Vell stood as tall as the treetops. He felt a strange rush of embarrassment as he looked down on the disbelieving faces of his friends and allies as they rushed to keep clear.
Hissing, snarling, Keirkrad sprang from the ground into the air. His physical weakness was erased by his bat-form, and he landed on Vell's vast face, clamping on with his claws and wrapping his huge wings over Vell's eyes. Vell charged, partly to keep Keirkrad away from the others, and partly to disturb Keirkrad's grip, the ground trembling as he did so. He blindly strode into the River Delimbiyr. A massive splash drenched the river's banks, and Vell waded into the middle of the river.
Vell felt the shocking coldness of the water rush up his massive limbs, reaching his brain with the intensity of a thunder strike. He dunked his head into the water, dousing Keirkrad. All around them, currents and eddies swirled, formed by the sudden intrusion of Vell's bulk. The werebat clung, squeezing more and more tightly on Vell's face; but he could not maintain his grip, and drifted away in the rapids.
Vell watched Keirkrad's huge wings vainly struggling against the water, their fine bones and leathery covering inadequate against the Delimbiyr's onrush. Then the water swirled around him, forming a whirlpool and a wall that protected him, and Keirkrad magically lifted above the Delimbiyr's surface. Beating his wings steadily to dry himself and stay aloft, he looked toward Vell with a perverse grin as he faced the lizard in the middle of the river.
"I am no longer human, perhaps," Keirkrad taunted. "But a cleric I am still." He spat out a prayer, and when Vell tried to urge his vast body to action, he could not move. A vicious torpidity seized his limbs and held him captive in the middle of the river, where the chill still assaulted his senses. He urged his animal body to action, but it would not answer. He was still as a statue, and the cold numbed his senses. He could barely feel his legs beneath him.
How could I have been so stupid? Vell asked himself. He had no way of knowing how long he could maintain his beast form, especially while paralyzed.
When he lapsed back to his human shape, he would be at Keirkrad's mercy.
A loud roar filled the air. A burst of sound caught Keirkrad and blasted him out of the air with such force that he landed beyond the south bank, clapping his clawed hands to his ears. From the corner of his eye, Vell saw Kellin standing on the river bank, Thanar alongside her. He could only guess that they were trying to dissolve the magic that held him.
Keirkrad unfurled his wings and flew across the river, bound for the druid and the sorceress. Thunderbeast hammers and arrows assailed him, but they bounced off as if he were solid metal. When he swooped down to harry Kellin and Thanar, Rask Urgek planted a blow solidly in his face with the Tree Ghosts' club, sending Keirkrad reeling, but leaving him aloft. His nose was smashed, and blood dripped down his face. He let out a high-pitched chirp of pain.
Thluna ran at Keirkrad with the greataxe, but Keirkrad ably dodged, and it slashed through empty air next to him. Too heavy for Thluna to wield properly, the axe went astray, and its head embedded deep in the ground. Keirkrad let out a twisted laugh as he swooped.
"Leave it to a true man to handle such weapons," the werebat taunted. "It is beyond a mere boy such as you."
Rask swung the club at him again, but missed. Keirkrad beat his wings furiously, lifting himself till he was just above the half-orc's head. He lowered a clawed foot, several of its toes missing, to Rask's face with his sharp nails and raked his throat. Before Rask could react, Keirkrad murmured a dark spell. A ravenous maw sprouted from the underside of his foot, a ring of teeth that snapped and sank hungrily onto Rask's chin.
The half-orc screamed with pain. He dropped the club, and his hands grabbed at the werebat's foot, but the fangs only sank deeper. Snarling in pleasure, Keirkrad beat his wings and began to lift Rask off the ground.
Thluna pulled at the shaft of the battle-axe, freeing it from the earth. He took another swing at Keirkrad, more quickly than the shaman had expected. Keirkrad released Rask, letting the half-orc tumble to the ground. The werebat dodged wildly, but Thluna's swing clipped one of his broad leathery wings, ripping it halfway through. Keirkrad flapped his great wings uncertainly. He hissed as he looked down on his enemies, yet he gained control of his flight. Blood ran from his smashed nose and dribbled onto the grass below.
Kellin and Thanar's magic unbound Vell from his paralysis in the Delimbiyr, and he struggled to move his chilled legs. With slow, steady steps, he lumbered to the shore, his vast brown lizard eyes locked on Keirkrad's hovering form. But he was so weak, his energy drained from him, that he felt his behemoth form shuddering and realized it would soon leave him. Soon, he would be Vell again and subject to Keirkrad's scheme. What would happen if Keirkrad succeeded in infecting them all with lycanthropy? Would all Vell's power vanish, or would it be shaped in some hideous new way? What would remain of himself?
In his moments of contemplation and weakness, Vell felt the transformation stirring. He rallied the last of his energy into a charge at Keirkrad. The others dodged to safety as the drenched behemoth thundered across the field. Keirkrad prepared to fly out of reach, but his damaged wing slowed him, and he could not rise high enough before the juggernaut collided with him at full speed. Vell knocked Keirkrad from the air with a swing of his mighty neck.
The world around Vell faded and shifted as he focused on the object of his rage. Brown eyes locked on the two bloodshot eyes that had such little humanity left in them. Even when Keirkrad was at his very worst, he was at least human. Now the elements of his humanity had been sacrificed for this sick taint.
Is this what I will become? thought Vell as he continued his assault. He was no longer conscious of his own body, human or behemoth; that awareness floated away on a sea of desperate fury. All of the anger he had held in check against the Shepherds, and against those of his own tribe who had shunned him for a lifetime, he unleashed on Keirkrad. He sated his need for vengeance against all those who had made him this amalgam of man and beast. He cried, weeping tears of rage for all the blows he had absorbed in his life. His tears dripped onto Keirkrad's snarling face below him.
They dripped from human eyes.
When his senses cleared, Vell found his bare hands locked around Keirkrad's neck, the werebat underneath him, pinned and struggling on the ground. Pulling back in shock, he released his grip just in time for the axe to swing down and slice through Keirkrad's throat. Thluna's blow separated the werebat's head from its body and sent it rolling away.
Vell weakly pulled himself to his feet, wiping streaks of tears from his cheeks. Beneath him sprawled the open-winged remnants of the man who had been their shaman for longer than any Thunderbeast could remember. Vell stared down on the spectacle of ruin, appalled. The ugly bat face rolled to a stop and lay facedown in the dirt.
Thanar rushed over to heal Rask's wound. Much to the half-orc's relief, the druid discovered that he had not been infected with lycanthropy.
"I loved him," Vell reflected. "Our shaman. All my childhood I was told to love him, and so I did."
"That's true of us all," said Thluna. He propped up the axe and cleaned the blade of Keirkrad's blood. "But it was not our shaman of old we just killed."
"Is that truly so?" Vell asked. "I wonder."
Kellin stood near Vell and placed a sympathetic hand on his arm. She felt a tremble as her flesh touched his.
"It's sad that Keirkrad had to die," she said. "But it's for the best."