217. Procrastination Agent

They say everyone you meet on the way up, you will also meet on the way down — well, not the ones you kill, obviously, they won’t be making any surprise guest appearances, so fuck those guys — but others will remember what you were like when things were going well, and treat you accordingly when you aren’t so high and mighty.

I think that’s good advice, up to a point, but my own personal approach is to avoid everyone on the way up and the way down. That way, when they meet you going in either direction, they’ll hopefully have no idea who you are.

Sometimes that isn’t possible. Sometimes you end up getting embroiled in other people’s problems and in those situations, when others need your help, you should treat them kindly and fairly, and get away from them as quickly as possible before their shit infects your life, too.

Unless, that is, they have weed.

Then you have a friend worth taking to the airport. Not picking up, mind you—that’s a nightmare and not worth the best weed minus seeds—but a quick drop off? What else are friends for?

I walked into the glade, leaving the security of the trees behind. Maurice and Dudley stood up and followed. I didn’t check, but I was pretty sure Joshaya was looking at me like, Who is this guy who fears no monsters? Also, I didn’t check in case he was looking at me like, This guy’s an idiot.

It didn’t matter, the important thing was that the frogmen — must have been thirty or forty of them — didn’t attack.

Nabbo came waddling over, leaning on a stick and looking exactly the same as the last time I’d seen him. The giant frog, which loomed over all of us, just sat there. It had bulbous eyes on top of its head that occasionally blinked very slowly but otherwise it could have been a big green statue.

“Ah, it’s you,” said Nabbo, his voice chilled and aged at the same time, like a stoned pensioner. “Hey, man.”

For a moment I thought he was suffering from the same case of amnesia as everyone else I’d ever done a favour for, and was blanking on my name (at least he would have a legitimate reason in his case), but it turned out he was just conserving energy by using pronouns instead of proper names.

“I’m glad to see you again, my friend.” He turned to face the frog people watching us. “Listen here, this is Colin, the one who saved us from those scum-sucking Vargau.”

The Vargau were the most violent race of lizardmen and had tried to press gang Nabbo and his family into their army. We had intervened (against my better judgement) and managed to scare them off (to my great surprise).

“I want you to treat him and his friends as honoured guests,” said Nabbo.

“Shut up, old man,” said someone.

“You can’t tell us what to do,” said another.

Nabbo turned back to me. “The youth of today.” He shook his head sadly. “Bunch of shitbags.” He took a long drag off his pipe and handed it to me.

I took a puff because it was only polite to do so. And also life had been very stressful of late. And there was a giant fucking frog looking at me, so it was like I was half-stoned already.

Maurice and Dudley appeared on either side of me and greeted Nabbo. I wasn’t sure what they said, I was away with the fairies. Not literally. Don’t want to be misleading since that was technically possible here. But my head stopped itching with its usual allergies to every thought I’d ever had, and I felt like I could kick back for a few hours, regroup, maybe eat something that reminded me of a tuna sandwich...

There was a yell and Joshaya came charging out of the brush. He was red-faced and had his double-headed axe out (not a euphemism). It should be a testimony to the power of pond weed that I didn’t panic, didn’t try to dive out of his path, certainly didn’t try to dive into his path. I did the first thing that came to mind, which was to breathe.

I blew a stream of dense smoke at him and he reared back, coughing and spluttering. Then he stood there for a while (hard to say how long as my perception of time had taken a left at Albuquerque) and then he plopped down on the ground.

“Don’t mind him,” I said. “Thinks you’re all monsters.” I passed the pipe to Maurice, after taking one more hit. I didn’t, after all, want to get a bad reputation. Murderer, cheat, coward, these were all fine, but no one wants to be known as a Bogart.

The other frogmen seemed to lose interest, even though we had a homicidal maniac with us. Either they trusted Nabbo knew what he was doing, or they were too baked to care.

A smaller frog came up and stood beside Nabbo. “You remember my grandson?”

If this was the kid we’d called Suri, he had grown quite a lot in the few months since we’d last seen him.

“Where are the others?” asked the kid. “Jenny and Flossie and Vagina?”

“Actually,” began Maurice, ready to correct him.

“You’ve got a good memory, kid,” I said. “Remembered their names perfectly. You’ve had a bit of a growth spurt, haven’t you? You’re almost as big as your dad.”

Frogboy seemed pleased with this comparison. “The soft one, is she here? I liked her jelly humps.”

