"SLEEP-O-VER! SLEEP-O-VER! SLEEP-O-VER!", Luz hears Anne, Sprig, and Polly cheering while waiting outside Iva's front door.
Luz opens the door and says "Come in, I'll be almost done. Just gotta get my stuff."
Anne and the Plantars enter Iva's house and go into the living room where Maddie is sitting with a thick book. While Luz disappears into her and Maddie's bedroom, Anne approaches Maddie.
"Are you really sure you don't want to come with us?"
"Pretty sure.", Maddie replies, "but I'll see you tomorrow at the audience with the King."
"Okay", Anne says and Luz rejoins the group in the living room with her staff in hand.
"You want to take Owlbert with you?"
"Yup. He's been looking forward to it all week. He's probably even more excited than I am"
Owlbert lets out a joyful "hoot" and then transforms back into his wooden form and sits on the staff. Luz, Anne and the Plantars say goodbye to Maddie and make their way to the palace as the day is already drawing to a close. With the exception of Hop Pop, who won't be at the sleepover, and Polly, who only wears a bow tie anyway, everyone else is already wearing comfortable pajamas. In preparation for that night, the Plantars had bought Luz a pair of pajamas of her own a few days ago at the city's shopping pier. She was very happy about the gift and of course she is now showing it off, only accompanied by her trusty cloak and her staff.
Anne wears a plain light gray t-shirt and loose brown shorts, Sprig wears a dark green t-shirt with the words 'BIG FROG' and an image of a toad wearing sunglasses and dark blue plaid shorts, as well as his characteristic hat. Polly's 'outfit' is the same as always. Luz pyjamas consist of a light gray plain shirt and purple pajama pants.
When they arrived at the palace, Lady Olivia was already waiting for the group. After a brief briefing on night-time regulations in the palace, she led them to Marcy's room. When she knocks on her door, an excited Marcy can already be heard from behind "Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. They're here!"
Lady Olivia opens the door "Good evening, Master Marcy. Anne Boonchuy, Luz and the Plantars have arrived for your-"
Before Lady Olivia can continue, Anne, Polly and Sprig run into the room, all yelling "Sleepover!". Anne and Sprig jump around on Marcy's bed while Polly tears up a pillow screaming.
"-Sleepover..." Lady Olivia continues, "If anyone needs me, I'll be in the kitchen drinking...juice."
She turns and leaves the room before Luz enters the same. Hop Pop stands in the doorway and says goodbye, "Okay, kids, I'll be back in the morning for our meeting with the king. You enjoy yourselves. I'm off to spend a little much needed me time. And by me time, I mean a full body"
"Okay, bye HP", Anne interrupts by slamming the door in his face.
"This is gonna be-" Anne begins to say.
"-awesome!" Marcy finishes.
"It's the perfect way to spend the night before we hear from the king", Sprig says.
"I wonder what he learned about the music box", Anne wonders.
"I don't wanna give anything away, but it's gonna be pretty cool", Marcy teases.
"Luz, did you find anything helpful?" Anne asks.
"Nothing that would help to travel between dimensions. But... did you know that Amphibia used to be far more technologically advanced than it is today? Somehow the whole society has regressed... No offense guys"
"None taken", both Sprig and Polly say.
"Cool. How did you find out about this?" Marcy asks.
"Iva's parents have published a couple of books in which they have put forward this theory"
"Cool. I should ask the king about it soon. But first we have a whole night to waste.", Marcy says with a smile on her face.
"YEAH! Our first sleepover!" screams Polly.
"Better make it a good one. These will be formative memories", Sprig whispers in an eerie tone.
"Nothing easier than that- Whoa, I just realized, we've never done a sleepover without Sasha", Anne says buffled.
"Oh, you're right", Marcy agrees, "You think we can pull this off? Sasha's the sleepover queen. Not us"
"You don't need Sasha, you have me. At my first sleepover on the Boiling Isles, Willow, Gus and I had brought a house to life and taken it for a walk." Luz brags.
"Seriously? A house brought to life?", Marcy asks skeptically.
"You don't believe me?" Luz says smirking before activating a few Glyphs of Light and levitating them in front of her.
"Good point", Marcy admits and Luz continues to grin.
"Okay Ms. Luz 'party planner'... I just realized I don't even know your last name...", Anne states.
