They were off again at the rising of the sun.
Sarraya wasn't too happy about it. Taking a look into her tent showed him why. She had conjured up just about every item of luxury she could imagine, including spectral servants to do her bidding. He had never seen such creations before. Sarraya called them mephits, and from her explanation, they were semi-aware representations of nature, kind of like half-formed spirits, weak enough for nearly any Druid to summon and control, and stupid enough to be no threat of breaking free of that control. They were the first stage in the path to summoning Elementals, she explained, though very few ever managed to get past the mephit stage. Summoning Elementals was the ultimate expression of power for a Druid, and Sarraya told him that only a handful could do it. Sarraya was not one of them.
A few moments of instruction had shown him how it was done, and he filed away the ability to summon mephits as another aspect of his Druidic power that he doubted he would ever seriously use.
At least he got a good explanation of why so few Druids could summon Elementals, a much more rational explanation than Sarraya's previous talks about them. "It's not the Druid, it's the Elemental," she told him. "I have the power to summon an Elemental, but I don't have the power to control one. Druidic Elementals are an order of magnitude stronger than the Elementals that you Sorcerers and the Wizards can conjure. That means that it takes supreme power, skill, and willpower to keep one of them under your control. The only real difference is that Druidic Elementals don't go berserk when the break free. They simply go home, and the backlash of that against the Druid is usually enough to kill her."
"I didn't know Wizards could summon Elementals," Tarrin mused.
"What they call Elementals," Sarraya said scathingly. "They're hardly more than a mephit. Sorcerer's Elementals, on the other hand, are formidable. Mainly because Sorcery is, at its heart, magic dealing with elements. Fire, Water, Earth, Air, they're spheres of Sorcery, so that makes the Elementals they conjure very powerful. Sorcerers are much more attuned to Elemental magic than Wizards."
"That makes sense," he agreed.
That got him to thinking about magic in general, and of course his thoughts drifted to Jenna. She was probably still sleeping, trying to recover from the tremendous ordeal which she had endured. He remembered how he felt after he woke up from his own ordeal, so he felt pretty sorry for her. She'd probably go crazy without her magic-Jenna loved being a Sorcerer-but that would pass when she was ready to use her new magic. And he'd be there for her when she was ready to learn, to teach her what he had to struggle to learn for himself.
He still felt a little bitter over seeing his family and not being able to spend time with them. It had been so short! Just enough to give them some warnings, and then he was gone. He played at the idea of trying to find his way back before they left that morning, even going so far as to entering the Weave and trying to find the path he had taken from within it. But the shifting nature of the Weave had erased all traces of his passage. It was like trying to track someone by scent who was swimming in a river. It just couldn't be done. The flowing power within the Weave had carried away the traces of his passing, and its surreal nature when viewed from within made it impossible for him to find his way. It was a good thing that it required no tracking to return to himself; just by wishing to do so, he could return to his body any time he wanted to do so.
It was yet another aspect of being a Weavespinner he hadn't expected. Entering the Weave was much like sending his soul out of his body and joining it with the power that was now so entwined through him that it would be impossible to separated it from him without killing him. It was so large, so… intimidating. He had no idea where to go, where anything was. He could reach the Heart only because all strands eventually went there. Without somehting to guide him through the vast labyrinth of the Weave, he could not use it to visit other places as he had done so with Jenna. He had a feeling that he could learn how to get to a few places, if they were important enough. Since the main Conduit that came from the Heart came out through the Tower, he thought he could reach the Tower in that projected state. It would take a little trial and error, but he felt that he could do it. He'd just have to make sure that he was fully rested when he tried. Entering the Weave, and trying to use any magic while inside it, took a tremendous amount of effort. The episode with Jenna had already taught him that very important lesson. It was like a standard Sorcerer trying to weave a spell from ten longspans away. The effort to push the magic over such a great distance was exhausting.
It was something about which nobody had ever said anything. He thought it was one of the abilities of the Weavespinners that had been forgotten by the modern katzh-dashi, one of the many things lost because they could no longer read the historical annals left for them by their ancestors. It made him wonder what else he could do, what else had been forgotten.
