she was hiding upon and pattering on the ground below.

When the retching abated, Alice brushed away the acidic saliva from the corners of her mouth and once again raised her blurry eyes towards the creature, watching in horror as each one of the late tadpoles started planting their hollow tooth into the many warts on the creature’s skin, causing it to shiver and twitch while remaining otherwise immobile in its spot.

They are sucking it dry. I wonder if it’s their parent and it's dying… or if they are just cannibalistic in nature.

The longer she waited, however, the more her initial assumption seemed wrong.

Not only was the toad completely unbothered by the numerous syringes that had been stabbed into its body, but the tadpoles themselves had started gradually shrinking in size instead of growing even larger, their bloated bellies turning thinner and thinner as time went on.

Alice thought back of her investigation on the tadpole and of the large sack that occupied a large part of its body; only at that moment, did she finally realize what was actually happening, her disgust growing ever greater the longer she contemplated the truth.

Whether its brood or a completely different symbiotic species, the tadpoles were the giant toad’s solution for obtaining enough food without actually moving away from its territory.

And I bet the froglings get their share directly from the big one.

Another night came and went and the tired girl had found no obvious way to avoid an encounter with the creature.

During the day, the toad would bask into the sun for as long as possible, barely moving until the rays of sunlight disappeared and darkness came back.

As soon as the creature didn’t feel the warmth on its skin, it would start shivering and contracting its body to release the tadpoles that had been clinging to its skin, dropping them on the ground to hunt for its food while it moved back into the water with loud, splashing sounds.

At first, she had been waiting for the night to cross the lake while the creature hopefully slept.

To her dismay, however, some of the hunting packs seemed to be very keen on roaming the territory around the lake, sometimes using their toothless mouths and their taloned feet to clumsily dig into the ground, searching for the creatures that dwelt in it but never straying too far into the forest. These particular tadpoles were a bit smaller than the ones that ventured into the jungle but, even then, they were still far too many for her to fight without some kind of advantage.

Thus, she had remained hidden and had kept watching.

At one point, as the rest of the tadpoles started returning to their ‘leader’, Alice had noticed that one of them seemed to be particularly injured, the hollow tooth of its mouth hanging loosely from its mouth, barely held by a torn layer of bloody tissue while dark blood flowed out of the many wounds that marred its body before seeping into the ground.

At that sight, the toad had suddenly shaken itself away from its daze and had clumsily turned its body to face the injured being.

The tadpole, for itself, had held completely still in front of the monster, slightly trembling on the spot until, after a few seconds of silence, the massive amphibian had suddenly opened its mouth and, with lightning speed, had extended a huge and fleshy tongue that had slammed against the tadpole, sticking against it and reeling it straight into the mouth.

The young woman had watched in horror as the unfeeling being munched a couple of times on the gurgling tadpole before swallowing the bloody remains with a loud gulp that resonated horribly in the air.

The toad, however, hadn’t stopped there, moving to the very edge of the lake and starting to brush its hind legs together, repeatedly dipping them in the shallow waters as it worked on the thick coat of clear slime that had started seeping out of the pores of its skin.

Within minutes, the mix of slime and water had turned into a greyish foam where the amphibian had proceeded to depose a bunch of melon-sized eggs before returning to its usual spot in the sun, laying there as if nothing had happened.

I definitely need to move. If it is able to create more tadpoles, that means that I’ll never have as good of a chance to escape. I’ve killed eighteen or so and there is probably an equal number alive right now. I’ll have to act tonight before the rest manage to hatch.

It was for that exact reason that, as soon as darkness had returned once again, Alice found herself crawling in the dark mud that surrounded the lake, her entire body and belongings completely coated by a thick layer of the smelly substance that she really hoped would help her remain hidden from the roaming tadpoles.

As she silently crawled in the mud, feeling like the female version of Andy Dufresne, the determined woman kept a firm grasp on her mace, stiffening every time one of the amphibians stopped nearby.

