Amphibians' End

by Trevor Pryce

  Strands of nightcast silk slithered through the air toward the town hall, then glimmered with golden fire, flared with flames, and vanished. Ash drifted lower and dusted Arabanoo, who was sprawled motionless on the ground with a stinger wound in his shoulder, Gee’s mother standing guard over him.

  A surge of grief rose in Pippi’s heart. “No,” she whispered, fearing the worst.

  Then Gee’s mom lifted Arabanoo and hopped toward the medical area, and Pippi saw that he was still alive.

  “Thank the stars,” she murmured, exhaling deeply.

  Her relief died a moment later, when Marmoo leaped into the center of the now destroyed marketplace. He loomed over Pigo, and his carapace glimmered with strange, unsettling grooves.

  “Darel!” he growled. “I want the frog called Darel!”

  INGO LEAPED THROUGH THE AIR AND landed on her hands on the speaking stump.

  “I’m sorry,” she told Marmoo, flipping onto her feet. “Darel’s not in right now. Can I take a message?”

  “Don’t mock me, croaker!” Marmoo snarled.

  “Why not?” she asked, scratching her head. “What’re you going to do? Get more evil?”

  Marmoo slashed his tail at Dingo, and when she leaped away, his stinger stabbed the stump, which he then tore from the earth, roots and all, and hurled into the market stalls.

  Pippi whimpered. Maybe Pigo was right. Maybe nothing could stop him.

  “Bring me that wood frog!” Marmoo roared, scraping a groove in the stones underfoot with one pincer.

  Quoba stood facing Marmoo, though Pippi was sure she hadn’t been there a moment earlier. In fact, the last she’d seen, Quoba had been trapped outside the barricades with the scorpions.

  “No,” Quoba said.

  Burnu strolled up beside Quoba, holding his boomerangs absentmindedly, like he wasn’t even scared. “Yeah. What are we, wood frog delivery?”

  “The Veil is down.” Marmoo’s segmented tail curved and swayed. “The Amphibilands are mine. There is no way to stop my horde now.”

  “We could arm-wrestle?” Dingo said from the town hall steps. “Or play rock-paper-scissorfish?”

  “If you could defeat me,” Marmoo said with a hungry smile, “my horde would walk away. But you cannot.”

  Old Jir stepped around the stump that shattered the market stalls. “Before you were a scorpling, Marmoo, the golden frog defeated a horde like this.”

  Marmoo snorted. “The golden frog is a myth,” he said, jabbing his stinger into a thick root. “A boogeyman we scorpions use to scare our children.”

  “He was as real as you or me.” Old Jir glanced aside briefly, and for a second Pippi wondered what he was looking at. “And he believed in preparation.”

  “He can’t help you now.” Marmoo lifted a length of dirt-clumped root with his stinger. “Nothing can.”

  “Perhaps not, but—”

  Marmoo hurled the root at Old Jir. A stocky wood frog leaped to block the root, but it spun wildly and struck Old Jir a glancing blow in the chest. He fell and wheezed, and the frightened gasps of frogs sounded from all around.

  Marmoo didn’t seem to notice. His scarred side eyes scanned the battlefield. “Commandeer Pigo! Report!”

  Pigo stepped into sight with a shatter mark on his carapace from his fight with Burnu, and his tail broken near the stinger.

  “My king,” he said as he limped toward Marmoo with his sole surviving red-banded soldier. “The mission is complete. We drove all the frogs here, and the Kulipari are yours.”

  Marmoo sneered. “All the frogs except the one I want most.”

  “Darel isn’t in the Amphibilands,” Pigo said. “He left the—”

  Marmoo smacked Pigo with his pincer. “You’re a disgrace! Look at you! Half broken, weak as a softskin!”

  Pippi looked away from the scorp squabble—in the direction that Old Jir had glanced. From her spot just inside the town hall, she saw Dingo stealthily pulling onyx-tipped arrows from a quiver strapped to her leg. Meanwhile, Quoba was standing in plain sight for once . . . but something about her face made Pippi think she was about to tap her poison. Or was checking if she still had any poison left.

  “Maybe that’s what Old Jir meant by ‘preparation,’” she said to herself.

  “Pippi,” Yabber whispered, unfurling his neck until his mouth was beside her ear. “Listen for the Serpent.”

