Having witnessed Nigel eat the humble pie all just to get their attention, the bragons became uncharacteristically modest – and thoroughly likeable. They reintroduced themselves using their real names and shared tea with acquaintances old and new (several of them having brought their own teapots along).
“Shall I pour?”
“You do it so well!”
“But your pouring is peerless!”
“No, yours!”
Before long, everyone had a cup of tea, Princess Rainbow was showing off her shrunken parents, and Frog was trying to work out who might make the best warriors in his army.
Frog put away his diary as the old, silver-bearded bragon known as Old ’n’ Graham hobbled forward.
“Nigel, for your willingness to wither like a lemon-lime left out in the sun, we, the bragons, most wondrous of all the creatures of Kingdomland – well, you know the rest – will hear your plea. So, tell us, why did you blow your horn and summon us?”
“I’m not sure where to start, truth be told,” confessed Nigel. “I don’t need to tell you that the whole world is ending…”
“I noticed that,” replied Susan. “I remember looking outside and seeing the scorched earth and blackened sky and thinking, something’s a little bit different today, and I couldn’t quite put my claw on it, and then I thought, oh, don’t overthink everything, Susan, you worry too much, and then I had a cup of tea and a dunky biscuit, and then I thought, I know what’s different, by golly! The whole world is ending.”
“I find everything is clearer with a nice cup of tea, by gosh,” said Nigel, with a smile.
“Isn’t it?” agreed Susan, blushing a deep blue. “Sometimes I think if I didn’t have tea it would be the absolute end of the—You know.”
“Perhaps after all this you and I could share a pot or two,” said Nigel, adjusting his spectacles. “I mean, that is, if you’d like to—”
“Um, could we giddy this up a bit?” said Frog impatiently. “End of the World and all that…”
“Quite so – we should probably return to what we were doing before Nigel summoned us,” Old ’n’ Graham declared. “That is to say, hiding away with a nice cup of tea until all this blows over.”
“‘Blows over’?” interjected Frog. “Things are not going to blow over! They’re going to blow up!”
“How awful,” said Old ’n’ Graham. “It sounds like you need an army.”
“You are the army!” Frog growled. “That’s why we did the summoning! You’re going to help us fight King Kroak.”
“We, an army? Out of the question!” declared Old ’n’ Graham. “Bragons fly, we do not fight. And we are cowards! Cowards with hollow boasts! Army indeed!” He turned to the bragons and spread his wings. “Bragons! We have been brought here under false pretences! This reunion is over.”
“I told you this wouldn’t work, by gosh,” whispered Nigel, as the bragons prepared to leave.
“Baa,” agreed Sheriff Explosion.
“It has to work,” insisted Frog. “The bragons just need a motivating-leader speech from their top army leader and first-in-commanding general! Watch and learn. I’ll—”
“No fair, you get to do all the speeching,” complained Princess Rainbow. “I’m a princess so I do speeching all the time at home. I’ve speeched to my pets lots and they like it. They always go ‘tweet!’, ‘meow!’ and things.”
“Pfff – it’s not as easy as it looks,” grumbled Frog. “It needs to be at least a million per cent inspirational.”
“Silly Greeny,” said the princess. She turned to the bragons and cleared her throat loudly.
“Hello, braggins, I am Princess Rainbow and I am a princess and I have three hundred and eleven – no, wait – three hundred and twelve dresses – and I like diamond puppies and newnicorns and strawbleflower cakes and my favourite colours are pink and another kind of pink and light blue not dark blue and my favourite smell is—”
“BRAGONS!” interrupted Frog, loudly. “What my fourth-in-command deputy is trying to say, is that we are about to face an enemy of such extreme badness that unless we defeat him, there won’t be any place to hide and there won’t be any tea to drink because this whole world will have been exploded into a million dusty pieces. But you can help us defeat King Kroak! We’ll defeat him to bits, and when we do you’ll all be given medals and champion badges and proper names like Baron Bopchops and Captain Smashbattle, and you’ll have all the tea you can drink and heaps of people to listen to your braggings! And all you have to do is help me stop the badness! All you have to do is save your world! All you have to do is make a stand! All you have to do is fight! Who’s with me?”
There was a long, awkward silence. The wind whistled around the cliffs. Then more silence.
“Anyone…?” he muttered.
“I will, by golly!” said a voice at last. Susan stepped out of the throng.
“As will I,” declared another bragon, taking a stride towards them.
“And I!” said another.
Before long, forty-seven bragons had stepped forward. Only Old ’n’ Graham remained.
“I knew I should have ignored that blasted horn,” he huffed and took a single step forward. “Very well … you have your army, Frog.”
The bragons spread their wings and cheered in unison.
“My speech was still betterer…” tutted the princess.
As the newly formed army chanted his name, Frog grinned widely. Tomorrow he would defeat King Kroak, once and for all. He couldn’t wait. He was The Mighty Frog, and nothing could stand in his way.
That night, Frog slept more soundly than ever.
