He woke up the next day, more exhausted than he was going to sleep in the first place.

He dragged his weary body from the hut and into the daylight.

His normal early morning view was nowhere to be seen with even Natan out and about, enjoying herself in the midday sun.

“Shit.”

He tensed his dao, connecting with the network of energy all around him.

The comfort it offered him let some of the phantom pains fall into the organic pathways.

“Oh, looks who’s getting up late. What were you up to all night?” The wormy creature nudged him in the side with a devious lear on her face.

He put a literal wall between them and sat in the humid heat of the swamp.

“You can’t just shut people out of your life like that.” The salamander walked towards him. “She is right, you look rough at best and exhausted at the least.”

He summoned another wall to block out the other annoyance.

“I can fly now. These walls mean nothing to me.” Her voice became louder and louder as she rose above the earthen wall.

“No.”

He disappeared within seconds of her peaking over the side to look at his figure far below.

His body sunk into the muck, molding with the natural world unlike ever before. His desire for serenity was as high as it had ever been.

There was a oneness with the swamp he was loving.

The memories from his night of training flowed through him like second nature.

He followed Pangu’s directions for calling on Supreme Body Hardening and felt the borders of his physical body strengthen.

There was once again a clear distinction of where the swamp began and the toad ended.

The strange feeling shook him from the torpor, sending him reeling to the surface.

The temptation to stay submerged and to be part of the world once more was stranger than he ever experienced.

His large warty arms pulled him clear of the earth and into the sunbathed world once more.

He let a sigh leave him as he grounded his thoughts in reality once more.

“Stop trying to hide, we need to talk about something.” Cinera’s voice called out once more.

“What?” He looked to its source and saw her rolling around in a few freshly formed coals.

“Tomorrow is the fifth day, Tecolotl will be calling for you in the morning and you can’t be late.” She stopped and turned to the toad.

“Time passes fast when you are busy. Helped keep my mind off our concerns.”

She nodded her head in agreement.

“And now we need to figure out how you will collect information while the meeting thing is going down. That frog didn’t seem very forthcoming so all that we can hope is that he is the anomaly and the rest are friendly well-disposed members of society.”

Egosum nodded along with her concerns.

“I guess you’re right. Obviously, I will need to find some people of power and figure out things from there.” She looked bewildered.

“This is our friend’s wellbeing we are talking about. We need something a little more solid than winging it.” He found it hard to argue with her as she became increasingly heated.

“We need a backup plan to our backup plans. Plural backup plans! You need steel your resolve to do whatever it takes to find him there. We have no other leads after this once dries up.”

“Stop! Just… wait a second.” He finally found the edge to halt the diatribe she sought to journey on.

“I will do whatever I need to do to find Coyotl. I will even make enemies with these abyssal frogs if they try to keep him from us. None of that is a problem. Our main issue is that we have zero information on anything regarding the meeting and we have no way to change that. All we can do is wait for tomorrow to come.”

She tried interrupting a few times only to finally give in to the explanation.

“Fine. I don’t like this, but I get it.”

With a bit more strategizing throughout the day, they made it to dusk.

“Wake me up before you go, I want to be there when he gets back. I know you won’t, but don’t mess this up.” She turned away from him and went to her solitary abode.

Egosum sat in his hut throughout the night with a deep pit growing worse the entire time.

The anxiety of her expectations and his desires for finding his friend weighed on him heavy.

She wasn’t wrong in any way, but there just wasn’t much they could actually do.

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His mind worked against him while the moon passed them overhead.

The morning sun barely crested the hills when the familiar croak of Tecolotl called out for his attention.

He hopped out of his hut and came face to face with Cinera.

“Hey, sorry. I couldn’t sleep that well and I just didn’t want to miss it.” She apologised and got out of his way.

“It’s fine, let's go.” They left the caecilian behind and headed in the frog’s direction.

Repeated calls from the person brought them straight towards him.

“Oh shit!” He screamed in terror as the pair entered his vision. They looked around in confusion at his sudden outburst.

“Sorry…sorry. I just don’t think I will get used to seeing someone other than my own kind.”

“Sure.” They followed after him as he turned to the field of pools just beyond them. He could almost see a gloom about the place that he failed to notice the first day they arrived.

“How sad.” His thoughts leaked from his mind.

“Oh, how nice of you to say that about my people’s ancestral home.” The familiar sarcasm and snipiness drew his attention back to the man of the hour.

“You’re welcome.“ He let it flow past him expertly. “Can we get some information before we head in where you are taking me?”

The frog harrumphed before telling them what to expect.

-

Quetinctol scanned the surrounding land for the first hints of his disciple's movements.

The dried muck that once housed the millions of spawn that would have eventually become an unstoppable army spoke to him as he fed it with his energy once more.