“Erm,” said Dudley. “If you don’t mind, that’s no way to talk about a lady.”

It certainly wasn’t, but I was pretty sure he was talking about Flossie. “The girls. Yes.” I tried to remember what we were talking about.

“Yes,” said Nabbo, “did you ever spawn with your mate? You always seemed the type to put a foot in the pond but never dive in.”

Normally, I would take this as a metaphor, but in this case it was probably how they actually had sex.

“Yes. I spawned. I spawned her real good.” I was quite stoned at this point, so I didn’t sound sexually aggressive when I said this. The giggling probably undercut my chauvinism a bit, too.

“No doubt, but I meant to the desired end.”

I looked at him blankly.

“Man, youth is wasted on the dumb. Little humans? Did you make any? I would imagine you’d have three or four dozen by now.”

His understanding of human biology had not improved, but I got the general gist of what he was asking. “No, not yet. I mean, if at all.”

“Can’t take it back,” said Maurice.

“Only a matter of time,” said Dudley, just before he began choking on the tiny puff he’d taken from the pipe he was now holding.

“Shut it,” I told them in no uncertain terms. “We’re here for a reason. What was it again?”

“This isn’t right, you know,” said Joshaya. He had appeared next to Dudley and took the pipe off him. He sucked so hard, the glow at the end went from orange to red to gold to white. He held it in his lungs for so long it made my chest uncomfortable, and then spewed out a fog bank that drifted across the glade, knocking over every frogman it encountered.

“I like him,” said Nabbo. “He’s got style.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, suddenly remembering our mission to rescue Broody, Chubby and Vagina. “The girls we were with last time, they got kidnapped by the One True God. You know him?”

Nabbo nodded. “Of course. He’s a great guy. Not like those other gods, always demanding stuff and never answering prayers.” He took the pipe off Joshaya — had to yank it out of his grasp — and got back to puffing. His face relaxed (even more). You could tell he’d missed it, those last five minutes.

“What’s he like, this god?” I asked.

“He’s chill,” said Nabbo, which wasn’t really helpful.

“And the seven women he has with him? The priestesses? Or witches or whatever.”

“Women? Oh, they aren’t women. They’re, uh...” He took another puff.

I leaned in so as not to miss the end of the sentence. “They’re uh?”

“You know.” He waved a hand at me. “What do you call them? Live in shells, always taking things, nasty temper...”

“Are you sure they’re not women?” The shell part didn’t match, but the rest was spot on.

“Fairies!” he said a little too loudly, startling himself.

“I thought fairies were tiny with wings.”

“When they’re young. Once they feed, they fill out.”

“Feed on what?” I asked, a prickly sensation reaching through the haze in my head.

“Whatever’s around. Babies, children, human sacrifices.”

Those all sounded like the same thing.

“Can you help us get the girls back?” I asked. “We need to get to the castle and, you know, save them.”

“Oh no, you can’t go to the castle. Pogo won’t allow it.” Nabbo nodded over his shoulder at the big frog.

“He’s the Second Guardian, is he?”

“Aye. We get to stay here in this sweet forest, rent-free, as long as Pogo keeps the humans out. You can stay here if you like, but no one’s ever got past him. We’d all get kicked out if they did.”

“How many have tried?” asked Maurice.

“None. No one’s ever got past the First Guardian.” He leaned his head back a bit and closed one eye. “How did you get past Old Mitapa?”

“What’s Pogo mean? Some kind of title, is it?” I asked, swiftly changing the subject.

“Erm, well, roughly it means the Frogfather. His kind used to roam these lands freely, once. Harmless as long as they are left unmolested. He is the last of his kind.”

The Frogfather shifted slightly and the water around him rippled and bubbled. I suspected he’d just let one rip, submarine-style. Then the side of his mouth opened just enough for a long, mottled-pink tongue to shoot out and strike Suri. The tongue made a squelching sound as it stuck to his bare back. The tongue shot back into the frog’s mouth reeling Suri through the air, eyes wide (even wider than normal) with surprise, until he disappeared.

Nabbo didn’t react at all. I raised my hand and pointed at the frog, feeling I needed to draw attention to the recent frog on frog crime.

The frog was still again, like nothing had happened, and then its wide mouth contracted into a kiss and a spout of water arced out. Suri came sliding out, screaming with laughter.

“The spider guardian,” said Maurice, “is he one of a kind, too?”

I tried to give Maurice the signal to abort, but he might not have picked up on the semaphore from my furiously undulating eyebrows.

