Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Illumination
Plink.
Plop.
Sploosh.
One by one, a slow volley of pebbles landed in the shallow creek. A lazy pink hand picked up another one, bounced it around, tested its weight. Plip. A bright, crystalline droplet flew up from the point where it had reached the water’s surface. A pair of gray eyes followed the path it took, until it reconnected with the stream, one tiny ripple the only sign of its reentry. She reached for another pebble, her hand brushing instead against dusty wooden planks. No more. With a sigh, the frog girl shifted, rolling over so that her front laid flat against her makeshift cushion. The sack of flour crinkled unhappily at her new position and puffed out a small cloud of fine particles. Some of them caught the sunlight, and she watched them drift around in front of her face as the carriage rocked, rocked, rocked along the dusty road. She was completely and utterly bored.
The stream looked a bit wider now than it had been a few miles back, and flowing faster, too. She sat up, struck by a sudden thought, and looked as far as she could into the distance. She squinted past the long line of carriages to where the road met the horizon, but her gaze was met only with flat land and long grass. They had been in the uplands for a few days now, and the pink frog tired of seeing nothing but plains. This was nothing like the Valley.
The road ahead was populated by carriages of all types, from simple hay wagons, if you were dirt poor, to the incredibly fancy, self-powered land-crawlers, if you were filthy rich. Her family was somewhere between the two extremes; the Plantar wagon was comfortable, wooden-framed and snail-pulled, but nowhere near the height of luxury. Meep, meep! Martha, their trusty old snail, turned her deep magenta head around to peer at the pink frog. The frog at the reins also turned back to glance at her.
“Everything going alright back there, Lily?”
“Yes, Dad,” the frog girl replied, “I’m just…”
“Bored?” He scratched thoughtfully at his vocal sac. “Well, why don’t you go out with your brother and pick up some more slingin’ stones? Frog knows we’ll need ‘em on our way back home.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.” Lily cracked open the hatch to the interior of the carriage. “Hey, Rowan! Come on up here - you wanna go looking for rocks?”
“Thought you’d never ask!” A bright young voice responded, as the blue-green frog boy leapt out of the hatch. He was still young and leggy, four years Lily’s junior, with unkempt brown hair (inherited from their father) and sparkling gray eyes (inherited from their mother). He was decked out in his signature pair of overalls, with a red bandanna around his neck. The siblings jumped off the side of the carriage and began walking alongside it, their sticky feet becoming coated almost instantly in the fine dust of the road.
They kept their eyes down as they walked, and each stone on the road fell under their careful scrutiny. If a pebble was deemed a worthy projectile, it was plucked off the ground, dusted off, and placed in the sling Lily had tied across her chest. It wasn’t long, however, before the monotony of the journey caught back up to them. It was a noisy kind of silence, characterized with the huff of breath, the scuffing of feet on dusty ground, the creaking of wooden wagon wheels, but it was a silence regardless, devoid of anything remotely interesting. It stretched on seemingly indefinitely, until someone got the will to break it.
“So,” Rowan started, “Who do you think will get it?”
“Get what?” Lily responded.
“You know, the glowy powers or the specialness or whatever? What we’re coming here to see.”
“Oh, the Calamity Powers, I should’ve figured.” Lily thought for a second. “Well, they always say the powers go to whoever’s best suited for them.”
“Yeah, but don’t the blue powers always go to a frog? Who d’ya think’s gonna get that?”
“Whoever’s got the most heart, I guess. And they typically go to someone who’s between fifteen and twenty.”
Rowan thought for a second. “Well, you’re almost fifteen, could it be you?”
Lily laughed incredulously. “What? No, it won’t be me, I’ve got about as much heart as a red heron. It’ll probably be Lewis or something.”
“That’s not true Lily, you’ve got plenty of heart!”
“Rowan, I literally beat some kids up just yesterday!”
“That was because they were picking on me, that doesn’t count! Besides, why do you think it’ll be Lewis, is it because he’s blue?”
“Well, he’s kind enough, and everyone else seems to think it’ll be him. But who knows, it’ll probably end up being someone we don’t even know.”
“I don’t know about that,” Rowan said, smiling a little, “the box sure seems to like us Wartwood frogs.” Lily nodded in silent agreement. “What about the other ones, green and pink? Any ideas on who’ll get those?”