Whenever that happened, she would force herself to be as still as possible, not even breathing while her eyes remained glued to the unknowing enemies, waiting for a sign of having been discovered.

She proceeded that way for more than two hours, her heart beating faster and faster in her chest the closer she got to the edge of the gently rippling water.

She had chosen a spot very close to the wall, to avoid as many of the small hunters as possible while also reducing the distance she would have to swim in the lake to reach the first boulders.

Despite all her measures, Alice would still have to cross the lake where the toad slept or, possibly, waited in ambush.

She had just reached the outer layer of reeds surrounding the lake when she felt something slithering out of the ground, her eyes widening when the long and spiky mouth of a Razorblood Clam emerged from the mud and moved to latch onto her face, barely grasping it in time with her left hand and trying to quickly silence it without getting noticed.

The moment her hand started squeezing around the tentacle, however, the ambushing mollusk started thrashing in the mud in an attempt to get free and, in the process, managing to awaken an entire cluster of the bloodsucking clams, dozens of tendrils immediately popping out of the ground and starting to feel around for their prey.

She knew it was only a matter of seconds before she was found by the tadpoles, it was time to go all in.

Alice got up on her feet and started immediately walking towards the edge of the lake, avoiding or stepping on the bloodsucking tendrils as she quickly brushed away the thick layer of mud covering her body, trying to reduce her weight as much as possible.

She already had a mace to carry, any extra baggage would be incredibly detrimental if she wanted to be fast.

And now she needed to.

In the distance, a tadpole suddenly stopped and started sniffing the air, soon followed by a few others. She forced herself to ignore them as her feet entered the water and she tensed her legs, preparing to dive into the lake.

The first warning gurgle echoed behind her back just as she jumped into the lake with a splash, frantically pushing against the water with her hands and legs and letting the surge of adrenaline pumping in her veins counteract the tiring weight of the mace that was constantly pulling her down.

By the time the first of the tadpoles had managed to jump into the water, Alice was already touching the edge of the first of the boulders and hoisting herself on it with a loud grunt.

Her lungs pumped and pumped as she started climbing on the smooth and slimy rocks, moving as fast as she could without breaking an ankle or slipping to her death in the waters below, the tadpoles already trying to follow her up on the pile of rubble.

The panting girl managed to climb three more rocks before she heard the loud and terrifying noise of a large amount of water being displaced just below her, fear gripping her stomach and forcing her to double her climbing efforts as an enraged croak echoed in the silence of the cave.

Two boulders later, a panting Alice finally caught the squelching sound of the large amphibian’s mouth opening wide and, without a moment of hesitation, she threw herself to the side, aiming for the boulder just beside the one she was standing upon.

An instant later, the massive tongue of the toad slammed where her body had been just a few seconds before, clinging to the boulder itself and almost ripping it away from its emplacement, causing a few concerning tremors to shake the entire pile of rubble.

In the meanwhile, Alice had just managed to right herself on the rock beside it, swaying the mace as a counterweight to maintain her equilibrium and already looking for the next step in her climb to get the heck away from the hellish toad frothing and croaking less than ten meters below her feet.

She was thus taken completely by surprise when the second, smaller tongue of the creature slammed against her chest, sticking to it and reeling her into its expecting mouth with an enormous backlash that caused her limbs to creak dangerously.

Within one of her heartbeats, a very confused Alice found herself getting tossed around in the massive mouth of the frog, rolling around as it tried squashing her against its palate and attempted to rend her body with its few, sharp teeth.

She could feel her bones as they strained against the pressure of the mouth, creaking but not giving way, her ribs preventing her organs from being turned into mush.

She had not gone all this way just to get eaten by a damned frog.

With a strained cry, Alice extracted her knife from the sheathe on her chest and repeatedly planted it in the tongues that were rolling and twitching against her body, moving her arm backward and forwards to cut into the massive muscles, soon feeling the warm and bitter blood of the creature starting to fill its mouth, its poisonous nature trying to enter her skin and corrupt her organs which, instead, kept it at bay, her skin glowing more and more as her cells frantically consumed the toxins they were coming in contact with.

