<br/>Staring through her monocle at yet another pair of slippers which she was sure would turn out to hold spiderclimb magic, Aria looked up when she heard Semmon's pained shout and Kass's exclamations. She traded a look of shock with Kass, face revealing that she was seeing this - whatever 'this' was - too.<br/><br/>"What in the hells!?" Aria exclaimed, leaving the slippers upon the roof and spreading her cloak-wings.<br/><br/>Anya's body seemed to swell from the stomach first, upward and outward, briefly looking almost like a sudden pregnancy but quickly becoming something much more massive and unnatural. Her belly and breasts ballooned, stretch marks rippling across the once flawless skin, until she was closer to the shape of a beholderkin than to the slender human she'd been.<br/><br/>Aria leaped off the edge of the roof, about to take flight, while her mind scanned through the various healing wands they now possessed; wondering what, if any thing, might avail.<br/><br/>She never made it to Anya, at least not as she knew her - the blonde's bulbous body exploded, sending stands of flesh, shards of bone, and gouts of blood radiating in a hemisphere over the sandy soil. The prone, unconscious Semmon was unseen for a second, covered by the gory spray, then visible again - still alive, and mercifully still unconscious, but now a truly hideous sight and looking somewhat injured by a few sharp bone fragments.<br/><br/>Aria's face paled as she saw Anya's head to rolling by, the only thing still really intact; she dove down, wrinkling her nose as she clasped Semmon's shoulders and dragged the bloodied fellow further away. She was barely able to fly with his weight, but set him down in a seated position against the outer edge of the temple wall.<br/><br/>In the spot where Anya had exploded, the gore of her lower body lay over a foot high. In the barely recognizable ribbons if intensive and stomach lining, four small aberrations wriggled - they seemed like fist-sized tadpoles, little mindflayer heals with the characteristic white eyes and underdeveloped tentacles and tails.