Amphibians' End

by Trevor Pryce

  She leaped forward and landed in the surf, then leaped again and landed on the nearest stingray. She heard her squad screaming the bullfrog war cry behind her, heard them splashing closer—but she didn’t wait.

  She didn’t even attack the scorpions on the nearest stingray. Instead, she leaped farther into the scorpion armada. She landed on a stingray’s back between three scorpions, and they struck at her—but they were slow and uneasy on the rippling tide. She ducked and spun and kicked them into the waves.

  The three scorpions sank without a trace, and a pincer from a nearby stingray slashed at her.

  With another howl, Orani backflipped off the stingray. A stinger missed her cheek by a toe pad’s width just as she dove into the water. From beneath, the sky was blotted out by endless stingray bellies. She swam underwater, the sound of battle muffled, then grabbed the side of a stingray and pulled herself to the surface.

  The scorpions shouted in fear at the sight of her. She dodged and punched and dove and swam and struck again.

  Once she cleared that stingray of scorps, she bellowed, “Fire!”

  On the beach, the catapults clattered and swung, lofting clumps of burning moss and gourds of pepperbush goop at the seaborne scorpions. Flames blazed in the sky, sparks glimmered, and ash dusted the surf.

  Scorpions screamed and splashed, then fell silent.

  But another sound rose—a faint buzzing that grew steadily louder. Then the blue-banded bees hit, darting close and stinging hard.

  Orani battled for what felt like hours, but the scorpions kept coming, and the bees kept stinging, until she and her squad were driven back to the beach. She stood dripping on the damp sand, caught a stinger in one hand and punched with the other, then yelled, “Don’t slow down! Keep firing!”

  “We’re out of ammo!” a frog shouted from the catapults, slapping a bee from the air.

  With a growl, Orani kicked a scorpion into the surf. “You know what to do!”

  A team of bullfrogs toppled the catapults, forming them into a barrier—then they set fire to the sea grass.

  “This won’t hold ’em for long,” the scout told Orani.

  She rubbed her face. “We’ve lost the beach. We’re trapped.”

  After the silence of the water, the clamor of battle struck Pippi like a fist. She closed her ears to the screams and made her way through mobs of rushing frogs—soldiers, medics, hoppers—to the square outside the town hall, which Old Jir had turned into a command post.

  “We need the Kulipari!” Arabanoo was saying when she waddled up. “We needed them hours ago.”

  “I’m holding them in reserve,” Old Jir told him, looking even paler than usual. “You know the Kulipari.”

  “I do.” Darel’s mother looked up from the puffball bombs she was assembling. “Once they start using their poison, they won’t stop until they’re completely tapped out.”

  “Exactly.” Jir rubbed his face. “If they start too early, they’ll run dry before we even set eyes on Marmoo.”

  “Where is Marmoo?” Arabanoo asked.

  “Out there somewhere.” Old Jir’s nostrils flared. “Waiting.”

  Pippi gulped in fear and her eyes slid toward the sound of the scorpion army crashing through the woods. Smoke from distant fires drifted over the village, past the streaks of silken thread that glimmered in the air: floating strands of nightcaster silk.

  Pippi’s bill curled downward: Anyone who touched that webbing fell limp to the ground. Not dead . . . until Marmoo’s troops reached them, anyway. She swallowed the lump in her throat and looked toward the medical area, where Coorah’s father and his apprentices were treating injured frogs and platypuses.

  “So we’ll wait, too,” Old Jir continued. “Once everyone’s gathered in the village, the Kulipari will tap their poison and protect our retreat.”

  “And the turtle troops will be waiting?” Arabanoo asked.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Where are the turtles?”

  “I don’t know.” Old Jir inflated his throat unhappily. “They should’ve been here this morning.” He paused as threads of spider silk shimmered with golden light and burned to ash in the air. “At least we have Yabber and his apprentices.”

  “We’ve also still got frogs trapped in the banyan trees,” Arabanoo said. “Surrounded on all sides. We can’t wait any longer for the Ku—”

  “They got out of the banyan trees,” Pippi told him. “They’re on their way here and—Oh! There they are now.”

  Old Jir and Arabanoo followed her gaze toward the inner defenses, an enormous barricade of logs and vines and stone. Wounded tree frogs limped through the open gate, dragging the dead behind them. When the crashing of the scorpion horde sounded louder, a squad of wood frogs slammed the gate shut.