  “What?” she whispered back. “Now? Look at the Kulipari, they’re about to—”

  “I know!” he said. “But I’m fresh out of ideas. We need the Serpent. Can you hear anything? Is it watching? What next? What now?”

  “I don’t know!” Pippi couldn’t hear the Rainbow Serpent—she couldn’t hear anything except the moans of the injured and the hammering of her own heart. “I don’t know!”

  “Look at you!” Marmoo bellowed at Pigo, hitting him again. “You’re no scorpion.”

  “I’m sorry, my—” Pigo started.

  Marmoo slammed him to the ground. “‘Sorry’? Sorry doesn’t—”

  “Eat toe pad, scorpion slime!” Princess Orani bellowed, charging forward.

  “No!” Burnu blurted. “Wait—”

  Too late. Orani slammed into Marmoo with her shoulder, and the impact thudded across the village. Marmoo slid a few inches and looked almost impressed. But not hurt. He cocked his head and said, “What are you?”

  She punched him with fast blows. “I am Princess Orani, of the—”

  “Of the defeated croakers,” Marmoo snarled, and jabbed her with his stinger, flinging her across the battlefield.

  She rolled limply to a halt at Burnu’s feet, an ugly slash on her shoulder.

  Burnu crouched and whispered a few gentle words while Orani moaned. And then his skin glowed so brightly that Pippi couldn’t look directly at him.

  “Kill him!” Burnu shouted and sprang forward in a streak of color.

  In a black whirl, Marmoo spun to face Burnu, whose body arched in the air, coiled to strike. Five onyx-tipped arrows pierced Marmoo’s shoulder and he roared—then Quoba’s staff smashed into Marmoo’s rear legs, and Burnu struck, kicking Marmoo’s plated neck as his boomerangs smashed the scorpion lord’s face.

  Marmoo staggered, roaring in pain and rage . . . but despite his injuries, his tail whipcracked at Quoba and his pincer slashed at Burnu.

  Burnu leapfrogged the pincer . . . right into Marmoo’s tail, which struck his chest so hard that Pippi heard ribs snap. Quoba dodged the scorpion lord’s stinger, but his pincer sliced her staff in half and snapped at her neck.

  Quoba slid on her knees beneath the scorpion lord, now holding two short fighting sticks instead of a staff. She tapped more poison and jammed the sticks into Marmoo’s soft underbelly. Except Marmoo wasn’t soft anymore, not anywhere, and her sticks only scratched his nightcast-hardened carapace.

  Marmoo’s roar turned into a laugh as the strange spiderweb pattern on his carapace glinted with a sickly green light. His wounds blazed with an unearthly glow, then disappeared as they magically healed.

  “Well, that’s not good,” Dingo said, firing her last arrows and launching herself into the hand-to-hand fight.

  Marmoo batted her away with a pincer, stomping at Quoba with four of his legs as he yelled, “Fahlga, web those turtles, now!”

  Across the smoking village, the spider nightcasters opened a row of cages and cracked silken whips. Dozens of geckos burst out, bolting toward the town hall—then the spiders unspooled threads from their spinnerets. Their eyes turned black and the silken strands slithered through the air above the panicked geckos, snaking directly toward Pippi and the turtles in the town hall.

  “Webs!” she gasped, pointing. “Watch out!”

  The turtle apprentices murmured, and a golden cloud billowed around them, like a thousand fireflies tumbling toward the terrified lizards.

  “Stop casting! Don’t hurt the geckos!” Yabber snapped. “They’re prisoners!”

  The golden cloud broke apart. Pippi�
�s bill tingled with fear and Yabber yanked her behind the protection of his shell. She fell onto her butt, and the nightcast silk wrapped around the turtle apprentices, glimmering with a sickly green light.

  Pippi clenched her jaw. She couldn’t watch this—turtles being killed by spider magic. She shot from behind Yabber, grabbed a turtle’s flipper, and started dragging him away from the webbing.

  She took two steps before the gecko stampede struck, knocking her to the ground. She gasped for breath, and a strand of nightcast webbing slithered toward her. Closer and closer. Her eyes widened in terror—then she caught a glimpse of something outside the town hall, beyond the geckos. Beyond the spiders in the ruined village, beyond Marmoo and the Kulipari. Beyond the battlefield . . .

  An instant before the nightcast webbing struck, Yabber leaped in front of Pippi. The glowing strands wrapped him instead of her, clinging to his shell and wrapping his long neck.

