Three days prior, the phraxship Archemax had encountered an impenetrable bank of fog. A day ago, they found themselves to be moored near the settlement of Gorge Town. Now, as night fell, the crew was leaving, continuing on its route to the Edge cliff and Ifflix Hentadile.
Meatball the slaughterer was a villain on a mission. He searched through the congregation of quarry trogs for his target, Teggun. The crowd of trogs and a handful of other species were gathered round a reflective pool of water, mirroring the stars of the night sky and the glittering phraxlamps clinging to Gorge Town's rambleshacks above.
Over the din of the departing phraxship's whistle and the rowdy quarry trogs, Meatball thought he heard the sounds of a thousand burps in the distance, but he snapped out of it when he caught a glimpse of his target's quintessential red overcoat.
The horde of creatures hopped through a little garden of tripweed. The sound of their movements mixed in with the sound of a thousand stinking belches. They burst through the trees into the vast clearing. Their approach was met with screams of terror.
Meatball stared at the pool of water listlessly. His target had slipped away in the crowd.
"The plot, like the froth of tripweed beer, thickens…," he scoffed.
Suddenly, the pool of water was disturbed by a million halitoads. A single halitoad glared at him before puffing up. He was dead before he could smell the fatal burp.
The huge hairy crowd of quarry trogs ran to the lifts in terror, desperately trying to escape the stampede of frogging halitoads. The hardy trogs were immune to the fatal effects of the malevolent beasts' breath. Instead, it made them stoned; hallucinating and high out of their minds.
To the eyes of a hallucinating quarry trog, it looked like the halitoads had grown sky-facing windmills. Like a helicopter in some strange alternate universe, the helitoads took to the air and took up pursuit.
From the deck of the departing Archemax, Nate Quarter and Eudoxia Prade held hands and watched the quarry trogs tripping out. The hallucinating throng below tripped over themselves to get to the lifts.
"Is this some ritual they didn't tell us about?" Eudoxia laughed.
"What are they running from?" Nate asked with a warm smile. She blushed at his gaze. "Oh well. I guess we'll never know…"