Clearly, Sorcery wasn't as simple as weaving spells. It had several different disciplines within that broad definition, and it would take many, many years of study to come to an understanding of his own abilities. Weaving spells was just one of the aspects of Sorcery.
But thoughts of the future yielded to thoughts of the present. They were still travelling northwest, and Tarrin was still looking for an ideal place to stop, an ideal battleground that would stack the deck in his favor. Jegojah was coming, and he was just starting to feel… twinges, little variances in the Weave that he thought were being caused by something unnatural. That could be Jegojah, for it was an undead being, and it was also possessed of formidable magical abilities. He couldn't pin a location to that feeling, but it was not close. That was all he could tell. But if it was close enough for him to sense it, then it had to be a maximum of twelve days away. That was when he started feeling the crown of the Aeradalla. And since the crown was such an incredibly powerful artifact, he doubted that he would feel Jegojah coming from a similar distance. Jegojah's probable effect on the Weave was nowhere near that. That meant to him that Jegojah was much closer than twelve days away, if that sense was actually him. That made finding a suitable location to challenge the Doomwalker his highest priority, because he would take no chances in this.
Jegojah was… special. It had killed Faalken, nearly killed his family, and had hounded and tortured him for years, by either deed or fear. It was going to end. This would be the last time he crossed swords with Jegojah, one way or another. Thinking of it made his hackles rise, but it also made him remember the vision that the Goddess had given him about Jegojah. That Faalken had been standing in front of the Doomwalker, his decayed body making it obvious he was a corpse, holding a flaming sword. What did it mean? Was it a warning for him not to get too carried away? Would Faalken's memory interfere somehow, as the vision suggested, or would it cause him to come into danger? Just thinking about that fateful day when Jegojah killed Faalken, killed him because Tarrin had lost control, made him suddenly furious. Jegojah had killed Faalken, but Tarrin had abandoned him to his death just so he could destroy Jegojah. The anger was directed at Jegojah, but some of it was focused on himself. That day had shown him the consequences of his actions. That day, his rage had cost him a friend, and caused him to vow that no one else was going to die if he could help it. Killing Jegojah would bring closure to him, he felt. Destroying the Doomwalker once and for all would avenge Faalken, and would act as atonement for allowing the valiant Knight to die. Jegojah was a physical embodiment of the demons that had plagued Tarrin since becoming Were, and he meant to destroy the Doomwalker, and them, and vanquish those demons back to the nether realms.
They stopped for lunch and to wait out the heat of the day in the shade of a large overhanging rock, then moved on again. The hilly terrain of the desert became progressively more and more rocky, and rugged foothills of respecatable size had begun to show through the heat haze that made looking at distance in the desert an uncertain pasttime. Tarrin and Sarraya found themselves running from valley to valley to avoid climbing the steeper and steeper hillsides, moving through terrain that very nearly seemed mountainous.
They travelled up one such valley near sunset, looking for a good campsite, when the valley opened up into a vast depression in the land like a great bowl with a flat bottom. The bottom of that wide valley-like feature was dotted with boulders and rocks strewn about the floor of it like children's toys, and rock spires, hundreds of them-
– -not rock spires. Towers!
It was a ruin! The remains of a great city were hidden in those crisscrossing valleys, a city that had completely filled up the depression in which it had been built. The city was buried in sand here and there, and it was obvious that a recent sandstorm had carried away much of the sand that had once buried the city. A city built of the same sandy colored stone that filled most of the desert, but it was a city that was remarkably well preserved. Buildings still stood here and there, and they stood out against the fallen debris that cluttered what had once been wide avenues. The architecture of those buildings were blocky, with many right angles, and as he and Sarraya approached them, he began to realize that the builders of this vast city weren't human.
The doorways to those buildings were only about six spans high.
Tarrin reached the edge of the city, and looked at the nearest building still standing. It was three stories high, but its compact construction made it only as tall as a human's two story building. It was made of sandy colored stones that showed the erosion of the years, but the wearing away did nothing to hide the exacting precision with which the stones had been fitted together. The architects and builders of this place had been engineers of the highest degree. These sprawling ruins put modern cities to shame with the durability and craftsmanship of the buildings.
"Who made this place, Sarraya?" Tarrin asked, looking at one of the buildings.
