Serrell was definitely going to kill him once he turned back into a human. She was then going to stuff his soul into a crystal, and likely the last thing he’d see was her grinning shark teeth before he exploded into a magical Energizer to turn herself into a demigod.

And it was somewhere between mostly and all his fault. He’d pushed Prissy away with his air of superiority, he’d pushed Kyessy away by not having enough patience with her bullshit, and also maybe not listening to her enough.

Whose fault was that? She made herself as unlikeable as possible for a very specific reason, and if he’d fallen into that trap, it was on her just as much, if not more.

Anyhow, back to the problem at hand. Findell was about to become an avatar of Vethros, and already the mercury in the Vethros-ometer in his periphery was twitching upwards a tiny bit. From what he’d been able to gather, the avatars of Vethros were like their own super baddies in and of themselves, so he had to get out of here and stop this other ritual before Findell went from fop to ender of worlds.

Honestly it wasn’t possible to see a half-fae, half-nellwynian (or half-gnomish) change into a super being capable of rending the lands in twain and causing all the peoples of the earth to bow before him. This was probably the fault of Corbin’s imagination. After all, Serrell laid waste to most of an army with just a single spell. Whatever nastiness Vethros was giving Findell, it should be enough to kill a newly-transformed Corbin.

Which meant he had to get his mandibles and mouthparts in order. He had to put a stop to Serrell and Findell.

And Grotok and the awful, awful assassin.

Not like this though. So far he’d mostly been a ball of agony, but he was getting a handle on things. After his second time as a type of starfish, he’d started to acclimate to the constant transformations.

He was a mantis shrimp… no, wait, he was an owl. Great, he wasn’t suffocating to death any longer, or seeing way too many colors from independently mobile eyes. He lifted one wing and tried to peer at his new anatomy, but his new eyes were working very strangely. Everything was too bright, and way, way too loud, but he had wings again.

Okay, perhaps he could take off. Get above whatever magical force field was keeping him in this circle. He leapt up, flapped, smashed into the purple energy, and flapped upwards again.

He ended up cracking against the circle’s magical border another three painful times before finally he started climbing without repeatedly faceplanting.

“Okay!” he hooted.

And then he changed.

Lucky for him (haha) he was able to whip his body around and land on his feet, because he was now… what, a cheetah? No, a jaguar. He didn’t take any damage from the fall, but snarled in anger.

This was not working. He needed… maybe brute strength for once.

“Okay, Corbin, let’s do this.”

He began to press his head against the wall of magical energy keeping him in.

***

Priscilla watched it unfold with a sense of horror. Around her the five army personnel were also glued to the crystal ball, either uncomprehending or just caught up in the special effects on display. The magic fire of the ritual circles, the weird way Corbin was melting from form to form, sometimes holding onto a shape for a minute or two, other times cycling through in just seconds. It was like his body was considering hanging onto this form for a short time, only to reject it after some thought, like with the mantis shrimp. Other times his body gave a big ole ‘nope’ and changed right away (in the case of the slow loris). The fact remained though that he was trapped in that circle, and whatever was happening behind him was something he was vehemently opposed to.

“What… is… happening?” one of the Rangers asked.

“This…” Hale whispered.

“It canna be,” Drell followed.”

“Spit it out!” Priscilla said.

“The ritual is to empower an avatar of He Who Slumbers,” Rinna said.

“The fuck does tha mean?”

“It means this warlock is in league with a vile presence that has infected our world since time immemorial,” Rinna said. “They are followers of a cult of the dead god. The ritual will make that…” he pointed to the little man into a finger puppet of the worst thing imaginable. If the legends are true, he will have the power to level buildings, to reshape the earth, and sway the minds of men.”

“Sounds, uh… worse than The Five,” Dane said.

“Four,” Niederhauer volunteered, and shrank back when all of them shouted for him to shut up.

“We hafta get in there and stop it, sure as shit,” Priscilla demanded.

“We have our mission–” Daniels began.

She was in his face with a glowing purple dagger. “I made a mistake wiff Corbin, unnerstan? I owe the wee bastard. We done helped you get on yer feet, now you return the flavor. Yer the leader now eh?” She nodded toward Dane. “What ye say?”

“I… don’t know.”

He peered around, or was about to, but the glowing purple dagger in his face drew closer. The eerie spectral moaning was barely audible, but Priscilla’s eyes blazed.

“Okay! Okay… hang on.”

“LT?” Rivera asked.