  And that’s when the frogs outside started shouting: “The Blue Sky King! The Blue Sky King!”

  Pippi fearfully peered through the town hall doors, looking high in the cloudless sky. Four harrier hawks soared toward the Amphibilands, talons curled and wings wide. Four frogs rode hawk-back, diving toward the battlefield. Blue war paint streaked the face of the frog in front, and a familiar dagger glinted in his hand.

  AREL LEANED OVER THE NECK OF HIS harrier hawk, swaying in time to the beating of her powerful wings.

  At first, the view from the air had taken his breath away. He’d been awed by the harsh beauty of the outback and its sheer size. But after flying for hours, he’d spotted a smudge of smoke on the horizon, and heard Coorah gasp beside him.

  The Amphibilands was burning.

  Darel flicked away tears with his inner eyelids. He’d done this. It was his fault. He’d told them to lower the Veil, and now the eucalyptus forest was on fire. Was his mom okay? Were the triplets? Was brave, furry Pippi still alive? Had the Kulipari fallen? What about Arabanoo and Gee’s brother, Miro? Old Jir?

  “C’mon, c’mon,” he said, squeezing tighter with his knees.

  “Kee-ee-kee-kee!” his hawk told him, and flapped faster.

  “Thanks,” he said, slitting his nostrils against the wind.

  As they swooped closer, Darel bulged his eyes at the sight of the Outback Hills. A writhing mass of scorpions skittered over the destroyed frog defenses, creeping past a thick pillar of smoke.

  “The Baw Baw village,” he gasped. “It’s—it’s gone.”

  A scar of toppled trees surrounded the great banyans, and spiders climbed through fallen branches, dangling from strands and spinning webs. The wetlands—where his mom sent him to catch dragonflies—had been trampled into mud.

  “Look at the coast!” Ponto shouted above the wind. “In the shallows.”

  “Is that . . . ,” Coorah started. “What is that?”

  Darel turned his head toward the beach. Scorpions and spiders drifted across the water, then marched over a field of charred sea grass and into the woods. He frowned at the sight of shapes in the shallows that looked almost like the shadows of huge birds.

  “Stingrays,” Ponto said. “Carrying Marmoo’s troops.”

  Coorah groaned. “Across the water? No way . . .”

  “What about the turtle soldiers?” Gee asked, his voice worried. “Do you see any turtles?”

  Ponto scanned the coast. “No.”

  Darel squeezed his eyes closed and tried to imagine a rainbow. Please. Please, tell me what to do! Tell me something, anything! But all he heard was the rushing wind in his ears. No help from the Rainbow Serpent. No help from anyone.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw that his home village—the leaf village, the central village—had been overrun by Marmoo’s troops. The barricades had fallen, and Gee’s neighborhood was in rubble. Spiders lurked among the ruins of Darel’s house, ghost bats slashed at the frog army with needle fangs, and a massive scorpion stood in the razed marketplace.

  “Marmoo,” Darel breathed.

  A faint glow shone from underneath the scorpion lord—Quoba’s colors—while Dingo crouched atop a shattered cart and Burnu stood up from a heap of rubble nearby.

  “Faster,” Darel begged his hawk. “Please.”

  His hawk angled into a dive as Quoba rolled out from underneath Marmoo’s churning legs. Darel flinched when Marmoo snapped at her with his pincer, but she dodged it, then rolled into a crouch beside Burnu.

  Dingo landed in front of them, her bow in her hand . . . but her quiver empty. She grinned at Marmoo, like she wasn’t standing in the middle of a battlefield, and he slashed at her with his tail. Her skin glowed brighter and her bow twirled and blocked Marmoo’s stinger. One of the scorpion lord’s hind legs slammed Burnu, then his pincer slashed at Dingo and—

  A brilliant yellow light shone from beside Darel.

  “Ponto!” Coorah yelled. “What are you doing? You can’t—”

  Darel raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glow, and caught a glimpse of Ponto sliding under his hawk, bracing his feet on her stomach, and pushing off. The hawk shot straight upward, and Ponto plummeted toward the ground in a blur.

  “Go, go!” Darel urged. “Dive!”

  Wind whipped past as his hawk let out a kee and plunged toward the battle.

  Down below, Dingo staggered from the lash of Marmoo’s tail, while Burnu and Quoba flanked the scorpion lord. Dingo still managed to grin, though, and crooked a finger at Marmoo. For a second, Darel didn’t understand why Dingo was taunting Marmoo, or why Burnu and Quoba weren’t attacking. Then he realized that they were working together, maneuvering Marmoo onto the exact spot where Ponto was about to strike.

