Bachi and Pahtl were tending to Zulimaya, who was groggy but conscious. “I don’t know what happened,” she said, dazed.

He knelt before her and peered into her eyes. Her pupils were unevenly dilated. “I think the bow hit you harder than you thought when it broke,” he told her. “Just lie still.”

“Can’t do that,” Kanga said. He jerked his head back to the west. “Hear that?”

The hoots and grunts of the frog-men had gotten louder. Tarek sighed, feeling unutterably weary. “Can you help carry her?” he asked Kanga. “I don’t think she can walk.”

Kanga frowned. “I seem to remember ghost girl here trying to kill me.”

Tarek gave him a flat look. “We’ll be here a long time if you want to track all the who-tried-to-kill-whos.”

Kanga shook his head and looked away. “I forgot how much I hate you.”

“Good. Carry her.”

With a growl, the big hunter stomped over to Bachi and brushed him aside, pulling Zulimaya upright against his side. “Time to go, girlie.”

Zulimaya pushed against him ineffectually.

“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t like it,” he said. “I hate to disappoint, but you’re nearly as disgusting as my little grub over there. Keep your hands to yourself.”

Pahtl growled and nipped at the legs of his leathers.

“I’m happy to step on your head,” Kanga snapped. “Get out of the way, you oversized rat. I’m helping.”

Tarek bit the inside of his cheek. “It’s all right, Pahtl,” he said as he scooped Tavi into his arms. “Bite him later.”

They trudged on through the night as fast as they could, but even though Tarek switched off carrying Tavi with Bachi, they were far slower than before. Though they walked for an eternity, Tarek doubted that the sun had even broached the horizon outside the mists before the frog-men caught up to them again. Strange horn-like sounds mixed with the frog creatures’ hoots.

“There!” Bachi said, pointing into the mists to the east.

Tarek saw it. The shoreline curved outward perhaps thirty strides ahead, and a clear path of sand stretched northward. They’d reached the bridge. He felt a strange vibration in his chest, almost like the world had just shifted.

The first of the frog-men appeared in the mists behind them. Tarek sighed and set Tavi down in the sand, his back and shoulders aching. He took the knife from where he’d stowed it at Tavi’s belt and straightened. “Good work, Bachi. Looks like have some old friends to deal with first.”

Again came that subtle vibration, but Tarek couldn’t stop to wonder at it. Kanga dropped Zulimaya unceremoniously in the sand and came to stand by him, pulling the doused firebrand from his leathers. Tarek looked over at the man he’d hated for so long.

“I don’t want to die next to you,” he said.

“Don’t, then,” Kanga replied.

More and more beasts streamed out of the mists. Fifty? A hundred? It hardly matters. More than enough. Bachi came and stood beside them. His fists were empty, but his jaw was set. Pahtl was right beside him. That unknown vibration rattled through Tarek’s chest again, stronger than before.

“Do you feel that?” he asked, but the others were focused on their enemies. No fewer than ten frog-men were running at them with all the speed they could muster. Ten paces. Five. Tarek fell into a crouch and promised himself he’d bite no fewer than five before they pulled him down.

And then a pillar of flesh the size of a great wimba tree fell from the sky and buried itself in the earth two paces from where they stood. Black ichor spurted from beneath it as the frog-men disappeared from view. A boom like thunder sounded, and Tarek found himself staring at the sky, knocked from his feet.

A shattering blast like a horn split the air, and Tarek covered his ears in pain. What was that?

Looking over at the inexplicable tree of pebbled skin and giant toenails, Tarek realized he was looking at a leg. What has a leg that big? It was easily three times as large as the illusory guard creature Xochil had created all those moons ago when they first met. Looking up into the mists above, Tarek could just make out the shadow of a long, sinuous neck and incredibly massive head.

Movement in the mists off to his left caught his eye, and he saw another behemoth leg whisk through the air and embed itself in the earth with a crash he felt as much as heard. The frog-men were squealing and retreating. Another leg came up behind the one stationed in front of the prone humans and squished several more frog creatures as they scampered away.

A grinding in the soil sounded nearby, and Tarek sprang into action. “Get them out of the way,” he bellowed to Bachi and Kanga as he pulled at Tavi’s unconscious form. They had barely gotten their insensate friends clear when the tree-trunk leg that had knocked them down swept forward right through the space they had occupied. Tarek wondered how far the force of that leg would have thrown them and was glad not to find out.

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

Fern-frond pole trees toppled beyond their view inland as a tail even larger than the legs swept overhead, and then the creature was beyond them. He stared in awe as the monster moved away. The tail alone was as long as ten men laid head to heels. The thing had never even known they were there. Ants. We might as well be ants. He shook himself out his disbelief. “Let’s go!” he commanded the others as he scooped up his brother. “The bridge, quick! Before the frog things come back!”

The spit of land started out wide enough for twenty people to walk side by side where it met the shore, but it quickly narrowed to a space that four could comfortably walk abreast, and then two. Sand gave way to rocks, and they picked their way more and more carefully, always listening for the hoot of frog-men at their backs. With the water lapping at the rocks on all sides it was impossible to know if they were being followed.

“You may be the worst person to ever walk the Land,” Kanga told him, still hauling Zulimaya at his side, “but you do keep things interesting.”

“I’ve had enough interesting, thanks,” Bachi said quietly.

Kanga snorted. It was almost a laugh.

Then something hit Kanga in the head with a wet, plopping noise. “Hey!” he yelled, glaring at Bachi.

“I didn’t!” the pudgy boy said, holding up his hands. “Look!”

