"Rickley Ravenbrook. Thirteen years old and back from the dead as an Undying Fiend. Bard of Death. That has quite the title to it, huh?"
A croak and a menacing grumble echoing off the walls was all I got as an answer from my ride. A frog that wasn't really a frog at all. Or, if it was, it seemed to have been merged with a house. If not that, then a house was fitted into a hollow jewel embedded and hidden within the frog's back. A house and a pond with a small garden and a sky made of transparent crystal. Connected, somehow, to the stomach and brain of this frog that wasn't a frog.
It could eat like a frog. But the contents of its stomach were made accessible to me. Dirt and wood to make a resting spot and a campfire near the pond. Animals and forage for Buke to butcher and cook up. Water to drink. Air to breathe. And so on and so on. So too could I control it, however. I could tell it what to eat. How and where to hide. Where to go. Not that I needed to. The frog knew my destination better than I did. And I had time to kill.
Never before had I left Chor. Much less Nevstan. So it was with luxurious glee that my time was spent sightseeing. Watching the scattered forests of Vruria pass while I tinkered and toyed with my drum and a flute and horns galore. Seeking a theme to fit the lands passing by the day. Dreaming and eating and napping as the rolling hills and tundras of Ligin bounced by the night. If any hostiles appeared, they went unnoticed by me, for I've been in here, relaxing and coming to terms with my tenure into fiendish undeath.
I found that while I was already one and would soon become the other, I was a bit like this frog as well. A… machine. My throat appeared to be made of flesh but could ping like metal if flicked hard enough. My voice still reported the same. And yet, I could make it as high or low or loud or quiet as I willed it. All with a mere thought. My hair had grown back much quicker, thicker, and softer than it had ever grown before. It almost felt like silk that seemed to insist on forming locks or braids that somehow made studded tips for themselves. Quite amazingly of all was my lungs. Their capacity was infinite, it seemed. For hours I could play on a single breath, echoing wordless tales of sorrow and joy in my mobile abode.
If any passersby approached, I was certain of my songs and my very being remaining unheard and unseen. For they could have only witnessed a massive frog of vibrant color thrumming against the ground like the drums of war. Convincing, I was sure, all but the bravest souls to seek a different way around the lumbering beast. For all they would surely see was a giant frog on a dutiful stroll. Most likely seeking a mate.
It was all so beautiful. Everything. And yet so ugly in comparison to what I soon witnessed.
It came maybe three days after I left Chor. In the morning, just before dawn. Yet I noticed it only in hindsight; the sky behind my window grew brighter. Uniformly so. Not by the concentrated light of the rising sun. But it was the anticipation of that light that brought my eyes to the sight.
Seeking some fresh air for a change, I climbed atop the head of my humble abode to skitter up a ladder and unfurl the trapdoor into the shaded saddle that crowned the frog's head. The moment I sat on my little throne was when I first laid eyes on it. Knowing the rising sun would be across the mountains, I at least wanted to bear witness to the creatures of the night returning to their burrows while the creatures of the light rose from their slumber. Instead, I saw only darkness. I heard only sloshing water. Rushing water. Like rapids or a waterfall. No more thrumming against the ground, for the frog was swimming swiftly through a canal. Only then, as I turned in my seat, did I notice the gilded hue of the skies fading behind the tunnel entrance. But even then, I thought nothing of it.
Nothing was what I thought, I realized as the frog swiftly approached the golden point of the exit. And so too was there nothing to think after, for I bore witness to the unthinkable.
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Seeking that night sky so bright, I lifted my gaze the moment we emerged, finding not a vibrant sky of spherical realms but a vibrant skyscape of silver-speckled blue. Beneath me, however, was its antithesis- that gilded darkness.
It was almost as if the bright night made something cold, vile, and malevolent awaken in the furthest depths of reality before it spat it out, allowing that something to reach its hand to the surface, making the shadows writhe with malicious glee. Seeking my destination, however, the frog leaped from the canal, pulling me and my gaze down into a pit of darkness as a pillar of golden light ejected from its depths; the hand, reaching out.
Into the skies it rose, and with tremendous speed. Not to meet with the descending beam of silver in a devastating display of power, but to strike against the Second Sun and scatter into a night sky filled with countless starry motes.
How beautiful, that sky was. How a sky should have been. Filled with countless possibilities that made one dream. But alas, that beauty was cut short when the frog plummeted deeper into that stream.
Even now, I know not what I expected. But I know it was nothing good. And yet, that could hardly describe the eternal second spent within that light. It was as if I entered an infant and emerged with the mind of an elder trapped in the body of a youthful woman. I felt… complete. Changed in body and mind. Upgraded, every detail perfected. Blessed by an invisible hand. I wanted to cry when it faded. That was how great the glory was. Capable of bringing despair when it was lost. A despair that birthed a hunger to seek more; a fervor in both me and the frog. And so, we swam at higher and higher speeds until we came upon the most inspiring landscape. A grandiose, underground city.
Two trees, divine in differing ways, dominated the domain. Gnarled around each other, they were, atop a hill of magical stones and ore where they looked over winding rivers of dark waters and forests of dusky leaves. Such inspiring sights bore thrums from both the frog and my lute that soon melded with the gothic hums of the morbid and the sonorous growls of beasts.
We continued on. We played further. We traveled, ever so slowly to the edge of that forest of dusk. Over a moat of umbral waters. Into a court of black marble and bloody flora to stop before a choir of vampires singing in tune to the beings of shadow, banging on drums and gongs to the tune of my frog. Devils and pale ones chanted in an eldritch tongue. Seemingly to a large woman of midnight skin and silver hair, lounging atop a dais.
How regally menacing she looked. How familiar the… essence… pouring off of her was. How comforted she seemed by my song. So comforting that I jumped down from the frog and had it hop away while I played on and on and on until I looked up and froze.
A hundred memories rushed into my mind as I met those eyes, so familiar and yet so foreign. Instantly, I was reminded of the sole being to treat me with true kindness while I was alive. I remembered the one who helped me and helped me again once I fell down this dark path. The one I'd hoped and prayed to meet again. Despite me knowing I hardly deserved it.
He was the same. That I knew. And yet, Amun was so different. Where his teeth were once… normal, they were now twin rows of sharpened shark-like teeth. Where his eyes were once blacker than black spheres amongst a realm of white, they were now white irises with draconic pupils set within dissimilar realms; a blue sclera speckled with silver on the right and black flecked with gold on the left. His hair, once as dark as the night he claimed, was white like the purest snow and wreathed in a diadem of pure arcana; blueish-green like the summer sea and formed in ways that reminded me of runes, tilted back against his head like a knight's visor. But instead of a helm of steel, arcane fire trailed from the upper rim, casting glows of silver and gold on his nightly frame and nothing else.
Seemingly unaware of the blue veins stretching down his forearms, he stood yet remained inverted on his sphere and reached down. In turn, I reached up to grasp his hand and was blinded by the light of his headdress. So brightly, it burned, that I was forced to look within and come to terms with the swirling mana within my spirit. More mana than I'd ever seen in my life, orbited by a dark mass of something wicked.
"So…" I looked outward to meet Amun's divine eyes. Hoping to hear an answer I knew was to come. "I'm... I'm your bard?"
"That you are." He beamed wide enough to make me burst. But I held it in, allowing only a thrilled hum to ripple into the night.
"Hmm. Hehe. Nice!"