“Well, for the Wit gem, it’s almost guaranteed that it’ll be some fancy newt, probably at one of those high-class universities. It also seems to like the royal family, so if Prince Eli were still alive, I’d put my money on him, but he’s not, so I honestly have no clue. And with the Strength gem, I bet it’ll probably just pick the biggest, buffest toad available, no need to complicate things.”
Rowan nodded, digesting this information, and they lapsed again into silence. Lily grabbed another stone off the ground.
“When do you think we’ll get there?” Rowan asked, looking up from the soil.
Their father answered from up at the reins. “We’re just an afternoon’s travel out from Newtopia - we’ll be off the High Plains in about two hours, and then it’ll be a couple more before we reach the bridge. As a matter of fact, you two should come back up here and get cleaned up; I think that’s enough pebble pickin’ for now.”
The siblings obliged, hopping easily up on top of the carriage and brushed the dust off their feet. They sat beside their father on the drivers’ bench for a while, talking about this and that, trying not to let the rhythm of the road creep too far into their heads. In about half an hour, the flat ground took on a downhill grade, and a faint blue something appeared on the horizon. A few more minutes confirmed that it was indeed, the imposing spire mounted on top of the Newtopian Palace. The city was finally within sight. Rowan celebrated this fact a bit too loud, however, as their mother caught wind of it and promptly hustled them down into the cabin to get a proper cleaning-up.
Margaret Plantar was a shrewd mother with a hawk’s eye for little details like filthiness. Lily stood in a corner with her arms crossed, watching with thinly veiled amusement as her mother chased Rowan around the carriage with a soapy washrag. What Rowan had in youthful energy, the matriarch made up for in excellent intuition, and it wasn’t long before the little frog was defeated and subjected to a vigorous scrubdown. After a great and arduous process, the now sparkling-clean Rowan was let free (strictly inside, couldn’t get him dirty again and have to repeat the chore). As he scurried to the farthest corner of the cabin, she suddenly turned and locked eyes with her daughter, washrag gripped firmly in a raised hand. Lily gulped.
***
The patch of sky visible out the window had darkened considerably by the time their father called everyone up to the top. Rowan scampered up the ladder first, and Lily was hot on his heels. She slipped into the twilight and turned to face forward, and then she forgot to breathe.
Newtopia stood before them in all its glory, awash in mauve light from the glowing strips that covered the city from its stout outer walls to the spiraling heights of the palace. Ships of every sort were anchored in its harbor, and more were moving in and out of the city’s walls. The main gates stood open, and all the carriages poured in across both the natural land bridge and the beautiful stone bridge erected to make the city accessible during high tide.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Said her mother with a hand laid on her shoulder. “It’s been almost twenty years since us Plantars last came here, but the sight of it never gets old.”
The Plantar kids could only stand there and gape, in all the time they’ve lived, all the places they’ve been, nothing rivaled the grandeur of the capitol city. Rowan’s hand came up to tug at his collar, which his mother promptly fixed. She hadn’t put them in their best formal outfits, a navy blue suit for Rowan and a simple, royal-blue gown for Lily, just for them to get all messed up. They sat down on the roof of their carriage, and faithful old Martha pulled them through the city gates.
Inside the walls lay perhaps the most vibrant and diverse city grid they’d ever seen. Shops opened their doors out on wide sidewalks. All along the streets were creatures of every kind: tall and slender newts in long robes, toad and salamander guards clanking around in heavy armor, axolotl technicians, and robots, oh my, the robots! They were everywhere and doing everything, carrying goods, lifting scaffolding, patrolling with the guards. Lily even saw one looking intently at a wooden message board - They can read!? The city’s bustling streets were well lit, even as the sunset faded into the western horizon, thanks to the brightly glowing light strips embedded into the walls, casting everything in an ethereal, purplish light.
They rounded a corner and the street opened up into a broad plaza that was filled to the brim with creatures. Raised platforms had been set up to accommodate the influx of visitors. The entire operation was set up to converge on a central focal point, a wide balcony in the adjacent palace walls, directly beneath the towering palace spire. A toad guard directed them to a secluded spot out of any direct light. “Parking here, then up onto Platform 12B to watch.” They parked the wagon and tethered Martha up, then followed the rest of their group onto the platform, where they quickly got themselves settled.