"Noceda. Luz 'Party Planner' Noceda", Luz joked.
"Alright Noceda. What's your plan?" Anne asks expectantly before Luz smacks a pillow in her face.
Anne looks at Luz with a little surprise while she is smirking herself. Everyone present copies the facial expression, arm themselves with various pillows and the biggest pillow fight in history breaks out.
Marcy is the first to give up. Sometime after that Sprig too. Then Luz. Then Anne and Polly triumphantly stood on Marcy's bed and celebrated her victory.
Marcy then came up with the idea of secretly breaking into King Andrias' dressing room. However, not before they all rushed down all the stairs in the palace, sitting on mattresses, cheering loudly. In the cloakroom itself, Anne, Marcy, Luz and Sprig had grabbed a few pairs of the king's socks and used them for a sack race through the endlessly long corridors of the palace. Unsurprisingly, Sprig could easily outperform his human competitors. Polly, on the other hand, has unleashed her creativity over the same period of time, building a life-size replica of King Andrias out of his clothing. Lady Olivia came along in the meantime and actually let herself be fooled by the replica.
After some creative vandalism on a couple of royal family portraits and pranks on Lady Olivia, followed by a speech about restricted areas, they were starting to get hungry. And that's how they came up with the brilliant idea of stealing a two-tiered ice cream cake from one of the kitchens and eating it whole in Marcy's room.
Now they are all lying on the floor with bloated bellies and some breathing heavily.
Polly burps, and Luz's stomach can be heard clearly.
"Eating that cake was a bad idea..." she complains.
"Yeah... That was awesome", Polly says, obviously not listening. Anne laughs weakly.
"Best sleepover ever!", Sprig adds.
"See? Told ya we could pull off an awesome sleepover without Sasha.", says Anne, lying shoulder to shoulder next to Marcy, "What time is it anyway? Five in the morning? Six?"
Marcy pulls out her phone while Luz gets up from her seat and runs in a panic to Marcy's bathroom. Fortunately for everyone involved, nothing can be heard from the next room. Owlbert, who has so far only watched the feast from one of Marcy's cupboards, glides down from his vantage point to Luz's seat and snuggles into her pillow.
"Maybe the cake really wasn't a good idea for her. Anyway, it's... just 10:30?" Marcy notes, startled.
"What?" Anne startles and Sprig chuckles.
"That early? But I'm so tired..."
He and Polly are lying on their respective pillows, almost falling asleep. Anne suddenly jumps up and shakes the two siblings awake again "No! Stay awake!", whereupon both groan in annoyance.
"Anne", Marcy sits up and holds Anne by the shoulder, "I think it's time"
"Really? Are you sure they're ready?" Anne asks in a mysterious voice, "And shouldn't we wait for Luz?"
"Who is ready for what?" Luz asks, who has just left Marcy's bathroom, walking back to her spot and picking up Owlbert.
"The Scare-Dare challenge", Marcy and Anne said in unison, followed by interested "Oooh's" from the others.
"The rules: One of us comes up with a scary dare and we all have to do it.", Marcy begins to explain before Anne continues.
"But whoever balls first gets their name added to the-"
"Book of Losers", both Anne and Marcy add in unison.
Anne continues "Yeah, and once your name is in the Book of Losers, it'll be there forever"
"Forever…", Marcy repeats in a deeper voice.
"Uhh, I like the sound of that", Luz said, shaking her arms with excitement. "What do you think buddy?" she asks Owlbert who chirps in agreement.
"Well, I'm sold too. Let's do this", Sprig and Polly said.
"Okay, all we need is a scary dare", Marcy explains, and Luz speaks up immediately and excitedly.
"I've got about twelve ideas"
"Twelve ideas?" asks Anne with a raised eyebrow, "We probably don't have time for all of them. Do you have a highlight?"
"Lady Olivia told us not to go down into the basement. I say: we'll do just that!"
"Luz, that place is probably off-limits for a reason. This may not be a smart idea", Marcy notes.
"We can alternatively spend the rest of the night in the palace dungeons, or sneak into the king's bedchamber one after the other and-" Luz suggests, but is interrupted by Marcy.
"Okay... Basement it is... I hereby accept this Scare-Dare challenge"
"I also accept this Scare-Dare challenge", Anne calls out.