"I don't know," she replied. "The doorways are small. If I were a gambling Faerie, I'd say it was one of the Lost Races. Maybe Dwarves, or Gnomes."
He'd heard those names before, but they belonged in bedtime stories. The Dwarves and Gnomes had lived a long, long time ago, but had been wiped out during the terrible Blood War. The Gnomes had died out by attrition, but the Dwarves had fought to the very last man, even their women, fighting to protect the world from the dark evil of the Demons. Even now, five thousand years after the fact, the heroism of the Dwarves was honored in song and story from one side of Sennadar to the other. The Race of Heroes, they were called. Both races were supposedly short. The Dwarves were stocky and strong, the Gnomes thin and willowy. Both races were respected as stoneworkers and builders without peer. If this place was built by one of their races, it was no wonder that so much of it had survived the destruction wreaked upon it by the years and the harsh desert sands.
He looked down at the doorway, which came up to the his chest. There was no way he'd be able to get into one of those buildings in his current form. But looking down caught his eyes on a small bright object partially buried in the sand. He knelt down and picked it up, and found it to be a small knife. A knife held in a skeletal hand.
A little excavation revealed a skeleton of a short, heavy-boned bipedal creature, wearing a massive set of plate armor-at least massive for the skeleton's size. A broken battle axe rested underneath it. The creature had died with a knife in its hands, fighting on to the last breath. The metal worn by the skeleton was clean and unblemished, a sign of being buried in scouring sand with no humidity. That, or the metal wasn't steel, wasn't subject to rust.
"Looks like a Dwarf," Sarraya said after the skeleton was unearthed.
So small, but obviously tenacious and brave. Like a wolverine.
"You want to camp here for tonight?" Sarraya asked.
"We don't have much choice," he replied. "But I don't think we should go into the city to do it. Let's pull back a ways."
"You afraid of ghosts?" she asked with a smile.
"I'm afraid of what might be hiding in those ruins," he replied soberly. "Sandmen are the least of our worries. A kajat could be hiding in there, and I don't fancy the idea of having one pay a visit after dark."
"How can something so big hide so well?" Sarraya complained as they turned around and started back up the incline.
"Practice," he replied absently.
They set up camp against a steep hillside, to at least narrow the avenues of possible invasion. The sand covered hill reflected the light of the fire quite nicely, illuminating much of their surroundings in the ruddy firelight. Sarraya ate her customary dinner of berries, nuts, and breads and pastries pilfered via Conjuring as Tarrin roasted a small umuni he had hunted down just before sunset. Umuni wasn't very tasty, but he was rightly tired of not having any meat. The poisonous lizard was a better meal than another Faerie dining experience. Tarrin looked down at the large city, wondering at who had lived there, what kind of people those Dwarves were. They had to be brave, if they were willing to sacrifice their entire race to stop the Demons. Very brave indeed. They had to be very smart and skilled to build such an impressive city. He had a feeling that they were a race of honor. He wasn't sure how he knew that, but he was pretty sure of it. Probably nothing like the Selani or Vendari, whose honor was their lives, but still very honorable. They had to be tough fighters as well. It was sad that an entire race was snuffed out in the Blood War-not just one, for that matter-but at least those who were saved by the sacrifice of the Dwarves still honored their memory, and honored their heroism.
They still sang the songs. Songs of the Battle of the Line, the titanic clash between the Demons and the natives on the arid steppes of Arak, where the Dwarves had pushed back an army of darkness that would have run back over land that the natives had managed to reclaim from the Demonspawn. Songs of the what was simply called Last Battle, the last of the great battles that had caused the extinction of the Dwarven race, who had rallied to the last man, woman, and child around the banners of the native peoples, then marched headlong into death singing songs of glory. They had shown no fear, shown no regret for what they had done. They had thrown themselves against the Demonic horde, and though they had lost their people, their courage had won the war.
Trying to imagine doing such a thing was hard. He had no idea how he would react if he was called upon to sacrifice not only himself, but everything that he held dear, everything in the entire world that mattered to him, in order to stop something so terrible that there was no other way. It was a terrifying thought. He had no regard for throwing his own life away, but to do so knowing that all his family, all his friends, everything that he had ever known was going to die with him… it was something one did not even think in jest. Such a horrendous cost.
