Chapter 8: Breaking the Spell
"Well, that's ominous…" noted Sprig. Moments ago he'd touched some kind of eye glyph on an alter in the middle of the chamber. Now, matching glyphs were beginning to glow along the chamber walls.
"What are they?" Polly asked. "Some kind of ancient surveillance system?"
"DETECTING-INCREASED-LEVELS-OF-ALPHA-WAVE-RADIATION", announced Frobo.
"Detecting the who know?" asked Polly. While she was quite the engineering prodigy, there were areas of knowledge the teen frog didn't have a ton of experience with… areas that if she did, she might have anticipated what was to come next.
So as it was, she was taken entirely by surprise when she saw a massive bird she'd seen only once before, and heard only twice. The first was buried deep in her subconscious, from before she'd even hatched, the second from a decade ago, when she was still only a polliwog.
"What's that doing here?" she asked. "I thought we left it back on Earth?"
She turned to Sprig, only to see the heron's mate's jaws snap down on him and Ivy.
"NO!" She shouted. "This can't be happening! We tamed them! Frobo! Cmon! We can still save them!"
The robot barely had time to move before the first heron tore it apart with her mighty talons.
Within seconds, her family had been taken from her a second time.
When the eye glyphs started lighting up, Ivy had felt a rumble beneath her feet. The rumble she'd come to associate with burrowing millipedes.
Anyone who knew Ivy Sundew-Plantar would tell you she was the single most fearless frog anyone had ever met.
But no one is truly fearless. And Ivy was no exception. That fear was sparked into overdrive now as the rumbling grew more intense. Cracks began to spread through the chamber as the very walls began to shake apart. She braced for the end as the rubble fell, but what came was far worse; rather than crushing her, she was merely sealed into a tiny, enclosed space.
Eleven years ago, she had been in the Wartwood schoolhouse when the building had been collapsed by a swam of millipedes. All the other children had managed to get out, except for her. She'd been trapped in the rubble for three days, surviving on ground water and aphid larva. When they'd finally dug her out, she claimed she was all right; she would even continue to play in the schoolhouse's rubble long after. But the incident had left its mark; a deep-seated fear of being buried alive.
A fate that had befallen her now.
"So… should something be happening, or…" pondered Sprig, when suddenly the doorway they had come through began to glow. A silhouette appeared in the doorway, tall, bipedal, and seemingly topped with a curly mop of hair.
"N-no way… it can't be…" he stammered…
The figure stepped forward…
"A-Anne…?" Sprig whispered, tears beginning to well.
Hop Pop had always said that family always found each other. Had destiny guided him here, to this very spot? It was clear to him now that the glyph had activated some sort of magical portal, that had brought Anne here, virtually unchanged from the day he'd last seen her. Destiny had compelled him to trigger the glyph, and destiny had reunited the two once more. Spranne against the world, forever.
"Anne, it is you! I can't believe it! I thought I would never see you again! There's so much I want to-"
"Ugggh," Anne said with a look of utter disgust. "Is that a giant frog? Gross."
"Y-you… you don't remember me?"
She turned up her nose. "I think I'd remember something as disgusting as you." She turned away and began walking back toward the portal.
"How… how could you forget me… " sobbed Sprig. "It was supposed to be Spranne against the world…"
But she was already gone.
And then it happened again. And again. And again.
As soon as the weasel had appeared, Maddie knew what was happening.
Seventeen years ago on Hiberday, the town had awakened from there hibernation cycle to find one of their own mysteriously gone. Over the next six years, the same had happened every year. No one had ever been able to figure out why, until that Hiberday ten years ago, when Anne, thanks to her kind's gift of a stable body temperature, was able to stand guard over the town. She had discovered that the disappearances were due to a hungry weasel who dwelled in a nearby cave and would prey on the helpless citizens during their dormancy. Since that year, the town made certain to leave an offering of food for the weasel and her brood just before Hiberday, and there would never be any more disappearances.
The last Wartwoodian to be taken, the winter prior to Anne's arrival, had been Semolina Flour, Maddie's mother. And while the threat of the weasel had been neutralized, for Maddie, it would always represent the knowledge that at any time, for any reason, your loved ones could be taken from you.
As Valeriana's student, Maddie had become familiar with a number of Amphibia's ancient languages, including several that were glyph-based, and while this particular system didn't seem to match any of them, many had an eye-shaped glyph in common. These were often used to connote dreams, illusions, and images… that which had the appearance of reality, but was not real.
