Danse Macabre Troop Leader POV
Dixon had just been killed by a fucking toad. The thing barely reached the middle of his shin, yet it carried enough force in the bite alone to crunch his skull like a poorly made ceramic vase under a mallet.
If it could do that with just pure strength at that size, he was terrified to think what its real specialty could be.
The fights with the liquid centipede and deer shade were fresh on his mind. At least those things were straightforward from the moment they laid eyes on them, a monster with a subtle specialty was a true nightmare to deal with.
Why the hell had they left the guns and blast-nades back in the stashes? A monster of this caliber doesn’t just wander into a clearing without anyone saying anything or anyone else dying.
It had to mean the toad was some sort of guardian beast the elves employed in return for something. He had to figure out a way to kill it or save himself in some way.
His mind raced for solutions as the gang surrounded it on all sides according to his orders. They were men he worked with for years now and the loss of one member was a massive hit to their capabilities that would take months to replace.
The expressions on some of the members’ faces told varying stories. Some were angry at their friend's death, while others were just wary of being the next on the chopping block.
The beastly bastard sat on Dixon’s back like a triumphant warrior standing over a slain enemy. It was insulting to the most heinous degree.
It seemed perfectly content on waiting for something to happen. It was patient and completely confident. His evaluation of the creature raised a few pegs as he inspected it more. It might be unknown to him, but he refused to let it surprise him.
If a monster can speak a language as complex as common, then it was smart enough to know the situation it was placing itself in and the confidence it oozed gave him no sense of the assurance he had hoped for.
Thoondur, one of their dwarven members and Dixon’s best friend was the first to test the monster’s might with a probing stab from behind.
One of the most obvious issues about the monster glared its fatal head at the approaching blow. The beast’s near-perfect vision coverage allowed it to notice the attack before the man had taken even a step forward and already poised itself to act accordingly.
It moved with the speed of a lightning mink to correct its direction and readied itself for the incoming attacker.
Thoondur failed to react in time to the defensive position it put itself in and stumbled on some unseen obstacle, leaving him unguarded and at eye level with the devil before him.
“No!” Only one word left his mouth before the beast launched itself ahead and killed the man in less than a second with a quick yank to the side.
His confidence went from a seventy percent chance of victory to a fifty percent chance of survival.
While they weren’t far off probability-wise, they meant drastically different things.
Another member of the troop began to step out of the formation to take advantage of the frog's preoccupied m outh.
“Stop! Hold!” He stared at the bloodied frog with fear apparent on his face.
Most of the men and women around him had realized the danger they put themselves in and none wanted to be the first to attempt fleeing in the off chance it takes it as a game.
“You speak common.” The statement seemed to make the toad think about something before it spoke in an unnervingly calm and clear tone.
“Yes, and many other languages too. You speak Elvish.” He scoured through everything he had heard and seen from the elves in the hopes of finding a way out for some of the people present.
They talked about a salamander using magic but nothing about the toad beyond there being one. This seemed pretty fucking important.
He just needed to buy time to think in the tense situation.
“Yes. Mainly songs and common greetings. Stuff that is useful in my line of work.” The toad chuckled at the response.
“And what line of work is that?” The question threw him off guard. How was he supposed to answer that with all of the unconscious elves and weapons in hand?
“Hmmm. Scouting, information gathering, and bard on the side.”
“I think you are forgetting mass murderer as well. That is a pretty big part if the knocked-out elves all around us are anything to go by.” The toad hopped back to Dixons cooling back and sat in the center of the formation as it adjusted slightly to the new position
“Well, there are some new developments.”
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“Yes, I am sure there are. Now, have you had time to think about my question?” It appeared to be growing more and more impatient by the second.
Why would it care about the song? That made no sense. Was it the ending or the whole thing?
“I am sorry. Could you be more specific?”
“The part about destroying ‘Bogwood’. What the fuck was that all about.” The toad’s tone was dripping with poison as the words fell from his mouth like hammers slamming into him with every sylable.
A talking toad with monster-like strength mingling with elves. Had he found a remnant of the Bogwood civilization weeks of travel away from their home?
“Oh shit.” He gulped as the words left him involuntarily.
The creature before him watched his every move as he froze like a marble statue.
The body underneath him quickly changed from completely human and only slightly bloody to a rotten corpse that seemed to have rotted in a bog in a matter of seconds.
His nose burned and his heart dropped as the face of Dixon disappeared from reality, only to be replaced by slick blood and exposed pink bone.
He fought the need to throw up and tried to get his story straight. There was still a chance he made it out alive.
