Chapter 5

Revelations in the Demon's Chamber

After more excavating, some of the newts discovered a hidden door deep within the ancient dungeon. If anyone was brave enough to press the triangular demon's eye, it activated the mysterious mechanisms and caused part of the wall to fold back and reveal the doorway. Though the archaeologists who discovered the mechanism reported that their hands felt cold and tingly for hours afterwards.

Sprig once again led the way, checking for traps. It was unnerving that he didn't find any. The dungeons on the hidden continent were always full of strange devices and traps to ensure that no one reached the treasures hidden within. Perhaps it meant that whoever built this place thought no one would ever get this far.

Or maybe someone wanted Sprig to come this way?

There was a little-known adventure that he and Anne had once been on, inside a catacomb full of frog corpses. Just like these ancient dungeons, that old tomb was full of boobytraps that seemed to invite unwary travelers into their depths and kill them. He and Anee had never made it to the end of the catacombs to discover what it ultimately hid. They should have shared the experience with Marcy; perhaps she could have helped them figure it all out.

But that adventure had told Sprig something: you only left a way open to your treasure and secrets if you wanted someone to uncover them. All the traps, puzzles, and obstacles were there to ensure that the person meant to get the treasure did, while pruning all the weak and unworthy. So, if that was true, then what did that mean when there weren't any traps behind any obvious demon?

"Look at these carvings!" one student exclaimed. "They're absolutely terrifying! This triangular monster is burning all these people seemingly alive, while they're in the act of worshiping it!"

"It kind of reminds me of the old depictions the Olms have of the Core," Maddie said.

Sprig nodded. "Burning people alive is definitely an evil thing to do."

"Way to go, Captain Obvious," Ivy said with a smirk.

"I bring it up because I just have this weird feeling. It's like we're not supposed to be here, but the fact that we got this far almost makes me wonder if we aren't expected. And if that's the case, it's giving me goosebumps because that could mean we are doing something we shouldn't."

"You are showing some feather, Sprig. Want me to get rid of them for you?" Maddie asked, holding up a potion bottle.

"Curse these tropic fungal infections!" Sprig ranted, accepting Maddie's treatment.

The newts waited patiently, watching the three friends. Maddie helped Sprig get rid of his goosebumps while Ivy inspected one of the murals even closer. She noted that there was far more to them than just the raging triangle monster. There were images of what appeared to be humans, more than just three girls. However, she did spot something familiar.

"Look at this! There are three warriors here that look somewhat similar to Anne, Marcy, and Sasha!" she exclaimed excitedly.

Sprig leaped over to her and gazed excitedly at the carvings. He could make out the three feminine forms. One was an archer and the others wielded swords. One had two blades, so she had to be Sasha. That meant the third must be Anne. He ran his fingers gently over the inscription of his best friend. His heart ached with how much he missed her. Seeing representations of his friends banished much of the fear that had been growing in his heart.

This was quickly accompanied by curiosity. Why were Anne and Sasha carved to be with a bunch of other humans? Sprig could make out a few others, though he had no idea of their identities. Some of them had symbols carved into their torsos. A tree, a star, a fish, but also a question mark, glasses, and a bag of ice. How did the ancients know about that stuff? Particularly the bag of ice…

"Yeah, I think these are Anne and the girls," Sprig commented. "But they're with all these other people… I don't know who they are, but this is definitely stuff from Earth! Perhaps this means that Anne is coming back with a bunch of other humans to help fight a monster?"

"Good," Maddie said, a mischievous glint in her eye. "Things have been getting too boring around here."

"Boring?" Ivy scoffed. "With all these discoveries and adventures?"

"When was the last time we dealt with magical powers, other worldly beings, cosmic entities, and world-ending events?" Maddie demanded. "I'm starved for action, Ivy! My magical knowledge needs to be tested by more than just mysterious ruins!"

"And you miss everyone, too," Sprig said kindly.

Maddie blushed. "Yeah… I miss the girls. I'd love to know how they're doing."