But the memory of the Dwarves lived on, lived on in the songs of the survivors, songs that were still sang to this day. So long as the songs called out over fires and within parlors and taprooms, the Dwarves would never be forgotten, and their memory would live on.
"You're quiet," Sarraya noted as she took a long drink from a tiny cup.
"Thinking of them," he said, motioning back towards the city. "I can't even imagine what they sacrificed."
"I don't want to imagine it," Sarraya said with a shudder. "But they saved us all, Tarrin. No matter how high the price they paid, it's something that we should never forget. We owe them that much."
"Amen," he nodded.
The rest of the night passed in relative peace and calm, but not for Tarrin. The twinge in the Weave was getting closer and closer, and he had a feeling that it was indeed Jegojah. He still couldn't pin a location to it, but it was coming towards him from the northwest, the direction he was going. That meant that any movement forward was going to bring it faster, and he may not be ready when the time came. What he was feeling was very vague, so he had no idea if it was half a desert away, or just on the other side of the ruined city. It told him that if he was going to move, it had to be back the way he came, to buy himself time.
But he had come from that way. There was nothing back there suitable enough for a showdown with the Doomwalker. The land was too open, and too verdant. He wouldn't be able to block off Jegojah's access to the land.
Stupid, stupid! He wanted a cluttered, rocky wasteland for a battlefied, and he was looking at one!
The ruins of the city would be perfect. They were rubble-strewn and broken, with lots of uneven terrain and many places to hide. The standing buildings and rocky piles created a landscape that favored him, the faster and more nimble of the combatants, and the entire city was either covered in rock or paved with stones under the sand. Sand itself was inorganic-it was a kind of rock-and that would deny the Doomwalker the power to draw energy from the land. Tarrin was a little bit wary of disturbing the sanctity of the ruins, one of the last few monuments of the memory of the Dwarves, but something deep inside him told him that the spirits of the Dwarves wouldn't mind too much if he knocked down a few buildings or trampled on a few graves. They had been willing to sacrifice everything for a noble cause. His cause may not have been as noble, but it was rather important. He didn't think they'd get too riled up. Beings of honor fully understood the purity of spirit involved in revenge.
That's all it was. Beating Jegojah to stay alive was a very distant alternate reason for what he intended to do. He intended to pay the Doomwalker back in kind for what it did to Faalken, nearly did to his family, and kept trying to do to him.
The ruins of the city would be his battleground. The Dwarves had stopped the Demons, now they were going to help him destroy an undead monster.
Tarrin shifted into his cat form and curled up by the fire. The first piece of the puzzle was in place. Now he just had to prepare for his playmate.
The new day dawned curiously warm and quite blustery for the desert. High winds whipped sand through the city, and though it wasn't a sandstorm, it was a good imitation of one. Tarrin had his visor on to protect against the stinging sand as they got ready to move that day, or at least Sarraya thought. Tarrin had spent most of the night considering what had to be done to get ready for Jegojah. He had to explore the city and find the best place to challenge it. He had to learn all the ground surrounding that chosen site, in case he had to retreat. He had to set up a few little tricks and annoyances to slow the Doomwalker down if he did have to retreat, and he also wanted to build at least one death-trap just in case things went so badly for him that destroying the Doomwalker's body became necessary. He doubted that Jegojah could withstand having a few large buildings dropped on him. Magical protection was one thing, but there were some things against which no amount of magic could defend. Tarrin had learned that the hard way, that invulnerability wasn't quite as invulnerable as one might think. Magic was no challenge to the almighty mastery of the great power known as Physics. The laws of physics told him that when a creature protected by magic was struck by something weighing as much as a large stone building, the magic wasn't going to protect the victim. It would buckle under the immense power attacking it. That power was physics.
He had much to do, and he wasn't sure how much time he had. But a few things he already knew, a few decisions had already been made.
"Alright then, you want to explore the city, or just move on?" Sarraya asked curiously.
"Neither," he said in a low, grim tone. "You have to do something for me, Sarraya."
"What?"
"Leave," he said intensely, his ears straight up and his eyes searching. "Jegojah is coming, and I don't want anything getting in the way. Not even you."
