"Fair enough. We-"

The ground shakes suddenly, and appears to slide to one side. It stays still for a moment, but then slides to the same direction again. They can hear at least two trees falling down in the distance.

"—well shit. Whoever has useful abilities for this get ready, everyone else get out of the way."

Esdras falls under "everyone else", but at least he is already Ventari-shaped so he is already in optimal get out of the way condition.

Dimitria grabs her ammunition - small cloth bags filled with dirt and seeds - and prepares to fling them at the whatever.

The ground starts sliding again all to the same direction, like a sudden sinkhole, except a second later something bursts out of the ground. Large chunks of dirt and stone fly into the air. Samson stops a wall of debris and laughs at the successful use of his power. His laugh is short-lived because the dust settles, revealing the creature.

As far monsters go, it is fairly small, about elephant-sized. It stands on three legs and a long iguana-like tail. There are other limbs, too many of them to count, half of them feathered wings, and most are too wrong to have any use, but there are two "arms" that are long, strong and intimidating. One has a clawed hand, the other has a malformed beak.

The head is the worst; it looks like two heads, one bird-like and one human-like, half-melted into each other and into the torso without a discernible neck. The dozens of eyes cluster randomly around the "face" but appear far down the creature's torso. It opens its mouth at Esdras. No roar comes, but this reveals its many teeth.

And now Oran is stark naked. "Cover me!" he cries and squints, starting to shift to a different shape.

Mana stays out of the way.

And Rafa is rather glad she doesn't have to spend a second thinking about it before sending sand to eyes.

Esdras takes flight, keeping it low so as to not attract even worse attention. At the same time the monster tries to reach for him with its beak-arm, but the limb stops abruptly midair thanks to Samson's power.

The eyes are hit and while the creature doesn't care about the pain, it does react negatively to the impaired eye-sight. It uses whatever earth-manipulation it has to make the earth shake in a wave that knocks everyone off their feet and makes more trees fall over. Nita better dodge that one.

Oh she does, barely, and clamps a hand on her mouth to not shriek.

Rafa also takes flight and decides to be more creative: she gets all the sand around into every cavity of the monster's, trying to cause as much internal damage as she can while not directly seeing or sensing her target.

The creature staggers and then advances Mana-wards, either by choice or accident.

Dimitria charges up her cloth-bag (it glows scarlet red) and then throws it right into the creature's mouth. A second later there is a bush practically exploding out of it, preventing the creature from closing its jaw. It slashes its tail at Oran - Samson fails to block it.

Thankfully Oran has just finished shifting into his adamet shape, and now there's an octogonal forcefield between him and the tail, blocking it.

Sand o sand do your job and destroy this thing's internal organs?

It's hard to direct sand once it's inside, but it sure feels like it should be doing a lot of damage. Hard to tell if all that squirming and those jerky movements are a sign of damage when the thing is so twisted.

It reacts by increasing the earth-manipulation things and causing the ground to shake violently. The ripples send stone and dirt that actually hits anyone that is flying lower than the trees, and everyone on the ground topples over. Esdras dives to lift Dimitria out of the way and Samson does the same for Mana.

Oran can stand his ground, he's heavy enough for that. He materialises an air harpoon and throws it in the monster's direction.

A wave of earth almost deflects it away, but it hits the creature's back and goes through. The creature reacts with a stronger wave still and then burrows into the ground. The tremors get weaker, but still make it hard to stand.

Dimitria asks for Esdras to drop her on the ground, which he reluctantly agrees to do. She uses her power on a wide area, making it briefly glow red. Plants everywhere start growing, getting to twice their previous height. The ground still vibrates but stops shaking dangerously.

He waits.

Gradually the tremors stop.

"Fuck yes! We made the bastard run away!" Samson shouts.

"Quiet," Oran hisses.

Samson quiets down. The forest is... not completely silent, but there is no sound of monsters.

Esdras signals to Oran "is it ok to talk again?"

Another couple of seconds and—" Yeah," he breathes.

And goes find his clothes.

(What no she wasn't watching this at all—)

(Eyeroll.)

Only then does Esdras notice that Oran is naked. He stares for a moment, then looks away. "Is everyone in one piece?"

Assents all around! Oran puts his robes on.

"Shall we?"

"Yeah, I don't think we are best served by staying here."