Cale whipped free his blade and holy symbol.
Dreeve, understanding nothing, and seeing only that Cale had drawn, snarled, leaped backward, and unslung his axe.
"Cale," Jak began.
"Treachery!" shouted Gez in Common, and he howled.
"You'll die for this, human," barked Dreeve, who brandished his axe.
He barked orders in his own tongue.
Behind Cale, Jak and Riven pulled their steel.
The rest of the pack, hackles up, pelted forward, goaded on by Gez.
Cale saw immediately that the situation could only go from bad to worse. Clutching his holy symbol, he whispered a hurried prayer to Mask. Impenetrable darkness cloaked the area, darkness through which only Cale could see.
The gnolls arrested their charge, but Dreeve, undeterred despite his blindness, lunged forward and swept his axe in a semicircle. Cale dodged out of reach, got behind Riven and Jak, and grabbed both by the cloaks.
"It's me," Cale said above the growling gnolls, to stop Riven from slicing open his chest.
He pulled both of them beyond the border stones and out of the darkness.
Rapidly, Cale said, "Gez is one of Vraggen's shapeshifters; the female from Stormweather. Jak, stay back and counter any spell she attempts to cast. She shows that teleportation rod, incapacitate it."
Jak shook his head and replied, "No, Cale! I-"
"This isn't the one that hurt you, Jak," Cale told him. "I need you to do this."
Jak held his gaze for a moment before nodding and taking his holy symbol in his hand.
Cale turned to Riven and said, "This one doesn't get away. Understood?"
Riven gave a hard smile and readied his sabers.
"I've no problem with that," the assassin said. "Get rid of that darkness and let's work."
Within the globe of darkness, the gnolls, too stupid or untrained to stop moving and listen, instead snarled and hacked about with their axes. It was pure luck that they hadn't yet killed each other. Dreeve alone maintained his calm. He stood in a defensive crouch, sniffing, and barking for quiet, but his pack did not heed. The Gez imitator edged away from the rest of the gnolls toward the left of Cale's sphere of darkness.
"To our right," Cale said to Riven.
Riven crouched, whirled his blades once, and said, "Do it."
With a mental command, Cale dispelled the darkness. For a fraction of a heartbeat, the gnoll pack stood confused. Cale and Riven leaped the stones and sped past them at Gez.
The woman in Gez's form saw them coming and her lips curled back from her teeth. Surreptitiously, she made a pass with her hand and began an incantation.
From behind, Jak's voice rose in answer, chanting a counter spell, and when the impostor finished whatever spell she intended to cast, nothing happened.
Just a pace or two away from Gez, Riven's voice rose and he shouted a word of power in the dire tongue Cale sometimes heard him utter in his sleep. The pronouncement caused vomit to rush up Cale's throat, slowing him, but he swallowed it down. Gez recoiled as though struck, grimacing.
Following up on the opening, Riven bounded forward. Sabers whirled, stabbing and slashing. Gez, still partially stunned, could not parry them all and the assassin opened a gash in the false gnoll's side and forearm. Cale lunged forward to attack from the other side, a low stab, a reverse slash, and an overhand chop. The impostor took wounds in her thigh, chest, and shoulder. She careened backward.
"Show yourself, bitch," Cale taunted.
The wounds they had inflicted began to close. The false Gez recovered herself, grinned, and winked.
From behind them, Jak shouted, "Look at his wounds, Dreeve! See how they heal? Look! That's not one of yours, but a shapeshifting demon from the lake!"
With surprising quickness, the impostor pounced forward and went on the attack. Spinning and ducking, she slammed her axe haft into Riven's ribs and forced Cale backward with a flurry of vicious swings. When the false gnoll had a moment to catch her breath, she shouted something in the gnoll tongue and gestured at Cale and Riven, no doubt an attempt to convince her packmates to assist her.
The rest of the gnolls hesitated, pointed, muttered. Cale didn't need to understand their tongue to know what they said. Gez didn't fight like a gnoll, and his wounds healed too fast.
More muttering. Still the gnolls did nothing. Cale could sense their fear.
Seeing the hesitation in the eyes of his packmates, the false Gez no longer tried to hide her true nature. She held up a hand, pointed it at Cale, and began to mouth arcane words.
Again Jak's voice rose in answer, a counter to whatever the creature had intended. The shapeshifter's spell fizzled in a stream of impotent black energy that leaked from her fingertips.
That was enough for the gnolls. Seeing one of their own casting spells told them all they needed to know. They backed farther away from the combat, looking to Dreeve for guidance. The gnoll leader seemed too surprised to act.
Hoping to catch the impostor off-guard, Cale lunged forward, blade low. Preternaturally quick, the shapeshifter danced backward, knocked Cale's long sword out of position with her axe, and punched Cale in the nose. Warm blood washed down his face. Eyes watering, he stumbled backward, keeping his long sword in a defensive position as best he could.
The creature might have finished him then, but Riven bounded forward and stabbed the false gnoll through the side with both sabers, halfway to the hilts.
"Let's see you heal that," the assassin hissed.
The impostor's legs buckled, and she growled in pain, but still she managed to smash the base of her axe haft into Riven's jaw. Blood flew from the assassin's mouth. He staggered backward and fell, leaving both blades buried in his enemy's flesh.
The shapeshifter roared, jerked Riven's blades free, and began to change form.
Gez's body contorted and twisted, growing broader, more muscular. Fur shrank and vanished into leathery green skin. The head expanded while the muzzle shortened, finally exploding into a huge mouth filled with teeth. Clawed fingers and splayed feet sprouted from the elongated arms and thick legs.
That was too much for the gnolls, who had been watching the combat from a distance. As one, the pack barked its terror and began to flee back the way they had come. Even Dreeve ran.
Moments later, more shouting and the sound of metal ringing on metal sounded from the woods in the direction the gnolls had fled.
Cale and Riven, both bleeding, shared a look. What new foe was this?
They had no way to know. Cale gripped his holy symbol tightly.
The creature didn't appear surprised by the combat happening in the woods behind her. She looked at Cale with dark eyes.
"You wished to see me, Erevis Cale," she said. "See me now."
With that, she leaped at him, quick as a viper, and knocked him to the ground. Her weight pushed the air from Cale's lungs and cracked several ribs. He tried to bring his long sword to bear but she pinned his arm in a vise grip. Her other claw raked his throat-only the stiff leather collar of his armor kept him alive. He punched at her with his offhand.
With an almost casual bite, she snapped off Cale's hand just above the wrist and devoured it whole.
Pain exploded in his brain. He screamed in agony, and thumped at her with a stump spraying blood. She tore at his chest, his arm, his throat.
From behind, Cale heard Jak exclaim in a rage, "Bitch!"
And the halfling was upon her, trying to get her off of Cale. He stabbed with his dagger and his short sword. Twice, three times he punctured her skin.
Cale was losing consciousness. He couldn't breathe. Blood poured from his arm with each beat of his heart. Through eyes gone blurry, he watched her rake Jak across his face. The power of the blow sent the halfling sprawling to the ground.