“Oh this is bad,” Chirp said. “This is bad, bad, bad. What are we going to do?”

Kellen ignored her, bending down to place a hand on Vex, who was lying in the rain, eyes squinted shut from pain, shivering. He’d maintained his Guardian form, which was something.

“You’re… a little late to the party,” Vex said, struggling to speak through the pain.

Kellen gave him a gentle rub on the neck. “Sorry buddy. I’m here now. Can you feel the storm mana?”

Vex gave a slight nod. “Draw on it if you can,” Kellen continued. “It might help you feel better.”

They weren’t beat yet. Though Kellen was the only one left in fighting shape.

He had no idea what was going on with the cultists and their creepy, glowing white eyes. They had Raiqo and Skystrike pinned to the ground and bound in their bandages. Based on their slack, zombie-like expressions, Kellen didn’t think they were worried about protecting themselves anymore. Kiypu and Shakraa lay like dead things a short distance away. One wrong move and they’d all be dead. As the Storm Horse had said, his friends were in need.

With a final flourish of Frog Priest’s bone club, the smaller version of the horse totem collapsed into a pile a dust that blew away in a sudden wind. Were they already too late? Chirp still hovered in the rain at his side. Kellen took that to mean there was still hope.

The Frog Priest turned to look at Kellen. He nodded in apparent respect, as his large round eyes studying him. “You are stronger than you look, human,” he croaked. His eyes flickered to Chirp. “Ah. The missing piece. I will take that from you now. “

Kellen held up a hand, focusing all of his willpower on it to keep it from shaking. Frog Priest alone had the strength to beat him, aside from the dozen or so zombie-looking cultists. “I challenge you!” Kellen said, raising his voice to be heard over the steady patter of rain and distant thunder.

The Frog Priest rumbled out a bass chuckle. “Why do I need to answer your challenge? You are weak. I do not respect the weak. I can take what I want.”

“I come at the bidding of the Storm Horse herself,” Kellen continued. “The ancient laws demand you answer her challenge, if not mine.”

A brilliant bolt of lightning flashed so close overhead, Kellen felt the hairs on his body stand straight up. The thunder rumbled like a thousand horse's hooves and an angry equine scream echoed over the storm.

Raising his head, the Frog Priest gave a wide, toothless smile at the display, tongue flicking out to taste the rain. “Very well. I will respect the challenge of a dying god. Our work is almost done here. It is nothing to crush another mortal.”

Without warning he leaped, sailing horizontal through the air straight at Kellen, bone club raised. Kellen prepared for this, throwing up his hands in a blinding flash of light before diving to the side. The Frog Priest croaked in pain and hit the ground hard, though he still landed on his powerful bowlegged feet. In the next instant, he’d turned the landing into a second leap, straight for Kellen.

Kellen held out a hand, summoning the sacred lightning working. A bolt of pure white appeared in his grip. He swung it down at the frog, the sun and storm mana crackling as they struck the bone club. Both Kellen and the Frog Priest were shoved backward from the blow, their feet sliding on the wet rock of the mesa.

Raising the glowing, golden lightning working, Kellen threw. The bolt struck the ground just in front of Frog Priest, exploding in a burst of crackling energy. Frog Priest flew backward, swaying on his legs when he landed.

Wasting no time with the space given him, Kellen worked a shield over his right arm. With his beast heart running low, he needed to preserve enough for a last offensive. Frog Priest charged at him again, this time in a limping, injured sideways hop. As the Frog Priest closed the gap and swung the bone club, Kellen ducked, shoving upward with his shield and catching the mutant under his wobbling chin. Frog Priest croaked and staggered back, momentarily stunned. Kellen followed the strike up with a second flash of blinding light, then swung a left and right hook at the stunned frog, his fists glowing with golden sun mana.

The first fist caught the mutant in his muscled shoulder, the second glancing off a slimy cheek. Kellen hauled back for a third but the Frog Priest butted his head forward, striking Kellen in the forehead.

Stars blossomed in Kellen’s vision, and he fell hard on his rear. He heard Vex’s shout—aloud or maybe in his mind—in time to roll to the side as the bone club came crashing down on the space he’d been an instant before. He rolled again and the Frog Priest struck at him like a rabid kid attacking a piñata.

Kellen scrambled backward in a crawling crab walk as the Frog Priest advanced. Panic seizing him, he threw out another sun orb. The Frog Priest batted it away, closing the gap at a steady pace. Kellen threw out a golden rope at the mutant’s leg. Once more, the Frog Priest reacted with stunning speed, using the mana in the bone club to cut through Kellen’s working before it could snare his leg.

“Is that all you offer?” Frog Priest croaked. “I am disappointed in the champion the Storm Horse chose to defend her sanctuary.”

“Not… quite,” Kellen panted. “I was mostly stalling.”

