“Kyembe!” Wurhi shrieked.

The monster mauled his arm, pulling him from his feet with hideous strength. The other darted behind him to grasp his throat as he struggled to pull a knife from his belt.

Wurhi went for her own short sword to use against the brute, but dismissed the small weapon immediately. Drastic measures. Reaching deep into herself, she let the animal haze consume her mind.

Then came the agony.

Her bones split and knit back together, altered. A shriek of rising pitch burst from her lips as fur erupted from her olive skin. Jaws cracked, her face lengthening into a rodent’s muzzle, her large front teeth exploding into a rodent’s shovel-like incisors. A rat-like humanoid now stood reborn where the Zabyallan once was.

The instincts of a cornered animal urged flight, but enough consciousness remained to push herself to fight instead. With a high pitched chitter, the rat-humanoid surged toward the hound and sprung upon the beast. Wet fur, rot and old blood stung her nostrils as she crawled over its back, the sharp claws on her fingers biting into its hide. It yelped and growled, bucked and snapped its deadly jaws, but the transformation flooded her with savage power.

Her grip was iron on the beast’s back and her jaws latched onto its neck.

A rat’s bite was a fierce thing, made many times worse by her size. Her incisors, like twin spades, punctured the top of the beast’s powerful neck as though biting through rotten cheese. Spine parted like thread on a blade and a muffled yelp signalled its collapse. Wurhi jumped free as it fell twitching onto the forest floor.

She looked up to see Kyembe stab his dagger into the other hound’s right eye. The point skewered the beast’s brain, and its body convulsed with a choking gasp. The Sengezian rose with gritted teeth, clutching a bloody forearm torn to shreds and shattered at a grotesque angle. From his grip issued golden light, caressing his wounds and knitting the flesh. Blood-loss stemmed, but the bone remained broken. “My magic cannot mend the bone.” He looked uneasily at the trunk. “I do not know if I can…”

The sounds of the pursuers closed.

He grit his teeth. “I will have to make do with help of the vines.” He started for the tree while Wurhi bolted forth and skittered up the trunk. Kyembe struggled to follow one-handed. It was a testament to the strength of his nimble frame that he ascended at all, but his progress was agonizingly slow.

All too soon the rest of the dog pack crashed through thickets and leapt at him. Their monstrous jaws snapping mere finger-widths from his feet and their fetid breath raked across his heels. The rat-thing that was Wurhi regarded him with beady eyes while he laboured after her. The dogs circled, barking and snarling while their masters crashed in after them.magic

“There!” A bull-voiced woman pointed at them. “Bring them down!”

Several trackers raised short limbed bows.

With staggering reflexes, Kyembe strained to pull himself over one of the great branches just as a stone-tipped arrow shot past. He hid there in cover, clutching his arm while projectiles cracked on the branch below.

“You five!” the leader pointed her spear at the tree. “Get up after them! You four!” She pointed to the next tree. “Get on a branch above them and pick your shots! The rest of you form a circle! Don’t let them escape!

Kyembe cursed between breaths and resumed his climb, but he was slower than before. The agony of his arm drained his strength and withered his endurance. His belly churned and his head swam. His skin was cold.

Arrows flew at him, but he was higher up and the mist was thick, spoiling their aim.

Men in bronze helms and wrapped in hides began pulling themselves up the trunk, daggers clenched in yellowed teeth. They closed on the Sengezian. Thinking quickly, he muttered words of power to his ring and channeled magic - not hellfire to burn the tree - but another illusionist’s trick.

He screamed as he let his broken arm drop, directing the spell downward.

The air filled with that scream, echoing endlessly.

A cacophony joined it. The shouts of Wurhi. The roars of their pursuers. The barking of the hounds. All of it amplified until he was sure half the forest heard it.

He saw both the trackers and the hounds ignore the illusions. That confirmed his suspicions. Some demon or spirit protected them. He feverishly made for the next branch. If he could grasp it with his legs, he could draw his sword with his healthy arm and-

Too late.

The lead pursuer grasped Kyembe by the ankle to pull him to his death.

Wurhi shot down with inhuman speed, claws digging into the trunk, her incisors shining.

She clipped off the offending hand.

The man shrieked, red fountaining from his stump, and he plummeted.

He impacted a giant root below.

His brethren halted in the face of her gnashing teeth. “Away, monster!” one cried.

An arrow burrowed into her side.

Wurhi let out a sound that was both woman’s scream and rat’s chitter.

“Wurhi!” Kyembe cried. The archers had scaled the other tree, taking position on higher branches to fire down upon them. The Zabyallan clambered to him, chittering in pain, and he tried his best to pour his healing energies into the wound. His hand shook. “It will be alright,” he panted. “Hold out a little more.”

Her beady animal eyes looked to him in fear.

The men below were closing in.

Arrows hissed at them. Two struck Wurhi. Her shrieks tore through the canopy like the anguished cries of a flock of gulls. Kyembe worked to heal her.

They maneuvered themselves onto the closest high branch and the Zabyallan skittered back to lick her wounds. Kyembe drew his sword.

He slashed away an arrow angling for him, then pointed the thin blade at the lead pursuer, gripping it with one hand and pressing on the ivory hilt with his foot.

With a push, the sword’s magic came to life.

The hilt grew, turning into the haft of a sword-staff. The length suddenly increased, shooting downward at speed.

The blade buried itself in the man’s collarbone, enchanted steel cutting through flesh and shearing bone until it found his beating heart. The corpse flew backward through the mist, and Kyembe yanked his weapon free. Without both hands, he could not retract the length. He would not get a second thrust.

Like maggots on carrion, other warriors began to swarm up the trunk.

Kyembe cursed, edging himself further onto the branch until he reached the trembling Wurhi. The drifting fog was thick, blocking sight to the ground below, but he could hear the low rush of a river nearby.

His teeth grit as he tried to think of a way out.

A terrible roar bellowed through the fog.

The cries of their pursuers died in stunned silence.

Another roar shook the forest. Then another and another.

Immense bodies burst through the brush in the fog below.

Alarmed screams and shouting rose up.

Kyembe smiled viciously and cut the illusionary sounds with a wave of his ring. His intention with this illusion was not to confuse or frighten their pursuers. Instead, he’d sought to attract the owners of the monstrous footprints.

“Ooooogres!” the leader cried from in the mist. “Regroup! Now! Don’t let them surro-”

A heavy impact splintered bone and pulped flesh, cutting off her orders. More impacts and screams soon followed.

!

The front half of a great hound - trailing entrails - crashed through vines and branches to plummet like an enormous fish into the river beyond.

A boulder the size of a man’s torso shot from the mist, sweeping the archers from their neighbouring tree, shattering them to mangled, crimson pieces. One agile soul leapt free of the boulder’s path and caught a low hanging vine, but it sagged beneath his weight, his feet kicked uselessly in the air.

A giant, hairy, grey-skinned arm reached up from the fog.

The enormous hand - fingers clawed like a beast’s - wrapped around the man’s thigh and ripped him from the vine.

Canine yelping diminished southward as Avernix’s great hounds fled like suckled pups from the slaughter.

Another boulder.

Kyembe and Wurhi screamed. It bore right for their branch.

The Sengezian gripped his sword as the branch broke and lurched sideways. Rat-woman and half-dark elf plummeted through the air, their world careening.

They clutched at small branches, desperately grabbing for giant vines to slow what seemed like unending descent. The canopy beat and raked their bodies with the enthusiasm of a driver of a donkey caravan. Abruptly, they hit the rushing water. Icy water cut to the very marrow of their bones.

To the two southlanders, the sting of fire ants would have been more welcome.

The river carried them away.