Godsforsaken

Chapter 10: The Toad Prince

I'd expected the innkeeper to give us something bland for dinner as a subtle hint that we shouldn't be imposing on his hospitality for much longer but clearly I'd judged the man wrong. Dinner was an assortment of smoked fish served with fresh bread and various condiments and after eating my fill I wrapped up a roll with smoked trout on honey mustard in case I got hungry while sneaking around at night.

After everything we'd learned that day we decided that sleeping in shifts was no longer necessary as the villagers didn't seem evil and the whatever-it-was seemed content to eat children and so the women would simply go to sleep, though Alisha insisted on some way for me to contact her in case of an emergency, so I'd pulled out a pair of thrumming stones. If one was squeezed hard, the other would shake violently, enough to rouse someone from their sleep, and she made me promise to squeeze mine in case there was any danger. I'd also shown her what I'd be using to avoid said danger, which seemed to relax her.

I waited until the moons were at their highest point, one almost hidden behind the other, before I pulled on my cloak and left the room. The cloak I was wearing was not the lesser cloak of invisibility that I'd worn against the bandits and the Dark Lord, but one of my very few high tier magic items, a greater cloak of camouflage. Unlike invisibility camouflage only blended the wearer's colors into the surroundings, so sudden or continuous movement would still be visible. Or it would have been if it hadn't also been the middle of the night, with the street lamps already extinguished and the moons and the stars the only sources of light. Spotting me inside the village walls was hard. Spotting me in the woods by the pond was essentially impossible. That still left the possibility of being heard, but for that I was wearing a pair of lesser shoes of sound dampening, though I didn't like wearing them. They were thin, almost as thin as a pair of socks with thin soles stitched onto them, and they looked like the kind of shoes that a female dance performer would wear. Selene had had a good chuckle about them and I couldn't disagree with the sentiment, but looking stupid beat being dead. And finally I had the night vision monocle with me, though I didn't put it on yet. Instead I snuck towards the gate leading to the pond, found a house with a nice flat roof and climbed onto it to wait.

**

It only took about ten minutes for her to arrive. Miss Mary had the same far-away expression on her face as when we'd first met her and at this time of night it almost made her look as if she were sleepwalking, her slow smooth movements adding to the effect. She wore nothing but a white nightgown that did not hide her belly at all. It didn't look smaller in the least, further disproving the theory that her belly was simply full from a heavy meal.

I trailed far behind her and the moment she hit the treeline I snuck off to the side to make myself even harder to notice. Eventually she reached the pond and went right to the edge. And then she just stood there, waiting and swaying as if to music. Suddenly, the sound I could not hear stopped and Miss Mary stopped swaying, making me think our theory about a song was correct and that she'd been dancing to the music all this time. I saw something move right in front of her and put on the night vision monocle and then I saw it. It rose and rose and rose out of the water until it finally stopped and I could appreciate what I was looking at.

A toad. An enormous toad larger than an ox, its full lips level with Miss Mary's head and the size and shape of ropes of intestine. Its eyes were a bit too close to each other for a toad, more like a predator's forward gaze, and on the top of its head a mass of lumpy horns twisted together into the rough shape of a crown. Through the night vision monocle all colors were a bit twisted but I could tell that its skin was dark, though whether it was dark green, dark brown or something else entirely wasn't clear.

“I've missed you, lover”, Miss Mary said and her tone was husky.

And then the toad opened its mouth and it spoke: “As I missed you, my princess.”

Its voice was the stuff of nightmares. It wasn't deep or booming. It wasn't sinister or threatening either. No, its voice sounded like a choir of children speaking in unison. At least a dozen voices all speaking the same words at roughly the same time. And I was convinced, not just suspecting it but convinced, that its voice was made up of the voices of all the children it had eaten.

It was all but confirmed when Miss Mary asked: “How is my little Ellie? Has she been good, my prince?”

And in response only a single voice rang out, that of a little girl: “Yes, Miss Mary, I've been very good.” My stomach churned and I wondered whether the dead children were actually aware or whether the toad was simply using her voice to pretend.

“That's wonderful. But my prince, I'm afraid I come bearing bad news tonight.”

