A Knot of Serpents
Fifth Day of Olweje-eza (Olweje Ascendant), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)
Drums on stone echo, the voice of blood in your ears, the voice of breath drawn too fast, the call of bronze striking flesh, and on your arm the shield grows not heavy but light as a feather with the call of its master. The horn echoes... and war is summoned forth in the spark of red flame and the flash of bright bronze. Strange is the 'hall' and stranger its master, but you know sure at the sight of hulking flesh and twisted metal in this place, you fight and you bleed, you win or you die.
The 'beast' roars and its voice is still that of a man, not as the raiders you have slain, as hands clasped before him Wanderer calls out to the ghosts of his grandsires and Tom speaks a prayer to Saint Michael for victory, as Zaia drinks deep of some flesh-shaping concoction and to your right Esha stands in a darkness of her own weaving, as hard as steel mail.
Light gleams off the edge of poisoned blade, not red and not the white of the mage lanterns, but all the colors flowing off the patina of arcane oils.
"For what we are about to do forgive us if we act in ignorance..." you add your own prayer, softly spoken. With only the word of the Worm that these are foes worth slaying you can but hope that you will find forgiveness if you were ill counseled.
"Now..."
The word is lost in the wet slurp as the flesh of the beast under you opens and a pair of beasts not like any mortal creatures is birthed from the depths. Scaled they are like fishes and the scales part before Tom's spear as he pierces them, horned they are like rams and one of them flies under the blade of Durendal, beaked they are like birds upon the head that grows from their backs and it snaps under Wanderer's blow. Still somehow the first of them does not die until Zaia hurls a vial of flame into its gaping maw, then in a flash of impossible flame and cacking laughing-crying-screaming... it is
not.
It is not dead, something inside you proclaims, sure as sunrise, something of that sort cannot die, only be banished for a while even as arrows of light fly from Esha's fingers and glance off the hide of the other.
"All things pass into the depths, all are judged," Inge chants in the tongue of her people and the ice does fall, battering across its scaly hide, but the ice does not bite any deeper. The bear charges it and with claws of steel rips into its guts even as the monster is hurled back from the rest of your company wounded but far from bested.
Swift as an eel in murky waters the thing slips the tearing claws even with Tom shouting a warning. For a moment it almost seems like the thing is tearing itself apart, flesh ripping off bones even as they shift and crackle, but the flaps of skin become wings like a bat yet colored as the tail of a peacock even as the two heads merge into a single one, bone beak long and sharp like a sword. It takes to the air right towards the same opening you had climbed down into.
It is only then that you notice it is not taking wing quite alone. Swift Pebble had somehow jumped onto its back mid-change, cutting the shifting tendons in a shower of ichor-becoming-blood.
What do you do?
[] Write in plan
OOC: For anyone wondering Swift Pebble also contributed to the death of the first Protean but Roland can only look in so many places at once and she is by far the smallest combatant, plus it just looked cooler to have her jumping on the back of a magic pteranodon to be her interaction. She was the only one who rolled initiative before the enemy and so I had her hold it fluff wise until it was distracted, hard to get more distracted than growing wings. 
