Erik grinned. His teleportation spell had enabled him to get away clean with his prisoners, and the adventurers would no doubt be severely mauled by the beasts he had left. Even if they managed to find him, there would be no way for them to get past the pack of wolves he kept to guard his inner sanctum deep in the forest. This girl was recognizably of descent from the royal family of Arlor, and would fetch an excellent ransom. He turned on her with a fond smile. She would make him very, very rich. The stableboy might be valuable as well, or he might be wolf food.
Then the girl’s open, sunny, if fearful countenance turned to something quite different as quickly as a solar eclipse. Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth moved from slack puzzlement into a far more malevolent grin than Erik had ever seen from Esmeralda. “You took me from my friends. Why?”
“You don’t ask me questions” responded Erik, with a confidence he was not really feeling. “Just obey me and you’ll live, probably.”
“Obey you?” the girl gave a bone-chilling laugh. “Obey you? Know the doom of Actaeon!”
Erik had avoided transformation—not an easy thing when you spent time hanging out with Robin the innkeeper and Esmeralda. So when he first felt himself shrinking he didn’t know what was happening, and when he felt fur growing over his body he still didn’t get it. It was when he felt his ears narrowing and lengthening that he finally figured it out, and for the first time in his life he knew terror.
“Get him, boys and girls” said Tobi to the gathering pack of wolves staring at the frightened rabbit. The hunger in the wolves’s eyes mirrored the hunger in her own.
Erik the rabbit took off. He didn’t get very far.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
“Mika!” Luka screamed. “Help!”
The barbarian was a mighty man, but wrestling with a grizzly would challenge the mightiest. Mika’s attention was instantly focused on the man he loved, and he launched a transformation spell at the grizzly.
Nothing. Apparently bears could bathe in permanency water as well. Audrey was flying to Luka’s side, and managed to distract the bear long enough for Luka to break free. He was covered with blood, but the wounds seemed superficial and the barbarian was smiling. He picked up the sword Lyra had let dropped and moved to the opposite side of the bear from Audrey.
Jak presented a problem. He would have to shrink him first to transform him back into his natural form. If the spells were done in the wrong order, he would be an ogre proportioned to a normal ogre the way he was now a chicken proportionate to a normal chicken. Mika didn’t want to deal with that, and anyway he couldn't shrink him to the size of a normal chicken while he was fighting the monster fireboar.
OK, Lyra. It looked some sort of psychological transformation. Those were in some ways harder to reverse. He concentrated, and summoned up the magical knowledge.
+++++++++++
Robin was breathing heavily a hundred yards from the battle. He didn’t relish the thought of going back into the fight. Was it best to circle back around to the inn, or to break out on his own? Frankly, he was getting a little tired of the way Erik and Esmeralda treated him like the hired help. Maybe it would be better to leave here and use the rock to set himself up somewhere else.
Suddenly, he lost consciousness.
Marge dropped the mundane, non-magical rock she had hit Robin on the head with and picked up the magic rock from his limp hands.
“Now I’ve got you” she cooed.