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“Find out what?” Ferroc asked. “How it feels to be crushed by a twelve-ton boulder?”

“To find out why the mountain is rumbling.”

“Why do mountains rumble?” Ferroc mused, ticking off possibilities on his claws. “Maybe they’re volcanoes. Maybe they’re fault lines. These are reasons to march away.”

Kulbrok cast a piercing look at him. “We’re charr. We march toward such things.”

Ferroc nodded. “Yessir.” But he let his pace slow ever so slightly, allowing Kulbrok to stride out ahead and the other charr to sift past. He was going to end up in the rear of the column again. The place of ignominy.

The place of survival.

“Aha! There’s something to fight!” shouted Kulbrok, a good fifty yards ahead by now. He lifted a great sword and pointed toward a crack in the side of the mountain.

The crack was bleeding—not blood, but creatures. A big, fat Gila monster waddled from the crack, only to get bigger as it emerged. Now the size of a crocodile, now the size of a marmox, now the size of an elephant—why was it getting bigger? And beside the giant Gila monster scuttled a horned lizard. It, too, was growing. Its scabrous skin swelled outward, and its eerie face grew larger and stranger, and its blood-spitting eyes became crystal-shooting eyes.

They were no longer creatures of skin and scale. They now were crystalline monsters. Jagged spikes jutted out all around their heads and all down their backs and sprouted from their gigantic tails.

“Does anybody else see those things?” Ferroc asked.

“Charge!” Kulbrok replied.

The centurion bolted ahead, followed by his lead warband. Swords darted up and down in their pumping fists.

Ahead, the horned lizard reared up. Crystals shot from its eyes and hailed across Kulbrok and his warband. Many fell, but others ran on. Kulbrok crashed against the raised muzzle of the beast and fell beneath it. Throat spikes gored him. A few warriors rammed swords into the horned lizard, but the blades clanged off its stony flesh. The lizard whipped its spiked head from side to side, impaling the charr.

“Didn’t anyone else see that thing?” Ferroc repeated emptily.

Other charr attacked the giant Gila monster—with a worse outcome. It waited for them to strike, ducked back, then lunged to snap them up like so many beetles. Poisonous teeth clamped down on bodies and bones, armor and weapons. With horrid gulps, the giant Gila monster swallowed warrior after warrior.

“Charge!” shouted Legionnaire Longtooth, leading another warband toward the monsters.

But they no longer faced just a horned lizard and a Gila monster. Now vast snakes emerged from the cleft—king rattlers wider than a charr and longer than a warband. They, too, had rocklike bodies and bad tempers.

They ate Longtooth and his soldiers.

Ferroc had slowed to a halt, marching in place. At least he wasn’t backing up—a fact that changed when he realized that giant horned lizards and Gila monsters and rattlesnakes were nowhere near as terrifying as whatever would create giant horned lizards and Gila monsters and rattlesnakes.

Who cared what came out of the cleft? What was coming out of the mountain?

The witnesses had been right. The mountain was moving, shifting, growing.

One of the foothills shuddered. Gravel and sand sifted down its side, revealing rows of horns. Beneath one curve—a curve that looked suspiciously like a giant eyebrow—opened something that looked suspiciously like a giant eye. More rocks shifted, and another eye appeared, surrounded by horns.

“Do you see what that thing is?” Ferroc shouted.

“Attack!” commanded another charr, charging up the hill. A dozen warriors followed.

Before they reached the thing, an enormous snout shuddered up out of the mountainside and bared great fangs. Fire bloomed out of the mouth, engulfing the charr.

As the horrible breath poured over them, they solidified like statues.

By all rights, the charr warriors should have died, but they were still moving—twisting, becoming something different. Fur became scales, hackles became spines, and everything seemed made of crystal. They no longer looked like charr,