“No, no,” said Nabbo. “In fact, Old Mitapa is about to step down as First Guardian. A younger spider will take his place. Such is the forest’s preference for youthful energy. Don’t get it myself.”

Maurice stepped closer to me and turned his head as if peering over my shoulder. “Three days from retirement,” he whispered. “Classic death flag.”

“Our Elder has gone with the other forest leaders to select his replacement. They should be back soon. Perhaps they can help you reclaim your mates.”

I had thought hanging out here would be a good idea. The girls were either dead already (morbid, but you have to face reality) or were being held to be used as bargaining chips against us in some way. Clearly, if the forest was a living being and working for the One True God, he would already know we were here. Rushing into the fray would achieve nothing.

But now I wasn’t so sure. How would they react when they found out Old Murtaugh hadn’t made it to his gold watch? It’s all fun and waterslides until you find out your giant spider’s been burned to a crisp. We could always blame it on Joshaya. You have to be pragmatic about these things.

“How’s the magic going?” asked Nabbo. “Getting the hang of it?”

He was the one who had taught me, and I happily showed him my progress. I produced six balls of light, each a different colour, and sent them floating up. I made them dance and spin and shoot out sparks like tiny fireworks.

As I got into it, I forgot where I was and what I had to do. There’s nothing as relaxing as concentrating on one thing with your entire focus. Well, doing it while stoned out of your gourd is probably slightly more relaxing. The balls moved around ever more elaborately and left behind afterimages. Even in the bright sunlight, they painted streaks and lines in the air. On and on until, a little dazed, I slowed them down and popped them out of existence.

“Still can’t make them very hot, though,” I said. Then I realised the other frogmen had gathered around in a circle and had been watching my little display. Even the Frogfather had a look of amazement, although he looked like that pretty much every time he opened his massive eyes.

“You have a gift I’ve never seen before,” said Nabbo. “The Elder could help you become a shaman, if he decides to let you live.”

This was the first he’d made mention of living being an optional extra. “Why would he—”

Something slammed into my back and hurled me into the air. I was flying backwards, very fast. I turned my neck far enough to wish I hadn’t. Pogo’s mouth was closing fast. I disappeared into the darkness with a slippery pop. Water surrounded me, tumbled me around and bounced me off soft, slimy walls.

And then I was ejected, sliding down a fountain of water into the lake, laughing like an idiot.

As fun as it was to mess about in the water, there were other matters to take care of. I had considered hanging out here for a few days, maybe pick up some intel on what the different groups were in the forest and how they related to the One True God.

We still had to get the girls, eventually, but it would be better to go in with some understanding of how things worked in this neck of the woods. That’s just common sense. The girls would understand, especially if we didn’t mention the impromptu water park. People tend to act pissed if you tell them you were late because of a water slide.

That had been the plan until we ended up killing the spider guardian. If they found out Daddy Long Dead was on indefinite leave, they would probably find a way to pin the blame on us. It seemed a much better idea to head out before that happened. It was just hard going off into the unknown when the known had food and weed.

Nabbo, of course, was happy to have us, and offered us a prime spot in the bulrushes to hang out in, and a delightful hole in the ground to shit in. All mod cons.

Dudley and Maurice were a bit anxious about leaving the girls to their fate, even temporarily, and seemed eager to get going. You may consider their reasons more pure than mine, but I would suggest there’s nothing purer than not wanting to be speared to death by dozens of angry frogmen.

The problem was the obstacle in our path. A giant fucking frog.

“We have to get going,” I said to Nabbo. “Soon. Soonish.”

“You’ll have to wait for the Elder to come back.”

“When will that be?”

Nabbo smiled, his eyes moving independent of each other. “Soon,” he said with a sloppy smile. “Soonish.”

I liked Nabbo, he was a decent person, but he wasn’t being of much help. Rescuing people who have gotten themselves kidnapped is really much harder than Liam Neeson would have you think. Especially when your special set of skills are mainly running away and hiding.

“The One True God, he isn’t going to hurt them, is he?” asked Maurice. Dudley leaned in for the answer, just as concerned.

It’s the sort of idiotic question people insist on asking even though there’s no point. If he is going to hurt them, then what will you do? The same only more so? And if he isn’t? The same but slower? The answer changes nothing. If it’s reassurance you’re looking for, just ask me. I’ll lie to you, no charge.

“He won’t hurt them. If he has no need to do it.”

