The sights before him threw him for a loop. A massive fish, a dozen leaps long, slowly sank into the depths below him. The only thing left of its massive body was its tail. Red and green scales alternated all along its skin, creating a hypnotic pattern as he tried to understand what was happening before him.
The headless body leaked fluids out into the water, staining it a clear red as more blood poured from the bisected creature. His thoughts started to fall into place the longer he took the situation in.
‘I had been eaten. This dastardly creature ate me while I was unconscious and made me believe Quetulopus had forsaken me once again. How preposterous.’ He froze as a shadow above him blocked out the sun.
He glanced up in awe at the thing that saved him from his digestive fate. A massive crocodile swam overhead as he gawked at it.
His savior had been one of his civilization's ancient mortal enemies. The monsters that killed untold swathes of his people before he was even a piece of genetic material.
‘He shall get a pass today for saving my life, but, shall we meet again, the story will be much more different. Count your blessings, beast.’ Egosum kicked away into the water, avoiding the monstrous reptile overhead.
The lake he found himself in was deep. The bottom was completely black as it went on and on without an end in sight. His stomach dropped as he saw movement just within the recesses of his sight.
He was above an abyssal trench with no hint of safety anywhere nearby. The thing deep below shuffled some more, yet he failed to make it out. He took a quick glance up to the floating crocodilian and the need for air drove him forward.
He refused to die to some unknown new enemy. He would have to take his chances with the satiated beast up above.
Strong leg kicks sent him flying to salvation. Without watching behind him, his fear came bubbling up, sending his movement into a frenzied overdrive. He swore he could almost feel the thing reaching for him from the abyss by the time he broke the water's surface.
The tingle in his spine grew in intensity as he kicked with all of his energy.
His streamlined toad form, covered in small bumps and backed by large poison glands, sent him out of the water with surprising speed and skittered to a stop on the moving landmass he had just declared his species’ mortal enemy.
The behemoth creature floated forward, either ignoring or not noticing its brand-new hitchhiker.
“Thank you beast, you shall live another day for this service.” The monster swished its tail back and forth lightly before continuing on, completely uncaring.
All around the pair was an expanse of water for as far as Egosum could see. The complete state of nothingness around him did little to ease his discomfort. With nothing to do except hope that this monster below him didn’t go for a dive or notice him, he snuggled in between two mountainous scutes and fell asleep under the bright afternoon sun.
-
The warm vernal pools calmed his nerves, allowing him to focus on his lessons. The mages had arrived at the raising ponds to give out knowledge to their younglings. All of the pools nearby had multiple mages lecturing them on their families' magic.
The pool Egosum and his brothers and sisters lived in had none. No elders came by to impart knowledge. His bloodline was devoid of mages, the toads much preferred brute force and acted more like the frontline bruisers of the army.
A legacy of durability and strength was the only thing he was offered from his lineage.
That didn’t matter to him. He was determined. He listened in on the nearby mages, taking in all the knowledge they could provide.
They spoke of the water and ground mana that they used to create the fusion mud magic. It was fascinating. The lectures went on and on. Dozens of topics at once funneled into him like water wicking into dry mud.
His mentor finally arrived during a rather intense lecture between two of the neighboring mages, fashionably late as usual. The old slamanderkin hobbled through the walkways. The mages hurried out of his way as he walked along the maze-like paths.
Their bodies shivered uncontrollably as the old creature got closer. Each step sent he took, they moved two. Every nod he made, heads bowed down. It was a sight to behold.
His master’s milky eyes did nothing to help guide him, as he merely traveled the path he was intimately familiar with.
Egosum pulled himself just out of the water as his master got closer.
“Ah, young one. I'm glad you are up and about. Are you listening to the other weavers speak?” He nodded his head up and down, refusing to embarrass himself with his poor speech.
“You know you must speak to me one day. I shall hear your voice before I die, I declare it.” A blue wave of mana shook the ground as he took an oath of power over the meaningless desire.
“Oh well, we shall save that for another day. Let us start with the lesson, though it is a shame none of your family will come up to listen in.”
Egosum’s fellow spawn huddled near the pool’s bottom to avoid the walking apocalypse in salamander skin that stood before them. His master, Quetinctol, had survived hundreds of battles, causing his mere presence to be enough to rout most enemies and scare off any of the spawn nearby at the same time.
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He was proud to consider himself different. Not so cowardly.
He gained his master’s attention by swimming up to the surface instead of fleeing to the muck. The feeling of impending doom was exhilarating, and he had to know what was causing it.
Being the only set of eye that popped up from the water, the old salamanderkin quickly took notice despite the lack of vision and so his mage internship had begun.
Quetinctol spoke on the nature of wetlands, the inner workings of what made them, how they came to be naturally, and how they could facilitate the process.
Despite the knowledge that he carried with him, he maintained he was only a withering old salamander that wanted to guide the new generation after he retired from teaching the founding members of their civilization.