  “That’s the last of them,” Old Jir said.

  Arabanoo nodded. “We’re all here.”

  “Almost all,” Pippi said, thinking about the frogs who’d already fallen in the invasion.

  “Yes . . . almost all,” Arabanoo agreed, flicking his inner eyelids gravely.

  After a moment, Old Jir hopped to the top of a speaking stump and lifted his walking stick. Frogs who’d been worm farmers and nursery-pool teachers a month earlier gathered around him; they were now the weary, battered commanders of the army of frogs.

  “We lost the north,” Old Jir ribbited. “We expected that. We’ll make a stand here, with the Kulipari.”

  “Finally,” a commander grumbled.

  “If the village falls, we’ll retreat to the beach. The turtles can help us reach the Coves, and—”

  “Forget the beach!” Princess Orani landed in front of Old Jir’s stump. “Marmoo’s taken the beach.”

  Shocked gasps sounded over the crashing approach of Marmoo’s horde. The snapping of pincers crackled in the air, joined by the twang of a spider archer’s bow. Somewhere nearby, a frogling wept.

  “How?” Pippi asked. “How did he . . . Scorps hate water!”

  “He’s got stingrays,” Orani growled. “A flotilla of stingrays, unloading scorps on the beach.”

  “On their backs?” Arabanoo gasped. “No way.”

  Orani nodded. “A dozen battalions landed—I almost wet my warts.”

  “You mean you jumped into the surf and pounded them like a maniac?” Arabanoo said.

  Orani gave a low, croaking laugh. “For a while. There are too many of them, and the blue-banded bees are giving them air support. We can’t fight in the sea and air at the same time. My bullfrogs are slowing them down—but not for long.”

  “So we’re surrounded,” Old Jir said.

  “And I checked the coast with a dreamcasting,” Yabber’s voice said. “The turtles aren’t coming.”

  For a moment, Pippi thought he was casting his voice into the square from far away, but then she saw him and his three dreamcasters stepping from the gloom of the town hall.

  “The stingrays turned the turtles back to the Coves,” Yabber explained, his face creased with worry. “Marmoo threatened their pups. The turtle soldiers couldn’t blame them for trying to protect their young.”

  “Shell-heads . . . ,” Orani muttered.

  “Maybe Darel found some allies,” Pippi said in a small voice.

  “He didn’t,” Yabber told her, lowering his neck mournfully. “I’ve been tracking him with my dreamcasting. Last I saw, he was two days’ journey away . . . and hadn’t found help.”

  “You’re a dreamcaster!” Arabanoo snapped. “Do something! Stop the stingrays, stop the bees—do something!”

  “They’ve been turning the nightcasters’ webbing to ash all day,” Old Jir told him. “Otherwise, we’d have been trapped in a blizzard of silk hours ago.”

  “Indeed.” Yabber looked toward the crash of the scorpion army in the woods. “And we’ve been turning firm ground to swamp.”

  “That’s what’s slowing them down?” Arabanoo asked.

  “They aren’t good in quicksand,” Yabber said
with a glint of satisfaction in his eyes. “Plus, I’ve been leading Commander Pigo’s squad in circles all day.”

  “We planned to retreat,” Old Jir told his commanders, “but there will be no retreat. This is where we stand. This is where we fall.” He raised his walking stick. “Move the river!”

  T OLD JIR’S COMMAND, A SQUAD OF wood frogs strained at levers high atop the waterfall. With great effort, they were able to move them far enough to release heavy boulders into the river, which blocked the current. The water splashed into new channels freshly dug by the burrowing frogs. The old river ran dry and dozens of new streams started to fill, spreading across the village like miniature moats. Pond frogs grabbed spears and hooks and leaped into the channels, swimming for fortifications.

  Pippi looked anxiously toward the barricades. Through the cracks between the logs, she saw spider archers climbing the wall, and heard their shrill screams when frog defenders knocked them off. She moved to join them, then stopped when the crowd gasped.

  The scorpion horde had reached the village. But that wasn’t the only reason why the crowd had gasped.

  The Kulipari were on the roof of the town hall. Burnu stood in the center, his boomerangs in his hands, and Dingo crouched beside him, an arrow nocked. Quoba’s cloak fluttered in the breeze as she raised her staff in a silent salute, then dropped from the roof.

