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It all happened just quick enough they didn't have time to react.
As the last of the trio of giant frogs suddenly let go of Senshi's axe, all three of them clambered back from the force of the recoil. It took them precious moments to get back up during which the frog had time to turn to its right, towards Chilchuck. The half foot was too engrossed in trying to free the trap to immediately notice the danger he was in.
Laios untangled himself from the pile he Senshi and Marcille had ended up in after falling only in time to see the frog open its jaws and lunge at Chilchuck, engulfing his entire upper body in its maw in one go.
It moved dreadfully fast in snapping him up further, tossing him back and deeper in with violent looking twitches of its head, making a gross slurping noise with each swallow, until only his boots stuck out over the rim of its jaws.
The tentaculus vine slipped out of his hands and retreated hastily back into its trap hole.
Frogs can't breathe while swallowing prey, Laios found himself thinking. They breathe by swallowing air, surface frogs sometimes choke on meals too big and suffocate themselves. Even so he wouldn't put the lung capacity of a giant frog against that of a half foot.
Not that it would matter anyway as in moments Chilchuck's boots disappeared down the frog’s throat with a wet gulping noise. Its belly wobbled, swelled, then settled, looking a bit distended from the surely inordinately big prey.
It regarded them with passive, unreadable eyes, its face not capable of expression, but Laios briefly, morbidly maybe, wondered if it felt the same sort of satisfaction as he did after having a particularly good big meal. The thought made him slightly nauseous.
Apparently being full hindered the creature none, because it swiftly dodged Senshi as he swung at it with his axe. The man swung wildly again, his grunts of effort and rage mixing with Marcille's panicked mutters, thought it had a similar effect as it dodged again and again.
The elf took shaky aim with her hand but Laios stopped her from casting.He’d seen how destructive and deadly her explosions were back when she’d fought the undine. At this range they might be caught in the blast, and Chilchuck definitely would be.
Mostly blocked on the ground, the frog retreated up. Its arc was noticeably shorter than before, no doubt owing to the extra weight, as it jumped up onto the vines from where it attacked in the first place. It scampered off into the foliage, quickly disappearing into shadow somewhere at the very top of the room where the tentaculus vines grew down out of the crumbling brickwork.
A sudden silence overtook the room.
It didn't last long, in the wake of a battle that's gone extremely poorly in a painfully familiar way. Marcille started trembling and her voice filled with distress he’d been all too familiar with. Senshi was muttering in an angered sorta way, but Laios couldn’t hear either of them very well despite the silence. His eyes focused on the spot where the frog had retreated to, though his sight blurred by panic slightly.
They’d failed. He had failed. If he’d kept his grip on the sword better and didn’t get disarmed, maybe if he’d thought through things faster, maybe this would’ve turned out better, and they wouldn’t be missing a member of their party now.
Where’d the thing gone? What if they never found it? Would they never see Chilchuck again? The thing swallowed him whole, like- Was he alive still, if so for how long? How fast did giant frogs digest their prey? How much air did he have, it must not have been much? What if he was already gone?
They had to chase it down, kill it, get him back, quickly, but where did it go?
“Is- is there an upper level to this structure?” he asked quickly, trampling down panic, “Did either of you see when we were walking up?”
Marcille snapped out of her spiral and looked back towards the entrance “I-I think I saw some stairs along one of the s-sides of the b-building” she stammered “d-d'you think?”
“It fled upwards” Laios reasoned “there must be a hole in the ceiling, camouflaged by the tantaculus, that it went through, if we can get to the upper level we’ll find it there”
“You sure?” Senshi asked. Laios could see his hands tense, gripping the axe, knuckles going white.
“It's the best shot we have,” He solemnly concluded. If the frog didn’t flee to an upper level of the building but instead went into the lake they had no way of tracking it down. And that meant that they’d never find Chilchuck again.
He didn't wanna consider that for any length of time.
Senshi nodded “Let’s go then” he almost growled, determined.
Marcille collected herself and nodded, fidgeting with the front of her robe in the absence of her staff “Y-yeah”
Laios set his jaw and frowned. This was their best shot, and probably their only shot.
***
It was dark, wet and Loud.
Having above average night vision didn't mean a ton when no light at all could filter into the space you’re in.
Space was really an overstatement, the… compartment, he was gonna call it, that he found himself in was barely big enough to even fit all of him in it, and he was crammed into it haphazardly. His clothes got soaked through almost immediately with frog saliva and whatever else liquids he was now half submerged in. It was cold.
And dear lord it was loud. They don’t tell you that when you get swallowed alive you’re gonna be surrounded by so much damn noise, disgusting gurgles all around and, somewhere in the distance, a thrum. Like a heartbeat, weird sounding but recognisable. It was nauseating, ever so slightly less so than the unholy slime he was covered in.
