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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4405527" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 82TRANSFORMATIONDar descended cautiously, one arm raised in front of his helmet to shield his eyes from the swirling debris writhing around him.  He had drawn out his everburning torch, and held it before him, driving back the darkness that gathered deep within the remnants of the keep interior.  When he emerged from the dust cloud, however, he couldn’t see much more then he had before. A considerable swath of the castle keep had come down; a forty-foot swath of wall had collapsed inward, taking with it a sizeable portion of the roof.  The great hall was now a jumble of rubble, pieces of stone ranging from the size of a wagon down to a man’s fist, tumbled throughout with roof tiles, bits of wood from smashed furniture, and other debris.  There was no sign of the Ravager, or of Letellia.  Or of anyone else. “How long?” Mehlaraine asked, drifting down to hover beside him.  “Not long,” Dar returned.  And as if to echo his words, there was a faint noise, a subtle vibration that seemed to radiate from the pile of debris.  “It’s not safe in here; the rest of this building can come down at any minute.  Get above, see to Sultheros and the others.” The elf woman nodded, and shot up into the sky.  Dar followed more slowly, watching and listening.  He wanted to go with Mehlaraine, wanted more than anything to go to his wife, but he lingered, knowing what was coming, but needing to see it with his own eyes. Down in the square below, a scant bowshot distant from the ruins of the castle keep, another scene was developing that was almost as grim.  The vast gathering of townsfolk and soldiers had vanished with the end of the ritual that had lured the Ravager here, leaving less than a dozen people remaining.  The square that had seemed to crowded just a few moments before seemed almost eerily lonely now, the cluster of individuals collected under the bright light of Maricela’s daylight spell looking almost dismal as they reeled from the aftereffects of the Ravager’s disruptive passage.  “Get those clerics inside that building!” Kiron yelled, grunting with effort as he half-dragged the semiconscious Maricela to the dubious shelter of an empty market stall at the edge of the square.  Petronia started to move to help him, but he stopped her.  “Help Allera!” he ordered.  The knight ran toward the healer, who was kneeling upon the stone tiles, her head bowed as though deep in prayer.  She was better off than the clerics, who were all unconscious and unresponsive as his men lifted them in pairs and carried them toward the nearest structure.  He looked for Sultheros, and saw the elf archmage still standing, though it looked like his staff was the only thing keeping him upright.  The two fighter-mages who had supported him throughout the ritual were moving toward him, but they looked dazed, slipping sideways a step for every two they managed forward.  All of the spell-casters, incapacitated, he thought.  He held Maricela’s head carefully as he eased her to the ground, lying her upon a small pile of canvas sacks that had been tossed into a corner of the stall.  The priestess groaned, and she was conscious, but her eyes flittered wildly about, and Kiron knew that she wasn’t seeing anything at the moment.  His heart stabbed with concern for her, but he knew that they had bigger problems.  He looked up toward the castle.  He couldn’t see the keep above the outer wall, but he’d seen and heard the impact, and while he wouldn’t have put coin on another creature surviving such a plummet, he knew that whatever respite they’d gained against the Ravager was only temporary.  Dar was up there, he knew, and others; but the two people most critical to their plan were right in front of him, and in no condition to help right now. “I’m sorry, love,” he said, letting Maricela go, and thrusting himself to his feet.  For that matter, he wasn’t in such good shape himself; his legs resisted his efforts to rise, and his head spun for a moment as he steadied himself against the side of the stall.  Part of it was exhaustion, but some part of the backlash from the sundered ritual had likely affected him as well.  Fortunately, he’d been less vulnerable to it than the magic-users.  Forcing himself to fight through the lingering mental haze, he hastened over to Petronia.  “How is she?” he asked.“I don’t know,” the woman knight said, her jaw clenched with frustration.  Kiron could see her resisting the impulse to look up at the fortress atop the bluff; his own eyes kept being drawn there, like iron shavings to a lodestone.  But there was nothing he could do about that, now. “Did you try giving her your draught?” Kiron fumbled with the clasp of his pouch, but Petronia shifted to show him the bottle in her other hand.  “Physically, she’s okay, it’s just...”“Help me up.”Allera’s command, though delivered in a weak, fluttering voice, nevertheless drew their full attention at once.  Kiron came to her other side, opposite Petronia, and met her gaze.  He was startled at how weak she looked, and while there was a vagueness in her eyes that mirrored what he’d seen in Maricela just a moment ago, as he watched he could almost see her steadying herself.  She reached out, and grabbed his arm.  “Help me,” she repeated.  “There isn’t much time.” Kiron nodded at Petronia, and the two of them slowly lifted Allera to her feet.  The healer almost swooned, but when Kiron hesitated, she seized his eyes with hers.  “Give me a moment.  Don’t let me fall down.”Kiron looked over at Sultheros.  The elf hadn’t gone down, but his head was bowed until it almost touched the tip of his black staff.  His assistants were speaking to him, but there was no sign that the archmage was hearing them.  “It was not... pleasant,” Allera said, in answer to the question that Kiron did not ask.  “We will... recover.  But there is nothing that my magic can do... in this instance...”  She took a deep breath, but her lips shook as she let it out. “Water?” Petronia suggested.  Allera nodded, and she drank of the small skin that the knight suggested.  “Dar... the others?” she asked. Kiron’s answer was cut off by a noise of crashing stone.  All of them save Sultheros and the unconscious priests looked up to see the gatehouse of the castle explode outward in an eruption of wood and stone.  The Ravager emerged through the storm of destruction that it had created.  It had transformed itself.  Thirty-five feet tall, its new form was a things of nightmares.  Its deep crimson hide and black teeth and claws it had retained, only now it had the look of an ape, albeit an ape with an extra pair of arms sprouting from its shoulders.  Muscles bulged under its dense hide, and its jaws opened to unleash a roar that shook the buildings around them to their foundations, an echo of the cry it had made when first it had emerged from its prison into the clean air of the world above.  Crusted bits of dried tanglefoot mixture still clung to its body, along with patches of gray where shattered bits of stone had clung to it.  It strode forward through the wreckage of the gatehouse, and the new gap in the castle wall that ten men could have ridden through abreast.   The Ravager was pissed off, and ready to unleash some destruction.</blockquote>

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