A Load of Bull: Part II

"Are you sure about this, I mean, after last time?" Rahkuri asked. "You were just returned to your normal form a few days ago."

"I'm totally sure! What could go wrong?" I grinned my most reassuring tiefling grin as I studied a tome with a new polymorph spell.

It had been one of the few things left from the stash of the sorcerer we had defeated nearly a tenday ago. Almost everything else had to be sold to pay a high level cleric to dispel the sorcerer's polymorph spell he had cast on me, and not a moment too soon as the bovine mind had begun to take more control the longer I held that form. I could still taste grass in my mouth. What a load of bull.

"I would laugh if we weren't so broke again." Rikin said, giving a toothy smirk and shaking his head despite himself. "Not like you're trying to turn yourself into a giant, carnivorous dinosaur. Oh wait." He chuckled.

"While it may be you are attempting to achieve transformation into some... primal kin of mine..." Gexis started. "I must admit to some reservations myself."

"No worries! That's why we came this far from town to begin with. No people - just a great big field surrounded by trees on all said, malms from everything!"

As I started to cast the polymorph on myself, green light shined from my eyes, danced like tiny flames from my fingertips, then enveloped me as I began to grow. My dark blue hair fell out as greenish scales started to cover my purple-hued skin and my bones thickened and grew with the rest of my body in a grotesquely enthralling scene. Rikin stood at the tree line, puffing warily on his pipe, ready to run as opposed to becoming an appetizer if things went south. Rahkuri started calling on Re-Horakhty, casting Shield of Faith, and Gexis clenched his great axe as he held it defensively in front of himself.

Up and up I went as my companions seemed to shrink away below me. Sight from my silver orbs seemed only to worsen as a hunger grew inside me. I smelled the blood of a fresh kill from some much smaller predator a short distance into the woods and found myself salivating. Just as I reached the peak of my transformation into the king of dinosaurs, the tyrannosaurus rex itself, I felt satisfied with the achievement and decided it was a good time to end the polymorph - and then there was a commotion in the trees to the west. A hunting dog came baying after a deer and they both bolted out of the forest into the field. A primal bloodlust took me over as I felt myself begin to move after them.

"Casreus! End the spell!" Rahkuri yelled, not quite reaching my own stifled consciousness as I stomped ahead, smelling the large, meaty doe entrée and the hound that followed closely after.

The deer turned sharply, running back toward the tree line to the northwest of us, just as the poor pup noticed the larger predator and turned tail back the direction it had come from. I continued after the larger prey and before long was crashing through the woods, felling trees more easily than a band of lumberjacks.

"Casreus! Stop, damn you!" Gexis roared as my companions chased after me.

I was able to close on the deer easily, and in moments I was having a meal of fresh venison. My friends were able to follow me easily with the large path I had left in my wake. Seeing that I was otherwise occupied with lunch, they took care to sneak up slowly behind me. Rahkuri kept her shield at the ready as they whispered of a plan involving something in Rikin's pouch and a backup plan that involved the blunt side of Gexis's great axe and my skull.

"Now!" Rahkuri shouted as they sprung into motion. Rikin sprang out in front of me, risking my maw as he tossed a fistful of sleeping powder at my nostrils - but his luck was terrible and it only caused me to let out a prehistoric sneeze that blew him to the tree tops. Gexis, in the meantime, had run up my back from my tail and lifted his great axe high over his head, but the sneeze that had blown unfortunate Rikin away shook me so forcefully that he fell to the ground and was knocked unconscious with his own weapon.

The sounds of merriment and the smell of cooking meat drew my attention further into the woods and away from my fellow party members, my most recent meal finished and falling away from my short memory. As I left a torpid Gexis behind with Rahkuri trying to rouse him and tend his wounds, likely his dragonborn pride more than anything else, something landed on my head, but I took no notice and continued smashing through the forest toward my new target. As I got closer any sounds of revelry had ceased, but the smell of cooking flesh remained.

Silence turned to shouts of surprise and cries of fear (it was my first time truly smelling an emotion, this fear) as some in the bandit camp took up weapons while others fled. The first and bravest was gone in two bites, only his sword and a boot left on the ground. I didn't feel or see Rikin as he hopped down off my head and headed to the fire pit while I swallowed the first bandit down my gullet. As I turned to the next bandit, one who had turned to flee and tripped over a tent post, I felt something bite into my haunches and turned to see a spear sticking out of my right thigh.

I bellowed out an earth-shaking roar, causing the rest of the bandits to flee as I crushed the one lying prone under my massive foot then snatched the spear from my flank with my teeth. Rahkuri and Gexis again had no trouble finding or catching up with me but made sure to stay out of site as Rikin cut back around behind me to rejoin them. My brief moment of pain, like everything else, took a backseat to my insatiable appetite as I lifted my foot to devour a bandit pancake then made my way to the fire pit where a boar was roasting.

Biting down on the roast boar seemed heavenly on my massive tongue as I ripped it from the spit. I enjoyed the tasty, greasy treat and suddenly began to feel very sleepy, and a few moments later I was falling, falling...

I was relieved to wake up back in tiefling form, then started to panic when I realized I was being carried by someone large while my hands and feet were bound.

"Let me go or I'll... I'll bite you, whoever you are, you big buffoon!" I started, then realized as I was hitting their back with my rope-bound hands that they were covered in black scales. "Ah, Gexis. Why are you carrying me?"

"We wanted to get back to town before dark and you were knocked out." Gexis replied.

"Blunt and straightforward as always, but always honest. Thanks." I said. "Could you let me down now that I am awake?"

Gexis sat me down and Rikin came over to undo my bindings with his dagger.

"Thanks you. Why was I bound, again?" I asked.

"Rahkuri likes it that way." Rikin chuckled behind me as he bent to cut the rope around my feet while I rubbed my unbound wrists.

"Just wanted to be sure you weren't still a danger to anyone, is all." Rahkuri said as she attempted to throw a backhand at Rikin who just grinned and ducked away.

"I suppose that makes sense enough..." I said. "At least everything went okay. Until it went wrong."

I belched as I stood myself up, tasting boar and I didn't want to think about what else.

"It went wrong as soon as you uttered the words, and I quote, 'what could go wrong?'" Rahkuri replied with a mocking grin.

"No, it went wrong long before that." said Gexis. "Back when we decided to join in adventure with a smartass tiefling druid."

"Hey! I'm supposed to be the smartass in this merry band!" Rikin said, feigning offended.

"Don't worry." I grinned. "Even for your 'shortcomings' you're the biggest smartass in the group. By the way, how did I come to pass out in that form? I know I did not merely tire myself out, and it didn't seem to me like a turkey coma..."

"After the sleep dust didn't work the first time we tried to stop you," Rikin said after kicking my shin for my cheap verbal jab, "I dropped from the tree top and rode on your head until you decided to make a chew toy out of the first bandit you came to, then I marinated that roast boar with my last two sleep potions - which you now owe me for, by the way."

"It sure didn't hurt the taste of the meat, by any means..." I said, salivating involuntarily at the memory of the slab of tender boar in my giant T-rex mouth.

"Now that this little side misadventure is over," Rahkuri said, "it's time to get on with our real mission."

"Indeed." Gexis replied. "And this time let us make sure we kill the right sorcerer."

For some reason I couldn't help but wonder what a half-elf sorcerer might taste like.