Summoned by Monster Girls

The door let out a loud squeal when I tugged on one. Because of the deformation from the dent, the door no longer swung cleanly in the jamb. It only made it about six inches before sticking with a thunk.

Glancing over my shoulder to check on the girls, I caught Rieka’s nod of encouragement while Kassandra gave me a thumbs up. Both girls had their spell rods drawn and held at the ready to cover me.

Nodding to them, I turned back to the door. First, I shifted my grip. Then, I shifted my body.

Shape-Shifting had given me a lot of utility so far, between adding natural weapons to my body or allowing me to meddle with my senses. This time, though, I just needed more power.

My arms bulged as I divided the roughly one hundred pounds of shifted mass I could access between both arms and to strengthen my back. I felt my torso swell against my leather armor and grunted at the pressure, but I only needed the extra mass for a moment. I gripped firmly and wrenched at the solid iron doors.

Screaming in protest, the two doors grated against the stone of the jamb before slamming open with an echoing bang. As soon as the doors moved, I let the shift fall away and shrank back to my normal size.

I hadn’t heard the seams in my shirt tearing during the whole motion. But, as I shrank, I could feel the ragged edges of my sleeves tickling my arms inside the armor.

Pushing that thought away, I slid to one side to give the girls a clear line of fire if anything came out of the darkness ahead of us. The lights that had lit the hallway and the other rooms did not continue into this larger space.

“I’m not seeing anything. Rieka?” Kassandra was the first to speak, and I heard the quiet rasp of her scales against stone.

“Nothing I can hear either,” the wolf-eared princess responded.

I glanced back to see my girls edging forward, still at the ready and wary. I held up a hand to slow them before turning my attention back to the dark room, trusting they would wait and give me the moment I needed.

Using that moment to focus, my eyes changed. I reminded myself before starting it to not consciously think about what was changing inside my skull, and just trust the power to not fuck up. Within seconds, my eyes enlarged and I took on the night sight of an owl. I trusted Rieka’s hearing on this, so rather than doing that as well, I focused on a different sense.

My face began to elongate as a muzzle emerged and I sniffed deeply at the air. I briefly wished that I’d taken enough time to research snakes before this trip, as the heat sense of a viper would have been handy, and I also remembered snakes supposedly having a very strong sense of smell. Sadly, I didn’t understand them enough to want to risk the change, yet.

The first scent I picked up was that of ancient dust and the faintest hint of long-past blood. The scent of my girls mostly masked those smells. Theirs was the scent of sweat and their soaps, as well as the faint odor that was unique to each girl. Kassandra had the scent of cinnamon and musk about her, while Rieka had an even stronger scent of herbs underlaid with the sharp scent of ozone that I was never sure if it clung to her skin, or her spell rod.

There was something else, though. Something that I couldn’t exactly name. It felt both familiar, and not. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. I could smell it, but only in comparison to the other scents in the room. As if my brain just did not have a source to reference it to.

Filing the odd scent away, I leaned forward and peered into the room.

The light shed by the enchanted stones in the girl’s off-hands was enough to illuminate part of the room, and it was a large one. The other summoning rooms had been around twenty-feet square, and this was easily four or five times that in size. Above, the ceiling loomed up and away, giving a good forty or fifty feet of space before the curved stone met in the center of the ceiling.

The floor was the same as the summoning rooms, the tiles of the hall ending abruptly at smooth stone. The smooth section did not go very deeply into the room, as the floor was littered with deep gouges and craters, as well as piled stone that had either fallen from above, or been gouged out of the walls during whatever ancient battle had taken place. The same hanging lamps that had been in most of the previous sections of the ruins had either been smashed or knocked free to land and shatter on the expanse of the damaged floor, joining the broken stone in cluttering it..

All except for the large summoning ring that sat at the center of the room.

Drawn on the floor in what appeared to be the same kind of ancient chalk as the others, this circle was drawn on the pale stone in a bright silver that shimmered in the reflected light of the girl’s glowing stones. Not a single bit of damage marked the ground where the circle was inscribed and if any rubble had landed in it, that rubble had been cleared away now. But a large portion of the diagram had been smeared and was illegible. This was obvious because of the large swaths of shimmering silver on one side of the meticulously inscribed ring. While everywhere else, it was still in neat and orderly shapes.

“Summoning circle, big one too,” I murmured to the girls, leaning forward further to scout the room before we left the hallway.

The piles of rubble made it hard to see clearly in the room, but I wanted to make sure nothing was hiding out of sight. The oppressive stillness of the ruins had built to where I felt like there were a dozen invisible creatures in the room that were staring directly at me, and it was making the hairs on my neck stand up and line dance.

“Be careful, Liam,” Rieka hissed, and I turned back to nod to her in agreement.

It was when I turned back to the room that I came eye to dome with a nightmare, and that bizarre scent I could not name filled my lungs.

I had barely half of a second to take in what I was looking at before it attacked.