"We also accept this Scare-Dare challenge", Sprig and Polly call out as well.
Shortly thereafter, everyone sneaks out of Marcy's room in the direction of the forbidden basement. Leading the way are Marcy and Anne, with Sprig, Polly and Luz with Owlbert as her staff just behind them. Because Luz doesn't look like she's feeling well, Sprig once wanted to ask, but was interrupted by Anne. Luz had assured him that her stomach just wouldn't respond well to the ice cream cake.
The walk through the palace to the basement is quite a long one and the fear of meeting Lady Olivia was present throughout. The group walked past several of their works that were created during the evening, such as 'improved' paintings, 'rearranged' armor and abandoned mattresses.
When they arrived at the area where the stairs to the basement are located, they saw Lady Olivia sitting on a chair asleep right next to it. A stone fell from everyone's heart as they grinningly tiptoed past her. Polly, however, couldn't resist trying to... 'embellish' Lady Olivia's face a little.
"This is the legendary forbidden basement?" Luz asks disappointedly when they reached the bottom of the stairs. They stood in a very high, circular room, the walls of which were completely covered by barrels stacked on top of one another. The whole room is lit only by two lanterns mounted at the bottom of the stairs.
"This is just a wine cellar." Marcy explains and walks to a floor hatch in the middle of the room, which she quickly opens dramatically, "This... is the forbidden basement"
A huge amount of dust comes towards her and after a collective coughing fit, they all look into a dark corridor that leads even further down into the ground. A narrow and steep stairway, walls of uneven dark gray stone covered with ivy-like purple coral growing towards what little light shines in through the normally closed floor hatch. For a while, everyone stares down the dark stairs, rooted to the ground.
"Soo...", Sprig is the first to break the silence, "Who wants to go first?"
"I vote Anne", Polly says, causing everyone to look at Anne.
"Why me? Marcy's older than me...", Anne states. Quite a few heads turn to Marcy.
"No way...", Polly doesn't believe it.
"Well, I think so, at least. Luz, how old are you? Twelve? Thirteen?", Anne asks.
"I'll be fifteen in two months...", Luz corrects her, whereupon Anne looks down in disappointment, "And don't worry, I'll lead the way."
Luz is the first down the stairs with Owlbert on her shoulder and immediately notices that the stairs are not only quite steep, but the individual steps are also unusually narrow compared to the rest of the palace. Anne, Marcy, Sprig and Polly follow her and as soon as everyone was moving, all they heard was a dull bang and absolute darkness enveloped the group. Anne and Marcy pull out their phones and activate the flashlights, and Luz activates a light glyph that levitates over her hand.
After what feels like an eternity, the group arrives downstairs and they immediately notice something strange: A long corridor with nothing but mirrors of various shapes and sizes. A thick layer of dust has gathered on all of them, and many of the mirrors have cobwebs with the remains of their creators on the floor. Some mirrors have lost their ability to reflect light, and moss has already grown on others. Only a single butterfly flies through the dark corridor. The pattern on its wings resembles sharp teeth.
"Whoa... That's a lot of mirrors...", Sprig comments.
"So, anyone want to turn back and go into the Book of Losers?", Anne chuckles nervously.
"Nu-uh. Come on, it's just a dark corridor", says Luz, trying to sound encouraging, as she slowly walks along, following the butterfly that has disappeared into the darkness while the others hesitate a bit. "Come on"
"You know, some cultures believe mirrors can ward off malevolent spirits...", Marcy tells as she walks next to Anne, "-or summon them. Muhaha"
Anne chuckles when she hears Marcy's sinister laughter. Luz taps Anne on the shoulder and says "That wasn't a joke" with a totally serious look, whereupon Anne slowly and carefully turns to Marcy, hoping that she isn't about to create any monsters.
In the meantime, Polly has jumped onto Sprig's hat and, with a racing heart and paying attention to every little noise, the two of them sneak through the corridor until they all stop in front of an elaborately barricaded door. Not only is the door nailed shut with wooden boards, twice, somehow, they managed to wrap a chain around the door as well as around the door frame.
There are white amphibian runes on the door itself and red amphibian runes on the foremost wooden plank.
"Umm, Marce, can you read that?", Anne asks.
"My command of Newtopian linguistics is limited, but what it says should be fairly obvious... Keep out!"
