The surface of the turquoise pool burst like an overinflated bladder.
Thousands of gallons of glowing green slime blasted fifty feet into the air, showering the cracked salt-pan with steaming, skin-burning droplets.
Out of the churning depths rose a mountain of rotting black glass flesh.
Fifty feet from snout to vent, the Nether-Devouring Toad hauled its bloated bulk onto the gravel bank.
Its hide was a nightmare of mottled charcoal and rancid green rust, crusted with hundreds of bulbous, weeping pustules.
Inside each semi-clear pustule, the frozen, stone-hard face of an ancient traveler or desert beast floated in mid-air. Their hollow eye sockets wept dark blue frost.
Its cavernous mouth spanned twenty feet across, lined with three jagged rows of hardened specter teeth that looked like broken tombstones.
An underground stench washed over the basin—a choking mixture of thousand-year bog rot, frozen copper, and rancid gastric acid.
