“You will rue the day! You hear me? Rue! Rue!”

Geela’s day was off to a dandy start. She’d managed to have gotten over her annoyance of the bug monster pretty quickly and was starting to enjoy its indignation. Its outrage. Its misery.

“Noirela will come for you!”

“Mhm? Then what?” Geela kept the little monster’s cage slung over her shoulder, bindle style, as she continued down the hall.

“Then you ask? Oh boy, then you’ll really be sorry.” Geela could hear it rubbing its ugly little hands together in glee. “Then Noirela will eat your soul.”

“Oh my. My soul you say?” Geela clasped her free hand over her mouth. “It wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh it would. It would dine upon it with the utmost irreverence.”

“That fiend.”

The little bug let out a howl of laughter at Geela’s aghastness. Then it stopped after realizing Geela’s step hadn’t faltered.

“You’re not letting me go?” it asked.

Geela let out a laugh of her own, this one far more toned down and, in her opinion, more effective. “Is the implication here that Noire would let my soul go if I allowed you free passage? Are you Noire’s favorite little bug monster?”

“I am not a bug monster.” Its voice warbled. “I’m a mosquito monster. A Monstersquito, actually.”

Geela choked at that. “I will, under no circumstance, call you that. Ever.”

“You have to. It’s what I am.”

Geela glanced over her shoulder to take in the smug smirk and multiple crossed arms. She shrugged, entirely unaffected. “No I don’t. You’re Bugsquito now. Enjoy your new name.”

Bugsquito’s fury was so deliciously palpable that Geela let herself pause for a moment to enjoy the sputtering. Then she kicked off the floor to orientate the ceiling as her new ground, before stomping through it.

“Don’t do that.” Bugsquito shivered as they were spat back out into a new hallway. “Don’t you know the dangers of falling through worlds like that?”

“Danger? It’s as safe as walking.” Geela tossed a curl over her shoulder, wholly unconcerned.

“Oh you don’t know. You don’t know. You know not the wrathful powers with which you play!”

“I don’t?”

“Even the void spawn do not just stomp through the walls with such recklessness. The walls’ currents are far too strong. They would be swept away!” Bugsquito’s chattiness made it quite the guide, something Geela was finding all too easy to abuse.

“I haven’t been swept away.” She tossed out another soul search. “Are you implying that I’m more powerful than the void spawn?”

“Why, I would never! Could you imagine?” It seemed angry at both itself and Geela for the assumption. “You will be swept down.”

“I haven’t yet.” With this, Geela tapped her foot against the floor and sucked the two through. She’d done it enough now that she’d even managed to make it look good. A light tap and fwoooosh. Another light tap and shhhhheeeew. Another tap and--

“Oof.”

So much for looking good. And to make things worse, she’d just thudded hard onto her rear end in the middle of another cavern.

“Oh you’ve done it now.” The bug monster began giggling in glee. “You have crossed into the most dastardly and deadly world in the realm. You will not survive this one, Geela. You won’t!” It was jumping up and down so hard that the entire cage rattled, and Geela’s teeth were starting to chatter.

“Would you shut up,” she snapped. “I can barely think.”

“Thought won’t save you from this one. You’ve really gotten yourself in a pickle. You’ve dug a hole so deep you’ll never be able to--”

Geela closed the bars of the lightning cage, so as to cut off Bugsquito mid-sentence. She wasn’t even really expecting that to work but either its voice couldn’t travel through lightning or it had been so surprised it had shut up. Either way, it worked.

In the new silence, Geela could hear a far more disconcerting sound. At first she thought it was chirping. Birds, maybe. But then she realized it sounded more like crickets. Cicadas? No, it wasn’t a bug’s noise. Besides, there were other noises mixed into the chirping. The occasional sharp cry. An odd, clucking noise.

Croaking. Lots of croaking.

They were frogs. Millions of frogs. Billions of frogs. Perhaps more.

Geela looked up from the lightning cage to take in the large cavern, but she’d already broken out in a cold sweat. Much as with the rest of the void realm, there was no real concept of darkness because everything was darkness. And when everything is darkness, nothing is. So Geela’s vision was limited only by her ability to make out details. She couldn’t see the frogs but she knew they were there. Teeming.

