“Shapeshifter!” shouted Amelia. “Shapeshifter! He’s using a transformation spell to turn himself into a stone golem!”
“That’s forbidden magic!” said Veronica, “worse than anything! It’s the most dangerous, uncontrollable magic known!”
The Arcanist’s body kept on growing and kept becoming more granite-like. I hadn’t faced anything like this before. Like the rest of the crowd, I was mesmerized by Maximillian’s metamorphosis, but my mind was busy working on some tactic that might defeat the enormous creature he was becoming.
Water might possibly have had some effect, but the rain continued to lash the square, and the giant seemed unaffected by it. Even as I watched, his skin began to harden. Great boulders bulged out over his knees, shoulders, and elbows. His head was like a great gray rock, bulbous and misshapen. He threw his head back and laughed horribly, the sound like an avalanche in a hollow valley.
Around us the townsfolk were fleeing. I caught a glimpse of the remaining soldiers tearing their tabards off and flinging them away as they sprinted away up a side street. I didn’t think we’d be seeing them again.
I turned and looked through the rain toward the tavern. Mistress Blossom was leaning in the doorway with one hand on the edge of the door. She looked pale.
“Mistress Blossom,” I yelled. “Can you do anything to stop him?”
“I’m already trying,” she called back. “He’s drawing power from the earth. All I can do is prevent him from drawing any more. Hopefully he won’t grow any larger.”
From where she was standing, I could make out the glow of her tattoo on her midriff.
The soldiers were gone. The townsfolk were gone. Mistress Blossom was doing all she could to hinder him. Even Jacques, who seemed to realize there was little he could do against this stone-clad horror, had retreated to the tavern.
That left me, Veronica, and Amelia.
It was up to us.
The monster which had been the Arcanist Maximillian stopped growing at about twelve feet tall. He was nearly six feet across the shoulders, and the same across the chest. It didn’t look like he had any weapons, but his huge, rocky fists looked like they could have crushed a house without too much trouble.
He must have used the robes to start the spell before casting them aside. My guess was that the only way to break the spell now would be to kill him.
The monster stomped forward, stopping in front of the pile of his soldiers, most of whom were now dead. Veronica and Amelia hurried back to stand beside me.
“So, these are my challengers?” the Mage boomed in a muffled voice. He laughed, a hollow laugh. Some of the shingles slid off one of the nearby houses as the sound reverberated through the square.
“What are we going to do?” Amelia asked.
“We’ll just have to try our spells and hope he’s vulnerable to some of them,” I said. “Spread out, so he can’t attack us all at once.”
The monster stepped forward, over the broken bodies of the soldiers and thugs, covering three yards at a single stride. He was only 20 yards away from us now. I pushed as much Mana into my Fire rune as I could manage and let loose a huge fireball at the monster’s torso. Amelia fired an ice spear a moment later, aiming for the giant’s right leg.
My fireball burst against the giant’s chest with a blaze of light. With my upgrades and progression, it was hotter than usual, and it scorched him, blackening the stone of his chest. He roared in fury as the force of the blast made him sway backward. There was a cracking sound as Amelia’s spear hit the giant in the knee and stuck there for a moment before melting. The monster roared again and buckled at the knee, limping as he stepped back again.
I could feel my Mana pool regenerating, but it wasn’t quite full enough to cast another huge fireball. Instead, I stepped back and drew my Elemental dagger, preparing to feed Mana into it and create a stable Elemental weapon with one of my affinities. That way I could be magically armed while still leaving Mana in my pool for spells.
Veronica saw what I was doing and ran up, pointing her vector sword at the monster’s chest. Lightning forked down from the sky and ran along the blade, and power crackled from her back onto the blade as well. She shouted, and the raw power flashed from the sword point, running down the blade and blasting across the space between her and the advancing giant.
He roared and raged about when the bolt hit him, but it didn’t seem to penetrate. Instead, the forks of lightning skittered over the surface of his rocky skin, and he batted at them as if he was trying to swat a fly. They seemed to cause him pain, but no damage.
Well, he was distracted by them, and this might give us the chance we needed to inflict some real damage.
Dagger in hand, I focused on it as I had done before. This time, however, I channeled Fire rather than Ice or Lightning. The results were impressive. With only a small amount of Mana expended, dark clouds of smoke formed and solidified, and the dagger transformed into a blade made of flame.
It was a straight sword, as long as my arm, with a solid edge as if the whole thing was made from red hot metal. Flame and sparks flickered along the blade’s edge. I could feel the heat that emanated from it, but it did not burn me.
As the monster continued to stamp about, beating at its chest and head to get rid of the lightning, I ran in and swung my blade at its thigh. That did the most damage yet. My Elemental blade sliced cleanly into the stone, leaving a great gash in the rock skin. Dark blood oozed from
