Crusade Gone Awry Ch. 14

Then, in a moment of relief, she spotted light! Not the blue light from the crystals...but actual yellow light from the sun! With renewed vigor, she sprinted towards it, desperate to be away from these things and their hellish tunnels. The light grew brighter and brighter, until she could see the entrance! She careened into the sunshine, feeling relief.

What she emerged onto, however, was far from what she had wanted. She wasn't in the desert. Instead, she saw and heard the ocean. Unfortunately, the waters was far below her. The tunnel had emptied out onto a large plateau that ended in a sharp cliff leading down below. She whirled her head around, trying to find a way down, but there was no way down. Apart from the cliff, the entire plateau was surrounded by sharply inclined rock walls. Catarina ran to the cliff and looked down. Her stomach turned. It was way too high. Even if she landed in the water, the jump would clearly kill her. Catarina whirled back around, but it was too late. The gargantua poured out of the only entranceway to the plateau. There were over a dozen of them, and they all fanned out, chittering and shrieking. Feeling a new wave of panic, Catarina held her sword out and edged her way to the rock wall on the far side. She put her back to it, ensuring that she would only have to fight in one direction, if that even mattered. The gargantua shuffled forward, being a little cautious due to her sword.

"GET BACK! ALL OF YOU GET BACK!" Catarina screamed. She quickly considered her options. Fight her way out? Impossible. Too many of them. Even assuming she could cut through the shells on their bodies, there were over a dozen. Catarina glanced at the cliff once again. It would be quicker...and there was a chance she could live, assuming she wasn't crippled. The insects skittered a little closer. She had to make a decision. She took a deep breath and prepared for her suicidal dive.

Then there was a rumble. All of the gargantua instantly froze. Catarina glanced back and forth, clearly confused. Then there was a second rumble. All of the gargantua scuttled backwards, forming a defensive circle. Catarina felt herself sweat and she gulped. Something had them spooked, and anything that scare insects of that size...! The rumbles got louder and louder, until the very ground beneath her feet shook. Then, in the most shocking turn of Catarina's life, and that was saying something, a HUGE green hand came up from the cliff and slammed onto the ground.

Catarina froze again, her brain officially giving up. The green hand pulled a massive body up with it. It was round, covered in translucent skin, and had two large, flat eyes gazing down. When its feet came over the cliff, it stood up to its maximum height, over fifty feet. The skin under its chin expanded as a deep, guttural croak echoed all around. It was frog! A fifty-foot frog that was standing like a human! Catarina just stared, her jaw hanging open.

The giant frog turned towards the gargantua. A few of them had tried to edge around, in an apparent attempt to grab Catarina and run. The frog leaned over and slammed its arm in between, blocking their attempt. The gargantua skittered backwards into the defensive circle. The frog then stood back up, glowering down at them. They edged forward again, bit by bit. They were hissing with their mandibles, as if trying to ward the huge monster off. The frog stared at them blankly, almost as if it couldn't believe they were even trying. Then, like a lightning bolt, it struck. The frog's tongue shot out and seized the closest gargantua. Rather than eating it, the frog slung it around and cracked it against one of the rock walls. The bug splattered in a hail of organs and blood. It happened in the blink of an eye, and all the other gargantua instantly lost heart. They turned and fled, crawling all over themselves to get through the tunnel. The frog slung the tongue around to get all the debris off it and retracted it back inside.

Catarina hadn't moved a muscle. Much like when the underground creatures slaughtered her fellow soldiers, she literally couldn't do anything. She watched dumbly as the frog monster crushed a gargantua like it was a literal bug. Then...the massive frog turned towards her. She looked up at the monster's flat eyes. It blinked one eye and then the other. It slowly opened its mouth.

"Mother fucker!" Catarina shrieked, at the world in general. The tongue shot out like lightning and struck her, the sticky organ enveloping her. It was on her so thick she couldn't even swing her sword. She was jerked up into the air and shot into the frog's mouth. She tried to kick and squirm, only to find the sticky tongue was actually expanding. She screamed as it wrapped around her neck and creeped up to her head. She leaned down and tried to bite the slick flesh, accomplishing nothing. It enveloped her head and cut off her air. Her vision slowly began to narrow as she cursed this land of insanity. She flew from one insane moment to the next, and now she was going to be killed by a frog. She hated everything!