At the same time, Alice strengthened her grip on the mace and, just as the injured frog opened its mouth to spit her out, swung it with all her might against the lower set of teeth of the creature, soon impacting the surprisingly brittle bone and punching through it with yet another spray of blood that coated her from head to toes.

After that, the frog decided that it had had enough and basically activated both of its tongues at the same time, using them like the ejecting seat on a fighter jet and sending her flying over the lake and then landing face-first into the mud surrounding it which, thankfully, managed to soften the impact.

As she hit the ground, the young woman felt a sudden wave of excruciating pain in her left hand as the obsidian knife she was holding slipped from her grasp and basically cut into the flesh of the palm until it touched bone while, at the same time, her mace rolled less than a meter away with a few dull thuds.

Tears filled her caked eyes as she forced herself upright, leaving the dagger on the ground and immediately sending an empowered Hemostasis through her arm while she kept the wound closed.

She screamed, crying out her hatred at the roiling pool of pinkish water and at the giant toad still thrashing in it, at the mountain of rubble so close and yet so far away, and at the numerous tadpoles swimming towards her, eager to end her life.

She rushed to the mace and grasped it tight with her right hand, the other one already healing the horrible wound thanks to the huge amount of power she was sending there, her cells glowing brightly as her magic coursed through them like a river.

The first of the smaller amphibians emerged from the waters and was immediately squashed on the ground by the human girl that had rushed to meet it head-on.

Within seconds, Alice was swinging her mace in a flurry of blows that crushed heads and broke legs until, suddenly, the weapon in her hand had become an extension of her own body.

She could now feel the wind whistling past the flanges of the mace, the sensation of her metal against the skin, flesh, and bone of her enemies, the vibrations from the impacts as they ran down her shaft and into the hand holding her.

The gently flowing energy contained within her head.

Alice didn’t even need to think to unleash it.

Between one swing and the other, the previously dulled flanges returned to their old sharpness, the twisted one turning to its original shape just as it met the brittle cranium of another tadpole, pushing through it and pulping the brain hiding beneath.

The mace was her, and she could change herself.

By the time she realized it, the entire pack of tadpoles was broken at her feet and the toad was pushing itself out of the water, coming to fight the intruder daring to attack it in its territory.

Unable to hear anything past the maddened beating of her heart in her ears, Alice smiled through the poisonous blood coating her entire body, her teeth shining through all the crimson covering them while the mace started morphing, its head growing sharper while the flanges fused into a single, pointed blade that was soon planted into the forehead of the beast, causing it to cry out in pain as the tiny human before it started climbing on its massive head, using the pointed weapon like an icepick until, finally, she was standing on top of its head, somehow balancing herself over its thrashing body.

She slammed the weapon down, breaking through the sagging skin and the flesh beneath, hitting the bone the first time.

She slammed it down again.

And again.

And again.

After a few dozen hits, the sturdy cranium of the toad finally broke apart and she continued slamming her pick into the soft brain of the creature, turning it into a gory mush that spewed its clear cerebrospinal fluid mixed with dark red blood, the pinkish substance streaming down the face of the frog as it exhaled its final breaths.

Alice swayed slightly on the twitching corpse, the seemingly inexhaustible river of energy that had run through her veins suddenly dried up as if a dam had been erected.

Her legs gave out and she simply laid down where she was, her body still covered by the toxic ichor of the monster.

She closed her eyes.

You have reached Level 27 in the Biomancer of Symbiosis Class.

You have changed your bones to be as resilient as yourself, able to ignore the blows of your enemies and proceed forward. You have learned the skill Enhanced Body: Bones. Your bones will heal quicker you’ll also be able to temporarily strengthen your skeletal system against particularly hard impacts.

*****

This chapter is officially sponsored by Lucas B.! Thank you for your support!