A hail of golden daggers sliced through the storm-filled night air, burying themselves in the Frog Priest’s back. Vex floated to the ground, markings glowing a brilliant sunrise golden hue.

“Sorry,” he shouted to Kellen. “Just needed a little breather on the bench.”

Frog Priest leaped straight up in the air, hefting his bone club overhead as he did. As he came crashing down to the earth, he led with the club, striking the ground in a massive blow that sent a wave of pale green-tinted light shooting out in all directions. Kellen knelt and threw up a shield. The mana working broke around him like a wave striking a rocky shore, draining much of Kellen’s remaining mana reserves. Vex vaulted over the wave of mana and both rushed at Frog Priest before he’d done more than stand following the attack.

The bone club swung at Vex. Kellen threw a shield in the air, knocking the blow aside and shattering his working. Kellen jerked it back, and the shards buried themselves like shrapnel in the side of the mutant’s frog head. As he staggered and clutched at his head, Vex’s mouth glowed golden and he shot a prism of sun mana at the Frog Priest from nearly point blank range.

Frog Priest stumbled backward again. Vex drove forward, relentless in his attacks. Kellen reached for the mana they shared between their bond, drawing just enough to be of use without hampering Vex. With it, he cast his gilded armor working over Vex. They needed to end the fight. If it became a contest of whose mana reserves would last longer, Kellen had no doubt the Frog Priest would win, even weakened as he was by the power of the totem.

Cloaked in Kellen’s gilded armor working, Vex charged straight at the Frog Priest but was struck down by the bone club. It left the Frog Priest open to Kellen’s onslaught of sun orbs. Just as one struck the mutant’s chest and rebounded, a second followed, Kellen catching them and hurling them back faster than his foe could block.

Letting loose a terrible croak, the Frog Priest leaped to escape. This time, Kellen’s golden snare caught his leg and jerked him to the ground. Before he could pull himself to his feet, Vex’s golden storm sliced into the pale white skin of the Frog’s back, flailing it open like so many butcher knives. A putrid yellow-green pus oozed from the cuts.

Holding two spinning discs of sun mana around each wrist Kellen approached their fallen foe.

“Will you yield?”

“The return of the Snake has been foretold,” the Frog croaked, cheek pressed to the wet stone as he stared up at Kellen with a single, yellow eye. “It cannot be stopped.”

A powerful leg lashed out, knocking Kellen to the ground. His head smacked hard against the rock. Vex leaped on the mutant, who rolled on his back, and shoved the Mana Beast away with another thrash of his bowed legs. Kellen threw a shielded arm up, but the Frog Priest was no longer interested in them.

“No!”

Frog Priest threw the club straight for Chirp, who’d flown to Kellen and Vex’s aid when she saw them fall. Spinning end over end, the club passed straight through the mana spirit into the weapon in a flash of red and gold. As Kellen struggled to his feet, the Frog Priest caught the returning club in his webbed hand with a wet smack. It glowed even brighter now, pulsing and emitting an aura that left Kellen’s body aching and his stomach nauseous.

Pulling the last dregs of his mana into a final shield, Kellen prepared to die.

The Frog Priest raised the bone club overhead… and brought it down hard against the rock. The club broke in half, the resulting explosion of mana throwing Kellen, Vex, and the Frog Priest several paces away. Kellen willed his exhausted, battered body to sit up. In place of the bone club, a serpentine ghost of pale, sickly white swayed upward. No trace of Chirp remained. The serpent seemed startled, head swiveling around to take in its surroundings. Beside it, Frog Priest lay unmoving on the ground. Farther back, the group of zombie cultists had collapsed, the light in their eyes and mouths gone.

Spinning around, the ghost snake locked eyes with Kellen. It slithered toward him, swaying side to side as it moved. Kellen knew he should have been afraid, knew this could be the end. But as he looked into the eyes of the snake, a glimpse of something familiar met him, even if he couldn’t place his finger on who or what it reminded him of.

A light erupted behind the snake and a portal appeared, first the size of a basketball and growing fast. Kellen caught a glimpse of a verdant jungle before the ghost of the snake fell to the ground, its tail pulled toward the portal by an invisible force. As Kellen and Vex stared in disbelief, the ghost snake vanished in a fading white mist and the portal winked out of existence.

“Does this mean we won?” Vex asked. “Pretty sure the frog guy is dead.”

In answer, a deafening crack of thunder split the sky. A howling wind forced them flat on the ground as the storm whipped about them, rain pelting like tiny arrows. Lightning crashing into the top of the mesa all around them, throwing splinters of rock into the sky. The air filled with the scent of thick ozone. Kellen and Vex’s hair stood on end.

As soon as it had begun, an all-consuming silence fell. When Kellen looked overheard, he saw a hole in the jagged sky above. A bright sun shone down overhead from the world outside of the totem.