*

Catarina gasped as she sat up. Her head whirled around, trying to quickly gather her surroundings for an impending fight. She quickly discovered that she was...on a beach? She sat stupefied as she tried to think. She had run from the gargantua, she was saved by a frog, and then said frog ate her. Did she...did she come out the other end!? Her rather crass thoughts were interrupted.

"I see you're feeling better!" A voice called. Catarina jumped to her feet and spun around, her fists up for a fight. She instantly realized where she was. There was a pier with a shack beside it. The pier led into a city, one she had only seen once but would recognize anywhere. It was Tarbat. She was literally back where she started.

"What the hell?" she cried. Her brain had literally given up at this moment. None of this made sense.

"You must be feeling better if you can curse," a voice said again. Catarina finally turned towards the voice. Someone was sitting beside the shack, a large bucket of fish beside him. He wore only a loin cloth, and that left little to the imagination. He appeared to be middle-aged, with gray streaks on the sides of his head. He was quite toned, with clear outlines of muscles on his sunbaked skin. Catarina's eyes went down his body once, and then again. She seemed to be...oddly mesmerized. Finally, her brain caught up.

"I'm sorry, what?" she finally asked.

The man appeared a little annoyed and spoke slower this time. "Are you alright? Are you injured? Are you feeling well?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm good. I feel..." Catarina stared down his body again. "...really good." There was another moment of silence before her brain caught up to her again. "Oh, uh, who are you?"

"I'm Adrum," the man replied.

There was a stiff silence before Catarina let out a laugh. "No, you're not!"

"I assure you, I am."

"That guy's like a hundred! At least!"

"I'm quite a bit older than that, actually. I hope I didn't hurt you, but I didn't think you would let me take you off that plateau willingly."

Catarina stared at him for a few moments, blinking dumbly. It took her several seconds for her brain to click.

"Wait..." she began. "That was...no! Is that why you look...! You really are Adrum?"

The ancient frog man gave her a quizzical look, as if the answer was obvious.

"Of course I am. I always have been."

*

Weeks before Catarina had met with her bizarre, sticky rescue, Talia and Renard were sitting on the docks at the turanta village. They had been cuddling and teasing one another as their feet dangled in the water. As Talia now gave him sex, she constantly pried him for information that, if he wanted to continue to get sex, he would willingly give. Finally, she brought up Adrum, and why he was afraid of someone so decripit. Renard sighed, and finally decided to give up the goods.

"NO WAY!" Talia shrieked, her mouth hanging open.

"Yes way," Renard said, looking a little sheepish.

"He can turn into a giant monster frog?" she demanded.

"Technically, he's a giant monster frog and that can turn into a human," the fox man corrected.

"Wha...but that's...is that why he walks all squatted like that?"

"Uh...maybe?"

"If he can change his form like that, why does he look so old and decrepit? Like his skin is falling off?"

Renard winced a little at that. "He uh...he got hurt protecting me. Hamid too, actually. There was a riot, well it was more like a battle, in Tarbat and..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay!" Talia said, raising her hands. "Back up. Start at the beginning here. He's a frog monster. So, he's like one of the demon's descendants, right?"

"Not exactly. No one's entirely sure where he came from, but he's not one of the demon's children. According to the stories passed down by the people of Tarbat he was already living here when the Demon King first arrived."

Talia's jaw slowly dropped. "Renard, that was like...thousands of years ago!"

"Yeah, it was."

"He's thousands of years old!?" Talia shrieked.

"Probably. He basically raised me for most of my life, and he refused to ever talk about it."

Talia's face dropped a little. "He raised you? What happened to your parents?"

Renard took a deep breath and leaned back a little. "The people of Tarbat get along now, but that's largely because of Adrum. When I was a kid, there was this little war, if you want to call it that. The pigmen and the centaurs forced more races than ever into the city. What had been a mostly human city was suddenly full of many new races. And let's just say we all didn't get along..."