What did that even mean?

“The sky,” said Joshaya from where he lay staring up, “it’s not really blue, is it? More of a turquoise.” He had found weed smoking a very pleasant distraction and had remained stoned since getting here. Probably for the best.

“But he kills children,” said Maurice.

“No, come on,” said Nabbo. “Don’t believe everything you hear. It’s his priestesses that do that.”

The distinction didn’t make things any better.

“Ah, that’s somewhat, um, harsh, isn’t it?” Dudley managed to say. “I mean, if it were your own children... you wouldn’t be so... so...” His voice trailed off.

“No, of course not. But it isn’t, it’s theirs. And because it’s theirs, it isn’t ours.” Nabbo took another drag on his pipe. Joshaya reached out a hand to take it from him, even though I was pretty sure he was the one who had just passed it to him.

“Wouldn’t it be better if no one lost their children to the priestesses?” asked Maurice.

“Of course,” said Nabbo. “But if that isn’t possible, then better it isn’t yours.”

He made a lot of sense, to me at least. Removing an injustice rarely led to an end to all injustices.

Injustices always keep coming. You deal with one, another comes down the pipe. One DLC after another, even though you paid your sixty quid up front.

And the next one could be aimed at you. In fact, if the current injustice actually prevented you from becoming a victim, if killing human children directly led to the priestesses not killing children of other species, it becomes a hard mission to recruit for, righteous or not.

There was some sort of commotion and I popped my head up from the rushes. The frogs were gathering at the far end of the clearing as new people arrived. More frogmen, although these seemed to be better dressed. Well, most of the frogmen were naked, so even a loincloth was a step up, but these had jewellery and armour glinting in the sunlight.

“Ah,” said Nabbo. “Ahhhh, yes, the Elder. Hmm, the Elder.”

It took me a moment to realise he was stuck in some stoner loop and would never get to the point if I didn’t do something, so I got up and helped him to his feet. He made some kind of muttering objection but didn’t resist.

“I thought he was bringing a spider back with him.” I couldn’t see any giant hairy arachnids with the party.

“He’s been sending out invites,” said Nabbo. “The spiders are on the way.”

There’s a phrase that has no appeal to it whatsoever.

As I watched the hubbub over the other side of the glade, there was a parting of the frog crowd and a small group emerged, headed our way. In the lead was the most ornately dressed of the frogmen who had just arrived, so I assumed he was the Elder who Nabbo kept mentioning. He was heading straight for us, a staff in his hand with strings of shells attached to the top, and shells hanging from his ears, all rattling melodically as he walked over.

I can’t say I’m an expert on frog facial expression — it tends to be a big sarcastic smile most of the time (and often is) — but this particular frogman was sending clear vibes of annoyance ahead of him.

“What is this?” he squealed in a voice like a blender on pulse. “Humans? You invite in humans?”

“Oh, chill out,” said Nabbo. “They aren’t humans, they’re Visitors.”

“I fail to see the difference,” said the Elder, quickly surrounded by a group of bigger frogmen, one of whom gave me an apologetic shrug. At least I think that’s what it was. My guess was that he was Nabbo’s son, who I had named Pitt (they all had names that sounded like a dolphin throwing up, so we had to improvise). I couldn’t be sure it was him because of my inability to tell most of them apart. Yes, frog racist, it’s a terrible thing to have to admit.

“Look,” I said, fighting my natural inclination to sink into embarrassment and slink away, unwanted guest at the party (a party with its own water park, no less), “we don’t want to cause you any trouble. We just wanted to say hello to an old friend, that’s all. We’ll be happy to be on our way and not cause any drama.”

Very reasonable, I thought. Plus, we would get out of there before anyone found the dead body in the east wing of the forest.

The Elder shook his head. “Leave? Leave? We’re here to stop you. That’s the whole reason we were allowed to stay here, to stop people like you.” He turned to Nabbo. “You see? He thinks he can just pass through. And then what happens to our agreement with the One True God? He can’t very well make us guardians if we don’t guard him.”

You’d think he would have just ordered us killed on the spot, but I could see his dilemma. His job was to kill people like us. Stop us getting to the One True God’s Castle. Only, he had never had to follow through on this task because no one ever got past the spider. For all I knew, no one had even tried. But now we were here, all relaxed and not bearing weapons, no one was prepared for what came next. Even the giant frog looked loath to kill someone for no reason. We just didn’t fit the violent adventurers on a murder spree profile the monsters were expecting.