So it was clear, then, that what Sprig had triggered was some sort of illusion-based trap, perhaps related to whatever the "alpha waves" that Frobo had mentioned were. Whatever the cause, the result was obvious; she was seeing her deepest fear. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that her friends were undergoing the same thing.
Shaking off the primal terror that was threatening to consume her, Maddie clamped her eyes shut and reached for her pouch. "Pollen of heronbane," she whispered to herself. "Powdered bloodroot. Ash of the Doom Tree's bark. A murder crow's toenail." There was no reason to speak the ingredients aloud, but the rote repetition aided her focus, especially when her brain was screaming at her to run and hide.
She combined the ingredients and whispered "By blackened sky and sea of blue, show me only what is true." Truesight was one of the first spells Valeriana had taught her, and the ingredients wee used commonly enough in other spells that it always paid to have them on hand. The incantation wasn't strictly necessary but again, it helped her focus.
Before her, the weasel faded away. She could see the others; Sprig, Polly, and Ivy were frozen in place, quivering, their faces frozen in a terrified expression. Frobo seemed to be attempting to get their attention.
"Frobo!" She shouted. "We need to-"
"MADDIE-IS-FUNCTIONAL-AGAIN? POLLY-SPRIG-AND-IVY-ARE-MALFUNCTIONING. REQUIRE-ASSISTANCE-TO-REBOOT."
"Frobo, I think those glowing eye symbols on the walls are causing this… uh… malfunction. Can you take them out with your lasers?"
Frobo saluted and produced a number of little protrusions from his chassis, firing off a volley of bright red beams that struck all the eye glyphs, leaving nothing but char marks behind. Abruptly, Maddie felt an odd buzz that she'd barely even been aware of leaving her mind.
"ALPHA-WAVE-LEVELS-DROPPING" confirmed the robot. Around them, Sprig, Ivy and Poly were beginning to stir.
"…they're… gone?" Polly remarked, looking around bewildered.
"It's… all right. Everyone's all right," Ivy said incredulously. "It… it wasn't real, was it. But it felt real. But everything's okay now. Now you know not to touch anything else, right, Sprig?" She glanced over at her husband, who still seemed to be staring into his own private abyss.
"She… she doesn't remember me…" Sprig began to repeat. "She doesn't remember me. She doesn't remember-"
"Sprig!" Ivy shook him. "Wake up! It's not real!"
Sprig suddenly blinked his inner eyelids. "I-Ivy… she… she was here…"
"Who was here, Sprig?"
"Anne. She was here. But… but she acted like she didn't know me. She just… she just walked away."
"It wasn't real, Sprig." Maddie informed him. "The temple was making you see what you fear the most."
"But… what if she did forget me?" Sprig responded. "It's been ten years. A lot can happen. I… I have all these old pictures on her phone to look at, but…" He shook his head. "Sometimes I look at them and they don't match the memories in my head. Sometimes I ask myself 'was her hair really that color? Wasn't her nose bigger?' And she gave me this specifically so that I could have something to remember her by. But what does she have that reminds her of me?"
"Sprig," Polly interjected. "Trust me when I say tat you're a hard guy to forget."
"You can be kind of a lot," added Maddie.
"Guys… that's my husband," scolded Ivy.
"Thanks, I-"
"So if anyone gets to make fun of him, it's me!"
"Aw, man…"
"But seriously, Sprig… there is no way Anne would ever forget you," Ivy assured.
"…unless they have some kind of memory-eraser technology," mused Polly. "Like in Season two of Suspicion Island, where the Consortium brainwashed Chad and turned him into an assassin…"
"Not helping, Polly," warned Maddie.
"Sorry, sorry," Polly replied. She hopped back over to the temple entrance. It still led to an inky void, with no sign of the new continent visible. "Well, looks like we still can't get out that way. Nothing left to do but press on further."
The corridor on the opposite side of the chamber led to a veritable maze of passages. A conscious effort was made to stick together, with Polly having Frobo use his GPS circuitry to compile a map of the of the labyrinth so that they wouldn't get lost or wind up going in circles.
Which they almost certainly would have, since the twisty passages were all alike, just yard after yard of stone walls with barely-still-functioning luminescent fungi here and there; for the most part the only illumination came from Frobo's high-beams.