At least the mimics weren’t this noisy, as much as he hated to give them absolutely any credit. They also couldn’t swallow you whole. They kill you quick. At least it’s quiet as you bleed out.
He found quickly that enough air was swallowed along with him he could still breathe, if shallowly, but the air was stuffy and stank something awful and would surely run out soon.
Asphyxiation sucked. He wasn’t desensitised to dying like some people were, that was a dangerous thing that some adventurers he’d run into failed to realise, he knew better than that. But he still had preferences in how he would like for it to happen if it had to. Slowly running out of air in the gut of a frog was definitely not up there. Notch it somewhere down there, near boiling oil.
It really was surprisingly cold, slowly wracking his body with shivers. The soft, mushy, wet walls pressed in on him, effectively restraining him to the awkward position he was crammed into, robbing him of whatever warmth he had left.
There was a knife hidden in his boot, he could in theory reach it, try to cut his way to freedom, but the god forsaken frogskin ‘gloves’ he’d made to grab onto the tentaculus had effectively made it impossible, his hands encased securely in what was basically mittens. He couldn’t even manoeuvre his arms to potentially take the gloves off, he could barely move as a whole.
His breathing was getting shallower and quicker on instinct, air already feeling chunky in his lungs. Whatever panic that brought didn’t do much, as whatever struggles he’d managed to make just got lost in the walls, mushy but strong, not yielding to anything. The little amount of air he had was getting stuffier and he realised he’d probably run out soon.
Was the exposed skin of his forearms and neck getting ever so slightly itchy or was that just his imagination? He shivered more violently.
Maybe running out of air wasn’t the worst way to go in here.
***
The stairs snaked up along the outside wall with no railing. They were old and crumbly but sturdy enough they would hold under their weight. They had to walk slowly, as frustrating as it was to do so, lest they lose their footing, so the trip took painfully long for just going up one level. They were wasting time but there was nothing they could do about it.
The stairs went up a fair bit before terminating in a precarious ancient doorway, its door long gone and overgrown with more tentaculus.
They only had a knife and an axe to get through the overgrowth, the rest of their weapons not yet recovered, but it wasn't as severe as the one downstairs. Senshi, unwilling to let go of his axe, was able to take care of it quickly.
The chamber wasn't big but was very much in ruins. It seemed to have had a few rooms in the past but the walls had mostly caved in by now. It wasn't even clear what any of the rooms were ever supposed to be with all the overgrowth and the dampness.
There was a considerably sized hole where the floor had crumbled under the onslaught of plant roots some ways in. A slight bit of light from the luminescent lake filtered in, not really providing a real light source.
Laios peered into the semi-darkness with nervous caution. In absence of Kensuke he had to pay even closer attention to possible ambushes, and even beyond that he was nervous about the situation in general. The space was humid as he tentatively walked through it, gingerly avoiding the caved-in floor, and the darkness slowly abated as Marcille's magelights floated in from the outside.
Surface frogs were all in all ambush predators for the most part, but he wasn't entirely sure these giant ones would be the same. Sure, they ambushed them, but not in the way frogs usually do. That left him with not being able to predict how they would behave now. His plan was weak but he didn’t have anything else.
There was a noise. Somewhere from the depth of the ruined space, like a wet rag dragged over glass amplified a hundred times.
He’s heard the noise before of course, definitely not this loud. Croak. Theat. Warning. Stay away.
He motioned the others to move forward. A single magelight floated gently, almost lazily, past him, illuminating a far corner. Laios caught a glimpse of shining orange in the glancing light. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
“There!” he yelled out before he could even let himself process it entirely, pointing to where the glimpse was. He was rewarded with a burst of movement - from all sides. Marcille sent another magelight there. Senshi dashed in front of Laios, axe in a white knuckled grip and an expression approaching rage on his face.
The light illuminated the shape - their frog, or so he hoped - and it made a noise like a hiss combined with a squeal as it lifted itself awkwardly off the ground and angled itself to seem bigger.
It wasn’t fighting. It wanted them to leave it alone. They had to be careful not to spook it into fleeing, because Laios wasn’t sure they’d be able to track it down again. They had to kill it here.
It had nowhere to back away to, and it seemed wary of them slowly moving in to encircle it. When another hiss did nothing it tensed.
Laios broke into a heavy run. If he could use his weight to hold it down they would have the time to kill it without it running away.
It flinched away and changed direction before he even got there. With frightening speed it angled itself and jumped.
It clearly aimed to hop right over Senshi, slip between Laios and Marcille and out the door, or down the hole in the floor and avoid the confrontation entirely. Except it seemed to not reach the full height of its jump and ended up almost colliding with the dwarf as it came down. As it seemingly struggled to right itself for another jump he took no time to react to this opening.
