96
You press home your attack and lash out at the woman with your Kai Weapon to prevent her from launching another psychic assault. Your blow misses her by inches, yet she collapses upon the ground like a dying beast. You bring your horse around in readiness to make a second strike, but you do not follow it through. Before your disbelieving eyes the woman’s body begins to change. Her marble-smooth skin becomes criss-crossed with a net of a thousand wrinkles and her abdomen swells like an over-inflated balloon. Then there is a terrible sound, like the rending of bone and flesh, and suddenly the illusion of her beauty is dispelled forever when this fell vampiric shape-changer reverts to its true form.
Confronting you now is a leprous horror with a huge, fang-filled maw. It roars with anger and a gust of its putrid breath wafts over you, turning your stomach with its vile stench. The rangers and their horses are snapped out of their hypnotic trance by the sound of its fearsome cry and, gripped by a sudden panic, they turn and flee into the trees. Hurriedly you follow them, forcing your mount to battle its way through a tangle of barb-toothed briar in your desperation to evade the wrath of the demonic forest creature.