"Well!" she huffed, putting her hands on her hips and getting in his face. "That's a fine 'good morning!' You think I'm going to get in the way, do you? I'll have you know that-"
"This isn't a discussion," he warned in a dangerous tone. "It's an order."
"An order!" she said scathingly. "You're not my mother, Tarrin! I'm not about to let you march down there and play your games without someone watching over you! I can take care of-"
She broke off when Tarrin's eyes ignited from within, his ears laid back, and he took a single step back to give him room to swat the Faerie out of the air. Sarraya's expression changed instantly from one of anger to one of fear. She gave him a wild look, laughing in a kind of nervous, apprehensive way. "You wouldn't really hurt me, would you Tarrin?" she asked fearfully.
"That's up to you, isn't it?" he asked in an ominously quiet voice. "I'm not playing, Sarraya. Not about this. Just go back the way we came a little ways and wait. You'll know when it's safe to come back."
"You're sure about this?" she asked hesitantly, but her expression wavered when she saw the intensity in his eyes. "I see you are," she sighed. "Alright, I won't argue. But if I hear something I don't like, I'm going to come. You can't stop me."
He didn't answer. He just stared at her for a moment longer, then turned and started walking away.
"Tarrin?" Sarraya called. Tarrin didn't look back, didn't answer. He wasn't giving her any excuse to try to drag things out, to try to worm her way into coming along. Sarraya could talk fast, and she knew that if she talked fast enough, the impulsive side of him may latch on to something she said and use it as an excuse for her to accompany him. So he robbed her of that advantage by not paying attention. "Tarrin, be careful! And hit it once for me! No, make that twice, I haven't forgotten what it did to me the last time it attacked us!"
Tarrin glanced over his shoulder at Sarraya, gave her an eloquent nod, and then stalked into the ruined city, leaving the Faerie hovering behind him, watching him go.
Tarrin didn't much like the idea of leaving Sarraya behind, but it was necessary. She was very useful in a fight, but this was not going to be a fight. This was going to be a duel. He didn't want any distractions, any possible chance that Jegojah could somehow get his hands on Sarraya and use her as a shield, or as a bargaining chip. Because of that, he didn't want her anywhere near them when Jegojah arrived.
The city was strangely expansive. It was a large city, but it was designed in such a way that it seemed spacious. Wide streets, buildings with large courtyards, avenues and parks-or maybe merchant squares, since the desert had long killed off any vegetation. The Dwarves had done an incredible job of stuffing many buildings into a confined space, yet making it seem like they had all the space in the world. To Tarrin, it looked like some massive village. Only the larger buildings seemed very big to him, given the tremendous difference in size between him and a Dwarf, making it look like some grand village rather than a large, bustling city. The single story buildings that Tarrin saw were short enough for him to look over their roofs, what few of them he managed to find. The vast majority of the standing buildings were at least three stories.
The wind died down, and with it came an eerie silence. The place was empty, not even populated by vermin or animals. Even his pad-softened footsteps were audible to him as he walked along rubble-choked avenues and down boulevards so wide that the collapsed buildings couldn't block them off. He was surveying the city with a tactical eye, looking for the ideal spot that was clear enough for a fight, yet contained enough rubble and debris to make footing treacherous for something that wore armor. One of those squares looked suitable, but the ones that he'd seen so far weren't large enough for his needs, or didn't have favorable surroundings. He wanted a place with escape routes, routes which he could trap should he have need to use them. But the place couldn't have too many ways to leave it. He had to funnel the Doomwalker in the ways he wanted it to go, or else his preparations would be meaningless.
The quiet suited him, but it also seemed unnatural. There wasn't even the sound of the wind anymore, and the wind should have been blowing at that time of the morning. There was nothing but quiet emptiness all around him, and his ears had begun to strain to seek out any sound not made by himself. The quiet made him a little jumpy, but he realized that it would be his ally. The Doomwalker, with its clunky metal armor, would make such a racket that he would hear it coming from longspans away.