“We just want to talk to the One True God,” I said. “We don’t know how else to do it except go to his castle and knock on the door. Do you think you could send him a message for us?”

“Send one of the boys,” said Nabbo. “Lazy shitbags should do something useful for once.”

There was a sudden thinning of the crowd that had gathered around us as various shitbags made themselves unavailable for voluntary duty.

“We aren’t a messenger service,” screamed the Elder. “You know we aren’t to bother him. We’re Guardians of the Forest.”

“That’s what the trees said,” Maurice interjected, “and they let us through.”

The Elder stopped looking irate, and went for a more miffed expression. “You spoke to the forest?”

“Yes,” I said. “Trees with eyes and mouths. You can ask them yourself.” I looked around. “Is it any tree? Or a special one?”

There was some confusion now. This wasn’t what they expected and I was happy to keep them off balance.

“I tell you what, your job is to prevent us getting past you, right?” I said to the Elder. He gave me a noncommittal shrug. “So as long as we don’t go past Pogo, you haven’t failed in your task.”

The Elder gave me a suspicious look. “Go on...”

“So why don’t we all go to the castle, with Pogo leading the way? Once we get there, we can ask the One True God if it’s okay, and if not you can kill us on the spot. Take our weapons if you want. Take him hostage, he’s our best fighter.” I pointed at Joshaya who had twisted a handful of grass into a straw doll with big boobs and was giggling at it. Looked a bit like Flossie.

“Sounds reasonable,” said Nabbo. “You should take him up on the offer. I saw them fight off a whole squad of Vargau.”

I felt like Nabbo was overselling our achievement in scaring off a bunch of lizardmen, but I wasn’t going to contradict him.

“The three of them?” said the Elder with the level of incredulity you’d expect.

Nabbo nodded. “Ask my son, he was there.”

They all turned to look at Pitt. He nodded slowly. “I’ve never seen anything like it. They ran screaming.” I noticed he didn’t say who ran screaming.

The Elder raised his hand and a ball of fire appeared on his fingertip, rotating like a spinning basketball. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you now?”

It was more impressive than my little balls of light, but I wasn’t fooled.

“Because I know how feeble that thing is, couldn’t set fire to a bag of wood chips.”

He hurled the ball at me, roaring through the air, and I instinctively raised my hand and caught it on the end of my middle finger. I could feel the intense heat from it. This was nothing like my weaksauce efforts, this was the real thing.

“Level three, fireball,” said Maurice, awestruck as he stared at the slowly spinning globe on my finger. I felt no heat in my hands but I had to turn my head to stop my cheeks from burning.

Even more astonished than Maurice was the Elder. “You taught him magic?” he yelled at Nabbo.

Nabbo shrugged. “Not much to do in the swamps. We were bored.”

“Bored? BORED?”

I could see this wouldn’t end well. I tried dispelling the fireball the same I would one of my own balls of light. It disappeared in a puff of smoke. “Can you teach me how to make one of those?” I knew the answer, but no harm in asking.

“No!” He made another fireball, bigger than the first. A stream of water arced through the air and put it out, soaking the Elder in the process. Everyone looked up at Pogo, who stared impassively over our heads like it had nothing to do with him.

“Pogo knows best,” said Nabbo. People started echoing his words like it was a popular saying.

“We aren’t your enemy,” I said. “We just want our women back. So we can breed with them.” I thought I’d put it in terms they could all understand. I got a lot of sympathetic nods from the crowd, including the females. You see, sexism isn’t all bad. Brings people together, as all of life’s basic urges do. We all need to eat, sleep and treat others like sex objects. It’s just nature, human or otherwise.

The Elder eventually relented and didn’t order us killed. He still refused to teach me how to make a fireball. I think he was sulking because Pogo had managed to very accurately only get him wet and no one else. He was a frog so the water didn’t bother him, of course, but still, no one likes to be singled out.

It was decided we would set off to the castle with Pogo, mightiest and last of the giant frogs leading the way. As long as we stayed behind him, the contract between the frogmen and the One True God would remain unbroken. It wasn’t really solving the problem as much as putting it off until later. If you can’t think of a good answer, waiting is often better than choosing a bad one.

We would leave in the morning, after some fish stew and a good night’s sleep. Maybe some water polo in the morning to get the blood flowing. On our way by lunch, at the latest. I mean, it wasn’t like the girls were going anywhere, and you can’t rush into these things.