When a wooden creaking is suddenly heard, everyone jumps up in terror, their hearts beating at what feels like 200 beats per minute. Polly buries her face in Sprig's hat for a moment and Marcy clutches Anne's hand. When she has calmed down a little bit, she seems to have forgotten to let go of her again.
"Okay, somebody's gotta wanna go back by now...", Anne assumes, trying to hide her own fear.
"I ain't g-going in n-no Book of Losers." Sprig stutters.
"M-m-me n-n-neither..." Polly stutters.
"Guess we'll go a bit further then", Marcy says.
"Uh-huh...", Anne confirms and takes a deep breath before she turns to Luz, "Luz, are you ready to keep go- … What are you doing?"
Throughout the interaction, Luz has been rummaging in the pockets of her pajama pants and is now pulling out some glyphs.
"Okay, I could knock down the door with a fire glyph or I could blast it open... With an ice glyph I could break the chain... Those are the options", Luz explains. "What?" she asks as the others look at her with a look she can't interpret.
"How is it that you are the least afraid of us?", Anne asks, "It's dark and cold here, the air is stuffy and behind that door there could be something that could kill us all and you are completely calm..."
"Well, I don't think this place is scary. There are places like that pretty much everywhere on the Boiling Isles. Also, there was this one time I had to fight Grom. Short for 'Grometheus, the fear bringer'. It's a demon, an amorphous, telepathic shapeshifter who can transform into people's worst fears and feed off of those fears. He forced me to face my worst fear and together with Amity, we defeated him. A world full of magic also has its downsides", she explains.
"When we're back up later, you absolutely have to tell a few stories. But now... We'll break off the wooden planks and you take care of the chain"
And just a few movements later, the door is open and the group can see the new chamber. "What the heck?", Anne comments on the sight of chained coffins, some of which are floating on water.
"It's some kind of creepy crypt.", she continues.
"Whoa-ho", Polly exclaims, "You mean like with dead bodies? Cool", and jumps from the door onto the nearest coffin, trying to avoid touching the totally murky water. It is not clear to see how deep it goes. Maybe just a few centimeters, maybe a kilometer.
The coffins themselves are all made from the same basic materials, primarily dark brown wood with a metal rim, but gold detailing unique to each of the coffins. Like the door, all the coffins are chained somewhere, be it to each other, to the wall, or somewhere under water. The room itself looks like an octagonal cavity has been hollowed out. The room is illuminated with red glowing corals, each of which is attached to a corner of the room.
Sprig and Luz jump right after Polly. Anne and Marcy stay behind, both looking quite worried. Marcy grabs Anne's hand with both hands and says "Anne, we shouldn't be here. This feels all sorts of wrong."
"Guys, I, uh, think Marcy's right. We should head back upstairs."
Luz, Sprig and Polly, standing atop one of the floating coffins, turn and exchange silent yet meaningful looks before all cracking smug grins.
"Oh, I see... So, I guess you two are okay with going in-", Sprig begins.
"-the Book of Loooosers.", all three shouting in unison.
"Pff... We don't wanna go back 'cause we're scared. This place just isn't our style…", Anne says, with a dismissive hand gesture.
"Okay... Prove it!", Sprig demands.
"Take a selfie by... that coffin." Luz adds, pointing to the largest coffin hanging from the ceiling at the other end of the room. Below the large hanging coffin, a few smaller moss-covered coffins are also floating on the water, along with a few rotted corpses and skeletons.
"Eww!" Anne and Marcy yell in disgust.
"Would Sasha do this?" Marcy whispers.
"Oh yeah, definitely", Anne replies with the same volume.
After some hesitation, Anne decided to lead the way. She set foot in the polluted water to find out just how deep it actually is. When she realized that the water was only about ankle-high, she climbed in. Marcy follows her, still holding onto Anne's hand. However, she already regrets her decision after the first step when her long pajama pants get soaked with water. She tries to suppress her disgust only to be able to leave this crypt again.
When they get to the coffin, Anne pulls out her phone and opens the front camera.
"All right, say desecration"
"Desecration", both girls say and Anne takes the photo. Marcy gives the camera a peace sign and they both smile in a rather forced manner.