It whispered of the innumerable lives lost and the confusion of his absence. It was like talking to an old friend.

It just wasn’t meant to last.

He broke through its will and rummaged for a way he could have gotten away.

“Those bird bastards took advantage of our warrior's absence.” The earth’s memory of many pairs of taloned feet filled his ancient mind.

“Just another group marked for extermination. They wouldn’t have taken him alive for any reason so I can mark kidnapping off the list of possibilities.”

His inner sight roamed once more. The old channels of his city were long since destroyed and gone from the material world, but the land remembered well.

He wandered over to Egosum’s old vernal pool to see where he would have ended up.

It was cracked stone for as far as a person could see, but his senses reached far underground. There was only one place all of the pools drained to in that section, and he could feel the collapsed tunnel below him.

He merged with the soil and went flowing like water percolating through sand.

Finally, his old form emerged in one of the winding caverns that filled the planet's crust.

“I am so damn smart. Who else could do this deductive reasoning? Definitely not masters other disciples. And to think, they called me blind and stupid. Shows them who’s boss. Well, it might if they were alive and I wasn’t talking to myself.”

His senile speech trailed off as he called on the solid stone to slip away and open up to allow him through.

The world was at his beck and call as he followed the small trickle of water that poured through. Its flow had diminished since his city stopped funneling their water into it, but that did little to confuse him.

He called on history every time he came to a bend or curve and followed the strongest flow possible when he finally found something of real value.

“Ahah. Footprints!” He nearly skipped to the hints in glee.

“I guess the lack of water made them dry hard.” He tapped the dried mud a few times.

Under a few layers of tracks, the easily distinguished lobbed fingers of his disciple stuck out to him like a worm in compost.

He followed the path, reading them like a book. The growing exhaustion had apparently caught up to the youngling with his tail showing more and more with every leap covered.

A scuffle here and trip there told him everything he needed to know.

The resilience was just what he expected from his bioengineering.

He saw light in the distance and rushed forward, looking out over the lake.

“Shit.”

Days passed with him searching everywhere and battling massive crocodilians before finding the first signs of civilization.

A small human fishing hut manned by a naked boy and his dad.

With a simple disguise and a few deceptive words, he managed to locate the human village.

His hopes for a warpath from his disciple were slightly let down as he found the village perfectly intact.

“I guess he hasn’t even completely lost his tail by this point so I can’t expect too much. Hmmm?” He did a double take as he caught sight of a a series of posters.

He tore once off the wall and tilted his head.

“A toad?” It looked familiar but he couldn’t place it perfectly.

“Oi, mister! Hey” A pair of boys waved at him from an alley.

“Croa*cough* Yes?” He walked deeper into the hidden space between the houses when he heard the soft footfalls of another kid blocking off the entrance.

“Good going. You must be new around here.” He pulled out a sharpened stick and started to approach.

“What-what’s going on.” He played up his fear to drop their guard.

“Nothing, just a little extortion. A tax if you will. We want everything in your pockets!”

The skinny kid snarled at the disguised salamander.

He managed to barely hold the smile from showing.

“Oh, of course.” It had been such a long time since something like this happen to him and he loved every moment of it.

He dipped his hands in his pockets and withdrew a full hand.

The human reached out and floated it right below Quetinctol’s closed fist, waiting for their prize.

The old man released the stuff contained inside and watched with glee as the human’s face warped in disgust and confusion.

“Fucking worms? Why do you carry worms around? Are you a fisher or something?... God damnit. You are worse off than we are.” He brushed past the salamander and out of the alley with the fat brother squeezing by shortly after.

“Hold on! What is up with this?” He held up the poster while he crouched down to collect the worms escaping for their lives.

“Huh? Oh, that thing. It was just a stupid toad that we gave to the local hag. She lost it apparently. Good thing too after she stiffed up. Now fuck off.” The old man’s disguise bared his raggedy teeth in joy before disintegrating into mud before their eyes.

“Hey bro, did we just see that right?” The fatso turned to his brother for confirmation.

He was met with the chalky white complexion of a horrified and jaunt figure who immediately turned and ran the opposite way.

“Hey, wait up.” He chased after him with the youngest of the group following in their tracks.

The salamander reappeared just outside the rickety door that housed a small well of power

He knocked on the wooden planks.

“Who in the hells is it?!” The raggedy crone threw the entrance open before blushing. "Oh, apologies. What may I do for you.”

She stared at a handsome figure clad in armor. An adventurer in every sense with a thick five o’clock shadow on his face and large muscles all over his body.

“Oh, there are many things you could do for me.” The charm was positively dripping as he spoke.

She blushed the deepest red possible.