The initial impression that I got was of a curved carapace, like the shadow-monsters had before. But, unlike them, it didn’t shine. Instead, it seemed to consume light that struck it and left behind only the impression of a rounded, almost bulbous head. That was all I could take in before the creature grabbed me and heaved me further into the room.

The screams of the girls echoed in my ears as I sailed a good twenty feet while turning in midair. This gave me the opportunity to take in the sight of the creature where it clung to the wall just above the door we were set to enter by. The one direction I hadn’t had the chance to check yet was, of course, up.

It was bunched up, with limbs sticking out at odd angles, and what felt like a dozen knobbly joints pointing in all directions that reminded me of a spider crouched on its web. The ‘head’ I had seen was perched on a long neck that protruded from an emaciated torso tucked amongst those bent limbs. Four long arms emerged, two to a side, from the torso. Those long arms ended in three-fingered hands that were tipped with wickedly long claws the creature used to cling to the stone. Its entire body was covered in that same light-drinking black skin that made it feel like a dark stain on reality.

“Liam!” I couldn’t tell which of my girls it was that was screaming my name, because that was the point I landed on the rubble-strewn ground. Hard.

I at least had the wherewithal to tuck and roll so I didn’t smack my head against a bit of rubble. The leather of my armor protected me from anything more than a bruise, but the impact still drove the air from my lungs.

The rattling hiss of anger that came from the monster made the air vibrate around me like a struck drum. I fought to right myself and go to the girls’ aid. A glance told me that the creature was reaching back into the tunnel with one long arm and my anger surged in my chest. As I scrambled to my feet, I felt my skin boil and both my right arm begin to shift and elongate.

“Hey, shitstain!” I screamed as loud as I could, the sound echoing in the large room oddly.

The bulbous head turned towards me, the faint pits that might have been its eyes turning away from the girls who were staring in shock at the beast as it loomed into the doorway. “Yeah, I was talking to you! Get away from them!” I lunged forward even as I grabbed at the terrain under the creature and yanked hard with all ten mana that I could summon up at once.

It occurred to me then, in one of those odd moments of passing clarity that you get as your adrenaline surges, that I could have used Manipulate Elements to open the door silently, rather than just brute force. Then the moment passed, and the four-foot-wide pillar of earth I’d just yanked out of the wall slammed the creature in its ass, and sent it tumbling into the room towards me in a flailing mass of bone-thin limbs.

I met it partway, having taken four long steps over the uneven ground before spinning into a turn that would slam my right fist into its body. The creatures’ flailing limbs came together to try to block the punch, but the blow was far more than just a regular punch.

The chitinous mass of the eighty-pound crab claw that I had shifted my forearm into slammed into the creature’s side with all the momentum and force I could put into it with my weight. I tried to get hold of the creature with the pincher, but the flailing limbs slipped away as the creature went tumbling into the center of the room in a sprawl of limbs. My heart was pounding in my ears and I could feel a faint, searing pain from my right arm. Glancing down at the red chitin of the claw, I saw several deep scores in the thick material. Even in midair, and without having the ability to properly brace, the creature had clawed the hell out of my arm.

Need to be faster if I’m going to get hold of it, I thought and quickly began pushing through different ideas in my head as the creature scrambled to its feet with a wordless hiss of fury that made the air tremble. I saw movement in the corner of my eye and turned to see the girls beginning to emerge from the tunnel.

“No! Stay back in cover, you two. The tunnel is easier to defend than open ground. Just fire from there!” I shouted to them and got a nod from Rieka, who was pale as a sheet but with her face set in a stern expression.

“Kass, throw the spare light stones into the room so we can see better, then start chipping away at it. Don’t ice the floor, Liam might slip.”

“Got it. You better stay safe, Liam!” My redheaded lover was scowling furiously, but I could tell she was even paler than normal in worry. A moment later, my serpentine lover tossed several of the glowing stones into the room to illuminate it, and I took the opportunity to shift my eyes and nose back to normal.

The monster had managed to right itself now, and it stood to its full height. The creature had to be at least ten feet tall, but it didn’t look like it weighed much more than I did, just based on how skinny it was. It had five legs radiating from a central joint that sat where the waist of its torso would be, and the legs had a good four or so joints to them, as if someone had built a gross approximation of a spider using the bodies of starvation victims. The torso was just as thin as the legs, with that light-drinking black skin clinging tight to its bones, though far longer than mine. The monster’s bulbous head pulsed as it thrashed back and forth on the neck, but the hissing noise came from down low on its body while its four arms spread wide.

With a smooth motion, the creature ducked low and scooped up a fist sized bit of broken stone and threw it at me with all the force of a major league pitcher. I had just enough time to push Shape-Shifting to reinforce my right arm while I moved the enormous claw into place like a shield. The stone impacted the heavy plate of chitin with a solid thunk and bounced off, but left behind an ache that I knew would translate into a bruise given time.

Peeking over the edge of my crab-claw, I saw the creature rear up and lash the air with its front two feet. I finally spotted where the hissing noise was coming from.