“Bugsquito?” she whispered, lips barely moving.

“Foul loathsome slave owner?” it whispered back, also barely moving.

But Geela didn’t want to ask the miserable little thing why a kingdom—no, a world—of frogs existed in the void realm. Perhaps it was just created based on her nightmares. Perhaps Noire had dredged deep within her mind to extract a singular piece of frog-related trauma, just to throw into Geela’s face.

If this was, in fact, the case, it would mean this was a trial that Geela would have to overcome. She would have to brave the lair of frogs in order to get to Darkos. This was a good thing, really. It meant she was on the right track.

Just to be sure, she shot out another soul search. It reported back what she’d feared: Hari’s soul was, in fact, on the other side of the frog realm.

“Alright, Bugsquito,” she said, voice still barely audible. “We’re going in.”

“What!” Bugsquito’s voice suddenly jumped up an octave and about seventy decibels. “We can’t invade on the sacred lands of—” It stopped, slapping six of its hands against its mouth, but Geela had heard enough. If Bugsquito didn’t want to be here, here was exactly where they ought to be.

“You’ve given your position away,” Geela said, lips twitching into a grim smile. “Besides, I can handle some frogs.”

The lie didn’t sound convincing to her own ears, but Bugsquito didn’t seem to notice. Or perhaps it just didn’t realize someone could be afraid of frogs, someone like Geela, as masterfully powerful as she was. Then again, it had never been in the Swamp Region.

“The frogs can blink faster than you think,” it said. “They are not bound to the same limitations as a mortal such as yourself. Wherever they see, they be. You’ll never last half a second.”

“They can teleport?” Geela’s eyes darted around the huge cavern. Teleportation actually made a lot of sense here. One of the perks to being semi corporal in a non corporeal world is that you weren’t limited by actual space. No, it wasn’t that the frogs could just blink to the other side of this room, lickity split, but their speed was likely limited by their ability to see. The void was, after all, composed of darkness, an optical limitation. And as someone with void powers herself, it was possible Geela could abuse this as well.

At least, she could give it a shot. Just running through the massive hall could take Gods know how long. Days? Weeks? Maybe more. The void realm was, after all, analogous to the entire universe of the mortal realm. She needed a cheat here.

Her eyes fell to a space about twenty feet away. She gripped the entirety of her being, as though she were a fancy noble gathering up her skirts before exiting a carriage, and focused very hard. Instantly, she felt a lurch in her stomach, as though half her body had surged forward and half had stayed behind, and she fell down, face first, onto the ground.

Bugsquito let out a hysterical little laugh and began jumping up and down in its cage.

“You will never master the power of the void, pathetic mortal creature!” It clapped its hands together. “The frogs will consume your pitiful apparition.”

Ah, yes, that was it. The apparition. Geela couldn’t drop it for long or risk entirely losing herself in the hellish vacuum of the void, but it was definitely the thing weighing her down here. Time for another experiment.

“Bugsquito, do me a favor and shut up.” It wasn’t as nasty a rebuke as it could have been, but the little monster talking had actually been quite helpful, so she didn’t really want it to stop. She just needed it to think she did, without being too forceful that it got scared and stopped talking.

Her eyes once again fell to the spot twenty feet away. Again, she gathered her essence and focused her will on the location, but this time, just as she felt the surge, she let her apparition blink out of existence for half a second.

Half a second later, she rematerialized at the spot, ankle deep in the floor, feet being surged at by the rushing torrent of the void right underneath. It didn’t take much time to pull her feet out, but it did take a good amount of focus and energy. If she’d let herself go for just a second, her feet might have been washed away.

What had gone wrong? Her gaze wandered over the filmy floor, taking in how it shifted and blurred. The walls of the world, the foggy and flimsy barriers that formed the halls and caverns, created optical illusions that obscured their true borders. Sometimes it was by an inch, sometimes by a foot or more. It hadn’t really mattered as she walked, since she could easily feel their natural borders, but trying to visually make out their shape was a bit more complicated. No wonder she had ended up wading in the goopy floor. There was essentially no real way to focus on a spot on the ground, or even near the walls, and not end up half immersed in them.