  “I thought the Kulipari were special,” Burnu called to the watching frogs. “I thought we were better than ordinary frogs. But watching you today, I saw true heroes. Your courage rings out across the Amphibilands . . . across the entire outback.” He inflated his throat as his gaze swept the frogs. “But now, my brothers and sisters, it is time to attack.”

  He raised one boomerang overhead, and the cry of “Kulipari!” resounded across the village.

  Squads of burrowing frogs squirmed into tunnels, and wood frogs took cover behind camouflaging leaves. In the branches, tree frogs unraveled vine lassos, while pond frogs and platypuses held the other ends, ready to drag scorps into the water.

  Amid the bustle, the deep croaking of alarmed bullfrogs sounded from the direction of the coast. Pippi shifted uneasily. Those were Orani’s frogs, driven toward the village by Marmoo’s seaborne troops, which meant the enemy was only moments away from—

  FWOOMP! The earth shook as one section of the barricades fell, and screams and shouts and panic filled the air.

  Taking a quick breath, Pippi started forward to help the defense.

  “Pippi!” Yabber said from inside the town hall’s front doors. “Over here!”

  She turned, and frog warriors leaped over her as she rushed to Yabber. “What? What should I—”

  “Stay close,” Yabber told her. “I might need—”

  The bloodthirsty roar of the scorpions and spiders pouring through the gap in the barricades drowned out Yabber’s voice. Pippi stared in horror as a wave of arachnids smashed into the frog defenders, snapping and stinging and shooting silk. Wood frogs leaped into battle from behind the leaves, ambushing a squad of scorpions and driving them into a watery channel that ran alongside the fallen barricade.

  The panicked scorpions clawed for dry ground—but their fellow scorpions trampled them underwater. The arachnid army kept pushing forward, shoving the scorps in front toward the village, filling the defensive trenches with carapaces.

  The scorpions slammed into the final remaining squad of wood frogs holding the gap between the barricades. Arabanoo landed beside the squad, hacking at the scorpions with a hatchet in each hand. Spider archers shot webs at him from the top of the barricade, and he dodged and shouted until Orani landed beside the spiders and bellowed, “You mess with the bullfrog, you get the horns!”

  Which didn’t make sense, but Pippi wasn’t about to complain.

  Orani lashed the spider archers off the barricade, using a tree vine as a whip, and the wood frog squad roared. Arabanoo led the counterattack . . . but nothing could stop Marmoo’s horde for long.

  Until a glowing blur zigzagged through the writhing black mass of scorps, and segmented stingers collapsed like reeds before a scythe. Quoba leaped over a scorp, flashing through the gap in the barricades to the outside, her staff spinning faster than Pippi’s eye could follow. She kicked another scorp into troops of spider archers, then appeared on the other side of the battlefield, surrounded by the enemy. They slashed at her, then fell with short screams as she cut them down.

  From the front doors of the town hall, Pippi peered through the gap. Quoba seemed to be everywhere at once—and soon the scorpions realized there was an enemy in their midst. They stopped advancing on the barricades, and turned inward, surrounding Quoba.

  “Yabber!” Quoba yelled. “Close it up!”

  Pippi turned to Yabber. “What does she mean? Close—”

  Yabber’s eyes glowed golden, and vines started sprouting in the gap between the barricades, growing incredibly fast, rising to replace the log wall with living plants. The scorpions’ pincers flashed, trying to cut the tendrils, but Quoba was suddenly among them, her staff cracking carapaces, while Burnu’s boomerangs slammed into the spider archers atop the barricades, who were aiming at Quoba.

  In a moment, the dreamcast vines filled the gap, repairing the barrier, shutting out the scorps on the other side . . . along with Quoba.

  “Yabber!” Pippi gasped. “Quoba’s stuck outside with the scorps.”

  “The scorps,” he said, his voice hard, “are stuck outside with Quoba.”

  “Up there!” Orani yelled, pointing skyward. “Flying scorps!”

  Pippi raised her head and saw Commander Pigo and his elite troop drifting into view above the now empty nursery pond, dangling from long tendrils of glowing spider silk.

  “They’re ballooning in!” Old Jir shouted. “Dingo!”