He found what he was looking for at about noon, in what was probably the center of the city, and it nearly made him chuckle ruefully. It was the ruins of some ancient arena or stadium, which had been shattered at one end by a large tower that had fallen into the stands at that end. He walked around it and found that all but two of the entrances were blocked off by debris, and both of those opened into surprisingly narrow streets for the layout of the city, flanked by high buildings that looked to have been very important places in their day. The long pile of large stones on the far end of the arena gave an exit for someone nimble enough to move across such treacherous terrain, but would block something slow and ungainly. Then again, an exit could be found on any side for him, since he could make the jump from the floor of the arena up to the the lowest of the stands.
It was perfect. Tarrin stood at the top of the stands and looked down. The floor was covered in sand, but there were rocks and debris littered across its surface. It was about twenty spans from the floor to the stands, and the two usable exits were accessible only from the stands. Once something got down to the arena floor, it would have a hard time getting out unless it could jump.
It was ideal. Just enough open space, surrounded by obstacles. It was an easy place for him to leave, but not for his opponent. And the two narrow pathways between the buildings, he discovered after exploring them, were ideal for setting nasty little traps to slow down, or if needs be destroy, any pursuer.
This was the place.
Now that he had found his place, he got to work. He cleared away the smaller stones and debris on the sandy field, the kinds of things he could easily miss and trip over in the heat of battle. He left the larger stones and blocks, giving the arena floor some things to break up its open continuity, things to use in a fight for either offense or defense. Many of them were light enough for him to pick up and throw, yet were heavy enough to do considerable injury to whatever got hit by them. That task took him most of the afternoon, but he didn't stop, even to eat, afterward. He explored the large mountain of stony rubble that had once been a tower falling against what was the south side of the arena wall. The stones were large and pretty well set, but a stray foot could cause them to shift. That was ideal for him. He went up and down and up and down the pile of rubble, getting familiar with its contours, coming to know the best paths to use to climb up and down its faces. After that was done, he moved up into the stands, making sure there were no pitfalls, and arranging rocks and other things about so they were easy for him to reach, and he'd know where they were, so he could use them as projectiles.
The sun was beginning to set, so he wove together a bright ball of light, bright enough to scare away any Sandmen that may be haunting the ruins, and fixed it so it would follow him about. He climbed up onto the buildings flanking the narrow pathways one at a time, and then built his traps. They were very simple affairs, very big rocks he Conjured set to drop on foes who tripped ropes set along the pathways. His deathrap was another deadfall, but this one was a very large glass bubble filled with the most powerful acid he could remember from his schooling days in the Tower, an acid so potent that it could even eat through steel if it was given enough time. What it could not eat through, however, was glass, and that made the trap useful. It wouldn't threaten anyone unless the bubble was broken. That acid was dangerous, even to him. Acid was one of the few things that could do him permanent injury, and it was something he hoped he wouldn't have to use. No doubt that Jegojah would flail about after being doused with that potent stuff, maybe even keep fighting, and Tarrin may get burned by it as well as it ate the Doomwalker's body down to nil.
The deathtrap on the other pathway wasn't acid, it was an absolutely massive stone set delicately so that it spanned the two buildings, and looked like the bottom side of some kind of bridge between the two buildings from underneath. It was on the pathway with the lower buildings, and it would be triggered by Tarrin himself, using Sorcery to break away the delicate supports that held it in place. Some experiments with smaller stones showed him the distance and speed necessary for him to trip it and get under it before it fell.
That done, Tarrin spent most of the rest of the night exploring the city directly around the arena. He learned every nook and cranny, every side street and alley, even the location and make-up of the many piles or rubble in the vicinity. He found every conceivable place to hide, every cubby hole or dark-shadowed corner.
He explored in his cat form every building within a longspan of the arena to look for those hiding places, and in so doing he was exposed to what the Dwarves had left behind. All the wood, paper, and cloth were long gone, leaving behind only the stone and metal things they made, but that was a significant amount. The Dwarves were adept at making stone furniture, believe it or not, probably softened with cushions and pillows. The faded paintings on the stone walls themselves, and some murals and frescos, showed him what the Dwarves had looked like. They were a short, stocky race, wide-shouldered and barrel-chested, with powerfully built arms and legs. They all had beards, even the women, and wore their hair long and braided in the artwork. Most of the art was depictions of battles and warriors, telling him that the race was a martial one, but there was no glorification of death and destruction in the art. It was a noble kind of art, Dwarves battling Ogres and Trolls and other Goblinoids, even one mural of a group of Dwarves fighting an actual Dragon, but no indications anywhere of them fighting with humans or Sha'Kar. So, it was a race of skilled warriors, but warriors who knew, understood, and enjoyed peace.