Sprig patted her hand. "I'm sure we'll find a way one day to meet up with them again. It's only a matter of time! I've been combing over all of Anne's notes and adventures, Polly's been experimenting with old Newtopian tech with Frobo, and now we have this place. We'll crack the secret someday."

"Speaking of cracking secrets, let's crack on!" Ivy said enthusiastically. "I really want to see what demonic horrors wait for us at the very end of this hallway!"

The students didn't look too thrilled at the prospect of uncovering a demonic inner chamber, but they were in the presence of fabled heroes and adventurers. Perhaps things wouldn't turn out too poorly.

Sprig led the way once again and the hallway ended at a spiraling stairwell. They climbed down, surrounded by carvings and statues that made the frogs feel like they were descending into the bowels of hell. Tortured frogs, toads, and newts decorated the walls and ceiling, surrounded by flames and broken landscapes. Chains of powers were depicted in the chaos and the steps were shaped like piles of bones. It was very uncomfortable on their feet.

Eventually, the stairwell opened up into a large chamber, and that was where things got weird. The room was shaped chaotically, with no sense of dimension or normal corners. The walls were broken up and jutting out in sharp, random ways. It gave the effect of stepping into an explosion. In the center of the room was a floating, rotating pyramid broken into three segments. The top part had one, large eye. Arms and hands sprouted from the other two sections, holding strange iconography and large swords. Purple liquid dripped from the bottom of the top segment and poured down the sides of the other two, falling into a deep pool at the center of the room.

The entire chamber was lit by the gleaming eyes of many other monsters looking at the floating pyramid. Sprig recognized a great, razor-toothed toad, rearing up as if to pounce. There was a towering, humanoid warrior dressed in heavy armor and wielding a great ax. Another collapsing corner was filled with a stone representation of a plant-like being with glowing orbs coming off its branches. The trunk was full of bizarre orifices and teeth. Smaller entities were dotted all around the chamber, but watching over them all was a great black serpent unwinding across the ceiling. It was painted into the stonework but separated itself from the ceiling in a wonderfully rendered sculpture, as if the great snake was peeling itself out of the two-dimensional space to invade the room and swallow it whole.

"Well, creepy, demonic room. Check!" Sprig said, fists on hips.

"And you were saying things were getting boring around here," Ivy told Maddie smugly.

"Talk to me again when the statues begin attacking us."

"The statues are going to attack us?" one student squeaked.

Sprig grinned reassuringly and replied, "Not as long as you keep your hands to yourselves and don't touch anything! If we don't disturb the trapped demons and spirits in this chamber, they will leave us be and let us study in peace."

The students all heaved a sigh of relief.

"But that's not how we learn! History is meant to be experienced!" Sprig cried jumping towards one of the lesser monsters. The students screamed as he approached a warped bird that looked a lot like the Chicalisk. He booped its snoot.

Nothing happened.

The students once more heaved a sigh of relief.

"The statues might not come to life, but this strange fountain is certainly magical. The way it is moving in the air without any mechanisms, how it is able to keep up the output of this weird liquid," Maddie said, trailing off. "There's something up with this room. Spread out and see what you guys and gals can find!"

Sprig and Ivy took the lead in divvying up the crew of helpers and guiding them around the room to document the statues and bizarre architecture. Sprig kept his eyes wide open for any other hints of humans or clues to his friend Anne. Seeing that mural made his heart soar with hope, but without any other clues, there was a very good chance he'd come crashing back down to depression.

It had been years since they had seen each other. How much had he changed since they last saw each other? How much had she changed? Though he didn't want to believe that anything like time or space could change their special bond, a deep-seated fear whispered that they could never have what they once did.

Another logical side of his brain said, Duh! You and Anne were always growing and changing during your time together! You weren't the same kids who defeated Andrias and the Core as you were when you first met in the swamp!

But he wouldn't really know until they reunited.