  Before he finished calling Dingo’s name, dozens of arrows blackened the air from the roof of the town hall. Half the scorpions thudded to the ground inside the fortifications, but the other half sliced the spider-silk tendrils with their own pincers. A dozen red-banded scorps thumped to the ground and scuttled to sting the frog defenders from behind.

  Arrows stuck out of the scorps’ carapaces like an echidna’s spines—then Burnu struck like an avalanche, his eyes black and his skin glowing. He crushed scorpions with spinning kicks and slashed his boomerangs like claws. Pippi gulped as Burnu wailed a terrifying war chant, tearing through scorpions in a brutal frenzy.

  Web-nets twirled through the air toward Burnu. Elite spider archers loosed volley after volley. Burnu dodged easily, but the webbing caught dozens of other frogs and dragged them closer to the spider soldiers . . . until Dingo’s arrows pierced them.

  Burnu leaped to free the frogs, and another squad of red-bands faced him, along with the scorpion Pippi recognized as Commander Pigo. Dingo must’ve recognized him as well, because a volley of arrows flashed at him.

  Pigo deflected them with a blur of flashing pincers. “You can’t beat us all,” he grunted to Burnu. “You’ll run out of poison before King Marmoo runs out of soldiers.”

  “We’ll last long enough to beat you.”

  With a gesture of his tail, Pigo ordered his scorpions to scuttle closer, surrounding Burnu. “You can’t stop us. Maybe if you surrender, King Marmoo will . . .”

  Burnu cracked his neck. “Will what?”

  “Kill you quickly,” Pigo told him.

  Orani jumped onto a red-banded scorpion warrior nearby, flattening him into a tangle of legs and pincers.

  “Maybe we can’t stop you,” Orani said, laughing. “But we can stomp you.”

  Burnu laughed along. “There’s your answer, scorpling,” he told Pigo, and glowed even brighter.

  He launched himself at the scorpion commander, hurling his boomerangs, and the two of them traded vicious blows, faster than Pippi could follow. They separated, both bloodied, and a boomerang slammed into Pigo’s knee. Burnu leaped forward, grabbed hold of Pigo with his toe pads, swung him in a tight circle, and dr
ove his elbow into the scorp’s carapace.

  A sharp crack sounded, and Pigo roared with pain. Then a blizzard of leathery wings swept across the battleground and turned the whole world white. Ghost bats swooped at Yabber, who was standing on the front step of the town hall, their red eyes gleaming and their needle fangs flashing.

  Pippi shouted, “That’s my turtle!” She did a half-handstand and lashed out with her spur.

  She missed, and a ghost bat bit her leg. She squealed and slapped the bat to the ground with an angry thwap of her tail, then smacked it again and again as a brisk wind swept past her.

  Not just brisk: powerful. And not just a wind: a tornado.

  The ghost bats hissed and flapped and tumbled through the air, shoved by a golden glow shining from inside the town hall, behind Pippi.

  “You heard the platypus,” Yabber said, his eyes as bright as the sun. “That’s her turtle.”

  She shut her eyes against the dreamcast windstorm and almost laughed. Then she heard the FWOOMP! FWOOMP! FWOOMP! of more barricades falling.

  The laughter died in her throat. She closed her ears and nose, and “listened” with her bill. She felt the tingle of the battle tumbling closer as the scorpions rampaged through the barriers and smashed into the frog defenders. She felt scorpions splash into the watery trenches, shoved forward by the battalions still marching toward the village. Soon the channels were crammed with scorpions, and the next waves of the arachnid army simply advanced over their fallen comrades.

  Pippi trembled and opened her eyes. Dust from Yabber’s windstorm and floating debris from the fallen barriers still filled the village. With a sick dread in her stomach, Pippi looked around for the reassuring glow of the Kulipari.

  Instead, she saw a black shape flash through the dust, bigger than any normal scorpion. Marmoo. And spider nightcasters clustered behind him, unspooling silk into the air.

  All of the barriers had fallen, all the watery channels were crammed with scorpions. The ghost bats circled the village, driving stray frogs toward the town hall and snacking on bees when they thought the scorps weren’t looking. Orani and her bullfrogs faced the arachnid legion that had arrived on the stingrays, while Burnu stood with the tattered frogs at the shattered barriers.