Eyes swung over to Daniels, but Dane was already in motion, muttering to himself about the parts he’d need. He dumped the contents of his Voluminous Sack on the floor, then the rest of his inventory came out in a heap, and began to sort through it. Armor scraps came spilling out, a stack of ability cards, followed by three echocrystal shards, a bunch of fur pelts, and then… springs, gears, power cores and the scroll for the portal out of this dungeon.

“He’s an owl now,” Guzman said, and brought Priscilla back to the crystal ball. Dane had transformed into an owl, peered at himself in a strange way only owls could manage, and soon after launched himself into the air.

“Make this happen, Dane,” she commanded.

He grabbed up his toolkit and began to attach the gears and springs to some of the sturdier plates, while the power core scanned and then ate the scroll of ‘portal out of here.’ He was halfway through building this horrible little bronze monstrosity, and tinkering with the interior coding of the spell subsumed within the power core when a great cheer went up. Priscilla noted he didn’t even look to see what was going on, but tapped at game prompts only he could see. In no time he had a little base, and was reading off a scroll, typing a bit and rearranging God knew what.

“Go, go, go!” the rest of them shouted.

“Come on, Corbin!” Drell urged.

“Fly outta there ya feathered sonovabitch!” Priscilla screamed. “Mama wants a new owl familiar!”

Dane fiddled with the tiny dials and buttons on the fist sized eldritch power device until the text read exactly what he wanted it to read.

Corbin transformed, and fell.

Priscilla shot to her feet and shrieked, “NOOOOOOO!”

“I dunno, he looks pretty good as a jaguar,” Niederhauer muttered.

Dane slipped a small glowing orb mechanism into the base, and the scroll instructions programmed in floated up off the parchment in a rush of orangey glowing text. That text settled into another small glowing orb mechanism, which he slotted into the base. Another thirty seconds followed in which he ignored the confused muttering about what the hell Corbin was doing, and Priscilla pulling her hair out urging him to GO FASTER. The device appeared ready: the cup to hold the crystal ball, and a single button. Before any of them could protest, he grabbed the crystal ball and settled it into his new gadget.

Oh, and the protests began immediately. Priscilla didn’t say a word, but instead watched him fit the viewing ball into his brand new (super ugly and janky) device. It slid in perfectly with a click.

Dane ignored their confused shouts too, pointed straight at Niederhauer, and commanded, “Open the portal right now.”

***

Corbin’s ‘just push through and damn the pain’ plan was an utter disaster. Serrell’s magic, or the ritual, or the circular nature of the ritual were much stronger than his head. He gave himself a serious headache from the few damage he received, but didn’t manage to budge the magic.

In the next two minutes, before he changed into his final form, he observed every action taken by every actor.

Corbin was only able to track what happened next because he’d shifted into a camel. They were all coming through and beginning to do combat, these savior strangers, but seemed to be doing it in a bowl of thick, clear syrup. The moment they did, their game stats and names appeared next to their heads like in an MMORPG: Rivera, Level 8 Rocksmasher, Niederhauer, Level 8 Spellsword, and then the others. He noted Rinna, Drell, and Hale in attendance, as well as Priscilla, level 11 Shadow Walker.

For no reason he could make out, he ended up with a 25 Intelligence and Perception, with True Sight. He also gained a whole plethora of other abilities, far more than he’d had as a raven: among the first were Carry On, Passenger Ready, Sandstorm Schmandstorm, Perfect Navigation, and Knowhow (all) at rank 1. This last one surprised him, as did Hyper-Awareness, and Infer RPG Stats. Last, he got +20 Agility on a Spit Attack, for what that was worth. He’d be something else in under a minute anyway, though he desperately hoped he could spit at Serrell.

He let loose with a great camel loogey as Rivera vaulted through the portal, ricocheted off the boundary of energy around Corbin’s ritual circle, and went down in an awkward heap. Over his head, Corbin read (in an instant, while Guzman was only beginning to somersault off Rivera’s big shoulder):

Agility (Acrobatics) check failed! You take 5 damage from the ritual magic barrier, and fail your Luck (Kismet) check as well. You’re knocked prone. Oof! I’d say things aren’t going your way, except Roid Rage gives you +2 Strength and Endurance, along with +5 temporary HP.

He then read as Specialist Guzman (Follower of the Path) burned through a whole bunch of her chi points and activated a plethora of abilities and did about twelve spins before barreling into the shitty nellwynian assassin with both feet. She rolled expertly to a fighting stance in the same moment all the other shit went down.