“What now?” Lily asked.
Her mother answered, “Now, we wait.”
Some time later, Lily noticed that the inward flow of traffic had stopped. Everyone was here. Moments after that, the steady roaring hum of the crowd was interrupted by a fanfare of trumpets, their bright sound blazing against the stone walls. All conversation immediately ceased as thousands of Amphibians rose to their feet, facing the balcony expectantly. The heavy wooden doors were flung open, and there stood the Sovereign Lord of Amphibia himself, King Elias the Seventh. He was massive, at least fifteen feet tall, and strikingly blue in color. His long hair and braided beard were dark blue with stripes of white beginning to form, and he had a forest green mantle thrown back over his gray-blue robes. A host of guards poured out from behind him and took up their positions as he walked up and took the podium.
Two other newts stood at either of his sides. One was tall and thin, dressed in long, dark robes, with only his pale green snout and long, white goatee visible from beneath his hood. The second looked like a smaller, younger version of the king, but with stark white hair tied up in a knot and only the beginnings of stubble emerging on his chin. They were the only other living members of House Leviathan: Lord Argentias the Wise, who was a seer; and the prince, whose name Lily couldn’t remember.
The king walked up to the immense podium and surveyed the crowd, evaluating his people. It was hard to tell from a distance, but Lily could swear she saw a slight nod of approval before the monarch spoke.
“Greetings, creatures of Amphibia, and welcome to Newtopia! Many of you have traveled long hours to be here tonight, and I hope this fine city has received you well!
“The event you have all come to witness – the Illumination – is incredibly famous, but also shrouded in myth and mystery. The true reason behind the Illumination is one that stretches back centuries. Our world, as many of you are aware, exists in a perpetual cycle of light and darkness. The first Gem Wielders pushed that darkness to a point where it could be contained, but every few centuries the barrier is broken, and Amphibia is plunged once more into the horrors of the Resurgence. Our ancestors had anticipated the emergence of this cycle, so they put forth a system of choosing and training new Wielders every turn of the cycle to combat the Resurgence. The Illumination is the first step of this process, where three Amphibians will be designated as the next Gem Wielders and receive their first dose of celestial power.
“As exciting as this event may seem, for indeed it is, I must offer a word of caution to you all. Whenever the Illumination comes around, it must be understood that the Resurgence is soon to follow, and that all of Amphibia is on the brink of an event that could easily become an unspeakable calamity. The three new Wielders will remain in Newtopia to start their training. I cannot stress enough how great of a responsibility it is to be a Wielder; the fate of our world rests in their hands.”
The hooded newt at his side whispered in his ear, and the king nodded. “The time draws near. My cousin, Lord Argentas, shall perform a short reading, as is custom, and then it should be time.”
The seer stepped forward and emptied the contents of a small pouch into his hand.
“What does he have?” Rowan whispered.
“Herons’ bones,” Lily replied, keeping her voice low. “He’s going to predict the future.”
“If you believe in that sort of thing,” their father interjected, “I’m not so sure of it myself.”
“There goes your father again,” their mother murmured as the tall newt shook the bones like dice. “He only trusts the things he can touch, like a plow in firm soil.”
A faint white-yellow glow formed around the old seer’s hands, then he cast the bones onto a marble table set before him. He stood there for a moment, observing how they fell.
His hand hovered over two that had landed crossing each other, almost brushing them, but not quite. “Let’s see here,” he breathed. Lily jumped, startled by how clearly she could hear his voice. “A coming battle, of course, but we knew that already, and…” He paused. “This one is unclear. A direct translation reads ‘many eyes and many minds,’ but I know not what that means. And this last one reads… unprecedented change.”
“Thank you, Seer.” King Elias VII said as the hooded newt stepped back. “The moon climbs high, the hour is finally upon us. There is little else to be said or done, just to wait.”
There were a few beats of hesitant silence before the murmur of conversation rose once again. Lily glanced around, wondering again who it might be. She spotted a sky-blue frog chatting eagerly with his friends and family, his towheaded-blonde hair bobbing as he gestured expansively. Lewis was ever the social butterfly - he was bound to get the Heart stone’s power.
A faint mechanical whir started, and the lighting changed. Was Lily imagining it, or could she suddenly see better?