"It would really help if these ancients used a form of writing that we could understand," one newt complained, but there's no writing anywhere around here! Nothing!"

"No, that's not exactly right," Ivy corrected, pointing to a section of the wall next to the giant. "Look here. See those gouges? It's almost like someone was scraping something away. The rest of the walls, though sharply designed, are all smooth. Something was here and then removed."

"Darn… I don't have any ingredients for a spell to regrow stones," Maddie grumbled.

"Why would you want that?" Ivy asked, confused. "Why would anyone want to grow back rocks?"

Maddie shrugged. "The wizard who developed the spell was obsessed with growing his rock collection. Literally."

"Sounds like a real wack job," Sprig commented, scratching his chin. "Just like whoever made this place. It doesn't look like any of the ancient temples we've found dedicated to the Great Frog or that Axolotl that keeps popping up. It's more like a weird cult room. A sacrifice chamber to some outer gods?"

"I wouldn't put it past the ancients," Maddie said.

"Great, so our ancestors were frog-sacrificing, demon worshiping maniacs!" Ivy said.

"At least a few of them were," Maddie sniffed.

Sprig glanced over to the students and found them all hurriedly scribbling down everything they were talking about. "Uh, guys, I don't think you need worry about recording all this speculation. It's good to jot down notes and make some theories, but we want solid facts. Record everything that you see and then we'll cross reference everything with other dig sites and what we have back at the Newtopian archives."

Ivy gave him a special wink that she reserved just for him, saying, "Look at you, Professor Plantar!"

"I guess my last stop at the university kind of rubbed off on me," Sprig said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head embarrassedly.

Maddie gave her friend a curious smile and said, "The visiting professors have been talking a lot about him recently. They want to whisk him back to newtopia and get him through their classes. A hero of the war, turned adventurer, graduated with honors, and then a lead professor. Sprig would be their crown jewel."

"But I don't want to be a crowned jewel!" Sprig protested. "They know that I am not yet ready to tie myself down to a desk. Learning on the go is more my style! Field work. They just won't give me a degree in that."

"Hop Pop must be so disappointed," Maddie joked.

"Nah. He's too busy rolling in coppers thanks to his avocado empire to really care too much if I have a great education. More like he wants me to take over the business when he inevitably passes. As he keeps reminding me." Sprig rolled his eyes and jumped on top of a nearby statue proclaiming, "I just need some time to figure how to balance it all, Sprig Plantar, War Hero, Avocado Tycoon, Professor of Survival, Adventurer Extraordinaire! Who will, mark my words, figure out how to connect Amphibia and Earth once again!"

As he declared this, a student shouted, "Ooo! Look! A button!"

"No, don't touch any-!" Maddie shouted.

Too late. The room shook as the statues and walls rearranged themselves in grinding fashion. Dust was thrown up everywhere. The chamber's chaos melted away as it expanded, keeping the triangular demon in the center. As the walls opened up and smoothed, new murals revealed themselves.

Once again, Sprig found himself looking up at the isosceles monster, this time with a bright, ruby eye. Blue, copper tears poured down from the eye, leaking down the creature's front. Sprig immediately noted how different end exquisitely this hidden mural was carved and decorated. The whole wall was full of treasure, which all flowed the a figure under the triangle demon. It was another humanoid figure, drinking the tears coming from the monster. All the treasure melted into rippled at the human's feet.

"Now that is awesome," Maddie said in an awed voice. "Yup, this was definitely a place for worshiping demons and outer gods."

"Then what do you make about that?" Ivy asked, pointing to the opposite wall, where the entrance was.

Sprig and Maddie turned around to see a slightly smaller but no less richly decorated mural. This own depicted a human carved out of blue copper with a ruby eye radiating amazing power. But he was opposed by a small group of vaguely defined figures. Over them gleamed a massive sword made of one continuous ruby.

"Wow... We hit the jackpot," Sprig murmured. "This is an incredible treasure! A historical find! And there's roughly 87% chance that all of this will end with us being horribly, ritualistically sacrificed!"

