>>5308538>>5308585>>5308597>>5308616>>5308652You decide to pursue the retreating beast. Your enhanced form makes you faster than before, and it isn’t exactly the speediest quarry around to begin with. Better yet, your slight increase in size allows you to brace your bac against the stone of the shaft it is ascending, and to gradually shimmy yourself up after it. It would be even faster going if you could use your elongated claws but, alas, your gauntlets currently preclude this, and you’d waste even more time descending to remove them before starting anew.
Your allies follow you as far as they can, but none of them have the size or vertical leap needed to properly ascend that shaft. Instead, the kobolds begin clambering a top one another to form a sort of ladder for one of their number (Ivno? You think?) to crawl up after you. He follows you, a knife clutched in his teeth, and a small pickaxe serving to help him climb. His bravery is impressive—altogether different from what you’ve heard of kobolds, and have come to expect from your handy defeat of their people.
It is a tiring ascent, for the shaft is quite long. You are continually plagued by the fear that the <Improved Dragonshape> spell will fade, taking your enhanced strength with it, but you persevere, and eventually reach the creature’s lair. It is a smooth-walled dome of stale air and rot-stink amidst the solid stone, a bubble of cooled volcanic rock pock-marked by holes; the largest of these give way to more tunnels like that which you just ascended. For a moment you fear you will have to chase this ugly tongue-beast through these tunnels for an even LONGER stretch of time, but luckily for you (you think), it has clearly tired of this pursuit and decided to make its final stand.
The creature croaks at you like some great toad. Ohle, battered and bruised and barely conscious, whimpers beneath of it his captor’s great, flat feet. ‘Hands’ like fleshy, spike-studded stumps flex as the tongue-monster eyes you, its massive oral appendage still hanging freely, flopping angrily in some threat display. When you approach, it swings out at you like a warhammer, narrowly missing with a blow that probably could have concussed you had it connected. Still, attacking from range is a dangerous proposition: you’ve seen this thing’s layers of fat eat crossbow bolts (some of which are still sticking out of it!) without any apparent lasting effect, and firebreath risks frying your kobold ally. You’ve come to far to just cook him alive NOW!