Flopping in the dirt at their feet was a fish as long as Tarek’s hand with curious, wing-like fins. Its mouth gaped in the dry air, and Tarek saw sharp teeth. The thing flipped and thrashed and threw itself back into the water.

“I hate this place,” Kanga said.

Another landed on the bridge, and then another. They snapped at anything that came close.

“Time to go fast again,” Tarek said.

Kanga pulled a weakly-protesting Zulimaya onto his back and lumbered forward. Without a word, Bachi and Tarek both took one leg and one shoulder on Tavi, carrying him between them as snapping fish rained from the sky. Pahtl scampered along in a happy daze, taking a hefty bite out of any fish unlucky enough to fall under his gaze.

Their heavy clothes protected them, but soon they all had trickles of blood coursing from gouges on their hands and faces. Tarek took the heaviest damage with his entire front side exposed. The fish were thick in the air, jumping out of the water on one side of the bridge and sailing on those impossible fins to splash down on the other side. They bit anything they collided with, even each other. Their teeth were as sharp as knapped chert. There was nothing the humans could do but hunker and run.

The rain of fish lasted for half a handspan in the gray forever of the mists. Finally the hail of biting fish thinned and stopped, and the little group breathed easier. Kanga let Zulimaya down, and she pushed away from him, insisting that she was able to walk on her own. Kanga sneered and shrugged, but Tarek noticed he stayed within arm’s reach nevertheless.

The rocks turned to boulders under their feet, and the waves grew higher. Spray soon soaked through their leathers, making their steps even heavier. They walked in silence, bracing themselves against waves that sometimes crashed across the spit of stone, pulling at their ankles or even their knees. Tarek looked out into the angry black waves on all sides and knew that if they fell in, they’d never come back out.

And then the bridge ended.

There was one big boulder a little further out, just close enough that Tarek might have jumped to it if it weren’t in the middle of a heaving, angry salt sea. Beyond that, there was nothing but water and mist.

“The end of the world,” Bachi said morosely.

“I will swim it,” Pahtl said.

“Wait,” Tarek pled. He nodded to Bachi and they laid Tavi down. Tarek shook him by the shoulders and slapped his face lightly.

The boy’s eyes fluttered, and then he snapped awake all of a sudden. “My leg,” he said, gripping at Tarek’s arm.

“It’s all right,” Tarek assured him. “I put my blood on it. Does it hurt?”

Tavi’s face settled into baffled wonderment. “No, it doesn’t.” He tried to sit up.

Tarek helped him. “But listen, it’s still bad –”

The harsh intake of air from his brother told him he’d spoken too late. Tavi was staring at the pocked ruin of his leg and foot. One of his toes was missing entirely.

“I’m sorry,” Tarek said, burying his face in his brother’s hair.

“I didn’t – it’s not –” the boy said dazedly.

“Shut up about your leg,” Kanga snapped. “The bridge you said had to be here? It’s gone. Look at it! Look!” He threw his arm out, motioning to the roiling world of black and gray.

Tavi’s face pinched in fury at Kanga’s words, but then he looked, and the anger drained away into disbelief. “I don’t understand.”

“Is this not the bridge?” Tarek asked. “Do we have to go back?”

“I don’t know,” he said, struggling to his feet. Tarek held on tightly, but Tavi seemed to be able to balance on both legs, at least. “There could be more than one. Or maybe…” he trailed off, and his face fell.

“Maybe what?” Zulimaya demanded.

“Maybe it washed away,” Tavvi said. “It’s been a thousand years. Some terrible storm that broke the rocks forever ago. Maybe it’s just gone.”

A soft, hooting cry sounded behind them. A frog-man inched out of the mist, half a fish in its hand. When it saw them, it called back into the mists, and other voices answered.

Bachi sat down on the rocks and put his head in his hands. “I quit. No more. Waves, fish, frog monster. Whichever takes me first can have me.”

“Get up, Bachi,” Tavi said.

“No.”

“We have to fight.”

“There’s no point!”

Tarek scrambled to think of an answer, but his mind was sluggish and dull, overwhelmed. “What about your Song quest?”

Bachi laughed bitterly, his broken voice cracking. “There was never any Song quest.”

Tarek blinked at him. “What?”

“They wouldn’t let me go! Said I was young and stupid. But I knew I had the strength in the Song, so I picked my own vision name and just… went.” He shook his head. “I thought for a while maybe it worked anyway. But that’s only because I’m the fool they said I was.”

Tarek had no words. Bachi’s dimwitted optimism was one of the foundation stones of the world. If it had failed, what was left?

More of the frog-men crept forward. They were cautious after their many losses, but they would grow bolder soon enough.

“I’m sorry I brought you all this way,” Tarek told the others. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

Kanga rolled his eyes. “You always have to cry about everything, grub. Shut your mouth already.” He balled his fists, rolled his neck, and strode forward to meet the frog-men.

They shrieked in terror and ran away.

Kanga halted in surprise and laughed. “I guess my scars are uglier than I thought,” he crowed as he turned about to face the others.

He looked beyond them and his face blanched. He took a step backward, missed his footing, and fell on his rear, nearly pitching himself backward into the waves. He hardly noticed. His eyes bulged and his mouth worked wordlessly as he groped to express himself.

“What,” he whispered, pointing.

Tarek turned around. A massive shape had risen out of the water, and a long neck stretched up over their heads. A square, blocky head was outlined against the lightening mists. It looked down at Tarek and gave a familiar, croaking roar.

The Old Woman of the Water had come for them.