Everyone knew it was an incredibly bold lie to come from such a venerated individual, but no one would dare speak out about it.
Egosum couldn’t care less, after all, he was the one learning from the best of the best.
“The many types of wetlands have let us arrive here. An amalgamation of various biomes. Swamps meet fens meets marshes meets bogs. One day you too shall spread the wetlands outwards, sequestering water and establishing new opportunities.”
He completed his speech and looked to the sky. His eyes began to glow red. The sky exploded behind him. The ground shook itself loose. Eogsum looked back to his master.
He was gone. So was everyone else. His brothers and sisters that had been with him for his entire life disappeared into puffs of smoke. It was the apocalypse all over again.
Mind blips caused him to wince as they raced through his brain.
A whirlpool opened up below him, sending him in a spiraling circle as he slowly sunk deeper into the water, unable to escape to suction.
He was surrounded by darkness when a hint of light found its way to him. A small glowing chunk of moss and roots drifted ever closer.
The little mass moved its way into his midsection, cementing its place deep within him.
This was not a core like that soul soil had said. It was a swamp deep within him that wished to be unleashed on the world and he needed to facilitate it, even if it was a little core shaped.
He shall once and for all spread the wetlands outwards to reclaim land for his lost brethren.
It was his true calling and he would use all of the means at his disposal to do so.
-
A rumbling feeling startled him awake. Was it another meteor wiping him out of existence? He stood up and glanced in every direction in fear of death when it all came back to him.
He had hitched a ride of the monstrous crocodile’s back after it saved him, so now where was he?
The world was not so bland as it had been when he fell asleep. The expansive blue that had dominated everything around him was gone. The area he had been brought to was filled with lush foliage and expansive forests. At his back was a smaller pond that fed into the large lake they had just left.
Egosum looked down at the side of the monster and slid along it like it was a sluice that their miners had used to find gold. The crocodile didn't even flinch at his movements, seemingly accustomed to hitchhikers getting a free ride or just uncaring for the inconsequential toad.
The sandy bank he landed on offered him untold options. Now that he wasn’t stranded in oblivion he could make actual progress.
His first hop was much more graceful than it had ever been before. The fluid motions of his back legs felt so right. He glanced to the side of the water and saw his reflection. His light brown skin and small bumps charmed him immediately.
‘Aren’t I a cutie.’ The glands behind his eyes were in full show as a warning to all those that wished to eat him like the bird beasts had. He was not to be messed with. He was now a full-fledged toadling. ‘Cute but deadly.’
The thoughts swam in his head as he moved down the bank, uncaring for the world around him, just happy to be able to move on his own volition.
He came back to reality as a structure came into view up ahead. Wooden planks made the frame of some strange house thing. A large covered porch stood proudly out in front with a dock leading out into the water. He hopped ahead to get a better look.
The weird buildings seemed to serve no utilitarian purpose. The boards had begun to rot with little maintenance and the holes in the wall allowed gusts to slam the shutters repeatedly.
‘What type of dull creature would make this?’ The very next hop forward answered his question. A tan skinned beast with a head of long gray hair sat on a rocking chair whittling away at a piece of wood.
Egosum’s blood ran cold once again as he saw the creature. It was the dreaded imperium of man. The warmongering humans that had subjugated his people in their infantile days.
They came in with clubs and made sport of clubbing the younglings while the adults cleared out the larger kin that could defend themselves.
It had to have been the most horrendous genocide to have ever happened. Tens of millions of his people had died to feed the gluttonous race.
His master had done all he could in pushing back the armies only for more to replace them. The humans were so entrenched in the lands that it took everything he had just to keep the front lines from collapse and sending the entire amphibian civilization to the dark ages they had just recovered from.
If it were not for Quetulopus, the slaughter would have continued until there were none left to fight the wars.
It was just his first in the long list of achievements that raised him up to near godhood status amongst his peers.
The hairy thing just sat rocking back and forth with its small eyes watching the wood as it worked.
He needed to do something while he still had the chance to fight back. His back legs tensed as he got ready to take the fight back to the human scum.
The door to the house flew open as a small human with no clothes on stumbled out wielding a wooden sword.
It was death incarnate.
“Papa, pway wid me pwease. I’m bored.”
“Put clothes on. It doesn’t matter that we arent in the town. You can’t just run around with your dong bouncing everywhere.”
“Owh. But I wanna pway. Ooo fwoggy!”
The small human stumbled towards him with his weapon at the ready
‘Oh fuck,oh fuck, oh fuck. Shiiiiiit’ He scrambled away from the horrifying giggling beast of terror.
He couldn’t be ridiculed for fleeing from certain death if no one was around to place him at the scene of embarrassment and so he took off into the woods.
“Leave it alone, we don’t need any more meat for the stew.”
‘You have earned yourself another day at life old human but I will be back. Mark my words!’
Egosum refused to look behind him and check if the creature followed him, instead opting to flee into the forest as if his life depended on it because he was certain it did.