Hoab circled the room, gesticulating wildly in his joy at the revelries he had instigated the night before.

Or, he circled the ruined wreck that had once been the room that made up the first floor of the home he and Iztha had taken over.

Hoab was thrilled beyond his wildest dreams now, he had been able to control the beasts that he had created. and they had run rampant through the warehouse by the docks. It had been glorious to Hoab’s way of thinking of such things. When he had completed the ritual to make the first two men into monsters, he saw how the spell had been wrought within the bounds of the Artifact.

He could not recreate that spell himself, he lacked the inherent power. The reservoir of energies needed for this spell had to be collected in the medallion, and then unlocked by someone with the Talent in a simple ritual.

But, he had seen and felt the workings of that spell as it unwound itself like a great toxic slug from within the skull of a corpse. He had watched as the thing had oozed out from the boundaries of the medallion, and stretched itself between the two lumpish men at the door to the warehouse as their brethren nattered along at one another inside the large building.

“And it was glorious!” Hoab didn’t quite shout to the room. Several moans of pain answered his dec;aration from the bodies of at least five men.

Once he had tracked how the ritual had worked, he saw the method by which he, or any half decent Talent, could apply a proper harness to the beasts. It had been a battle of Willpower to keep the monsters in check, and make them do what he wanted.

But, Hoab had to admit, what they wanted was mostly what I wanted. too! GLORIOUS!

Making one of the transformed men hold down another man for Hoab to then transform, while the second beast chased after a third had been difficult. The things had only wanted to eat. Well, mostly to eat. Once he had five of the things in tow, he found that they wanted to chew more than they wanted to actually eat.

Which made Hoab pause in his capering about in the rubble, the smile sliding from his face as he contemplated the idea that chewing with or without swallowing might have more of an impact upon the chewer than it had upon those chewed.

And then he laughed again, his cracking, burbling voice tortured under some deep and continued stress. Whatever voice Hoab had grown up using, even into his adulthood, had not been this torn and tattered thing.

Several more moans greeted him from limp forms strewn about the room. He counted at least seven bodies of men in various stages of undress, several now looked deflated and stretched, covered in differing volumes of blood and ichor, all lying in corners where their beasts, those who HAD become beasts, had squatted once Hoab made them return to his little abode.

Looking more closely now, in the first rays of the morning sun that crept into the little ruined home, Hoab could see the men he had transformed had not just returned to their former, manly, states. As the rigors of the spell and its workings had left the bodies of the five men, they did not just return to their former dimensions and forms. They were now bloodied shirts, lying discarded once the arms had been slipped from the sleeves.

Skulls which had last night been pushed out into the dimensions of those of predators now sagged loosely as the great gaping jaws no longer possessed the long muzzle bone structure. Oddly, the giant, ripping teeth remained, and stuck out from stretched and abused lips at random angles, in some places even tenting the flesh of the cheeks out into unexpected and incongruous shapes. Feet and legs that had lengthened out to those of the paws and hind legs of giant wolves now lay shapeless, missing the bones that the power and Talent had grown in place in moments. All of it was now gone.

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Leaving the torn wrecks of bodies behind.

Hoab thought about the ways in which the ritual had used energy to pull mass into each body and somehow weld it all together like a blacksmith using differing metals to create a grand and intricate work of mongery. He speculated over the intricacies of the spell that had to be created, and who had had the patience to map out such an amazing working, much less laying such a thing upon an inanimate artifact, such as the medallion that now swung, inert, from the leather thong about his scrawny neck.

The five volunteers who had aided him in his endeavors last night still breathed where they lay about in the wreckage of the room in which Hoab now stood. But, he wondered, for how much longer? Will I need to find new meat to use in this marvelous recipe come moonrise? Having given these men the height of seven feet last night was all well and good, but now they lacked that two extra feet of required internal structure… interesting.

He was seized by a slight fit of giggles at all of the “limp” jokes he could now make at the expense of these oh-so-manly-men’s expense.

As he surveyed the bodies, and possibilities, Hoab noted at least two of the bodies that had been dragged back to his home for further entertainment by the other five. They were the ones, Hoab now noticed, who were still mostly dressed. Both had suffered greatly in their treatment.

Comparing their shivering misery to that of the flaccid forms that moaned in pain about the room, Hoab wondered if any of the seven would survive to the coming evening. It felt to him like a shame to waste so much possibility.

Surveying the bodies of the two who his five had brought along for whatever reasons they had, he found one was an older man, paunchy, and grizzled. He had been grabbed, if Hoab recalled correctly, at the warehouse meeting.

It was the second victim that brought Hoab’s mangy eyebrows up. It was a very young man. Barely more than a teen. He didn’t remember where the boy had been pulled from in their evening of revelry, but he was breathing well, and aside from a few obviously broken bones, the boy looked solid if unconscious.

“It’s a shame to risk wasting a perfectly good whistlepig… What’s your name, boy?” He asked as he leaned over the child and shook it.

He half stood again, watching the thing on the floor writhe in pain. His hand dropped to the sheath at his belt, and his thumb caressed the pommel of the knife held there. Hoab liked the knife. It was a good knife. The blade was thick enough to be a good, sturdy working knife, and long enough to tickle a heart from a good belly stab. the curve… Oh, Hoab had often sat and just contemplated the wonder of that tantalizing curve as it would reflect the light from a candle. The ground edge on the inside of the blade's curve was just as wonderful as the outer edge's curve. Maybe even better.

He leaned back in and prodded the boy where he lay on the floor. “You! What’s your name?”

The body stirred, and it cried out in its pain.

His eyes alight, Hoab gathered it up, and as it squealed mildly, he started to walk up the stairs toward the bed he shared with Iztha. “What’s your name?” he asked again.

“...Cessily…” a breathy voice could barely be heard to reply.

“That’s a stupid name for a whistlepig. I will call you Colby.” He considered. “For about three minutes.”

Wet noises, and noxious smells flowed out from the small upstairs room, along with weak protests.

Until, finally, a weak and tremulous woman's voice said with regret, “Oh, Hoab…what have you done?”