"Well, looks like that corridor just crosses back to the first one," Polly remarked crankily. "What kind of sadistic creep laid out this place?"
"I don't think we've been down this tunnel yet," indicated Sprig. He held up Anne's old phone to illuminate it. Just then, Something leapt out of the darkness, snatching it out of Sprig's hand.
"Hey!" Ivy shouted. "It's one of those little hairy guys! The *finger snap* mundy!"
"Hey! Get back here, you little thief! ANNE gave me that!" Sprig growled, already chasing the tiny primate.
"After him!" Polly shouted.
"I dunno… does something seem weird about this whole- do you hear something?" asked Ivy.
Maddie nodded. "I think there's someone else in these tunnels. Look!" She pointed to a tiny light in the distance that seemed to be coming closer. Behind it, they could hear low whispers.
"All right…" whispered Ivy. "I'm not sure they've seen us yet, but we might still have the element of surprise. Frobo, kill your lights and hide around the last corner. Maddie, hug the wall as they get closer." Maddie nodded and flattened herself against the wall. "Right… wait for it…" The two frogs held their breath. They make out two tall figures, one of them holding some kind of stick with a light shining out of it.
"I think it was around he-" the second one began to say, as…
"AMBUSH!" Ivy shouted as she and Maddie leapt on them.
"Hey!" the first one shouted, Ivy squinting as she shone her light-wand directly in her eyes. "Get off of- wait… no ****ing way… IVY?"
Ivy blinked, adjusting to the light. Her target had the unmistakable build, face bump, ad side-head-flaps of a human… and not just any human. "SASHA? What the frog are you doing in Amphibia?"
"Amphibia? What are you doing on Earth?"
"If that's Sasha…" Maddie realized, "then this must be…"
"Hi," Marcy said bashfully. "Whoa… look at you! You look just like…"
"GRENDLEGORB THE BRIGHT!" the two said simultaneously.
"Whaaa?" Ivy asked.
"Oh, you know… the wizard from War of the Warlocks?" explained Marcy. "Well, he starts off as Grendlegorb the Drab, but then in the third movie he seemingly falls to his death on the Great Causeway while fighting the Dravern Lord-"
"-but then he returns at the climax of the fourth movie just as the final battle with the Lich King is starting…" continued Maddie, "and when Brubo the Burrower complains he's late, he says-"
"'-Nonsense. A wizard is always on time, it's everyone else that is early!'" the two concluded in stereo.
"Maddie and I had a sleepover a couple of nights before we did the third temple," explained Marcy, "and we binged the whole series."
"Yeah, figured that," acknowledged Sasha. "You two dorks haven't seen Anne go by here by any chance, have you?"
Ivy's eyes darted back and forth. "Well, we haven't… exactly… there was these weird eyes on the wall that-"
"Been there, done that, got the trauma to show for it," dismissed Sasha. "So, Anne's here with us, but we lost her when she ran off to chase this monkey that stole our flashlight…"
"That's exactly what happened to Sprig! Well, it didn't take the same thing, but he did chase after it. Polly went after him, and we were going to follow them but then we ran into you two… oh, Frobo's here too… you can come out, Frobo!"
The robot lumbered out of his alcove and scanned the newcomers. "SASHA-MARCY-RECOGNIZED. INITIATING HUG PROCEDURE."
"Whoa," Sasha interrupted, holding out a hand out. "I'm, uh, happy to see you too, but I'd like to keep my bones not-crushed, thanks. So… now what."
"Well," Marcy replied. "I've been mapping out this labyrinth using graph paper. It's pretty fun, actually, like playing a reallllly old-school CRPG… anyway, judging from the basic dimensions of the temple and the layout I've already mapped…" She displayed her map. "This seems like the most likely direction to go."
"Frobo's been mapping the temple too. Can we cross-reference his map with yours?" asked Ivy.
"I don't see why not!"
Frobo projected his map against Marcy's graph paper. "Okay," Marcy instructed. "Now shrink it by about thirty percent to match the scale… rotate 90 degrees clockwise… perfect! Looks like we need to go… here."
"Where'd that stupid thing go?" grumbled Sprig. He'd come to yet another large chamber, and though he'd seen the monkey go down this hall, there was no sign of it as he emerged from the corridor.