He was beginning to be impressed by what he saw. The Dwarves looked to have been a noble people, skilled and strong, proud. It was a crime that they had all died in the Blood War.
The paintings were one thing, but the art of sculpture was another. The paintings and murals were exacting and crisp, like illustrations without soul, but the metal and stone sculpture that graced those abandoned buildings showed the true soul of the Dwarven people. It was bold and exciting, with strong lines and oftentimes abstract depictions. The Dwarves could carve a bust with utter precision, making an exact likeness of someone down to the hairs in his beard, or they could create stunningly complex shapes and objects that seemed almost impossible to the human eye, abstract sculpture that grabbed the eyes and threatened to turn one's sanity inside out. Despite the bizarre shapes, all the sculptures carried with them a sense of perfection, a sense of delightful teasing of the senses, forcing one to concentrate to unlock the secrets hidden within the shape's lines. Tarrin was no expert on art, but he could see the soul within each of the sculptures, and he was astounded by them.
The rest of the night after that was spent removing all the art that would come free from those buildings near the arena, moving them out to the outside edges of the city. He would not destroy such beauty. He also marked those buildings that were largely populated with paintings and murals. Those buildings he would not approach in the battle, no matter what it cost him. He would not jeopardize what little there was that the Dwarves had left behind. He also drew a precise boundary or explored and unexplored buildings, an area that turned out to be about two square longspans. That was the battleground. He would not leave the battlefield, for he would not risk destroying unexplored buildings and the treasures that they may hold.
After he moved all of the art, he started to worry, realizing that he had made a serious blunder. He had left it all sitting outside, and it would be exposed to the elements. If he had to leave, then he may not have time to put it all back inside buildings, and the wind and sand would wear the art down to nothing but soulless rocks. But he was afraid now to go back and move it all over again, because the twinging of the Weave was getting stronger. Jegojah was moving in his direction, and he didn't want to get caught outside his chosen battleground.
It left him only one option, something he had never really done before. While sitting on a rock in the pre-dawn, he blew out his breath and called for help. "Mother," he called. "I need to talk to you."
What is it, Tarrin?
"You once said that if I asked, you would do something for me."
Of course.
"I need your help now," he said soberly. "I moved a whole lot of ancient Dwarven art out of this area, but I didn't think to put it back inside once I moved it. I left it sitting outside, like an idiot. Could you move it somewhere safe?"
What is this I'm hearing? Is this consideration? Is this concern? Is my dour kitten actually thinking about protecting pieces of rock and metal? the Goddess called winsomely.
"Mother!" he said, flushing slightly.
She laughed delightedly. For such a noble cause, my kitten, I'd be more than happy to help you. I'll put the art somewhere safe, so don't you worry about it.
And that was that. It was the only thing he could think to worry about. He had made all his preparations, and taken all his precautions. He had learned the battleground so well that every rock had a place, and he had made his plans. There was nothing for him to do now but wait. Sit and wait for Jegojah, look forward to the moment when he looked the Doomwalker in the eyes and sent it back to Hell.
It was interminable.
Waiting was one thing, but waiting like this was quite another. For three days Tarrin waited, waited for that sense of the Weave to move towards him again, but it had not. It had stopped some distance away from him, and had not moved forward since. He fully understood that Jegojah had probably done the exact same thing as him, had found a suitable battlefield and had stopped to lure him into a fight. But Tarrin would not abandon his place, even if it meant waiting out the Doomwalker.
The waiting had frayed Tarrin's already sensitive nerves. Never a very sedate person to begin with, the waiting had worked him up to a state of nervous frenzy. He would pace back and forth in the arena all day, walking in lines and circles that had developed into pathways in the sandy soil, and when that got boring, he would go out on short patrols of the chosen battleground, making sure everything was where it was supposed to be, making sure his traps were still set and nothing had moved. He had even gone back to the large open square where he had left the dwarven art, but it had disappeared. A quick look around hadn't found it, and the Goddess had been curiously tight-lipped about where the art had gone. She wouldn't tell him, only saying that it was safe.