Rowan let out a soft gasp, and she looked up. The whirring sound was building, like an engine gaining speed, and she wasn’t imagining it, the city’s light strips were glowing brighter. The crowd gradually went silent once more as the sounds and lights grew even greater.
Somewhere in the heart of the castle, an ornate music box hummed with energy, its three gems glowing brightly. The wires and columns surrounding it also took on this tricolored glow.
Back outside, the Plantar family watched in awe as a shimmering, green-blue-pink aura formed around the highest spire of the castle. The the shimmering steel structure glowed brighter and brighter, and the mechanical hum reached a deafening crescendo. A ball of green light formed at its very tip, and suddenly it launched off of the spire, arcing into the crowd. It soared towards a platform full of newts and hit one with a flash of green light. In the instant of that flash, Lily caught a glimpse of the creature, and noted that they seemed much shorter and squatter than your average newt, but she didn’t have time to ponder it further.
The next orb, electric blue in color, had already built up atop the spire. Lily tensed, fully expecting it to come towards the frog balconies. Instead, it arced - or rather, fell, almost straight down, towards the palace balcony. The king and guards ducked as it plunged towards them, and it struck the prince with a burst of cerulean energy. An audible gasp went up from the crowd. A newt with the heart powers, and a royal no less. This truly was unprecedented!
Finally, a sphere of rose-colored light grew upon the spire. Lily spared a glance towards the ranks of burly toads, wondering which of them it would be. Looking back up at the spire, she saw that the final ball of light was almost done. It slid quietly off of the spire, and appeared to hang in midair, slowly growing larger. Lily was confused for a solid three seconds, then she realized what was happening. It came close enough that she could hear it sizzling with energy, and she knew it the instant before it fell on her like a miniature sun.
Her vision went white. Gravity, space, and time lost meaning. She was wrapped in dry heat, like standing one step too close to a campfire, and tingles and shivers raced up and down the full length of her body. Her hair stood on end, and static electricity roared in her ears. Suddenly, it was like nothing had ever happened. She was standing shakily on her own two feet, her hair had smoothed back down. There was a faint flushed warmth to her cheeks, however, and she was breathing hard from the effects of an adrenaline rush. Oh, and everyone was staring at her with their mouths agape. What the heck just happened?
Everything dissolved into a blur. There were shocked faces all around her, some morphing into excited grins. Lily blinked hard, still unable to string thoughts together. All the Wartwood frogs had clustered around her, cheering, thumping her on the back, yelling, smiling. Her mother’s hand gripped her shoulder tightly. Rowan was there, jumping around excitedly, hooting and hollering like a wild child. She registered Lewis’ face, smiling encouragingly. The whirlwind blew around her, and she stood still in the center of it. Or perhaps she was moving. Was she slack-jawed and silent, or was that laughter and words leaving her lips? Something fizzy and excited was building up within her, but she didn’t know what to do with it, couldn’t process it, couldn’t do anything.
Some amount of time later, the crowd around her dissipated and she was able to think again. She found herself standing with her family at the palace gates. Guards were standing there, and when they saw her, they stepped aside respectfully and opened the doors. Her family stopped there, and when she turned to them, she found them standing still, smiling encouragingly at her.
“We’ll be here for you when you get back,” her father said.
“Yeah, we’re not going anywhere,” Rowan added.
Lily nodded, trying to calm her nerves. “Thank you,” she all but whispered, and then she was within the palace walls. Two guards stood there in full armor, helmets adorned with luminescent pink, feathered plumes. They motioned for Lily to follow them, pivoted, and marched down the halls. Lily followed.
The castle was richly decorated from floor to vaulted ceiling; even the hallways were tall and graceful, with arched windows and a ceiling too high for even the nimblest frog to jump to. It was also very quiet; even when Lily strained her hearing, she could only hear the guards’ clanking footsteps and her much lighter ones. They continued walking down the halls for a while, so she busied herself with looking around, getting acquainted with this ornate new setting. She observed many stiff portraits, ogled several shining suits of armor, and made note of the stuffy curtains. Glancing forward, she found it almost comical how those vibrant pink plumes bobbed and nodded as the guards marched on. She became aware of the sounds of muffled conversation some distance away, and it grew louder and clearer as they approached its source. Soon, they came to a set of doors, and the guards pushed them open and held them there, each offering a one-handed salute. Lily cautiously stepped inside.
