The boy turned away from her, hiding his tears from view and started to walk out of the village.

“Thank you.” His voice was quiet as the group turned to follow him.

“Hold on.” She turned to the amphibians and looked each of them in the eyes.

“I want to ask you guys to look after him. I know you guys will be doing the fighting, but he can get really worked up sometimes, so I just wanted to ask you guys to keep him safe if things go badly.” She waited for a response as the boy turned around to see what was holding them up.

“We will. We will have tons of backup as well so I wouldn’t be too worried if I were you. We’ll make it back before morning.” Cinera spoke up for the group with nods from the others as they caught up to the boy.

“Let’s get this done. The faster we can get the parasite together, the faster we can finish.” Thunkar hurried through the dense jungle with the amphibians in varying states of struggle trying to keep up.

A cacophony of noises filled the air as they got closer and closer to the lake the pink worms called home.

A familiar sight to when they first saw them in their new hosts was playing out before them.

More than two dozen human hosts clashed in mechanical, but efficient, movements like masterfully controlled puppets.

Egosum watched the pink, fluorescent worms crawl through their bodies like maggots in a rotting corpse. The sheer volume of parasites saturating the flesh couldn’t be compared to the first hosts he had observed.

“I see you guys are familiarizing yourself with the bodies. Do you think you’re ready to go?” Egosum hopped ahead to address them.

Dozens of human faces turned to him in that very moment. The blank expressions came to life as they saw their favorite non-infected animal.

“When aren’t we ready to fight?” They threw their arms up and flexed for the group. A single one of them didn’t react fast enough, earning them a glare from the rest of the crowd.

“You guys are quite intimidating. I do remember you saying that there would be thirty if you include your original hosts.” The numbers were slightly off as he counted the mass of flesh before him.

“Ah, yes. It was quite a shame.” The lead parasite sighed with an exaggerated tone and held its face in its hands. “Can you imagine our horror when we were just walking through the forest and this big, slow, stupid, sloven, sexy-eh,uh-beast attacked our group with these massive claws? It looked like a mix of a bear and a sloth almost.”

The mention of the familiar beast sent phantom pains shooting Egosums back. The wound had healed with ease, but the scar tissue still tightened his back more than he liked.

“So, it killed a few of your hosts? Did you infect it as well? Are we going to have a ruminating sloth to help us out?” The thought invigorated the beastman that had been watching the crowd with a difficult expression.

The sheer number of humans in the forest made him uncomfortable and being forced to confront it was not a comfortable exercise for him.

“So he speaks. Sadly no, it is too different to actively control while moving all of these human bodies around. We figured twenty-five pairs of arms is better than two massive ones.”

“Well, we will have to work with what we got. Egosum, please go over the plan again.” Cinera turned to her amphibian friend as did the rest of the clearing’s attendees.

“We will march to their campsite and a few of us will check to make sure they are still inside. If they are, we will come back to collect everyone and then the parasites will surround them.”

“That won’t work. The wind will blow their scent inside before everyone has the chance to get into position. I will guide them to a place downwind from the camp and then we can strike from there. No need to let them know we are attacking until we strike after all.” Thunkar interjected to correct the plan.

“Okay. then we will do that. The parasites will focus on getting the hostages out of the camp and then they will secure as many of the hunters as possible and immobilize them. Really try not to harm them. Cinera and I will deal with the remaining hunters that you were unable to capture and then we will go after Punishe.”

He waited for any interjections before moving on.

“We will converge on him together if things go well and then kill him. There are a ton of ways we can do him in but I am confident that we will need to adapt to whatever situations arise from the scenario, so no certainties on how we will take him out. That is the whole idea. Take them by surprise, rescue the hostages, immobilize the hunters, and single out Punishe to kill him.”

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None of the people present raised any questions, leading the group to head into the forest in the direction of the camp.

The loud shuffling from the massive group scared off all of the possible attackers. The random beasts that came up bolted away in terror as they saw the army before them.

They slowed their pace as they neared, quieting down to avoid alerting any possible sentries.

Thunkar scanned the air with his nose, ensuring they were in the right place at the right time.

The camp was only a short run away now. Now they needed to establish a staging camp

They quickly made it to a simple clearing with enough space for the group to loiter while the scouts went ahead to get a better grasp on the camp's situation.

Cinera and the beastman headed off, leaving Egosum and Coyotl alone with the parasites.