“Speak, princess”, it said, again with the voice of the whole choir.

“There were three adventurers asking about the missing children. I cannot fathom why your song didn't affect them.”

It croaked, not in the voices of the children but the way a normal toad would, only much larger in scope and I realized it was the toad's equivalent of a contemplative sound. “I am aware, princess. My spies have seen them snooping around. I assume you did not give them evidence they could make use of?”

She shook her head, afraid of even the idea of upsetting the toad. “Of course not. I erased all traces of Ellie from my notebook. Just in time, too, it would seem.”

The toad leaned forward and it took me a second to realize it was nodding. “You did well, my princess.”

I could just make out her broad smile before she asked: “But what will we do about them?”

It chuckled and the sound was disturbing, being in the voice of the children. “My powers have almost reached their zenith, my princess. I fear tomorrow the people of Lycia will remember all the children and wonder where they have gone. And in their haste to find answers they will turn on the suspicious group of outsiders.” Well, crap.

“And what will my role be in all of this?”, Miss Mary asked.

“Your role will be to stay far away from whatever happens. You are my princess and there is no reason to risk you.”

And then the most disturbing thing happened. She stepped forward, arms spread wide, and hugged the toad, pressing her lips against its. Then it opened its maw wide and for the first time I realized that behind the ropy lips it had teeth. Lots and lots of teeth, arranged in multiple rows and all of them long and thin and pointed. And then its tongue shot out and slipped into Miss Mary's mouth. And judging by the way her throat expanded it did not simply stop at exploring the teacher's mouth. Her hands twitched and her belly seemed to grow a little and just as I was wondering whether she was in danger I heard her moan around the toad's tongue and then she stumbled backward.

“Sweet dreams, my princess”, the toad told her and she waved before walking back to the village. The moment she went through the gate the toad started to sink beneath the water again and opened its mouth to sing. There was an instant where I heard a choir of children singing and then the sound refused to stick to the insides of my ears again. Well, that at least answered that.

But never mind that. This was bad.

In the morning it would rally all the villagers against us and apparently it had been spying on us through all the frogs hopping around the village. I had two options, either fight it by myself right then and there or run back and alert Alisha and Selene. If I chose option one firstly Alisha would never forgive me and secondly if I failed there would be nobody to warn them of the danger, so option two it was. I made sure to avoid Miss Mary on her way home and rushed back to our room in the inn. When I opened the door Alisha was already awake, apparently having been too worried to sleep.

“What happened?”, she asked. “You look terrified.”

“Wake Selene up. We're in deep trouble.”

**

It took ten minutes after Selene was up until I'd explained the entire situation to them, leaving nothing out. The women had gotten paler and paler with each detail I'd shared and once I'd finished Alisha decided that the best course of action would be to stick to our earlier promise and involve Thea and Silvia. I'd agreed mostly so we'd have somewhere to hole up when angry brainwashed villagers came into our room to murder us in our sleep.

We had been knocking on the chapel door for almost a minute without reaction before Selene had simply opened the door and gone into the back, yelling for Thea to wake up. It took another three minutes until we heard her come up the stairs. She looked as though she hadn't exactly been sleeping, her hair ruffled and her nightgown only hastily thrown on. She looked supremely annoyed at the interruption but when we explained to her what we'd found out she led us down the stairs.

Silvia looked... not ready to receive visitors. Her whole upper body was flushed with heat and it was clearly not just from embarrassment, the garment she had on was so hastily put on that it barely covered anything and, most notably, the tip of her tail was glistening wet and by how unsteady Thea was on her feet I had a very good idea of why that might have been the case.

**

After we'd shared the entire situation Silvia was chewing her thumbnail. It was actually kind of cute as far as coping mechanisms went but when Thea noticed she pulled Silvia's hand away and replaced it with one of her own.

“I hope it goes without saying that whatever solution we come up with must not involve hurting the villagers. They are the victims in this”, she said adamantly.

I nodded. “Of course. I have thought of a plan, if nobody else wants to go first?” I was greeted with a round of head shakes. “Alright. So, we wait until all the villagers have gathered on the street as a lynch mob. Then we'll have Selene use the Gjallarhorn miracle from the roof of the chapel.”

