Although Nay couldn’t take her eyes off the weird amphibian monstrosity, she couldn’t ignore the sack on the ground next to it. It was moving as Young Finch inside floundered.

And it wasn’t just any child. It was Bryja’s little brother.

She was hit with a series of prompts that scrolled down her vision. With each one there was a ding and a chime. The text and audio burst was disorienting.

---

[Marrow Detected!]

[Frog Leg Marrow of The Mewlipped Tode]

---

Surely the Marrow wasn’t one of the thing’s fucking legs.

She looked at the monster’s over-sized toad leg. It was the off-color chickenshit yellow of gator belly. And it was riddled with pulsating wart sacs and purple lesions. She gagged thinking about consuming it. There was no way in hell any chef could take that ingredient and make it appetizing.

---

[Quest Detected]

[Quest: Separate The Marrow from The Mewlipped Tode]

[Reward: Frog Leg Marrow of The Mewlipped Tode]

[Accept Quest Y/N?]

[Quest Detected]

[Quest: Help The Gloom Rangers Slay The Mewlipped Tode]

[Accept Quest Y/N?]

---

She quickly accepted the quests so they would no longer interfere with her vision.

“We need to be careful,” Lain said. “Many of my major heals are on cool down.”

Martygan grunted. “It’s not going anywhere. Not when it’s hooked with the Harrow Chains.”

“Still,” Lain said. “It’s not a catalogued creature. We don’t know what else it can do.”

“It can die.”

Martygan held his small sword up to the sky. Vigor vapors coiled off his arm and swirled around the sword. He shouted, “Blade of the Ranger!”

Crackles of electricity and spinning shards of metal seemed to materialize out of the air. The shards of metal flew to the small sword, snapping in place and adding to its mass, reforging the small sword into a huge blade. There were cracks in the surface of the newly forged blade, giving it a crude but intimidating nature. Within these fissures, green light ran up and down the cracks, signifying the power of Martygan’s vigor.

His form blinked and reappeared in front of The Mewlipped Tode, emitting a blast of vigor energy that dazed the monster.

The Gloom Ranger grabbed the sack with the child and threw it over his head.

The sack flew through the air and Lain caught the child. She gently set the sack down.

She pulled the fabric down, revealing the blue face of the terrified faun toddler inside. He was shrieking in fear.

“Calm, my handsome one,” Lain said. She touched the boy’s forehead with a finger. There was a blink of her golden vigor, and a shimmering translucent golden blanket fashioned of interlinked autumn leaves rippled around him, calming him. He fell asleep and she set him back down.

As Martygan lunged forward with his sword, about to deliver a combo, the Harrow Chains ripped out of the street.

The tode twisted, whipping the chains around the Gloom Ranger. They pulled his arms close to his side, and though he still held onto his sword, he was trapped in his own chains.

At that moment, an obnoxious prompt splashed across Nay’s vision in an ostentatious battle-royale-style font.

---

[Mini-Boss Battle Engaged!]

[Nay & The Gloom Rangers & The Bouldershield Brother]

VERSUS

[The Mewlipped Tode!]

---

“Shit,” Nay said. She gripped Thorn. There was no question of whether she wanted to accept the mini-boss battle or not. Which she thought was rude of whoever or whatever the quest giver was. It was happening either she wanted it to or not.

Next to her Jolf stood up, leaving his brother next to the child they were rescuing. He grabbed the pike and shouted, “To the nether fooking hells with ye!”

He hurled the pike at the tode.

It flew through the belly of it like a spear piercing through tissue paper. It bleated in pain and ichor squirted out of the wound, spraying Martygan.

The Gloom Ranger let out a cry of agony as the skin on his face began to melt.

The ichor appeared to be acidic.

At that Lain simultaneously jumped to her feet and pulled one of the golden hoops strapped to the small of her back.

It hummed and started to spin, growing in gold light. But instead of emitting a harmful beam, it blasted Martygan with a healing stream.

The spinning halo appeared to have different modes.

One, like the first mode Nay saw, was pure damage. This second mode was pure healing.

The healing stream hit Martygan in the face. His melting skin began to mend.

Watching it was like observing a crazy optical illusion. Squint just right and his skin was bubbling and melting. But if Nay opened her eyes wider or tilted her head in a certain way she saw the skin regrowing.

There was a push and pull to it, but the healing stream seemed to be winning.

Lain drew another hoop and jumped in an arc, as she descended she brought the razor-edge of the hoop through the Harrow Chains restraining Martygan. All the while the other hoop followed her, hovering near like a halo, healing her Gloom Ranger companion.

Martygan burst out of the severed chains and blinked into the tode, delivering a combo of lunging and slashing.

The strikes were so fast Nay’s vision could barely register their delivery. She just saw visual distortion.

The sword wounds opened on the tode, the skin on its chest and belly opening up, spilling more of that ichor. Its guts slipped out of its belly and one of its arms slid off its shoulder.

The ichor hit Martygan and steamed, burning him, but the heals negated the damage.

The tode bleated, its mouth distending.

Its gecko-like tongue shot of its mouth and hit Lain’s halo hoop spinning over her.

Its sucker-tip grabbed it and the tongue flung back into its mouth, swallowing Lain’s hoop.

Taking away Martygan’s heals.

