“Fuck!” Priscilla exclaimed as she nearly fell off the horse trying to dodge the tongue, pain radiating through her head. Her mind raced as she tried to identify the creature that assailed them. It had dark blue-green skin with light gray splotches across it, with everything covered in a slimy layer of mucus – it had four limbs, with the front two having sharp claws and the back two being wide and flat. It spit some sort of poisonous substance, with a high likelihood of it being corrosive based on how the ground began to steam.

“Dammit girl, think, think,” Priscilla whispered as Sulaiman dismounted, pulling his sword out the sheath and raising his shield between him and the monster. Nothing that would be in the Emerald Forest matched this creature’s appearance so she just switched focus on the creatures from the bestiary, hoping that this one was one of the few she read about.

Sulaiman kept the three foot puddle of poison between him and the monster as he murmured a phrase that had pinpricks of pain crawling up Priscilla’s arm. Fire blazed into life along his sword and the toad let out an angry croak, focusing on Sulaiman.

Claws, poison, hates fire…

“It’s a Gorelock Toad!” Priscilla called out as she pulled sharply at the reins to try and keep the panicking horse in line. The toad was from the Heinlein Fens and that begged the question of what the fuck it was doing here in the Emerald Forest.

But there was no time for speculation as the toad let out another spray of poison towards Sulaiman. Sulaiman dashed to the edge of the road to dodge before rushing the monster, his sword swinging in an arc that left an angry, cauterized wound on the toad’s side, cutting through the thick mucus covering it.

The toad bellowed and took a swipe at Sulaiman with its claws. He was able to just barely deflect the blow with his shield, though it left a large groove against the metal.

Priscilla’s mind raced to remember the weaknesses that the book had mentioned. Fire was one of them, because the toad’s natural predators were Firebog Wolves. The wolves usually killed the toads quickly and efficiently because Gorelock Toads traveled in packs.

With only Sulaiman available to fight the toad, they couldn’t afford a long drawn out fight and risk the other members of this toad’s pack arriving before this one was dealt with. There was one other weakness that could be exploited however, a pesky fact of biology that would work for them.

“Aim for the back of the head, at a darker patch!” Priscilla shouted as Sulaiman dodged another swipe. “Get that and the fight’s over!”

The darker patch indicated where the toad stored excess poison and served as a last line of defense to get a pyrrhic victory for the toad in case anything tried to bite it from behind to kill it. While the toads were largely immune to the poison’s effects due to their mucus, the same thing didn’t apply to their inner organs, and, most importantly, their brain, which happened to be close by.

Sulaiman didn’t appear to hear her as he took another swipe of his sword before getting out of range of the claws. The hit was shallower this time and the toad lunged forward, trying to swallow Sulaiman whole.

Priscilla gasped in fear, but Sulaiman used the opportunity to cut the toad’s lips as he ran to the side. The toad rear back in pain and anger as dark green blood leaked from the wound.

“Sulaiman, get behind it to get the head!” Priscilla said as the toad’s attention refocused on the easier target available – her.

The tongue shot out again, but this time its momentum was arrested when Sulaiman brought his sword down and cleanly cut through it. The fleshy appendage fell uselessly into the puddle of poison, the blood leaking from it starting to dissolve as it dripped down.

Sulaiman made no moves to get behind the toad and Priscilla cursed him under her breath, trying to figure out any way that she could be helpful. If this was a human opponent or something smaller, maybe she could be of use, but for a monster of this size, Priscilla knew that she would be a hindrance if she tried to get close.

A sheath bumped against her hip and Priscilla suddenly remembered the dagger the mother gave her.

She didn’t dare look away as the toad’s claws raked against Sulaiman’s shield again, the sound of metal tearing screeching through the air., but her fingers moved with purpose as she pulled the dagger into her palm. Priscilla had only ever thrown knives at renaissance fairies and daggers weren’t the same things, but she was low on options.

Her horse didn’t want to stay in one place, its eyes going wide with panic, but Priscilla tightened her thighs and tangled her left hand in the reins.

The toad seemed to be gearing up to lob more poison at Sulaiman at point blank range. It was now or never.

Priscilla took a deep breath in, clearing her mind and pushing away the pain that plagued her brain and made her vision fuzzy. She brought her arm back, and felt her grip get adjusted by Asha before she whipped it forward with as much force as she could muster.