“We wanted to talk about our debt.” The largest of the hosts spoke up to the toad.

“We believe this will make us even. We would like to express our thanks one final time. Without you, we would have been stuck inside that cave till we sputtered out of energy for good. We were so worried until you jumped into our lives.” They all nodded their heads in sync.

“Consider it paid after this. I just ask that you try and ensure that Thunkar doesn’t die during the fight. He should be staying out of it, but he can get pretty heated when it comes to the villagers.”

“We will.”

Silence took over the clearing as the parasites stood perfectly still and his froggy friend stared into oblivion.

“What do you plan on doing after you are debt free?” Egosum disrupted the awkward atmosphere with his question.

The parasites seemed to pause and think before one of the bodies off to the side spoke up.

“We will do what we always have done. The Twilight Forest is our home. We were born here, fought here, cursed to never leave here, and so we shall stay here, forevermore.”

The odd poetic tone felt final, but Egosum had too many questions to let silence retake hold.

“What about the beastmen? Will you move on to eating them as well like you did the humans?”

The question seemed to cause them to recoil at the thought as they looked to each other like they couldn’t believe the question.

“Don’t tell them we said this, but they all smell like soaking wet dogs. I don’t know if you have tried to eat something that smelly because we have and it is not easy or fun for any of the parties involved. I think we will stick to the humans and fish.”

Egosum stifled a laugh as he thought about the choice of prey.

“Why the humans then? They smell good?”

“Not particularly. Maybe like stale food if anything. Not gross but not tasty. We are in it for the thumbs. Apposable thumbs and fingers are great to wrap around stuff If you know what I am saying” The parasites had a lusty leer to their eyes as they ribbed one another with their elbows.

The toad cringed at the thought.

“Thumbs are nice.” The statement caused the parasites to fall completely silent. Egosum looked over at them to see the issue and they stared right back before turning to each other.

Their hands flew to their mouths as they all tried to suppress their giggling

After a few long moments of barely contained laughter, the largest of the hosts spoke up.

“Yes… they are… wow, that was good. It is always nice to get a good side splitter.” He wiped nonexistent tears away before looking down to the toad. “Hands are great but it is also quite nice to be able to talk. It takes a lot of effort to communicate without the correct equipment.”

Egosum watched the worms wiggling in the flesh with his enhanced sight as a thought entered his mind.

“Why were you guys in human skeletons if you used to only eat fish?”

They looked amongst themselves before one spoke up.

“It was a trap by some old mage. They got scared that we would spread to the waters around the world. They got us to flee into some humans that had eaten fish from our lake when they poisoned the aquifer below us. It damaged the forest, but they considered the risk worth it.”

It took a deep breath as it continued

“From there, they knew our concentrated powers would have been far too strong to destroy in our human hosts, so they tricked us into that cave and made some strong illusionary wall that muttled our senses into wandering aimlessly till we leaked all of our power into the landscape. From there, we were stuck with nothing to do but wait. It is another one of the reasons we don’t mind eating humans, truthfully.”

“And you don’t plan on leaving the forest now that you are free. No revenge you want to take?” The host deflated as Egosum spoke.

“We were born cursed. This forest sustains our consciousness and we protect it. Well, we used to at least. It is our job to maintain its borders and we really need to get back to doing that.” The revelation came as a dull surprise to the toad.

“You are a native to this forest? Your existence is that directly tied to it?”

They shrugged at the slight disbelief they could hear in his tone.

“Without it, our minds will shatter and we will no longer be truly whole. A terrifying prospect by any stretch of the imagination. It shrunk a lot in our absence so we really should get to pushing back out into our natural borders.”

They took on pensive expressions.

“Now, revenge? It isn’t even a possibility outside of petty stuff like eating humans. Plus, that wizard has been dead for a long, long time according to their memories. Just another mage king that fell to the waves of time.”

‘Another mage king. People of power seem to gravitate to the same position. One of ruling others. Is that the natural state of the strong or a goal of the strong that they strive for and they become more powerful as a necessity?’

Egosum's musings were cut short as light shuffling stole away his attention.

The group tensed as they waited for either hunters or their friends to find them.

Thunkar pushed aside the branches that blocked their path as Cinera scuttled past him on the ground.

“Did you guys have a productive scouting?”

They looked at each other before Cinera spoke up.

“We might have bigger issues than we were expecting.”