*

Eighteen years before Lionheart's doomed crusaders set foot in the desert, Adrum was standing on his pier, looking at the city of Tarbat. He didn't look old and decrepit, but middle-aged as Catarina saw him. His arms were crossed, and he was scouring at the skyline of town he had always called home. Multiple columns of smoke were billowing from different sections. A makeshift tower had been erected in the center of the metropolis. The humans had built it so they could keep an eye on everything. They had barricaded themselves around it, and with their vantage point they were launching raids into the neighborhoods of other races. Those other people, in turn, had united against the humans and built their own defenses around the city. It had devolved into street-by-street violence, with both groups trying to either displace or wipe out the other.

Adrum scoffed and gazed out across the ocean. In all the years he had existed, far too many in fact, he could never get over the stupidity of people. Some new groups of people move in, and all of a sudden everyone starts arguing. The new people look different. They talk different. Their ways are different. Clearly this meant they were dirty heathens who didn't belong in this city! At least, that's what the "humans" thought. They weren't even pure humans! They all the demon's blood in them, yet thought they were better than the ones they call "monsters." They even turned on the other races that already lived in the city. Hatred, anger, racism, all because society had changed a little. What was he supposed to do? Save them from themselves? That wasn't his job, and the person whose job it was lived across hundreds of miles of desert.

As if to answer him, a bird came fluttering over to him. He briefly turned to look at it and jumped a little. It wasn't a bird, but some sort of magical construct made of palm leaves shaped like a bird. It carried a scroll in its beak, and it didn't take a genius to know where it came from. Adrum sighed, suddenly feeling old, and reached down to take it. The moment it was in his hand the palm bird exploded with a loud pop, sending twigs and leaves in all directions.

"That was dramatic," he complained. He unrolled the paper and quickly began reading. The more he did, however, the greater his frustration grew. When he finally finished, he wadded up the paper and clenched his fists.

"Seriously!" he bellowed. "You're just going to push this on me?" He continued to fume for a few more moments, gritting his teeth. Ultimately, it wasn't like there was any other option. The people were ready to kill each other because some of them looked and talked differently. By the time anyone else could make it here...

"Fine," Adrum said in a low voice. "But it's going to be solved my way." He tensed up as he let go of the magic on his body. His skin bulged, his muscles popped, and his bones cracked. For the first time, in a very long time, his body began to return to what it was truly meant to be. He would be lying if he said it didn't feel good.

A young boy of the fennec tribe was huddling inside of a ruined house. For days on end, all he had heard was the sounds of battle and the screams of the dying. He was hungry and tired but couldn't leave. Two fronts of this street-by-street battle were right outside the entrance. Barricades were on both sides of the street. Men, humans on one side and many races on the other, were armed with bows or were priming magic. They had been taking shots at each other for days. Several people were already dead. If young boy stepped outside, he could be shot down, possibly by either side. The fox boy had no choice but to continue to wait, hungry and alone.

Abruptly, screams and shouts came from outside. The young boy curled into a ball and covered his ears. They were fighting again. At any moment, one of these fighting men could come stumbling inside. If they were human, he would be killed. The only thing he could do was pray. After some time, the shouts and screams began to abate. The boy lifted his paws away from his ears. Were they finally done? Could he get away?

Without warning, someone came sprinting into the home. The fox boy yipped and scuttled against a wall. The person who ran inside was a human but not a very big one. It was a child, no older than the monster child himself. The human ran to the opposite wall to the fox boy and fell to the ground. He huddled in the dark gasping for breath.

It took a few moments for the human to see he wasn't alone. When he saw the fox monster. He gasped and tried to back away, even though his back was already against the wall. The fox boy saw the fear on the human's face and quickly spoke.

"I won't hurt you!" the monster said. The human boy stopped, his eyes darting back and forth. He looked haggard, thin, and filthy. It was clear they were both in the same situation.

"They kidnapped me," the human boy said weakly.

"The monsters?" the fennec asked.

"No...the humans. They wanted me to use magic to make them an army, but I'm just a kid. My parents didn't even teach me any of the techniques! I just...I just ran over the barricade and made it here."

"Aren't you human?"

"My people are doll mages. I'm not human enough."

The fox monster clenched his jaw. Everyone hated the doll mages. They could morph people into their puppets and even steal children from cradles to do so...or so the stories went. Then again, doll mages had never hurt the fennec boy or his people. Doll mages weren't the ones who had killed his parents.

