(Insert rat shaman banner here) The Rat shaman was lost adrift its foul castings, words of power flooded every inch of its body in stinging green fire that burned it from the inside as the hellish magics pumped the blessing and unbridled hatred of the Horned Rat deep within the shamans dirty frame. The spell was one of the miracles of Ratkin kind, an art that could only be cast by one who was overflowing with their chaotic gods evil might. Rather than obliterate this idiotic man-thing back to dust it would snap victory out of the very JAWS of this disastrous near defeat. Before Farihas blinding arrow could punch a whole through its chest the last syllables to its demonic chanting reached its apex. ------------------ (Image coming soon) Eternity. To oversee every act of history repeated time and time again. The same dragon killed by the same brutish humanoid.. but then there were times when the dragon was a gigantic worm, or a drider armed with its hideous trident. Everywhere the being looked it saw only the mundane scene of history long past repeat itself.. But things change. Sometimes it is only a minor thing.. othertimes- The swirling reality about the figure shattered. Magic of great power, not once but twice, called across the infinity. In a rift there was an unwritten rule that every creature followed subconsciously and that was avoiding astral or large teleportation magic. For this very reason! The collective realities of each and every rift were intimately interconnected by the threads of the crystal! The infinity stone was their access point ans exit but when you made another one.. Realities shattered. In a panic the figure reached out to try and grasp the bubbles of amassed history before they shattered with a violent popping of energy that assaulted even the figures immaterial body painfully, a feat not thought possible. It had to find the source! Through infinity it gazed out and found the problem. A holy man and an eccentric wizard had activated a recreated portal that had connected reality to the burning hells of the demon planes and had further altered it. Looking for another exit portal or effect, but rifts did not exist to handle that kind of madness! The other was a shaman. The oddity here was.. it was trying to manifest its god! The imperceptible roar of outrage coursing through the infinity spoke of its outrage as the stone all but shuddered under the weightof infinite potential and the chance for infinite disaster. Given that there was few options to stop the shattering, countless worlds and realities within had already been shattered irreparably, that only left one option. The portal looking for a new exit answered the call of thr ratkin, the figure forcibly altering its intended pathway to stabilize reality itself. The cost was unexpected. Sharss of shattered reality still whistled through the empty space between rifts and whenever they cane in contact with one.. ------- The Ratkins look of success shattered as it felt it. No, more than that. Ot saw it. Time had stopped long enough for the Grey seer to truly see. Siph Barou, legendary humanoid, Fariha. Archer. The entomancer behind it. The dwarves marching forward.. all a lie. A recreation. The 'figure' held them all here in an endless loop. Its own magic had failed to summon the horned rat to wipe the slate clean but had done more damage than ever thought possible. Looking at its own clawed appendage, the bright green hell flame slowly being replaced by the magical power of another, Skritch realized his many errors. The white arrow punched through its feeble shield and through the grimoire restingnover its heart, and kept going right through until it hit the cavern wall behind the shaman. There was no pain. Just emptiness.. The rat ogre, infused with the horned rats blessing, had cracks of blue forming across its skin as well. So this was how it ends... A blinding light erupted from every ratman in the tunnels that had tasted the chaotic magic, their frames simply shattering into sparkling motes of light. As if they had never existed at all. The second coming of the strange magic shook the tunnels with cataclysmic force, throwing anyone on their feet into the walls as the earth seemed to reject what was coming. Everything became distorted as ripples of some unknown force invaded them and their world, altering details or removing some entirely. When at last it faded there were new problems to be dealt with. Hideous Naga creatures, humanoids with snake bodies and thick arms brandishing pikes or tridents had replaced many of the rats, greenskinned orc savages had fallen from the sky or been ejected from the walls were climbing to their feet brandishing weapons of crude stone design. The two opposing forces were clashing wherever they met, as more and more creatures from different rifts no doubt flooded the current one. Where Fariha and siph stood, a portal shimmered into life. [@manofthenorth] (Tunnels now have orc and naga enemies. Fight to regroup!)