"Ha! Nailed it." Anne says proudly as she looks at the picture she just took, "Oh, wait. This photo's kinda jank"
Suddenly her phone display starts shimmering blue while one of Anne's eyes turns yellow in the picture. The blue tint has gained mass and appears to be detaching from the phone. Suddenly, a blue, semi-transparent creature with a yellow eyeball and tentacles hovers right in front of Anne and Marcy. The two of them start screaming in panic, and Anne briefly had the urge to throw her phone at the creature. Instead, she just wiggles one arm to shoo it away. Successfully. At least for a few seconds, until the water turns from a murky brown to a murky purple and the whole room starts to tremble.
"What's going on here?", Polly asks, scared.
But before anyone can answer her, more creatures emerge from the water and some of the coffins. They are all different sizes and shapes, but the same color. Some have claws, some have tentacles.
"What the heck are these things?" Anne asks as she and Marcy take a few steps backwards before another being appears from a coffin behind them.
"They look like ghosts", Luz comments.
"They're actually kinda cute", Sprig says, "I wanna touch 'em"
"Don't touch it", Marcy warns.
"Look!" Anne points to one of the creatures, which has sucked up some of the bones that were floating on the water and is decomposing them inside.
"AHH! They're gonna eat our bones!", Polly screams.
"Okay...", Luz says, "I'm slowly starting to think that we should go back..."
As Sprig and Polly flee from one of the beings that has risen from the coffin they were on, Anne, Marcy and Luz slowly walk back towards the corridor they originally came from.
"I don't get it. Are they aliens? Alien-ghosts?" Anne asks.
"Does it matter? Let's get outta here, Scoob." Marcy interrupts Anne's thought process.
"Roger that... Wait, what did you just call me?"
Just before the girls can flee, another giant creature comes out of the corridor blocking the way. Luz jumps between it and Anne and Marcy and pulls out some glyphs.
"I got this!", she yells, hurling a fireball at the creature. It didn't even flinch. She tries to get it out of the way with plants. The plants dissolve as they touch it. She tries to freeze it, also to no avail!
"What? That's not possible...", Luz says, frustrated.
"Guys, this way! We found another exit!" Sprig and Polly yell from an open door at the other end of the room, where the three human girls immediately run to.
They run down the corridor as fast as they can, but the beings are chasing them. At a junction they find another corridor, which is already like the first one, full of mirrors.
"Man, someone really loves mirrors", Anne comments.
As the beings get closer, they keep running down the hallway with the mirrors, when suddenly another being appears in the middle of the hallway. Luz starts and stumbles.
"Luz, you can study ghosts later, come on!" Anne yells before the group turns into another junction.
This time, however, there are no mirrors, but plants.
"What the... a garden? But how are these plants growing so well without sunlight?", Marcy wonders and stops. Anne notices, turns around and grabs Marcy's arm.
"Mar-Mar, we don't have time for this. Come on!"
They keep running, pass some paintings, one of them destroyed and finally run up a spiral stone staircase until they discover a heavy hatch at the top, which Anne and Marcy push open together.
"My room?" Marcy asks confused.
"Don't question it!", Anne replies and Sprig closes the wooden hatch.
"Oh, thank goodness that's-", Anne wanted to say relieved, before a few of the creatures slowly slide through the closed hatch.
Sprig and Polly now have their backs to Marcy's door, while Anne and Marcy have been pushed back to Marcy's window. Marcy herself is terrified right now while Anne is looking for options.
She sees a book lying on a shelf, picks it up and throws it at one of the creatures.
"Take this, you overgrown gummy worm!", she calls out as she tosses the book. Although it slides through it almost unaffected, the book smokes briefly as it lands at Sprig's feet.
"Quick! More books", he yells.
"Way ahead of you", Polly says, and the two of them throw whatever book they can find at the semi-transparent creatures.
Anne does the same and throws every book she can find as well. Only Marcy stands there petrified, unable to move at all.
"This isn't working. Why are the books passing right through them?"
"Maybe they prefer audiobooks", Anne replies after picking up a sprayworm and shooting a kind of liquid liquorice straight through one of the creatures at high speed. Sprig picks up a hand mirror to shield himself from the licorice.
Suddenly a ray of light comes out of the mirror and before you can even blink, the largest creature in the room is no longer transparent but completely solid.
