Shape Changer (Nightrise)





"It is fortunate, then, that I came now. It would seem I have arrived just in time... to kill you!"

- The Shape Changer to Jamie

The Shape Changer is a minor antagonist in The Power of Five book Nightrise. The Shape Changer is stationed in the ruins of Scathack Hill back in 10,000 BC when Jamie Tyler has been sent back in time to in order to win the war against the Old Ones for humanity. The Shape Changer is one of the Old Ones himself, and he has been waiting for human survivors. Somehow knowing he would meet Jamie, the Shape Changer has taken his human default form of an old man with a monk's robe and hood, and he has a wooden staff.

Description
The Shape Changer greets Jamie civilly, and Jamie is aware he has somehow tuned into a completely foreign language without knowing anything about the world he is on (the world is Earth in the distant past, yet he doesn't know this) and the Shape Changer greets Jamie and says its strange seeing a young boy amidst dead men. The Shape Changer says Jamie may have been wanted by the Old Ones, and confuses Jamie by asking if he serves the Old Ones. Jamie says he's nobody's servant, which pleases the Shape Changer, who says he's arrived in time to kill him.

Transformation
Jamie laughs aloud at this news, because the old man looks so frail and harmless, yet he screams suddenly when the man becomes a giant humanoid scorpion. His body is still human but it is fused with a black scorpion body. The staff becomes a mouldering steel piece of metal, dripping blood.

A fight breaks out between the Shape Changer and Jamie, and Jamie somehow realizes he knows how to fight despite never fighting before ever. The Shape Changer, with years of warfare on his side, gains the upper hand, and is about to stab Jamie in the throat before Jamie slashes its stomach and blood and poison pours out, and he chops off its stinger from the tail. The monster screams "DIE!" and rallies for another attack, but then Scarlett Adams arrives, and fires two arrows which go into the beast's throat and kills it.