Maybe this was a blessing, thought the butler to himself. He couldn't wait to taste the freedom as he could already feel the taste of it. When a fly was flying nearby, his tongue suddenly snapped out to catch hold of the fly that quickly flew away in a different direction.
Oh, God no! Durik wanted to vomit thinking how his tongue with its own mind had tried to catch the fly. He was now catching the habit of an actual toad and he made a face where the expression never came to appear on his face. Looking around the carriages, he hopped forward when he finally heard the word 'Mythweald' from someone's lips. Turning around he hopped to hear a man say,
"The traveling time is quite long back to Mythweald from here and I don't want to catch a storm. The rain has been clogging some of the roads that connect in the border. God knows when it will be fixed. The council said they would be fixing it but every time I pass through there is some issue in there. I should get going," said the man to the other.
"I shall see you at Mr. Graken's party. Have a safe trip back home."
Durik's heart burst out of happiness. Freedom is finally here! He was overjoyed by the thought of it. The person was going to Mythweald which was the land of the south that would be away from Bonelake. He had to get on to that carriage before the man would leave. There were still a good amount of hours before he would turn back his half-vampire self and he couldn't wait for it. Maybe everything happened for a good reason and this was how he would be free.
Jumping one hop after another he came close to the carriage when suddenly he found himself in a bar of the cage where he was being lifted. Out of panic, he looked around what was going on. How did he end up in the cage?!
Using his web-like fingers, he placed them on the little iron wires that let him look at the surroundings, and at the same time, it stopped him from moving out of it. Where? Where was he going?! Durik was livid right now.
If he was a witch himself he would have swished his hands and turned every single person around him to be toads. He was mad at the way the day was going. When he looked to see who was carrying him, all he could see was the hands that looked pale and clothes that were black in color. Durik wondered if it was alright to cry over his plight right now. After all, who cared if a toad was crying right but more than anything, he was mad and angry.
The person who was carrying him was walking making the movement of the cage he was in swung back and forth. Durik had to catch hold of the wires that were in front of him so that he wouldn't fall back and forth hitting his head multiple times. Holding the wires with his webbed hands, he screamed at the top of his lungs,
"Can anyone hear me? Please help me! I am a human and not a frog!"
Unfortunately for him, no one spoke the language of frogs and even if they did, with the crowd of people who walked past them, they couldn't hear a thing because of the noise.
"Help me out of here!" he screamed loudly.
Whoever was taking him didn't bother with the number of croaks that was heard right now. Getting into the carriage, Durik's cage was placed at the foot of the person and he noticed the shoes that were worn. It was a man, said Durik to himself. The carriage started to move and all Durik could do was wanting to get out of this cage and go back to the man who was traveling South. He couldn't believe that his freedom was right near him before he was put into a cage.
At first, the butler had thought it was a witch who had picked him up for dissection but he doubted a witch would wear such a fancy looking pair of shoes and even the pants look clean and neat.
Did toads have teeth? Asked Durik to himself and with his small hands, he tried to touch his mouth to feel it smooth.
He couldn't feel his teeth when he tried to touch his mouth and when he did open his mouth, his long tongue appeared to fall on the left side of his mouth and he quickly closed it.
When the carriage finally stopped somewhere, he believed this was the house. Yes, no witch possessed a house of their own. Witches were not only cruel but they didn't actually possess a class of their own. The person took the cage he was in and stepped out of the house and when they did get down, Durik wished he had never agreed to the terms of Lady Penelope of turning to a toad.
He was seeing things he was not supposed to be seeing.
This was no house or mansion. It looked as if a storm had blown up the house and had left the mansion broken and battered. It looked like a haunted house and Durik was scared of ghosts! His slimy hands tried to rattle the front of the cage but to no avail as they kept slipping right now out of sweat or his hands were secreting something sticky that made it hard for him to hold on to.
The house was darker than the clouds and the sky that had turned dark as it was the time of night now. The house looked like a silhouette in the background that was present to them. There were no windows, there were no doors, there was nothing in here and the trees around the mansion stood bare, leafless.
It was as if the house was built in the middle of barren land. The toad gulped as the person took him inside the house which it didn't want to go in.
The further they got inside the house, the darker it appeared and a man appeared at the front as if wanting to greet the person who had picked him up. First of all, who did pick him up?! Durik wanted to slap the person's face for making him lose his freedom with a snap of a cage but at the same time, he was worried about who would take an interest in him.
No one took a random croaking toad except for witches and this person didn't appear to be a witch.
"Welcome back home, master," the man who appeared to be a butler greeted him.
The butler didn't look like a butler.
He looked like a dead corpse who had come to greet the man who was holding the cage. Not a dry but a juicy looking corpse whose body had turned to a dull green with the underlying tissues being visible right now and his eyeballs still attached in his skull. His legs appeared to be dislocated as they didn't walk in a straight line.