His gooey camel loogey continued on through the ritual magic barrier, much to his surprise, while Niederhauer leaped over the slowly rising Rivera and landed a hard slash on Grotok, who was turning in comically slow motion.

More and more continued to happen: Rivera kept rising, while Drell, Hale, Rinna and Priscilla (Prissy!) used him as a ramp to launch themselves toward Grotok, who was in the midst of taking flame breath to the face and (given that Niederhauer’s ability had just leeched out his resistances) taking 49 damage from the fire attack.

Serrell turned to behold the fracas that had just begun, and the final two saviors made their entrance through the rapidly-closing portal: a healer already casting a mana recovery aura, and a gnomish tinkerer launching a huge clockwork eagle familiar toward Serrell.

As for the warlock, she turned all the way around just in time to take his pinpoint camel loogey attack in the eyes, for zero points of damage but one thousand points of satisfaction. She fell back, bounced off Findell’s ritual barrier, and when next she had a chance to do anything, had Dane’s brass eagle familiar clawing at her eyes.

More kept happening, and it was both his blessing and his curse to see it all in glorious, painful detail: Drell snuck in a jab for 19 damage and inflicted bleeding on Grotok, Hale stepped in and roared, throwing his intimidation aura around in the moment before Niederhauer took 48 damage to the face, spinning him away and laying him out. The big orc sheriff roared right back, and kept all eyes on him.

And worst of all, Findell’s ritual now had a completion bar hovering overtop, like what you’d see if you were downloading a massive program to your computer, which now read 92%. Abilities with hideous icons were fading into view in his four Core slots.

Guzman landed eight punches on the nellwynian asshole before flipping up over his head, clutching his leather breastplate, and hurling him into the ritual magic field.

And finally, after a seeming eternity, Sergeant Rivera Rocksmasher stood back up.

“Rivera,” he shouted, “bring down this magic barrier, please!”

Nothing. The strange golem man lumbered around the ritual circle in super slow motion and, gaining speed, launched himself at Grotok.

“Get me out of here!” He roared, as a camel, which probably sounded like a confused sexual groan to everyone who couldn’t innately understand familiars.

Someone heard him, because a second later, he heard a tiny squeak order: “Rivera, break down that ritual!”

And, wonder of wonders, the golemite turned and began pounding on the circle of magic surrounding him.

The consequences of this suddenly rushed in on him now, while Rivera took damage which made him stronger (and probably angrier), and he let out a half-hearted, “Wait.”

Meanwhile Grotok was using Drell the dwarf skirmisher as a club to smash against Hale’s shield, while the dwarf burned with holy healing light. At the same time, Guzman had just taken an eldritch blast of disgusting purple red goop magic to the face from a snarling Serrell, for 32 damage. The warlock herself was taking damage constantly from the swooping brass eagle, but not for long. As Rivera was winding up to deal bare-handed damage to Corbin’s ritual for the third time, shadows reached out from all over the temple and grabbed the familiar midair, stopping it.

So much, and so fast. Barely ten seconds had passed since the portal opened.

Grotok had Hale down, had the human tank’s huge sword pinned by one foot, and held Drell over his face like a pillow, smothering Hale with his own comrade. Corbin distinctly noted the Endurance (Grit) checks going on, with Hale clawing at Grotok’s thick green wrists. Meanwhile the dwarf was throwing elbows ineffectually back behind his head over and again, missing completely due to Grotok’s massive reach advantage. Drell kept on taking damage, kept on being Grappled, helpless to stop himself from killing his friend. Now the shadows converged on Rinna and Lieutenant Daniels, who were getting low on mana.

They… were losing. Even if–

A purple blade of spectral energy emerged from Grotok’s throat. It withdrew, then appeared again, and again, and then again, accompanied by another dagger, this one flaming.

The orc sheriff’s hit point bar dropped precipitously. He also dropped Drell, which gave Hale a chance to breathe again.

Grotok turned just in time to have Prissy crouch into a ball and launch herself thirty feet into the air… or in this case the orc’s chin. Grotok fell hard, as the big ones are said to do, with zero HP. A pile of loot appeared, and his spirit stood up, bewildered, before being sucked out of sight.

“Enough!” Serrell soared. The word reverberated through the hall.

