The Trials of Trass Kathra by Mike Wild

undeniable. If that was the case, he had to be certain she got there. And to do that, he had to get her out of the deathtrap that his own curse had stuck her in.
    Moon broke suddenly from his introspection, and began to slam his fist on the stone floor of the chamber, making Kali start at the unexpected violence of it. As he continued and the skin of his fists split, leaking blood, she tried to stop him, but he shrugged her off, intent on achieving what could be their only salvation.
    “What the hells are you doing?” Kali asked.
    “Leaving,” the old man said, simply.
    His blows became more powerful because he became more powerful, his head snapping back and the irises of his eyes changing as he purposefully unleashed his inner ogur – and what he had found lay beyond the inner ogur. Sitting in the corner of the shrinking chamber, Kali swallowed, because although she had witnessed his transformation into Thrutt a number of times, what was happening now went far beyond anything she had ever seen.
    Every muscle in the old man’s body was expanding, he himself becoming taller, broader, bigger, and with the extra strength this granted him he was able to shatter the stone of the floor and expose the gears beneath. These, too, he pounded, though not mindlessly, and suddenly the contractions of the Bevvel’s Conundrum became more pronounced and more frequent, reducing the area of their confinement by half in a matter of seconds.
    “Old man...?” Kali said.
    The chamber jerked inward once more, and Merrit Moon stood.
    “Get beneath me,” he said. There was a timbre in his voice deeper than any previously heard. Kali looked at him, saw his expression, and obeyed, huddling in the old man’s shadow, though the truth was he appeared hardly old, in fact hardly a man, any more.
    The chamber shuddered again, and Kali felt the cold touch of stone nudging at her heels.
    It was at that moment that the light went out. The old man’s explosion of anger had subsided but, instead, she heard a low growl. An inhuman and even un ogur-like growl. The growl of something incredibly powerful. And then the growl turned into a roar and she heard the sound of massive fists punching outward, fists which shattered the stone around them, reducing the walls of the Bevvel’s Conundrum to dust.
    As the dust settled, she looked up. Something massive and incapable of speech loomed over her. But its message, as it offered her a hand, was clear.
    Time to go.
    Kali followed the beast like creature to the exit from the cavern, watching its form dwindle as they progressed upward. By the time they reached the surface, Merrit Moon was almost himself again, though Kali couldn’t shake the image of the old man’s transformation from her mind, far more violent, far more dramatic than it had ever been. She waited until his breathing steadied before asking the question that had to be asked.
    “Merrit, what happened to you down there?”
    Moon raised his eyes to meet hers. “I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
    Kali smiled, touched the old man’s arm with its enlarged cartilage, tendons and muscle that even now throbbed and pulsed beneath the skin.
    “You could never frighten me, old man. I’m just concerned. I don’t understand what’s going on...”
    “Then that makes two of us.”
    “It’s unlike you not to have some kind of theory.”
    “Oh, I have a theory, all right. But you’re not going to like it.”
    “ Tell me .”
    “I’m staring to believe...” Merrit began, then paused.
    “What, old man?”
    “I’m starting to believe that I was never meant to leave the World’s Ridge Mountains. I mean after what happened, after I died. That it happened, how and where it did, for a reason.”
    “The ogur cave?”
    “The ogur cave,” Moon repeated. “I think it’s.... calling to me.”
    “What?”
    “Don’t ask me to explain it – I can’t. But I think there was far more to my transformation than corruption by the soul scythe. A