The room was filled mostly with a long table, spread with clean plates and with its central area clear. Standing around the edges of the room was the king and his personal guard, his hands laid protectively on his son’s shoulders. The prince was flanked on either side by his own two guards, with plumes of vibrant blue. He waved almost shyly as Lily entered. A bit to their left stood the two green guards and, much to Lily’s surprise, a horned toad. He was shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, apparently too interested in the floor to notice her entry. The Wit powers had gone to a toad? Strange, but if a newt got Heart and a frog got Strength, it wasn’t the singular weirdest thing to have happened today.
King Elias stepped forward, clapping his hands. “So it looks like all of us are here! If you please, come take a seat at the table. We have a short banquet prepared for you – my treat – and then I’ll talk a bit about what the next few months will look like for you. But first, please, come eat!”
The king went and sat at one end of the table. The prince took the seat directly to his right, and the toad sat across from him. Lily stepped forward uncertainly before finally taking a seat beside the toad. A side door opened and in came a line of servers bearing trays of steaming food. As they reached the table and set down their platters, Lily could barely stifle her gasp. This was by far the finest food she had ever seen, much less tasted! Most of it was strange, far removed from typical frog fare, but upon closer inspection, she found a few dishes that looked familiar, and several more that seemed at least inspired by the tastes of Frog Valley. She almost reached for a delicious-looking cricket roll right then and there, but caught herself just in time, thanks to a pointed look from the prince. They all sat with their hands folded until the last tray was laid on the table, and the king gave a gracious nod. Lily then loaded her plate as high as it would go and fell upon it with a vengeance, before she remembered whose company she was in and slowed down. The toad chuckled, despite his former shyness.
“Wow, you’ve got quite the appetite for such a small creature, huh? What’s your name, anyway – I never caught it earlier.”
“Ahm,” she said eloquently, before swallowing her mouthful of food. “My name is Lily Plantar. And yours?”
“I’m Barrel,” the toad said simply.
“Just Barrel?”
“Just Barrel,” he confirmed, “that is, unless I can get myself some sort of title. Besides that, we toads don’t really do surnames.”
“I never knew that,” said Lily, now turning towards the prince. “And you’re Prince, um…”
“Andrias,” he supplied patiently, just as Barrel leaned in to whisper his name in her ear.
“Prince Andrias!” Lily exclaimed. “Please forgive me, sir, I don’t know how I managed to, um, forget your name–”
“Don’t apologize,” Prince Andrias said, “People forget people’s names all the time. Besides, you forgetting my name was kind of refreshing. I’m so used to people knowing everything about me: my name, my birthday, when I get up in the morning, which sock I put on first–”
“You wear socks?” Lily interjected.
“Yeah, don’t you? Anyways, it’s no big deal. I’m sure you’ll remember my name soon enough, and in the real way, not in the ‘I memorized your name so many times it is drilled into my brain’ sort of way.”
“Um, I sorta have done that already. Didn’t keep me from forgetting it, though.”
Barrel laughed out loud from beside her. “I like this one!”
Andrias chuckled as well. “So do I. I think the three of us will get along just fine.”
Before long, plates were growing emptier and stomachs getting fuller. Barrel finally leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his abdomen.
“This is just crazy. I’ve spent four months in this city, and every bite of food I had, I had to pay for it, but now here I am eating my fill at this feast, and not a single copper is coming out of my pocket because of it.”
“This isn’t a feast,” Andrias corrected. “You haven’t had a feast until you’ve eaten one of Lady Angela’s apple fritters. Those things are humongous.” He looked up from his plate when he felt the other two gazes on him. “Oh yeah, and an actual palace feast is much, much bigger than this meal. That too.”
“You said you’ve been in Newtopia for four months?” Lily asked Barrel. “What for?”
“College,” Barrel said, considering another mouthful of dessert.
“College? How old are you, anyways?”
“Just seventeen; my town's education system only goes to sixteen. I came here for engineering – you don’t find a degree program like that around Blackwood.” He finally relented and plopped the lump of dessert into his mouth.