  The scorpion lord must’ve realized, too. He lifted his scarred face and looked directly at Ponto, who was seconds from impact, his glow trailing him like a meteor’s tail.

  Marmoo didn’t dodge, though. He didn’t move aside. He just barked a command, and his troops—the scorpions and spiders, the lizards and bees and bats—roared and charged the tattered remains of the frog army.

  Darel heard the croaks above the rushing wind: “Blue Sky King, Blue Sky King!”

  Free-falling in a blur of speed, Ponto shone blindingly bright as the ground approached. Yet Marmoo still didn’t move. He simply hunched in his carapace, drew his pincers to his chest . . . and waited for Ponto to hit.

  The shock wave almost knocked Darel from his hawk. A mushroom cloud of dust and debris rose over the village. Frog and scorpion soldiers hurtled across the battlefield like leaves in a windstorm. The impact flung ghost bats past Darel, half of them stunned and dazed and the other half hissing in panic at the sight of the harrier hawks.

  With a vicious keeeeeee! Ponto’s hawk slammed into a ghost bat at a steep dive, slamming it toward the ground.

  “Help me!” the bat hissed, and a dozen other bats swarmed the hawk.

  “Keek-eek!” the hawk cried, slashing with razor talons.

  One bat shrieked and spiraled down, but the others snapped at the hawk with hungry fangs, using quick, darting motions to stay away from the killing beak.

  A cloud of white bats surrounded the keeing bird, then disappeared from view as Darel’s hawk dived lower and leveled out close to the ground. The wreckage of the village blurred past, then Darel tapped the bird’s head and she dipped her wings, slowing just enough for him to leap to the ground.

  He rolled a few times, then stood facing the dust cloud that had swallowed the Kulipari and Marmoo. Coorah and Gee landed beside him, and he looked from one to the other. He felt like the Blue Sky King should know what to say at a time like this, something rousing or meaningful, but he didn’t. He just felt grateful that his friends were standing beside him—like they always did.

  “I don’t know about you two,” Gee said, “but I just rode a hawk.”

  Coorah pulled out her fighting stick as scorpions clattered toward them through the dust. “We’ll take care of this, Darel. You make sure Marmoo’s down.”

 
; “The two of you against dozens of them?”

  “Five of us,” Pirra said, leading two bedraggled platypuses closer.

  “More like four,” Gee told her. “I’m going with Darel.”

  “More like ten,” a bullfrog said, hopping from the wreckage with a battered tree frog squad. “Those poor scorps don’t stand a chance.”

  HE NIGHTCAST WEBBING GLOWED around Yabber, and the golden sheen of his eyes dimmed. He collapsed, his long neck flopping to the floor of the town hall.

  “Hold on, Yabber!” Pippi said, slashing at the web with her spur. “Hold on, hold on—”

  “Pippi, y-y-you must stay safe,” Yabber whispered. “Find a pl-pl-place to hide and—”

  A terrible BOOM sounded outside, and splinters stabbed Pippi’s face. The town hall exploded and the roof collapsed. Pippi yelped in shock and fear, then cowered as a heavy branch careened from the roof, falling directly toward her. Crack! The branch hit Yabber’s shell an inch from Pippi’s bill. Debris rained around her, and she would’ve been pummeled to death if the branch hadn’t formed a sort of tent over her.

  She shivered and whimpered until the crashing stopped, then slumped in stunned despair. “Yabber?” She touched the shell that formed half of her protective tent. “Yabber?”

  He didn’t answer, didn’t move. She rapped on his shell, but he still didn’t respond, so she shook her head back and forth, trying to sense him. For a second, she couldn’t. Then her bill tingled faintly, and she almost wept in relief.

  He was still alive . . . barely.

  At least the webbing was gone. Whatever had boomed outside must’ve blown the spider nightcasters away. Still, she needed to hide Yabber, and quick. If the scorpions found him like this, unable to defend himself . . .

  She shuddered, unwilling to finish the thought.

  The spider archers fired a barrage of webs, but Darel leaped over them and slashed the silk in half. One web-bolt thumped his shoulder, but he managed to keep his balance and slam down onto a hairy spider’s back, then jump away into the blinding dust cloud.