"My name is Renard," the fox boy said. "What's yours?"

"Hamid," the human replied.

"Is your house near here? Can we hide?" Renard asked.

"No they...they raided our house. My parents..." Hamid paused and wiped his eyes. He was surprised he had any tears left at all. "My parents tried to fight them. They lost."

Renard watched Hamid tremble for a moment before speaking. "My parents are gone too." They stared at each other, the same sullen, damaged look in both of their eyes.

A loud boom echoed across the city, rumbling the ruined home the two were hiding inside. Both children screamed. Hamid, perhaps out of pure instinct, scrambled across the room to Renard. They both huddled together, a new wave of terror sweeping over them.

The men outside of the house stared with slack jaws. They were all standing up, the barricades forgotten. Something huge and green was lurching down the street. None of them could believe their eyes. A frog, taller than any building in the city, was waltzing down the street. The massive monster turned and spotted the men. Its slow pace broke out into a blinding sprint. Despite its massive size, it was unbelievably fast. The men screamed as they clamored over the barricades, their petty feuds suddenly forgotten. When the frog monster reached their makeshift walls, he reared his leg back and gave a thundering kick. The barricades shattered to pieces, with debris flying hundreds of feet in the air. The chaos attracted attention across the city. Men from all sides began pouring through the streets and onto roofs, heading towards the chaos. Perhaps out of fear, they all began attacking. Bolts of magic, fire, and electricity struck the monster frog from all directions. The monster didn't budge. In his true form, his skin was strong as steel. He had so much magic coursing through him that it bled out and negated the effects of their spells anyway. Human, monster, it didn't matter. He was a different breed, and no amount of their power could stop him. A few of the shots, however, went errant and hit the building behind him.

As the walls of the home collapsed, Hamid and Renard screamed. Their shrieks got the attention of Adrum, who turned and saw them for the first time. With the supporting wall gone, the roof crumbled. The children were unable to escape as the stones fractured apart and fell towards them. The frog monster lunged forward while still under fire. He thrust out his hand and caught the debris, saving the children. The two boys looked up, their eyes wide. The massive creature threw the stones aside but was hit by a renewed fury of magic spells. This time they were more organized and potent. A combination of spells coated him with flaming liquid. Although it only mildly stung, Adrum knew that if the kids stayed there, they would be doomed. If he moved even a little, those spells would zoom right past him and onto them. He flipped his hand over and curled his fingers around them. The two children cowered, fearing they would be crushed. Instead, they were gently wrapped in the monster's grip, and they were lifted up.

Adrum stood and scanned the city. Men of all races were lining the streets all around him, continually throwing magic at him. There were even some on roofs, trying to direct others. All of it was useless, but they didn't know that. He had to find the leaders of these two forces and get them to put an end to it. As the magic beaded off Adrum's skin like drops of rain, he zeroed in on the makeshift tower the humans built. A magic circle appeared over his eye, and he was able to zoom his vision. He saw the man he was seeking. The leader of the humans was on the balcony of the tower, pointing and shouting at the frog monster now terrorizing the city. Adrum blinked one eye and then the other. The tower was halfway across the city. He would have to walk through countless streets and barricades. He would have to kill many people to do that.

Adrum then felt his feet becoming cold. He gazed down to see that the people of the city had changed tactics and were now using their magic to freeze him in place. The ice was already up to his ankles. He couldn't stand there for much longer. Their ice wouldn't hurt him, but the children were not so invincible. He was going to have to do this quick. He slowly squatted down, bending his legs and putting his body against the ground.

In the very next instant, he was gone. With a thundering push from the ground, he leapt clear of all the buildings around him and was in the air. Shards of ice flew around like shattered glass, all that work undone in less than a second. The whole city gawked as this hulking mass was suddenly airborne, sailing through the air effortlessly. Adrum's body slammed into the tower, shattering it apart and sending everyone on it flying. With his keen eyes, he saw the leader of the humans hurtling through the air. Adrum opened his mouth and his tongue struck out, seizing the man and pulling him inside his gullet. The frog monster then landed quite roughly, toppling several buildings in his wake. Adrum then stood again, once again searching.