King Elias VII chose that time to stand and clap his hands together. “I sincerely hope you enjoyed that meal – I certainly did. A word of thanks to our cooking staff for whipping this up for us tonight, especially those frog- and toad-style dishes. Quite exquisite.” A polite smattering of applause went up from those seated at the table, and the servants standing along the wall nodded in gracious acknowledgement. “And to the young frog and toad in our midst, I just received word that your long-term residences are not yet fully prepared for your habitation, so you can spend tonight in the palace apartments.
“Now, for the heart of the discussion – what the next few months will look like for you three Gem Wielders. Your training will commence in three days, and from there we’ll operate on a four days on, three days off schedule. For these first few weeks, you can expect some basic core classes, just to get you all caught up on whatever skills you might be lacking. From there, we’ll start working into more specialized departments. While your training will be tailored to your Facet, that is, your power’s specialty, you’ll still do some work in other Facets. For instance, Andrias here got the Heart powers, but he’ll also be in some Wit and Strength classes. Expect to be training on your own and with one or both of your fellow Wielders. Any questions?”
Barrel raised his hand. “Will we have some time for personal projects, say, for some improvements I could make, because I already have some ideas…”
“Certainly. After all, your mission as a Wielder isn’t just the protection of society, but also its improvement. Any scientific or technological advancements you make will be welcomed with open arms.”
Prince Andrias spoke next. “When do we tackle the Temples?”
The king chuckled. “Let’s get some basic training under our belts first, then we can talk about the Temples.”
Lily raised her hand tentatively. “So, it sounds like I’ll be staying here long-term, but I just have to ask: what about my family? I’m kind of needed around the farm, and if I’m here… what can be done about that?”
The king scratched his bearded chin thoughtfully before responding, “Well, how about I send a frobot to accompany them home? We have a few agriculture-compatible models that should be able to pick up any slack you left behind.”
“Thank you, sir, that should work for us,” Lily said. Quietly, more to herself than anything, she murmured, “I sure am gonna miss them.”
Barrel heard it, though, and nudged her gently. “If you want, I know something I can do to help you keep in touch better.”
Lily looked up at him and smiled. “I’d like that.”
When they met back up outside, Lily gave her parents and brother the biggest hugs ever and told them quietly that she’d be staying behind.
“We know,” her mother said, “They told us.”
“So I guess it’s goodbye for a while, huh?”
“Actually, it's not goodbye just yet,” said her father. “We’ll be staying here for a few more nights.”
“Really?” Lily asked, looking up at him. “But what about the harvest?”
“We bought ourselves a little time, called in some help,” Rowan answered.
“But we do need to get back pretty quick,” their mother added, “or else ol’ Chad’ll turn the whole farm into a bed of petunias.”
They heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and they turned to find Barrel and a shining frobot walking towards them. “Hello, Plantar family!” he called.
“Woah, what’s that?” Rowan asked.
Barrel slapped a firm hand against the frobot’s shoulder. “Plantars, I’d like you to meet Becky Two. She’s a top-of-the-line agricultural model frobot, and the king agreed to lend her to you, long-term and free of charge, to help out around your farm while Lily’s staying here.”
The Plantars were greatly excited to have the droid in their possession and thanked Barrel profusely. He spent the next several minutes outlining her basic functions, which included all the functions necessary for maintaining a farm and more, including a limited irrigation system and advanced defense weaponry. “It is a great thing that you’ll be staying over, because I want to make a slight modification to her system for you.”
“And what’s that?” Lily’s father asked.
“I want to install a proper communications module, so you can talk freely with Lily from all the way in Frog Valley.”
The horned toad found himself once more showered with the frog family’s genuine gratitude. “It’s really nothing, guys,” he said, scratching his neck. “It’s just how I’ve been keeping up with my dad back home, and it wasn’t that big of a deal to do it for you guys, too.”
“Nonsense,” Lily’s father waved him off. “You’ve got a big heart on you, kid, hope you know that.”
“I know it,” Barrel replied, and with that, the frogs and Becky Two walked off towards a place to stay for the rest of the night.
“You’ve got good folks,” Barrel said.
“Sure do,” Lily replied.
The moon began to slide down the sky. A little pink frog found her way up to her temporary apartment and flopped gratefully into the fluffy bed she found there. She looked up at the vaulted ceiling and thought about how crazy of a night it had been. She closed her eyes, thinking, And to think that this is just the beginning.