***

Rivera did not stop hammering on Corbin’s ritual circle, but had little to show for his efforts. Sure he grabbed up Strength and Endurance every time he took damage off the magic circle, which was every strike, and sure his strength was now over a hundred and fifty, but ritual circles were meant to summon and imprison demons and djinns.

“It’s not working,” Dane said, just as the warlock screamed out, and the real magical fireworks began.

Dane hadn’t seen flame-haired fae before, but the principle was easy enough to understand. “Rivera, belay that!” he called. “Come here.”

The golemite dutifully complied, and just in time.

He lowered a pair of goggles in front of his eyes and saw her aura blasting off her in all directions, much larger than everyone else in the temple: a big black and red mass of dripping tentacled goodness, interspersed with strangling gold vines twined around it, emanating from the base of her skull and the center of her chest.

Now, with Findell in the middle of his own ritual, the nellwynian assassin taken down, and Grotok dead, she was the only one left to oppose the Rangers.

Although, she managed pretty well. Swirling magic lashed out and sent spikes of blackish goop racing across the floor. These lanced up and poked holes in the rest of his party. Prissy, Guzman, Rinna, Drell, Hale, and Lieutenant Daniels all ended up skewered on these and lifted into the air like they were about to be crucified. Only Dane and Rivera were spared, since they were on the other side of Corbin’s ritual circle. Daniels, once again, was killed outright, and a bunch of inventory items fell to the ground.

One of those was a Knowhow: (Rituals) skillbook.

“What?”

Serrell peered through the magic and locked eyes on the two of them.

“I’ll go take care of her,”

Several armor scraps, scraps of pelt, coils and gears, lengths of rope and a power core later, he had a workable gadget like a grappling hook. Instead of the hook end though, it had a claw. He fired off in the direction of the LT’s body, grabbed up the skill book, and reeled it back in. Meanwhile, the fae warlock stood and, dripping dangerous black red magic from her hands.

“Serrell!” the floating guy inside the other ritual circle shouted. It was a scream full of pain and discomfort, but also anger… which still sounded a little adorable, given that he was a half-fae. “Complete the ritual!”

Serrell instead began skirting around Corbin’s circle, and occasionally blocking expertly shot spit rockets from camel Corbin. “Let me swat these insects first.”

Dane grabbed the skill book and marveled at the thing.

Do you wish to learn the basics of Ritual spellcasting? This skill book will be consumed upon absorption. Indicate your answer verbally or mentally.

“Yes,” he said, and blacked out for a moment.

One second he was edging around the ritual circle opposite, and hopping to avoid a tentacle of black magic trying to skewer him, the next he was in Rivera’s arms. His head felt full… like a serious headache was about to start over the entirety of his skull. He wasn’t sure how the books worked, and was amazed Daniels hadn’t thought to show him the books in the first place.

“We need to break the ritual circle,” he moaned. Rivera darted aside and took a magic spear in the shoulder. Dane felt even sicker from spinning around, but still the Ritual Spellcasting knowledge came to him.

Duh.

“Rivera, you need to break the floor! And after that, launch me at the warlock, and go break that other ritual. Got it?”

“Understood,” Rivera grumbled, and immediately pummeled the temple’s tile floor. The cracks were enough straight from the first shot: the barrier surrounding the ritual flickered and failed when the greasy black circle ended up cracked.

Corbin wasn’t human yet.

Still, Dane found himself launched through the air straight at the warlock’s face, with Voluminous Sack in hand. He had meant to unload a whole salvo of armor scraps into her face, but there wasn’t time. He instead ended up with the bag tangled around her hands. For a brief instant, he hoped she’d be sucked into the bag and suffocate in there, but it wasn’t to be. Instead he commanded the eagle to start in on her again. She snarled at him, her eyes began to glow, but luckily he was small enough to grab onto the drawstring and swing down under whatever horrible fire attack came next. He actually swung around far enough that he ended up kicking her in the face by accident. Still, the 4 damage was done, and he looped around the rest of the way, trapping her arms inside.

“You infuriating little stak!” she snarled, and began to wrench her arms this way and that.

And as soon as she got a sliver of wiggle room, he started calling everything to come shooting out of the bag.

It was fun to watch her take several hundred projectiles in the stomach, watch her eyes widen in disbelief and pain, watch the green bar above her head rapidly shrink, turn yellow and then red. The best was watching her spit blood before she finally staggered backwards, fell on her ass, and died.

He grabbed up the loot without looking, and turned to see Rivera break the ritual circle surrounding Magistrate Findell.