The titanic guard easily tossed a heap of creatures aside with one wave of its spike, removing the last barrier before it could enter the same space the frog was in. And the frog couldn't help its body locking up, knowing the creature was approaching.

  Even if the knight was still at the other end of the clearing - far enough that it was hard to make out completely - its sheer presence was crushing: the whisper's promise of death to all that dared stand up to it.

  There was no fighting this creature.

  Its strength and speed were incomparable to those of normal guards, and the frog still had big trouble against those. No moves would save it from the knight.

  Especially not when it was this enraged: it kept attacking anything that crossed its path with an uncharacteristic enthusiasm, changing directions to chase after those that ran, clearly more focused on killing as many as possible here rather than simply pushing back the frenzy.

  But this was good news, in a way, as it meant that the knight wasn't here specifically for it. Despite the throwers' behavior, it was doing its own thing, and its coming might have nothing to do with the frog's actions at all.

  Which eased its mind enough to snap out of the panic and scramble backwards, trying to get lost in the frenzy, to hide.

  But many things smacked, tripped and shoved it away, and when it turned, it found that the creatures behind were predictably trying to do the exact same thing, their bodies once again forming an impenetrable wall of flesh.

  And so the frog turned desperation into fury and threw itself at them, because even if the knight wasn't here for it, all it would take was for that thing to decide that it wanted to slay creatures this way rather than that, or to stop wasting time all together and come for the bison.

  The frog pushed and shoved and tried to slither in... but the wall kept rebuffing it, the same way as before, making its desperation grow and grow.

  It knew there was a better way in - that it shouldn't try to force things - but going with the flow and taking it slow was impossible right now.

  It should've known! These frenzied things wouldn’t just make way unless something made them. The knight must have been slaughtering them en mass, so brutally that the smartest of them had snapped out of their daze and made themselves scarce, got away from the strike zone and dragged the crowd along. And the frog had decided to wander right in the middle of-

  It felt the strike coming.

  Everything it had - its reflexes to understand the trajectory; its dexterity, to bend in the right manner; its focus, to tamp down on the paralyzing fear; its jump, to make distance - all pushed to their limits, into its new moves. To twist out of the way in a manner it didn’t even know was possible for its body, dodging death far better than it should have been capable of.

  The spike barely even touched it.

  And still the frog was launched into the air, and the world became a confused mess - up from down impossible to distinguish.

  When everything started making sense once again, the frog touched at its back. The wound was just as horrible as feared. So deep and grievous that it didn't want to think about the consequences, if didn’t run away and feed back to health immediately. Fortunately, the gash was mostly on the shoulder of one of its stumps, so it wouldn't impede its escape too much. But...

  For all its new abilities, for all that it had grown, for all that it had managed to avoid the worst of the hit... it had barely escaped death. After only a casual attempt from that guard.

  And as it awkwardly and awfully slowly picked itself up, the frog realized the situation had worsened drastically.

  The knight was staring straight at it.

  In a fit of desperate hopefulness - and maybe as an aftereffect of getting smacked so hard and having lost this much essence, with more flowing out by the moment - the frog peeked over its shoulder, as if the knight might be looking at something else behind.

  But nothing else could be the actual focus of that horrible attention, when everything was dead. Just a pile of dead flesh...almost in a straight path towards the bison.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  It was clear now.

  They had stood where they should not. And so they had died.

  And by daring to survive the knight's punishment, the frog had enraged it.

  It backed up against the heap... but realized that going there would be useless: there was no more crowd to bar its path, but also no more crowd

  where to hide in.

  So it rushed for the others at the sides, hoping the knight would lose its focus. But as soon as it reached them, as if knowing associating with it was

  death, they pulled away. Some even kicked back.

  The knight kept staring straight at it the whole time, even as it kept swirling its spike about, mincing everything close. Killing creatures the frog couldn't dare to get close, all without even looking.

  It was a good reality check. The frog couldn’t deny that, after its showing against the guards recently, it had nursed the idea that it could at least hold its own against the knight.

  Here, right now, it knew how wrong it had been: there was no fighting this strength. This speed.

  There was no amount of moves that could see it through. And the knight wasn't even trying.

  It needed to run. Now. Before the knight stopped staring and acted.

  But there was no getting through the throng now that they were spooked.

  Maybe it could try to vault over–

  The frog lowered just in time to avoid dying once again. It felt the edge clip the back of its head this time, and trembled: that had been so close. Just a tiny little bit deeper…

  It stumbled back up in a daze, but didn't hesitate throwing itself forward, over the newly-formed heap of dead creatures.

  Now, it knew that it would likely die here. Running was useless. But if it had to die, it would die while reaching its goal.

  After all, the knight had graciously cleaved a path open for it. If there was a chance, the frog would seize it. And if there wasn't, then it would rather be trying to make one than whimpering like a critter.

  So it scrambled forward with no more hesitation. And thankfully some remote part of its mind remembered that there was one thing it could try now: it dove between dead flesh, and then pushed its stealth to the limit, trying to sneak under the knight’s gaze the same way it had under the owl’s.

  This was the same situation, after all. Unlike its moves, it felt that its sneakiness should be up to the challenge.

  Alas, the knight chose to react the same way as that old foe, but having unknowable powers to back that strategy.

  World-shaking blows were falling down around the frog, only vaguely near its path. However, even such wildly missed strikes could still deal immense damage with the whisper behind them.

  But the frog was committed now, and so it kept crawling forward, and sometimes through, freshly dead bodies - fragments of flesh and bones hurling around, from slashes that were getting ever closer to the mark.

  It didn’t even know what bits of its body it was losing with each one, as it was trying to ignore the pain completely, afraid of what it would discover if it checked.

  All its focus was on moving forward and nothing else.

  So much so, that it almost didn’t realize the enormous body it had just vaulted over was that of the bison.

  ...

  It bounced back with such eagerness and need that it almost broke a foot to stop its own momentum.

  And then it was sliding downwards against the bison's fur, most likely having slammed hard against the enormous body, judging by the painful ringing in its head. But there was no time to waste on pain.

  It immediately started trying to pierce the... extremely hard skin. In fact, was it making any progress at all? The frog was tearing into it with the desperation only a creature chased by the knight could feel.

  There was no time, but this skin refused to give, no matter how much the frog struggled.

  It was attacking and attacking and attacking, but simply getting past the layer of tough fur that kept getting in the way would be daunting in the best of circumstances.

  Like this, the knight would come before it even managed to scratch the thing! The titanic guard must have realized by now where it had gone and would be rushing over, while the frog was wasting time with...

  No, the knight couldn't have realized. If it had, then the frog would already be dead.

  Even knowing this, it had to fight the self-defeating temptation to check behind, which would just waste precious time only to increase its panic while it should rather try to pierce this hateful thing, find anywhere that would be more...

  There was some kind of line here, wasn't there?

  ... The dark one? Of course! Back then, it had almost beheaded the bison! The head must have simply fallen back in place, somehow, and the wound was so impossibly thin it looked as if it wasn't even there. How had the mysterious creature even managed to kill this one with such a thin cut?

  In any case, this was exactly what the frog needed, and this part felt even closer to where the gem should be than the rest. So, it wasted no more time and dove in.

  Even with an entrance already dug for it, getting inside was incredibly hard, as the bison's very flesh - even the inside that should be soft and vulnerable - was harder than any other creature's shell, bones or chitin alike, that the frog had ever experienced. But now it was making some progress, at least!

  And then a horrible shaking started.