“But”, Selene interrupted, “we don't even know how exactly it works.”

“In this case it hardly matters. It makes a loud noise. The mind control the toad prince wants to use will almost certainly come in the form of a song. The Gjallarhorn will drown it out. You will be standing pretty much in the middle of the village so I'm hoping that's far enough from the walls to not collapse them by accident. While the Gjallarhorn is sounding, the villagers won't be susceptible to the mind control. We'll spend some time making wax ear plugs now and then once you use your miracle, Alisha, Thea and I will run around and shove those ear plugs into as many villagers' ears as we can. We'll also make a big sign that tells them why we're doing what we're doing. Once the Gjallarhorn stops I hope we won't have too many of the villagers to contend with and I hope the number will be small enough that Alisha can use that air spell to make them fall unconscious.” I looked at Alisha.

“It takes roughly ten seconds per person and I can do only one at a time”, she said. “If there's more than one or two you'll have to hold them off until I can deal with them.”

“Good enough”, I said, then turned to Thea. “Thea, I know this is a personal question, but what abilities do you have?”

She shrugged. “My innate magic is earth elemental. Rock darts, fissures, creeping vines, that sort of thing. The miracles my goddess lets me use are mostly related to farming. One that blesses fields to be more fruitful, one that chases off vermin, stuff like that. Other than that, Heal and Homeward are all I have right now. Oh, and I can call down four miracles a day.”

I nodded. “So that's up to eight Heals if we really need them and both of you have magic that a water-dwelling monster won't be able to shrug off. That's good. Toads are usually soft enough that swords and spears should easily penetrate their hide but I have no idea if that holds true for the toad prince. I've never even heard of such a thing.”

“What do you think its offensive capabilities are?”, Alisha asked.

“It has a horrifying maw full of teeth and a tongue several feet long. I'm assuming its main offense will be to try to grab people and pull them into its mouth.”

Thea frowned. “Then we need a buddy system. Alisha and I will need to be close to you and Selene so you can cut us loose if it grabs us. If it grabs you two, you should be able to free yourselves.”

I nodded and Alisha cut in:

“If it's capable of mind control and glamours with its singing voice, it's entirely possible it can use sound as a weapon, too. So it might not be a bad idea to save some of those wax ear plugs for us as well.”

“Good idea”, I said.

Selene remarked: “Maybe it has other magic, too. If it's that powerful, maybe it has other tricks up its sleeve.”

“True, and we need to keep that in mind, but we can't plan for something this vague”, I said.

Selene looked chastised and said: “Sorry.”

“No, not at all, it's a good thought”, I said. “It could definitely have some unforeseen powers, it's just that we have to adapt to them on the fly.”

Silvia asked: “And what about me? I want to help as well.”

Thea told her: “I will not risk you. I will not have you save the villagers only for them to turn on you right after.”

“So what? I'm supposed to hole up here while you fight for your lives?”

There was heat in her voice and I interrupted them: “Actually, there are a few things I'd like to ask of you, Silvia.”

She turned to me. “Yes?”

“We can't fight this thing on no sleep but it's way too risky for us to just sleep in case the villagers come looking for us”, I said. “I would ask you to watch over us and wake us up in case someone starts banging on the chapel door. And, while we're asleep, it would be amazing if you could draw a big sign explaining the nature of the mind control song and why we're running around shoving wax into people's ears. So if you stay up tonight and are tired tomorrow that's fine because you're not coming with us. It may sound harsh but I agree with Thea, we can't risk you. It may not sound like much but it's something vital that only you can do because of your situation.”

She stared at me for a while before letting out a huge sigh. “Fine, I'll watch over the four of you and draw a sign.” Then she turned to Thea: “But if you dare die on me know I'll be killing myself before I let the villagers catch me. And once I'm dead I'll chase you all the way to Elysium to tell you how much of an idiot you've been. Is that understood, miss?”

Thea replied by wrapping Silvia in a crushing hug before she told her: “I won't be dying on you. There's far too much I still want to experience with you.”

Alisha added: “I swear to you we'll bring her back to you.”