“Or not.”
They raced forward to join the fight. The orc men hurled flashing green attack spells at the waving tentacles, missing most of the shots. The monster hiding behind the doorway skittered into view. It looked like a giant crab, with four more grotesque tentacles sprouting from its back. It clicked and shrieked at them, freezing the refugees in their tracks.
Cheyenne hurled two black orbs of sparking magic at the crab thing's center and split it cleanly in half. One giant claw twitched and clicked on the ground before melting. The other rose on its own and drew the rest of the shattered crab-thing with it. It let out another grating screech, and the beast rose on thousands of tiny legs like a giant, morphing centipede.
“Get through the doorway!” Persh’al waved the frightened orcs forward, then flicked his wrist and brought up his trusty green magic whip.
The women and children broke into a run. The orc men ushered them forward and turned to launch their own attacks at the grotesque, scrambling new form the monster had taken. Each hit sent clouds of black smoke and shattered fragments through the air, but the creature kept racing toward them.
Persh’al lashed out with his whip, glancing over his shoulder to watch the fleeing refugees’ progress toward the door. “Just need to give them time!”
“Yep.” Cheyenne blasted the clacking, squealing centipede-thing with more churning balls of black energy and lifted a shield in front of two orc men staring down the wrong end of the monster’s spitting acid. The green slime pinged off the shimmering wall of her shield and disappeared beneath the black fog covering the ground. “Go!”
The orcs took off toward the doorway, tossing a few more attacks before they disappeared. Only three of their crossing party were left, and Cheyenne waved them away before darting toward the other side of the portal after them. Wind howled through the in-between, and Persh’al threw crackling darts of blue light at the monster between lashing out with his whip.
A screech ripped through the air, and the wind kicked up again, buffeting them. Cheyenne looked up and saw another massive bird-like creature, though its face and what could have been its beak opened in its belly to let out another piercing shriek. She flung her black tendrils at the creature’s amorphous legs, and they yanked the creature’s limbs from its body. The thing swooped down from the sky as Persh’al battled the centipede, and the last three orcs raced through the glowing doorway.
“Time to go, kid!” Persh’al stepped back, putting himself between the snapping, spitting monster on thousands of legs and their exit.
“Couldn’t agree more.” Cheyenne darted away from the flying monster as it landed in front of her with a shuddering boom. A column of glistening black burst from its headless shoulders like a newly grown neck and a huge red mouth opened wide to snap at her. She sent another black energy sphere blasting through the back of that mouth, and the creature reared back.
She froze when she saw something moving inside the creature beneath the surface of its shifting skin. Racing, pulsing lights of muted silver darted up the creature’s sides like LED lights, interspersed with symbols she didn’t recognize. “What the hell is that?”
“Cheyenne!”
The halfling whipped her head toward Persh’al, her hand lifting toward the activator she hadn’t removed. That wasn’t supposed to still be there.
A slimy tentacle wrapped around her ankle, so cold it burned her through her pants. Snarling, Cheyenne summoned another energy sphere and threw it at the bird-creature that had now become another thing on sharp, spearing legs. Then it jerked her off her feet and bashed her against the ground.
“Shit. Hold on!” Persh’al attacked the centipede again, which kept sprouting new legs and growing back whenever he blasted it apart. Then the centipede froze, let out a series of ominous clicks, and turned away from him before scuttling toward Cheyenne. “What?”
The troll cracked his green whip around the centipede’s pincer-tipped head and jerked back. The creature’s body severed beneath his magic with a wet slurp. The head burst before it hit the fog-covered ground, and by the time a new one grew in its place, the centipede had forgotten Persh’al.
“Dammit!” Cheyenne flew through the air again by her ankle as the new monster flung her around. Two more hits with her black orbs severed the tentacle around her leg, but another reached out and caught her arm before she hit the ground. Searing heat blazed through her bicep, and she screamed before clamping her other hand down on the tentacle. That hurt just as much, but she clenched her teeth through the pain and held on. “Should’ve started with this!”
The black fire flared across her skin, sending a blazing wave of drow heat through her body before she pushed it out along the in-between creature’s flesh. The thing shrieked as the flames consumed it, and Cheyenne dropped five feet with a thud.
“Cheyenne! Look out!”
She turned just in time to see the centipede’s razor-sharp pincers glinting with some foul substance before the thing was on her.
“Hold on!” Persh’al shouted.
The ground lurched away from her as the centipede’s thousands of legs stabbed into her skin over and over. It tried to scramble across her body, but they were both whisked into nothingness. She couldn’t even hear Persh’al shouting for her as she punched the sharp-tipped legs and kicked away from the writhing monster.
She fell hard against something at her back and cried out. The centipede tumbled away, rolling over and over until it righted itself and turned to face her. This one had the flashing silver lights inside it too, pulsing up and down its long body and illuminating it from inside. This is seriously weird.
The creature lunged at her again, and Cheyenne waited until the last second before falling to her knees and grabbing the underside of the monster’s head