"What the..." Marcy asks before grabbing a pillow off her bed and slamming it on the creature's head. "It's physical? But how?"
"The mirrors.", Anne and Marcy call out as they look over at Sprig.
"Both hallways to the crypt were filled with mirrors.", Anne remembers.
"It looks like the reflection of their own light turns these creatures physical, which means..."
"Quick, everyone, grab a mirror!" Anne shouts and throws a mirror at everyone.
One by one, the creatures solidify and, with the help of pillows, are pushed back down the stairway.
When all creatures were finally expelled from the room, Anne closed the hatch, Polly threw a large mirror on it and Marcy pushed a chair onto the mirror for extra weight.
"We did it!", Anne exclaims relieved and lets herself fall on Marcy's bed, "we drove away the alien-ghost-things"
"And no one got eaten.", Marcy adds, lying down next to Anne.
"A great victory", Anne says.
"Umm guys...", Sprig begins nervously, "Where's Luz?"
Immediately after this question, Anne shoots up and looks around the room.
"She… must still be in the basement", she concludes.
"Anne, we need to get back down and help her", Marcy pleads.
"But the creatures are probably still on the stairs", Polly notes.
"We can't just leave our friend down there with those things. She doesn't even know how to-", argues Sprig, but is interrupted by Anne
"GUYS!" she yells, "why are you trying to convince me? As if I'm going to leave Luz down there... Arm yourself, we're going back!"
Marcy lifts the chair from the hatch while the others equip themselves with hand mirrors and pillows. Anne even takes an additional mirror for Luz while wondering why Marcy has so many hand mirrors in her room at all.
"Are you ready to kick some alien ghosts' butt?" Anne asks encouragingly.
"Yeah, let's go.", says Marcy
"FOR LUZ!" Polly yells and is the first to throw herself down the spiral staircase.
The creatures had already retreated a bit down the stairs and are also transparent again, but Polly beats them up one by one. The others call after her that she shouldn't go ahead alone, but it quickly became clear that once Polly was in a fighting frenzy, she wouldn't stop that easily.
Anne, Sprig and Marcy follow Polly only a short time later and can still hear her battle cries in the distance. As they descended the spiral staircase, they encountered several solid creatures lying motionless on the stairs.
"Luckily she only has a pillow... I don't want to know what she would do with a real weapon", Marcy comments, whereupon Anne and Sprig exchange meaningful looks.
"Yeah, it's better if you don't know", Sprig replies, whereupon Marcy doesn't ask any further, just nods.
At the bottom, they see a contented Polly, breathing heavily.
"That. Was. Awesome."
"We haven't found Luz yet. Maybe there's more..." Anne says teasingly, causing Polly's eyes to widen.
"Yes. Yes. Yes... Let's goooo", she yells and hops off and Marcy looks at Anne with a raised eyebrow.
"What? A little motivation is good. Helps make this place feel a little less spooky", Anne explains.
"Aha! So you were scared after all", Sprig claims.
"I thought we had that sorted out already", Anne shoots back, "Now let's look for Luz"
"Anne, she was right behind you. Where was the last time you saw her?", Marcy asks.
"By the mirrors. She tripped and fell. But got up again."
"Are you sure?" Marcy asks skeptically.
"What do you mean?"
"Are you sure you saw her get up again?"
Anne doesn't answer, but swallows heavily. Ashamed, but determined, Anne makes her way through the underground garden with the rest of the group.
Marcy keeps getting lost admiring the different plants that she hasn't seen anywhere in Amphibia before. But Anne also sees something that looks quite familiar to her and makes her stop in her tracks in shock. Sprig notices that Anne has stopped and turns to her.
"Anne? Did you find Luz?" he asks, whereupon she shakes her head, "Then what- oh... um, Marcy..."
"Hmm? Whoa..." she says as she sees what Anne and Sprig have found.
"That's a Mossman..." Anne explains.
"You were right... He's real. Why is he chained up?" Sprig says.
"It's not the same one Wally and I found"
The Mossman, who is chained to a wall with a massive iron chain and has only been sitting on the floor with his legs bent, now turns to Anne, who kneels down to him in turn.
He's looking at her as if he's waiting for something.
"Yes, that's right. I've met someone like you before. Out there in Frog Valley", she says in a sad voice, "It must have been forever since you've seen the sun, or been out in the fresh air... Or had company ..."
