“Jak!” Tobi shouted at her ogre companion who had been transformed into a chicken. Clucking frenetically, he started scampering towards her, but a crackle of lightning flew from her hands and struck him. He immediately started growing until he was about the size of a horse. Squawking aggressively, he used his giant claws to pick up the figure cowering behind the bushes that Audrey had hit with her crossbow and tossed him towards the party.
“It’s that damn innkeeper!” Audrey snarled as she walked up and unhesitatingly drove her sword straight into his chest. To her surprise, her sword struck the ground as the innkeeper vanished and a gray rat scampered up her sword arm and squeezed under her armor.
“YEEargh!” Audrey performed a series of impossibly acrobatic dance steps as she struggled to eject the squirming rodent from under her clothes. Lyra came forward to try to help, but the rat unexpectedly leapt from Audrey over to Lyra’s neck and scrambled underneath her collar, causing her to start slapping desperately at herself as if playing a game of Whack-The-Mole.
A decoy! Mika thought to himself, and then abruptly connected the dots. “LYRA!” he cried out urgently. “Toss me your stone! QUICK!”
But he was just a moment too late. The rat had found what it was looking for, and grasping Lyra’s magic stone firmly in its jaws, it dropped to the ground and streaked away from the party. Mika tried throwing immobilization spells at the creature, but it was too small and moving too swiftly to hit accurately. Thinking fast, he looked in the direction where the rat was running and saw a dark shape behind a clump of trees. Charging up the largest fireball he could muster, he flung it with full force at the figure.
But instead of the anguished screams of a barbequed beastmaster, an enormous fireboar with double-twisted tusks erupted from behind the trees. Absorbing Mika’s fireball, it somehow grew even larger and charged headlong toward the party. Mika tried frantically to ready another spell, but they were saved at the last moment by Jak who rammed into the fireboar from its side, knocking it over.
“The stone!” Lyra shouted. The fireboar had trampled the rat in its charge, and the rock was now lying exposed on the ground. In her rush to recover her prize, Lyra dashed out from the protection of her shield. “No, don’t!” Mika shouted just as a dart struck Lyra’s neck. Her eyes dimmed as she squatted down and tucked her arms in to form wings. “BWARK!” she clucked loudly and began flapping her arms and walking around like a chicken.
“I’m immune to transformation, I’ll go.” Luka lumbered forward, but before he could reach the stone, he heard a ferocious roar. Turning, he saw an angry grizzly bear approaching him menacingly from the side.
In all the confusion, Audrey & Mika saw the real innkeeper scampering forward to retrieve the stone. They tried to stop him, but it was impossible to get a clear shot thru the whirling melee of Jak clawing at the fireboar, Luka wrestling with the grizzly bear and Lyra pecking furiously at the ground.
A series of screams rang out from behind. They turned and found Shari crying alone in panic. Both Tobi and the stableboy were gone.