“Bogwood was the place that housed a massive colony of amphibians. About a week ago, there was a raid on the place by a coalition of forces. It was a kill or be killed situation they had found themselves in, you know?”
“Kind of like right now.” The voice slipped from the toad like a natural threat he was ready to act on.
“Yeah, like this. It was either the human and dwarf races or them and we just happened to come out on top. It was nothing personal from what I know. Just war.” The last sentence seemed to hit a nerve as the toad tensed up like the people around him.
Was this it? Was he going to die right now? He refused to accept it. He was going to report back to the kingdom of his find if it was the last thing he would do.
“War tends to get personal when you kill a toad's entire family in one large mass bombing. It really stokes the flames of bloodshed and revenge if you don’t get them all. You said something about that in that little song of yours if I am not mistaken.”
“I think you are miss-remembering. I merely said that they were ju-” The toad cut him off mid-sentence.
“No, I am certainly not. I have a great memory.” The matter of fact sentence left him with no room to argue.
He saw very few options left that had any number of them making it out of here alive. They were already down two members and he feared what losing any more would do to their future
It wasn’t every day that you found an assassin who could play a mean flute and wanted to come work for someone that just had most of their member killed.
“Rotated probing, caution!” His yell triggered the troop members to ready their weapons to follow his orders.
The human members with long reach and longer weapons periodically tested the waters to see where the monster got nervous.
“Really? The first person that gets within range of me dies.” The stone cold tone chilled his spine in the same second the sentence was uttered. The humans that pressed the attack suddenly became much more timid in their little tests.
He withrdrew a throwing knife from his belt and hid it behind his back for a surprise attack. The toad looked much more tense than before despite the hidden nature of his actions.
How did it know?
He threw caution to the wind and flicked his wrist to send the razor sharp blade forward. It soared through the air in a neary straight line directly to the mnster before them.
Faster than his eyes could follow, the toad flexed its arm and the blade disappeared from his sight just before it made contact.
“Argh!” A loud gasp sounded off to his side. A quick glance showed Blaustoond had been stabbed straight through the gut by the small blade. He fell to the ground as his guts poured out of both holes.
Had it deflected my knife and purposefully sent it towards him or was this just a fluke?
The many unknowns brought no small discomfort. He was stuck in a moment of death and uncertainty. That was the worst combination he could imagine.
“Either come to me or I will come to you. Hurry up.” The toad appeared to grow more impatient at the stalling.
“Two peel, secure bags!” His shout caused a pair of the members to back from the encirclement and grab hostages from the ground.
They approached the circle with weapons at the elve’s necks, ready to end their lives.
“Surrender or we kill them.” The threat seemed to fall on deaf ears as the toad merely tilted its head and stared at him like he was the dumbest creature he had ever seen.
“I…I… I don’t understand. Are you really that stupid?” The troop members’ anxiety leapt up in that very second.
“We will kill them, that is not a bluff.” The monster opened his mouth wide with a mirth.
“Muahahaha. I mean, why else would you be here with weapons drawn around a bunch of unconscious elves if not to kill them?” The laugh that left the small toad refreshed the cold chills on his spine.
Had he been wrong about it being a guardian to them? It appeared entirely carefree. Was it trying to bluff them?
“Termina-” He was abruptly cut off.
“Whoever does that dies the in the worst way I can manage.” It glanced back and forth between the hostage-holding members with a blank stare.
So he does care about them.
“I repeat, surrender or we kill the elves.” His demand was much more forceful than before. He put his whole chest into the command and glared the toad down.
“You are making a grave error in judgment here. I would prefer you didn’t kill them, but I will be a hero whether one dies or a dozen dies. I will still be saving hundreds. Do you see what I am talking about now? You are just making this worse for yourself now.”
The gravity of the situation finally sat in. He finally understood the situation clearly. It was almost guaranteed that they were all going to die today if he didn’t play his cards right. The cold words left the troop motionless as they digested the toad's intent.
The standoff lasted for nearly ten seconds before the leader made his move.
“Terminate one!” A short dwarf holding one of the hostages jabbed his dagger in the elf’s gut, spilling the intestines from his torso.
“I told you we will do it. Surrender of the next one will go too.” He grasped at the final straws f hope.
“Eeep!” A high-pitched squeak left the murderous dwarf’s mouth as he looked back to the toad before him. The black lifeless eyes of the amphibian looked straight at him with its emotionless features.
“I told you what would happen, did I not?” All members present gulped at the threat while the killer shook from his hands to his feet, regretting his actions.
The clearing erupted into a flurry of movements.