The dagger flew from her hands, heading straight for the toad.

It struck true, even better than Priscilla had dared to hope for.

The dagger sunk deep into the toad’s eye. The poison the toad had gathered fell uselessly out of its mouth as it let out another bellowing croak of rage.

For the first time since the fight began, Sulaiman looked back at her, his eyes wide in surprise.

“Get the back of its fucking head!”

Sulaiman snapped out of whatever made him stop and it seemed this time, he was willing to listen. He dodged around the flailing claws into the toad’s new blindspot, his legs quickly bringing him behind the damn toad.

The same strange prickle of pain went through Priscilla’s body before Sulaiman used a nearby tree as a springboard to jump at the back of the head, his sword faithfully sinking into where it needed to go.

The toad did not have a death cry, its remaining eye going glassy almost immediately as it slumped over. Sulaiman leaped off the toad’s back as it twitched a few final times, shaking the last of the mucus and poison off his sword as the flames died.

Priscilla was breathing heavily, despite not having down much of the fighting. Her pulse was racing and her hands were shaking as she hesitantly tried to make her way towards the beast. The horse did not want to get much closer, so Priscilla was forced to dismount, tying the reins roughly around a nearby bush. She kept a wary ear out for the signs of more toads making their way through the forest, but heard nothing. Maybe this was just a lone toad after all, though that went against everything she knew about it.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Sulaiman had retrieved a cloth from his pack and was wiping his sword down with a look of disgust.

“Sulaiman, can you burn the corpse?” Priscilla asked as she came up next to it. “And the poison?”

Firebog Wolves liked to play with Gorelock Toads before killing them because they and the poison they spat burned so well.

He paused in movements, before looking up at her, his face in that same carefully blank look.

“Why?”

Priscilla took in a deep breath to control her first instinct to yell at him to stop asking unnecessary questions.

“A corpse of this size will attract larger monsters,” Priscilla said in her most neutral voice, “and the poison will fuck up the ecology of this place.”

“Scavengers will eat the corpse,” Sulaiman said.

“If any scavengers eat this, they’d be too stupid to live, but that’s not the fucking point,” Priscilla said. “If we leave this corpse here and the poison it spat out alone, then this trail will not longer be passable because there will be no fucking trail left.”

Sulaiman’s stare remained impassive, like he didn’t care. Priscilla stared back at the obstinate man and back to the cooling body and felt a hot flash of anger. Something obviously shit in Sulaiman’s cereal this morning and he decided to become an obstacle today rather than an asset.

“If you would please accept my humble request,” Priscilla said through gritted teeth, “and burn the corpse and poison, I would be extremely grateful.”

Because she was looking for any sort of reaction, Priscilla saw the slight upward tilt of his lips that told her he was enjoying seeing her beg.

She stared for another long moment before turning on her heel to get back to her horse. She rifled through her pack until she found the flint and steel she requested from Hans.

Priscilla roughly grabbed some dead grass near the side of the road and stalked back to the toad. Since it had fallen over, she was able to reach and pull the dagger out, which was so fucking gross now, covered in a mix of blood, mucus, and whatever the fuck an eye was made of.

She dropped her fistful of grass next to the corpse and knelt next to it, ignoring how the pain in her head flared with each beat of her heart.

“What are you doing?” Sulaiman asked.

She ignored him and tried out the flint and steel. The first attempt was a failure, mainly due to the bulkiness of the leather glove proving hard to maneuver the pieces into their proper place. Priscilla pulled off her left glove and tried again. This time got sparks, but none stuck around. She took a slow breath in and tried again.

Finally, the grass started to burn. It wasn’t much, but it was a start, and then –

The same, hot staticky pain ran down Priscilla’s front, making her fall back onto her elbows at the unexpectedness of it.

The corpse was consumed in flames, burning hot and bright, the smell of burning flesh rising through the air. There was a sound of another fire starting behind her.

She could only stare as the fire burned hotter, melting down the corpse until little more than ashes remained.

“There,” Sulaiman said from behind her, “I did it. Can we move on now?”

Anger began to win over pain and common sense as she pushed herself to her feet.

“Why can’t you just fucking listen the first time I say shit?” Priscilla growled as she stared at the ashes in front of her.

