With a horrifying, baleful moan, long fleshy tendrils erupted from Rawgh"faz"s back, spasming and thrashing about as the shaman"s body continued to distort and mutate. Eleanor"s eyes widened, and she instinctively took a step backwards. She had planned for a lot of possibilities, but something like this was not among them.Suddenly, everything on the dogman"s body congealed with a fleshy crunch, and the darkness faded. The gnoll was gone. In his place was a warped abomination of bone and flesh. The dogman"s head and arms still remained in some exaggerated form, but all else had been replaced. The giant fleshy tendrils erupting from the creature"s back now served as its primary mode of movement, as the shaman"s legs had been replaced by a second set of hairless, fleshy pink limbs, eat of which bore oversize, clawed hands.
The creature roared, the booming, grinding sound of his voice reverberated throughout the room as he slapped and slid his way forward on his newly grown limbs. Lacking a better idea of what to do, Eleanor drew another colored bead from her components pouch, and hurled a fireball at the creature. The missile"s aim was true, but the blue fire splashed off the creature"s body without reaction. Seeing Eleanor"s expression, Rawgh"faz laughed.
"Foolish girl! I would think you would recognize Infernal magic when you saw it. But it appears I am mistaken." He said.
With a low, rumbling intonation, he brought his two upper hands together. A giant arc of electric energy flashed between them, before he threw his hand towards her. A bolt of lightning flashed from his hand, arcing and crackling across the stone as it rocketed towards her. Eleanor pulled her hands down towards the ground before throwing them skyward. As she did so, ground rumbled beneath her, and a sheet of earth ripped out from beneath the stone of the throne room floor and interposed itself between her and the approaching energy. The bolt struck the earth with a hissing crackle as it fused a large part of the wall into gla.s.s. Instantly the throne room filled with the deafening blast of thunder, causing the ground to shake and fragments of stone to rain down from the ceiling around both of them.
In the interceding moments after the thunder began to fade, the shaman crossed the s.p.a.ce between them in a whirling flurry of limbs before thrusting himself off the ground and leaping over the barricade Eleanor had summoned seconds before. He landed where he expected her to be, his vicious claws raking the air where she should be to be standing. But yet again, she was nowhere to be seen.
"I grow tired of your games, devil b.i.t.c.h!" He roared, slamming the earthen barricade next to him to rubble in his rage. "Show yourself!"
Turning his attention back towards the room behind him, he finally saw Eleanor near the entrance to the throne room, absent-mindedly kicking a piece of rubble with the tip of her boot as she whistled. She made eye contact with him, and waved cheerily.
"Hey! You find what you were looking for back there?" She called, her face grinning widely as she brushed her bangs out from her eyes with the tip of her tail. She reached down and gingerly brushed some dust off the front of her green and white dress, seeming to pay him almost no mind as she did so.
Rawgh"faz reared up to launch himself after her, but drew short almost immediately. Something about this seemed... off. How had she gotten to the far end of the room so quickly?
And where did she suddenly get that dress?