The Mossman offers Anne a hand, which she hesitantly takes. Pictures appear in her mind. A pink frog with red hair. Many of his own kind who lived in the basement. Like him, some were in chains too.
Anne flinches as the pictures ended.
"Anne, are you okay? What happened?" Marcy asks worried.
"He... showed me pictures... memories. This place, it used to be a garden tended by a frog", she explains. When she has calmed down again, she turns back to the Mossman, "What happened? Why are you the only one here? Why the chains? Did the others escape like the one I met?"
The Mossman takes his eyes off Anne and looks at Sprig for a few moments. He looks back at Anne and extends his hand to her again.
Pictures pop into her head again. The same pink frog, but perched on the back of another unchained Mossman. Crying, with a box in one hand and a weapon in the other. They ride past. There's a roar. Leif. The pictures disappear again.
Anne falls backwards to the ground and turns to Marcy, "That frog, Leif... She had the music box... and was running from something."
"What? Although, there were frogs on the box itself too. It doesn't surprise me that this is where the box originated from", Marcy says.
"But what did she flee from and why? We should ask King Andrias about it tomorrow", suggests Anne.
"Good idea", Marcy says, and the Mossman makes a painful noise. Anne turns back to him and sees that he is now sitting on the floor with his legs against his chest and his back to the group.
A question forms in Anne's head that she thinks Marcy won't like the answer to. She turns back to the Mossman facing his back now.
"Did...did King Andrias do...something bad?" she asks him cautiously. He doesn't turn around. Only the same, painful noise can be heard again.
"It's okay. I'm sorry if I brought up painful memories. It wasn't my intention... You know, maybe we could help you. In a few days we'll be leaving Newtopia and heading back to Frog Valley. Maybe we can try to smuggle you out of the palace and the city so you can see your friend again", Anne suggests hopefully.
"Anne, I don't know if Hop Pop would agree with that. Besides, we'd have to get him out of the palace and to the fwagon undetected before we even got out of town..." Sprig explains, very doubtful.
"But we can't just leave him here and pretend we never found him", Anne says, making Sprig feel guilty.
"I'm all for Anne's idea...I mean, I teleported us to another world because I didn't want to be alone. I don't want to imagine how he must be", Marcy says.
"Wait, what?", Sprig asks and looks at Marcy with big eyes.
"Oh right", Anne begins, "I hadn't told you that before... I'll do that later."
"Fine... Maybe we can take him with us. But first we need to talk to Hop Pop and plan it thoroughly. I mean, we're stealing from the king... Can't believe I just said that", Sprig says.
The Mossman turns around and a joyful humming can be heard. The three friends intuitively start smiling.
"Look, we're looking for a friend right now who's probably lost down here. Any idea where she might be?" Anne asks him.
He nods, stands up and points in the direction of the corridor with the mirrors, where Anne last saw Luz.
"Thank you very much. We'll be back tomorrow, hopefully with a good plan", says Anne and walks through the rest of the garden with Sprig and Marcy. Marcy waves goodbye to the Mossman, who waves back as well.
When they arrive at the hole in the wall that connects the garden to the mirror-corridor, they see Polly standing in the middle of the opening.
"Guys, I've found Luz", she says.
As the others can see down the corridor, they freeze.
"What's that?", Sprig asks scared.
In the middle of the corridor, to the left of the opening, stands a transparent being. At first glance, Polly thought it was another alien ghost because it was just as transparent, but the shape was nothing like the other creatures. It seemed much more intimidating.
"It looks... like a wolf", Marcy observes the creature standing just a few meters in front of her. It has gray fur, white claws and its skull outside of its head. His eyes are glowing bright yellow and his gaze is focused on something in front of him.
"Luz?" Anne calls, causing everyone to look to the right of the opening where Luz is standing motionless in the corridor with Owlbert on her shoulder. Both her and Owlbert's eyes glow the same color as well. Luz and Owlbert's eyes meet the wolf's.
"Luz? What's going on here?" Sprig asks with apprehension in his voice. He pulls out his hand mirror and points it at the wolf, but without any effect.
"That must be something else if the mirrors aren't having any effect." Marcy observed.
"I'll pull her away from there", Anne decides and steps out of the opening into the corridor.