The Gloom Ranger’s blinking movement ability seemed to be on cool down, so he merely dove away from the ichor squirting out of the tode.

The tode shot its tongue out again. This time it attached to Martygan’s blade.

The tongue tried to retract and rip the sword away, but the Gloom Ranger held on tight. Brute physics pulled him forward, dragging him toward the tode and its leaking acidic ichor.

The liquid was melting the cobblestone. Noxious team rose into the air.

And Martygan was being pulled straight to it.

Lain held out a fist, and her gold vigor aura turned crimson. She turned her wrist, pointing her thumb out.

Red light glowed inside of the tode. Lighting up the inside of its belly like a Christmas bulb. Red light shot out of its open wounds.

The healer had toggled the hoop’s settings, turning on the damage mode.

The disc was spinning inside the tode, churning its innards and filling it with a buzzsawing beam of damage.

As the tode trembled violently, being devoured from the inside, its tongue still dragged Martygan closer to the acid.

But the ranger would not let go of his sword.

So, Nay ran forward and slashed vertically, severing the tode’s long tongue with Thorn.

One half fell to the cobblestone and retracted back towards the tode like a limp spool of measuring tape. The other half fell to the ground, an organ separated from its host.

More beams of light shot out of the tode and it exploded.

Pieces of it flew in all directions, leaving Lain’s spinning hoop hovering in the air where its stomach used to be. A shower of gore rained down on them.

Lain gestured and an Autumn Shield glowed around all of them, protecting them from the rain of acidic ichor.

---

[Quest Complete!]

[Help The Gloom Rangers Slay The Mewlipped Tode Completed!]

[Congratulations!]

[You have been rewarded with Loot]

[You have been rewarded with Vigor Points]

---

Nay’s inventory was blinking.

She opened it to see that she had received one of the gelatinous eyes of the tode, except it was encased in a metal frame and was connected to a chain, like it was a lantern or morning star.

It was labeled, Mirkwood’s Eye.

Mirkwood’s Eye. Activating the Eye will let you see into the Nether Realm for thirty seconds. Three uses.

---

[Mini-Boss Battle Over!]

[Mini-Boss Defeated!]

[You have received Boon]

---

Nay’s inventory was blinking again. She quickly looked at it to see an item in her inventory.

Boon of the Mewlipped Tadpole. Consuming this Boon will accelerate your current Vigor Rank up by 25 percent. Side-effects may result in turning into a toad for a day and being compelled to catch and eat nothing but flies. Will be in all the danger that toad form is susceptible to while a toad.

Nay was surprised by both of these items.

She was about to explore how to pull an item out of her magical inventory when new text made her freeze.

---

[Boss Battle Detected]

[Boss: Nether Sister]

---

She looked around but didn’t see any huge boss nearby.

Martygan jumped to his feet. His reforged sword had returned to its normal form, his ultimate having run its course. “Do you sense that?”

Lain retrieved her hoop and she scanned the area.

Martygan closed his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them, the whites had turned to a red glow. He was looking around, half-frantic.

That’s when Nay saw the blinking red light in the corner of her HUD on her mini-map.

It was to the north, where most of the tode gore had landed.

“It’s an Eidolon,” Martygan said.

“It was smart and waited till we had run through most our vigor reserves,” Lain said. “Everything important is on cool down.”

“Show yourself!” Martygan said.

He spun in circles, brandishing his sword.

“It’s that way,” Nay said.

Lain looked at her, suspicious. “How do you know?”

“Look.”

They looked at where she pointed. There was something emerging out of the gore.

It was a human hand emerging out of the puddle of tode remains, slicked in the ichor and gore. The fingers were pointed at the sky and then the palm slammed down on the ground and it pushed against the earth.

Violet flames rose out of the puddle.

It was a crown of supernatural fire.

A head emerged out of the puddle.

The dark hair was framing the angular face in wet strands.

As the blood and ichor dripped off it, they got a glimpse of its true form.

Its body was a mixture of the corporeal and the incorporeal. Its torso seemed to be composed of spirit, translucent and wavering. Yet its arms and legs were corporeal, having a material presence.

To Nay it was monochrome like television static, as if the woman had crawled out of an old box television.

But its black and purple armor, a leather cloak, vest and breaches were as vivid as the night was dark.

The supernatural crown of fire could probably burn flesh or set aflame anything that touched it.

Lain cursed. “It’s from the Nether Realms.”

Martygan sneered and brandished his small sword, angling his body at her.

“A Nether Sister,” Nay said, whispering it under her breath. But Lain heard her. The healer glanced at the cook, surprised that Nay might know what it is called.

“My poor familiar,” the Nether Sister said. She looked around at the remains of the tode, sorrow on her face. “He was just doing as he was told. Yet this is how you treated him.”

“Don’t worry,” Martygan said. “You’ll be joining it soon.”

The Nether Sister focused her purple eyes on the Gloom Ranger. The fiery pupils swirled, flaring as she spoke. “The underworld is my domain. I see the spirits of the dead whenever I please.”

“So tell me,” Martygan said, “what happens to the spirit of a mistress of the Nether Realms when she is slain? Does she return to her domain, but as spirit?”

“That’s knowledge you will never be privy to know.”

Her crown of violet fire flared.

“Now. I’ll be taking the child.”