His axe came down on its head over and over, mangling its skull to bits, chunks of bone and thick blood trailing every strike.
It was dead 15 times over when he’d stopped. He panted heavily before discarding his weapon and kneeling at its side.
“Help me flip it over,” he called to them with a sense of urgency.
***
He wasn’t entirely awake anymore. He’d been drifting in and out of consciousness for some time, he wasn’t sure how long. Breathing was hard. The air was thick. It was cold. He wasn’t shivering anymore. His head was starting to hurt.
The itchiness was real but barely registered anymore. It’ll become stinging soon, and he faintly hoped he wouldn’t be awake for that. That he’d finally pass out one last time for a while.
Something was different though. He didn’t know what. His thoughts dragged like miasma, but no, he could tell something's changed.
The noise was dying down. The background noise of wet gurgling was quieting, the thrum he thought might’ve been a heartbeat was gone.
He tried to shift, listen better, but he could still barely move, though the walls were no longer restraining him as much. They still barely yielded to him, but they didn’t seem as tensed up. Like they were going slack.
His world then shifted, going almost upside down as he slid around in the cold itchy stomach juices. What was going on?
His eyelids felt heavy. He feared he would still pass out soon, even with things changing. He was still trapped in here, probably still would be for the foreseeable future.
New noises filtered in. Distant, muffled, barely recognisable, what was that?
Voices?
Flicker of light. Something at the edge of his vision, a slight smudge of colour in complete darkness. He turned his head towards it.
There was a line, very faint, of red glow.
It took a second to process, a growing headache staggering his thoughts. The glow was slowly growing in intensity, still in a line, a cut across the darkness.
Then something punched through the wall of his confinement, through the stomach wall, a knife, slicing through soft tissue, and a bright light blinded him after however long in the darkness.
His headache spiked. The air was no longer the stuffy muck that he’d resigned himself to. He coughed and tried to take lungfuls of it, not really seeing anything in the blur of bright lights in his eyes before his vision faded completely. He passed out again.
***
Senshi sliced through the frog’s stomach slowly, ever so carefully. Laios kneeled on the other side, steadying the corpse and pulling back layers of tissue as they were sliced through. Marcille toed around nervously just a few feet away, still distressed and swirling magelights around them to illuminate their work.
They had to go slowly, lest they injure Chilchuck and make the whole situation even worse. It was excruciating in how slow it seemed though. Laios could see Marcille getting fidgety. He felt much the same, but he stilled his hands.
Senshi tensed in front of him, made a sort of choked off noise at the back of his throat, and Laios looked down to where the knife sliced through a membrane that seemed to have nothing immediate under it.
In the darkness of the stomach they’d just cut open a shape was revealed. Curled in an awkward position was a small human body, wet the entire way through, seemingly entirely unmoving. Laios gasped and hurried to pull the cut open wider, straining to see any movement, breathing, any signs of life.
The shape- body- Chilchuck shifted. Gasped and coughed, squinting up at them, his eyes not focused on any of them, barely open. Laios felt relief flood through his veins as he reached to help Senshi haul him out.
He was cold, dreadfully cold, like the monster was, even when it was alive. Frogs are amphibians, their body temperature was always quite low, it must have been freezing on the inside.
The half foot choked on air and frog slime for a moment then went limp in their arms, his eyes sliding completely shut. Marcille yelped and beelined for him.
They laid him down on the stone floor for her to look over. He looked relatively unhurt, though the skin of his arms looked ever so slightly irritated, slightly more pink than it should have been. Marcille examined him, concentrating.
She put her hand on his forehead and chanted what Laios could parse to be a healing spell under her breath. The pink-ish irritation gradually faded and his breathing evened out, shallower than sounded entirely healthy but somehow peaceful. He didn’t wake up.
The elf sighed “He’ll be alright” she breathed out, relieved. Laios couldn’t help but sigh too, suddenly tired but no longer quite as stressed.
They made their way back down the stairs, even slower than before, accounting for Laios carrying Chilchuck and Senshi dragging the frog corpse.
They settled the half foot on a bedroll in the end, bundling him into two blankets at once to chase away the cold. He’d been warming up steadily, his hair still wet but now washed, no longer caked with stomach juices, new clothes clean and dry.
***
It was warm and quiet when he woke up again.
There was light filtering through his eyelashes again. Not a dim red glow, a campfire. It was dry, and he was bundled - not restrained, as the material yielded easily to his hands - into something warm.
He was still tired, but his head didn’t hurt and he could breathe without choking.
He opened his eyes a little more and was met with a campsite. Quiet noises of cooking carried from somewhere out of line of sight.
His hands still felt a little chilled. Maybe he could catch a little more sleep before the meal was finished cooking. He’d get up then.