"Hey!" Polly's voice complained from behind him. "Warn a frog before you go running off like that! Getting separated in here would be a really bad idea… whoa." She looked around. "I think we found the central chamber."
This was an assumption, but the chamber did seem far larger and ornate than the one at the entry, with a higher ceiling and a more ornate central altar. It was set with luminescent crystals that provided enough light to illuminate the entire chamber. "Frog, this place absolutely reeks of significance, Still doesn't get me Anne's phone b-"
"Sprig, do you hear footsteps?" Polly interrupted, tugging Sprig's sleeve.
"Probably the others catching up with us."
"No, that would be coming from behind us. I'm talking about-" She pointed that the opposite doorway. "Look!"
A familiar figure emerged. Sprig cringed. "Oh no… it's happening again. That defense system must still be active!"
"Sprig? SPRIG!" And then the figure was running toward them and swept Sprig up in her arms. "You're here! You're really here! But you can't be here! Is the temple playing tricks on me again? But then how can I be touching you?"
"Who cares?" Sprig said. "All that matters is you're real and I'm real and we're together!"
Polly cleared her throat. "Ahem? Other surrogate frog sibling here?"
Anne looked up. "Whoa, Polly! Is that you? Your… your body!"
"What… about it?"
"You have one! Get over here, you little psycho!" Anne swept her up into the group hug.
"Okay, I said I wasn't gonna question it, but… how is this possible?" Sprig asked.
"I think this temple somehow exists in both of our worlds. I don't know if it's always been this way or if it's just started, but… we just found out about it after Mr. X contacted us to investigate 'cause we have experience with this sort of thing. He says there's been a lot of stuff like this happening in the last twenty-odd years and he's with this special branch that tracks that kinda thing…"
"We? So… I guess you still hang out with Sasha and Marcy?" Sprig asked.
"…not as much, but Mr. X caught us on one of our occasional reunions. See, someone from Amphibia found her way to our world, so, we're bringing her back…" She suddenly facepalmed. "And, we left her in the entry chamber."
"*sigh* ….any minute now…" Bella groaned, boredom setting in.
"Well, even if she was with you, I don't think it'd matter 'cause… we can't get out." Polly explained.
"What do you mean?"
"The way we came in is blocked off," Sprig explained further. I think we're stuck here until we accomplish something…
"That is indeed why you are here, young ones," a familiar voice spoke. Standing upon the central altar was none other than Valeriana.
"Okay, no, no, you were not in here a second ago. I call shenanigans on this hooey!" Anne declared.
"What the frog is going on?" demanded Polly.
"All will be explained once all are gathered," replied Valeriana. "That is why I had my student gather you and your friends." She turned to Anne. "She could not gather you three, though, so I had my agent lure you into the temple instead." To illustrate her point, the kleptomaniac monkey that had been tormenting our heroes scurried into the chamber and perched on her shoulder. "By the way, I believe these are yours," she said, handing Sprig and Anne back their phone and flashlight.
"So you were in league with that stupid monkey?" Anne asked.
"Stupid monkey!" repeated the monkey, before changing back to a purple parrot-fly. "Stupid Monkey! AWK! Stupid monkey!"
"You have done well, Leander. Have a cracker."
"He can do that? Anne, did you know he can do that?"
"How would I? Val – can I call you that? Don't care. I'm callin' you that anyway – you got a lot of 'splainin' to do," Anne said impatiently.
"As I have said… all shall wait until we are all gathered." She tapped her foot. "…this may take a while. I should never have arranged a meeting in the middle of a labyrinth."
A.N.: Well! Chapter 8 is here at last! Sorry for the delay, but at least I've broken my writer's block… for now.
Having Maddie's mom be the victim of the Hiberday weasel was not originally my idea, I picked it up from another fic, but I can't remember which one. So… if you're the one who wrote it, consider yourself credited. I did come up with the name of her mother on my own).
MarMarFaAnne: Actually, there was a Big City Greens ref back in Chapter 6, see if you can spot it.
Jose: Very effective, though.
Lyger 0: I promise nothing! *evil laugh*
Tall T: Thanks, I wanted to flesh her out a bit more.
Ashley: This fic takes place a bit over nine years after the Amphibia flash-forward, and concurrent with the Earth one. After all, I doubt Sprig and Ivy were ready for kids at that age!
Next: It's the Exposition Chapter