As if to answer that claim, a bright, green orb burst into being above the triangular demon fountain. Its sudden appearance caught everyone off guard and most of the students ran out of the room screaming. Spring toppled onto the floor with a big, "OOF!" Maddie withdrew a couple of bags, ready to hurl her anti-magic at the orb. Ivy assumed a defensive posture.

The orb drifted softly towards the three frogs, a voice dreamily emanating from it. "Sprig. Sprig? Are you there?"

"The outer gods know my name?"

"You bid dumb, we've been using it ever since we came in here," Ivy muttered out of the corner of her mouth. "They obviously heard us and are not happy that you jumped onto one of their heads!"

"Sprig! Are you there? I can't see anything! Marcy, are you sure this spell is working?"

"Marcy?" the frogs said together.

"I told you, you should have drunk the Sight potion, Anne."

"I am not ready to go all starry eyed and uber powerful again. Baby steps. Spriiiig!"

"Anne! Anne!" Sprig shouted, jumping back to his feet and waving his hands frantically. "Anne, I'm here, I can hear you!"

"I can hear and see him just fine," Marcy's voice said, becoming far more clear as the orb drifted nearer. "The spell is just having a hard time taking effect because they are in the bowels of a temple dedicated to gods of chaos and monsters prophesied to destroy all of creation. Which hey! Works really well for us, because that is exactly what we are facing! But yeah, their residual power is tampering with the connection."

The orb came to rest right before Sprig and shifted from a greenish hue to soft blue. Peering into the orb, Sprig could make out tons of different people, but his eyes locked onto one person he would never forget, no matter how much age and distance changed her. Anne Boonchuy. Older, taller, her hair up in a frizzy ponytail, and wearing a proper uniform. She was definitely more mature and appeared wiser, but that old glint of adventure and mischief was still in her eyes. A big, relieved smile stretched across her face as she recognized him.

"SPRIG!"

"ANNE! Wow, we came across carvings that could have been about you and now I'm talking to you! Oh my Frog! I can't believe it! This potentially, no most definitely evil temple hidden deep underground actually reconnected us!"

"Dude, I think it was Marcy swigging some crazy potion that Andrias told her to make that made this possible."

"WHAT!?" Ivy and Maddie exclaimed together.

"But it actually worked!" Anne cried out. "And oh boy, Sprig, guys, we have a lot we need to talk about!"

"You betcha! We found a dark, sinister cavern with a lot of demonic statues and murals that either indicate that we're all about to be sacrificed or it could be another prophecy regarding one more apocalypse!"

"Woah, Sprig, buddy, this might sound like a total coincidence, but that is kinda partly why we're reaching out to you."

Sprig waited patiently, though excitedly to hear Anne's full explanation. Connected dreams with a restored King Andrias, Marcy whipping up potions that gave her tons of knowledge, a world full of witches and demons, spells that connected them to people called the Pines working alongside a god child, and many bursts of wanning insight and cosmic knowledge coming from Marcy.

Stuff like, "Oh! That's Bill Cipher! He was the ruler of the Nightmare Realm!"

"Oh my! It's Cthulu! It's amazing how many societies and worlds can now reference him with the cosmic copyright run out!"

"That room is full of gods who have vanished from the multiverse over time! Though that snake… I actually can't figure anything about it. It's as if that statue is literally devouring my magical Sight!"

"Say what!?" Sasha and a bunch of supposed witches shouted.

"Anyway," Anne interrupted sternly, finally getting her story across. "We're whipping up a way for us all to meet up! We gotta get a huge gang together to save the entire universe! And then some? So, feel up to it?"

Sprig beamed up at her and replied, "Sure thing, Anne! But first, let me get you get caught on up on everything you've missed out since leaving Amphibia." He took a deep breath and began, "It all started shortly after you three went through the portal back to Earth; I talked things over with Valeriana and she said…"

Marcy's potion had long run out by the time Sprig was finished.