“‘I’m not discussing this anymore.’”

…

That was what this was about?

Alright, she was done with this bullshit.

She spun around sharply, Priscilla’s face pulled into a snarl as she stepped into his space, startling him.

“You didn’t listen to me just because I told you no?” Priscilla spat. “Really? What a fucking childish thing to do – you could have gotten us both fucking killed by pulling this shit!”

“You–”

“Shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth.” Priscilla hissed. “I gave you a chance to deal with the corpse and poison because it’s the right fucking thing to do, and what do you do? Make me scramble to find another solution because you couldn’t stop being an ass for a moment to realize that this wasn’t some inane request I had – I asked you to burn it all because this entire forest and any traveler going through it would be fucked otherwise.”

She felt Asha’s anger burning with hers as she jammed her finger against his armor.

“What if I hadn’t gotten out of the way in time?” Priscilla asked, voice low and harsh. “Would you just say, ‘whoops, my fucking bad that I left you permanently disfigured because the nearest fucking healer is tens of miles away?’”

Priscilla wanted to deck him so bad, so, so fucking bad. A flash of something went through Sulaiman’s eyes but she couldn’t see well through the anger or pain.

“What do you think this temper tantrum was going to accomplish? I may be the heinous bitch, but at least I can behave myself.”

Sulaiman took a step backwards at the venom in her tone and she took one forward, not allowing him to flee. She was going to get the fucking point hammered in that stupid skull of his.

“I know you hate me and would rather me leave this plane of existence,” Priscilla said slowly, forcing him to look her in the eyes, “but is it really so fucking hard to accept that you aren’t entitled to knowledge just because you want to have it. There are things that you’ll never know and you can’t just be a goddamned child each time you’re told no.”

The sudden silence when she finished speaking was resounding, only the sound of both of their harsh breathing piercing it.

Priscilla let her words fully sink in before saying, “I don’t want to hear your voice for the rest of the fucking day.”

There was a moment where he did nothing, but then Sulaiman opened his mouth to say, “I–”

Priscilla shoved him.

He hadn’t been expecting that and fell to the ground, staring up at her incredulously.

“Go on then, keep talking to spite me,” Priscilla said, feeling oddly detached, like she was only a passenger in her body. “I’ve always been interested in learning how long it’d take me to rip the balls off a man with my bare hands.”

Making good on that threat would be impossible and just envisioning being that violent to Sulaiman actually made her stomach turn over, but she was tired and done and wanted him shut the fuck up by any means necessary.

Sulaiman paled to a color that was alarming with his skin tone but Priscilla couldn’t bring herself to care as the pain in her head intensified to where she could barely see. This fucking headache was the most fucking annoying thing in the world, and she was willing to take an ice pick to the brain to make it stop.

“I think I’ve made myself pretty fucking clear,” Priscilla said softly once she composed herself enough to speak. “Talk to me again today, and you’ll regret it.”

Priscilla clumsily gathered up her firestarter and her slimy dagger, wiping it carelessly against her pants. Blindly, she shoved everything into her pack and mounted her horse. She trusted the horse to keep her on the path and it set off at a brisk pace, clearly wanting to leave this area behind. She didn’t wait for Sulaiman to get up.

He caught up in a few minutes and was smart enough to keep his damn mouth shut.

All Priscilla wanted to do was crawl into her bed under the covers and sleep for a week so this fucking headache would just go away. She wanted to lay ice across her eyes and make them so numb that they didn’t feel like a part of her anymore.

But she couldn’t do that.

Though they may not know it themselves, people’s lives depended on Priscilla getting to the end of this journey as fast as possible.

So Priscilla focused all of her energy into staying upright in the saddle. She trusted Asha to warn her if there was another toad out there, and that Sulaiman would deal with the creature should it show up again now that he knew how to end the fight quickly.

They eventually took a short break to give the horses a brief rest. Priscilla deliberately didn’t look at Sulaiman, trying to keep her temper from flaring up again. She normally intensely felt her emotions, but experiencing constant pain like this migraine always made her short-tempered and wanting to lash out. If she had the option, Priscilla would go somewhere quiet and away from Sulaiman’s presence to take an hour to recombobulate herself, but that was a luxury she didn’t have time to daydream about.

The only thing she could do was keep moving forward and hope that they encountered no more fucking complications.