A salivating mouth, shaped like a lamprey’s nightmarish, puckered maw, was set in the middle of the creature’s legs. The mouth was lined with teeth that glimmered like black glass, the only part of its body that reflected the light, and they flexed outwards when it hissed. Spittle dribbled from underneath the creature’s body to land on the ground and begin to eat away at the stone silently.

“Bolt Chain!”

“Ice Lance!”

My girls had not been idle in the time between throwing the light stones out and now. The two spells slammed into the creature’s body with fervor, and the monster screamed in surprise.

The ice tore off one of its four arms at the spindly shoulder joint, sending a spray of black ichor into the air that began to eat away at the stone when it contacted the ground. Rieka’s lightning bolt caught it above the joint of one leg and the limb began to flail and spasm furiously, but the other four limbs worked together to help it scramble away from the glittering chain of lightning.

Taking my opportunity, I charged forward. A thought struck me as I lunged between the stones and I seized on it without hesitation. It was keeping away from me, trying to circle around to reach the girls, so I had to be quicker than it. The creature was fast, shuffling sideways and actually breaking the lightning chain by grounding it out on the side of the doorway that the girls sheltered behind. As soon as it did, the beast lunged at me with its three remaining arms slashing.

I had to abort my charge and duck to one side in a roll to avoid its counterattack. But a moment later, another spear of ice lashed past me. The shadow beast dodged that, aborting its own attack to avoid the spear of magical ice that would have caught it in the chest.

“Spark Net!” I stayed on the ground as the shimmering sphere of lightning flashed past me. As soon as it was gone, I jumped to my feet and implemented my plan. If Rieka’s spell could slow it down, my idea might work to counter this devilish speed.

The sphere of lightning popped almost a foot away from the monster, just as it was getting ready to dodge. The crackling corona of lightning lashed out, and the beast squealed in surprise as the electricity disrupted its motor control for just a second.

Both my arms flowed and changed. My elbow reversed as my arms folded in half and I raised my arms up like a boxer in a ready stance, but rather than holding out my fists, my elbows were what was aimed at it instead as my hands flowed and changed shape.

Before I could reach it, the creature had shaken off the lightning and scampered away again. This time it circled deeper into the room to put the summoning circle between it and me.

I pursued it relentlessly as the girls continued to pepper it with spells. The creature kept ahead of me, throwing rocks every so often or dodging with a disjointed rush when it needed to, but the girls were wearing it down. Kassandra would corral it into a spot with her spell, and Rieka would slam it with a bolt of lightning a moment later, then they would switch.

Screaming in pain, the creature finally had enough and charged forward, its two remaining arms — Rieka had claimed one as well with a lucky spell to an already damaged joint — windmilled in front of it as it sought to plow over top of me to reach the girls. But I was ready this time.

Rather than dodge, I met the charge as it finally chose to close with me. It juked to one side to avoid me, but not fast enough. The knob of chitin that had replaced my hand snapped forward in the blink of an eye and shattered the closest knee joint with a sharp crunch of impact. Before the creature could react, I fired off with my left arm as the right retracted. The left club slammed into another knee in the forward leg and the monster began to crumple towards me, arms flailing.

Another blow, as fast as a gunshot, smashed one of its clawed hands as they came for my face, before the left snapped into its emaciated chest and caved in a softball-sized lump of its midnight hide.

The girls hadn’t been content to wait. Kassandra had taken advantage of the creature’s stumble to slam another spear of magical ice into the base of one of the legs, ripping it off in another spray of blood. A questing chain of lightning wrapped around the creature’s bulbous head where it bobbed above me. The creature screamed in pain while electricity poured through its body.

Tucking both my clubs back in order to wind up for my next series of blows, I couldn’t help but thank the pluckiest, and likely most dangerous, shrimp of them all for the inspiration for this shift. I fired off both of the dactyl clubs, which was what my arms had shifted into, directly into the already damaged chest of the monster like a mantis shrimp in search of its dinner. Which felt appropriate, since it was that feisty little crustacean that I had taken the idea of my new arms from.

The one-two blow completed what my previous left-hand shot had started. Its rib cage crunched and collapsed entirely, bones the same shimmering obsidian color as the teeth punched out of the frail skin like a fast-growing forest. The creature collapsed with a wheeze and a whimper, but the girls did not let up.

Rieka continued to pump electricity into its head, focusing it through her Bolt Chain spell, while Kassandra continued to drive spears of ice into the corpse until it stopped moving.

“Rieka, you can stop!” I called after the creature stopped twitching.

I wasn’t sure if my wolf-eared princess was going to listen, but a second or two after I spoke, she completed the circuit and flicked the other end of the chain into the corpse with a pop. It didn’t even twitch now, though the stone was melting under the body as the blood flowed across the ground and the body began to collapse inwards.

There was something eerily familiar about how the body was dissolving the stone. It didn’t boil like acid would, it just slowly began to dissolve the floor.

I kept watch on the body while slowly backing towards the girls, but I only made it three steps before a flying, platinum-blonde projectile struck me from behind.