Bugsquito had fallen silent, and she had to check over her shoulder to make sure it was still there. The little monster, still secured in its cage, glanced up at her, almost sheepishly.

“Um,” it said, scuffing a hand-foot on the floor of its cage. “Better not do that again?”

Even as dumb as it was, it knew the jig was up. This time, Geela focused her gaze on a further target, a good three feet off the ground, and surged her energy forward. As soon as she rematerialized, she drifted to the ground. The drop was only about a foot, though. If she had focused on what had appeared to be the floor, she’d be knee deep in it.

So that would be her strategy. Blink forward as far as she could see, a few feet off the ground. If she moved quick enough, she might not even have to fall. She could jump forward again before gravity really had time to catch up.

This just might work. It had to. Darkos, her whole mission, and, importantly, her reputation were at stake. Imagine if she died here with only Bugsquito to witness her cataclysmic failure.

“Ready to take on some frogs?” she asked.

“Um. I would really rather not.” The little monster fidgeted. “I could stand to get in an awful lot of trouble. You see, the froggerts—”

But that was all it had time to say as Geela cast her sight on a spot about a hundred feet off and blinked forward.

“They really have been in foul moods lately,” Bugsquito continued, barely deterred by the blink, nor by the sudden pull of gravity as they appeared twenty feet in the air. “I—”

The next leap brought them even higher, since the altitude gave Geela a better view of the cavern and her hypothetical destination: the far end of the massive chamber. “—can’t tell you why—”

Blink!

“—would get me in more trouble—”

Flash!

“—and I’m in enough—”

Zap!

“—already and the froggerts, well, you know—”

Poof!

“—how bad they can be—”

Geela’s focus was very much not on Bugsquito as she blitzed through the room a hundred, five hundred, a thousand feet a second. Unlike the bugs, the frogs couldn’t fly, so it actually took them quite a while to realize that Geela was sprinting through their lair, a hundred feet over their heads. By the time they had, a good three or four minutes (technically three minutes and forty two seconds, but who’s counting) had passed. By mortal measures, Geela had covered over fifty miles and was very much enjoying herself. Her blissful leaping through the air, however, was about to come to a close as suddenly she noticed the hall had gone very quiet.

Geela wanted nothing more than to look around and figure out exactly what had caused the abrupt silence, but she had a good feeling she already knew and she didn’t want to start falling. Maybe they hadn’t spotted her. Maybe they’d just gone to bed. Maybe they were on lunch break. Maybe they—

CROAK!

Nope, they’d spotted her.

The frogs couldn’t fly but that didn’t mean they couldn’t reverse gravity in the room the same way Geela had. Within a second of the massive, synchronized croak, frogs were falling at Geela from every wall, floor and ceiling. She was now the nexus of gravity and the frogs were homing missiles.

Geela wasn’t afraid of the dark, wasn’t afraid of pain, wasn’t afraid of revolting, pulsating tubelike tunnels. There were quite a few things that rubbed her the wrong way, bruises to her ego that stung deep. She’d had to traipse through a dozen regions in a garish orange smock and bow, she’d had to tromp through a massive jungle with nothing but her wits and a minion pushing a merman in a wheelbarrow. She’d witnessed her husband cheating on her, she’d been considered more lowly than her demonic minion, she’d watched her favorite rowboat explode in a plume of light. These things had all done a bit to bruise her ego and cause her pain, but there had been a few choice moments in her life that had truly scarred her.

Being torn apart by a kraken. Murdering her favorite apprentices in cold blood. Getting eaten by a frog.

Suffice to say, having hundreds of billions of frogs rain down on her from every possible angle was a form of fresh hell she’d never have expected, in a million years, to have had to experience. On the mortal realm, such a thing wasn’t even possible. Were there even that many frogs on the mortal realm? Where did Noire get them all?

