Hrazfel hit the fortress like a dropped anvil.
He activated his magic halfway down — the storm-blue swelling across his skin, the lightning waking in his eyes — and the giant form took the impact that the dwarf alone never could have.
He struck the center of the snow-dusted courtyard and the stone erupted, a crater blooming outward, flagstones flung in every direction, a thunderclap of dust and noise rolling out across the entire mountaintop castle.
He came up out of the crater roaring, alive, four meters of furious blue muscle — and immediately surrounded.
They came from everywhere at once. Monks. Dozens of them, pouring out of doorways and down stairs and off the walls, every one of them wearing the body of a child — pale, smooth-faced, terribly young, and terribly wrong once you knew what was underneath.
