Hidden Power by Tracy Lane

until, at last, it nearly outgrew the barn. Horns grew on its head, then down its spine, toward its backside and tail. It was, at last, a savage beast, and bowed on one crackling, wart-covered knee to bid his master’s wish.
    “Teach your friends,” he whispered in the horse’s mangled, black ear, pulsing with power, magic and puss. “And find the girl lest I make your time on earth even more perilous and disgusting than it is right at this very moment.” 
    Without another sound, the steed rose from bended knee and returned to his pen, enrobed in a rich, blinding orange light. One by one, the other steeds transformed as well. None grew as large or as powerful as the first, but all were lethal – and quite disgusting – in their kind.
    Then Kronos turned his attention toward the Hooter, seizing it with one strike from his staff until it, too, grew and changed into a large, leathery, six-winged beast.
    Giant fangs, sharp and yellow, sprang from its beak, claws ripped from its leathery yellow tendons. Feathers, once brown and sumptuous, became leathery scales, ears became horns until at last the transformation, bloody and brutal, was through. 
    “Teach your friends,” he whispered in the Hooter’s leather ear hole. “And find the girl.”
    The Hooter drifted into the rafters where, one by one, yellow eyeballs opened at its return. One hoot from the transformed minion began a chain of events as disgusting as it was glorious. The sound of bones cracking and skin tearing and muscles growing signified a roost full of savage, monster Hooters, each and every one eager and willing to do its new master’s bidding. 
    At last Kronos made a monster of the tiny Bleater, its cottony white coating turning to scales green and orange, its spine ripping through its leathery hide and turning to spikes, its hooves growing pointy and clawed, its eyes green and fiery, its teeth sharp and dangerous.
    At last it stood, black blood dripping from its spiky spine, eight hands tall and eager to do whatever Kronos wished of it.
    “Teach your friends,” he whispered to the drooling Bleater, scaly new skin fairly vibrating with violence and a savage new bloodlust. “And find the girl.”
    The Bleater returned to its pen, where frightened Bleaters turned, one by one, into drooling, mewling, hungry savage beasts. They grew so fast and hard they cracked the barn wall and, seeing an opening, tore through it. 
    The steeds, too, broke down their stall doors, streaming from the barn in search of Aurora, the daughter of their former master but sworn enemy to them now. The Hooters fled as well, tearing through the barn roof with savage claws sharp and bloody from their transformation, and yellow-black eyes keen on tracking down the girl they’d watched perform morning chores for years.
    “Go!” he screamed as his minions fled far and wide. “Go forth and find the girl and bring her to me. Do so, and quickly, or this day will surely be your last.”
    But only when the barn was empty and Kronos stood alone did he hear the squeaking of the rodents, cowering in the only corner of the barn still left standing after his minions all but tore it to the ground with their violent escape. His eyes widened, growing darker than ever, as he filled the corner where they cowered with power and light. 
    “Cower no more you miserable little Squeakers,” he cried as the rodents grew feet, not inches, until they towered nearly as tall as himself. Some groveled on fresh and bloody claws, eight inches long. 
    Others stood on their hind legs, arms almost as long as his, eyes a rich and bloody red to match the tongues darting from their elongated, savage snouts. More teeth and spines emerged, snapping through gums and skin, leather tails growing pointy, scaled and spiked.
    “Find the Orb,” he growled to them, staff pointed in their glowing red eyes. “Find the Orb of Ythra and take your rightful place at my side when this world of light grows dark with power.