Of course, none of this was asked out loud by Geela because what was coming out of her mouth was a high pitched, ungodly shriek as she continued her tear through the realm, an ever increasing ball of frogs plummeting after her. Every time she reappeared, she could feel them surge out of her way, to avoid being destroyed as she materialized. That didn’t stop her from feeling their gummy bodies brush against her, feel their squelchy, membraney slime defile her pure, perfect skin. If Bugsquito was making any noise, it was drowned out by the cacophony of frogs. Geela couldn’t even hear herself scream. Even her howl of dismay was stolen from her as she blinked back into existence to find a frog in her mouth. There would be no time to vomit here, though if she had even a moment, she would have absolutely done so. The taste of stomach bile would be preferable to the rancid mucus of a frog.

To the average person, this assault may have even gotten boring after ten or so minutes, but Geela could only keep reliving those terrifying moments of being trapped inside a massive, lurching frog whose stomach acid kept eating away at her only for her skin to be rejuvenated by her hair bow. Would there ever be an end to this? Geela was starting to run out of places to jump to, her vision being more and more covered in frogs. Finally, after another several minutes, she shot out another soul search, to ground herself.

It blinked ahead of her, but not as straight ahead as it had before. Instead it was nearly above her.

Thank god, she could get out of this. Her eyes darted upward, at where a torrential downpouring of frogs was raining, and she made out an empty spot where she could blink to. It took a couple more hops before she could see the wall—ceiling—floor of the cave. From here, she let gravity do the rest and slammed herself through the surface of the cave, into the next tunnel.

As soon as she emerged, she plunged through the next wall and the next and the next. Through another six walls until not a single frog had followed her.

Then, left alone in a hall empty of everything except hers and Bugsquito’s quiet gasps, she curled up in a ball, hid her face, and cried.

It wasn’t the most piteous sobbing she’d ever managed. Actually, no fit of hysterics, no matter how justified, had topped the absolutely pathetic little sobfest she’d had after Tarren had asked Sydney to the Spring Peony Junior Dance. It was bad enough that her rat-faced roommate Meghanna had pitied her enough to spend the first hour of the dance consoling her. Meghanna, the same girl who tried to get Geela killed by siccing the Silver Guard on her. The same girl who’d later been executed after Geela had framed her for the deaths of said Silver Guard when they’d failed to apprehend Geela. That Meghanna.

Anyway, Geela had grown to overcome moments of trauma like this, and after only a few minutes of crying, she’d quieted sufficiently so that the only sound in the hallway was Bugsquito’s sobs.

“Why are you crying,” she said, sniffing hard. She slipped off her goo-covered gloves and wiped her face with her thankfully clean hands.

“That was the scariest thing to ever happen to me.” Bugsquito was also covered in frog slime, and a few dead frogs as well, who had materialized partway through the lightning cage. The little bug monster shivered, looking even more wretched than Geela. “I thought any minute you’d release my cage and let me fall to the froggerts.”

It was a good thing the monster was so bafflingly stupid. Really helped Geela calm down, and she managed to fix it with a look so disdainful, it would be effective despite the goop on her face.

“Aren’t they your allies?” she asked. “I mean, you’re all servants of Noire, right?”

Bugsquito shuddered. “Allies is a strong word. We’re not—well rather—Hey, you’re trying to get me to give away trade secrets, aren’t you?” It crossed its arms, a hurt look on its disgusting little face. “I’ll never.”

Geela let a little smile cross her fown ace as she started siphoning slime off her clothes. “Alright, be that way. Shame you’ll have to go the rest of the journey covered in frog remains though.”

Bugsquito did a little double take, as if forgetting the refuse covering it. It looked to Geela, then to the dead frogs, then to Geela, as if begging her to remove them. Geela, however, was firm, and simply slung the poll back over her shoulder.

“Nothing? Well, if that weird little mouth of yours ever gets the inkling to start sharing Noire’s secrets again, feel free to pipe up.”

As she began walking, however, it wasn’t Bugsquito’s voice that suddenly filled the hallway. It was, in fact, an entirely foreign voice, deep and imposing. It didn’t emanate from the walls either. No, the voice that spoke seemed to come directly from where Geela stood.

“How dare you enter the sacred halls of The Eldest? For your transgressions, you have been sentenced to die.”