Pool of Radiance - James M. Ward [49]
Behind him, Shal was muttering something in the language of magic. As she finished her incantation, she tossed a handful of powder past Ren and extended her hand toward the lead frog. Immediately it shrank to normal size. Ren kicked it with his boot and sent it flying up at one of the waiting monster frogs. The creature shot its huge tongue out, and in an instant, it slurped the small frog down whole.
The remaining frogs, caught up in the prospect of a feeding frenzy, began to leap willy-nilly-up, sideways, backward-in a primitive, instinctive dance designed to freeze their victims in terror. In a frantic reaction to his own revulsion, Tarl lashed out again and again with his hammer, but it only slipped off the sides of the giant frogs. When one got too close, though, he bashed it with his shield with all his might and sent it slumping to the floor, where he finished it off with a blow from his hammer. A wave of nausea surged through him as he watched the frog's legs twitch wildly, independent of its pulverized head.
Shal, meanwhile, had called for her staff, and she was swinging it wildly at the huge slimy creatures. Swoosh! Thwack! The walls echoed with the sounds of her brutal attack, and the strength of her frenzied swings was so great that when one connected solidly, it was as if Shal had folded the center of the monster's body in two. Its flesh folded over the staff and stayed that way until Shal could pull the staff out. She must have broken the creature's spine, for when she removed the staff, the monster's body folded grotesquely in the opposite direction. Just as Shal freed her staff, another giant frog came leaping toward her. In an almost instinctive defensive measure, she pointed her staff straight up at the flying monster and then watched in horror as it skewered itself on the staff's sharp end and slid down over her arms. She screamed loud and long and immediately pulled back for all she was worth, extending her arms outward to get the disgusting animal away from her.
At that moment, Ren, who was fending off another frog, backed into the one Shal had just unskewered. The frog he was battling took advantage of the distraction to jump and land on top of him, squeezing his body against the body of the dead frog.
Ren became a human sandwich, folded deeply into the dead frog's soft, quivering belly, and covered by the mass of the live frog. He flailed out in panic, slashing up, down, sideways, pushing frantically at both of the creatures as their guts began to ooze over him. Soon both frogs lay jerking spasmodically on the floor on either side of Ren, who was shaking the slime and gore from his arms and retching…
"Behind you!" Tarl yelled, but it was too late. The last of the frogs was leaping at Ren with a vengeance. It smacked into his back with a wet thwack and sent him sprawling into the back wall of the room. As he struck the wall, it collapsed, and Ren fell to the floor of the next room with the frog on top of him. Shal spoke the final words of a Magic Missile spell, and three projectiles shot from her fingertips and buried themselves in the cold flesh of the frog. It jerked to its death on top of Ren before Shal and Tarl could reach their friend and pull the creature off him.
When they finally got Ren out from under the giant amphibian, his complexion was a pasty white, and his black leathers and armor were dripping with blood and ocher-colored ooze.
"Are-are you okay?" Shal asked, anxiously releasing her tight hold