That only served to annoy an already nervous Were-cat, and that wasn't a very good combination. He worked off his anger by practicing with staff and sword, shadow-fighting against imaginary foes, making sure the long stretch of inactivity combat wise hadn't dulled his edge. When that lost its appeal, he moved heavy rocks around the arena floor, trying to find a perfect landscape that was just enough open space and just enough obstacle to suit him. Every time he ended up putting things back the way they had been in the first place, but at least it was something to do, and it gave him some exercise. Some of the rocks he moved weighed as much as three horses.
Three days. Tarrin was very nearly ready to abandon his battleground and his plan and hunt the Doomwalker down, but he knew that that was suicide. The Doomwalker was already a formidable foe, and fighting it on its own ground would be insane. But Tarrin knew that the Doomwalker was compelled by magic to seek him out, where Tarrin had no such magical compulsion. His compulsion was based on emotions, but he could control his, where he would bet that the Doomwalker couldn't suppress its own compulsion half as effectively. It was aggravating, but he had to wait out the Doomwalker, until that magical compulsion to seek him overwhelmed the intelligent strategy of luring the Were-cat onto favorable ground.
Three days of seething unsettled nerves, and then the Doomwalker began to move again, move towards him. The effect on Tarrin was almost one of bliss, a complete calming of his worry, so much so that he could sit in one place in total serenity for as long as he wished. He found a good place, sitting in the middle of the arena, staff on the ground by his crossed legs, eyes closed, his senses more attuned to the Weave than they were to reality. He tracked that quiver in the Weave intently, watched it approach, hesitate at the edge of the city, then move forwards again. He now knew that the Doomwalker knew where he was. That was why it was wary to enter the city. He also knew that the Doomwalker knew that he knew it was coming. That seemed a bit silly to think in those terms, but it was true. The Doomwalker would expect Tarrin to be ready for it, instead of thinking that Tarrin wouldn't be expecting to see it. He knew that because Tarrin had stopped in the city, in an environment that favored him, and had not moved since. That was not normal for Tarrin, and the Doomwalker wasn't stupid. It probably took one look from the edge of the city and realized that Tarrin was waiting for him, wouldn't leave the relative safety of the rocky terrain, terrain covered in sterile sand that would deny the Doomwalker the ability to draw energy from the land. Jegojah would know that he was walking into a trap, but his compulsion would not allow him to retreat.
The Doomwalker grew closer and closer that afternoon of the third day, but instead of getting nervous or anxious, Tarrin was strangely calm. The anger and sheer hatred he held for Jegojah had begun to build in him, growing stronger with each step forward Jegojah took, but it was an icy anger, one that allowed him to remain in complete control. There would be time enough for fury later, but right now, he wanted to remain in control. He wanted to look into Jegojah's eyes and see what was there at least once before he ripped off the Doomwalker's head.
It was here.
Tarrin opened his eyes as the sound of clanking armor reached him, raised his head as he heard it jump from the stands down to the ground. It looked exactly as he remembered, with the archaic armor and the wasted, leathery face, pulled tight over bone, with the glowing red eyes. He noticed that it had two swords belted to its waist. Tarrin's own eyes ignited from within with their green radiance as his expression dissolved away, leaving behind nothing but an emotionless, stony mask, a mask that hid everything from his adversary. It stopped some distance away from him, then calmly went about taking its shield from its back and settling it on its left arm, then drawing one of those swords. It never said a word.
Seeing it invoked a powerful fury inside him, but he kept it tightly controlled for the moment. There would be time enough to vent that fury on the Doomwalker shortly.
Tarrin did not get up. He merely watched it. Tarrin had one trump card to play, and it wouldn't be effective unless the Doomwalker was close. He had no doubt that Jegojah remembered the tall, willowy boy. Now he was facing a much taller, much stronger, much faster opponent, thanks to Shiika's draining kiss, and he wasn't going to tip his hand until the last moment.
"Waiting, I see," it cackled. "The same idea, we had, yes. But more patient, ye are, than Jegojah. For that, Jegojah salutes ye."
Tarrin said nothing, staring at it.
"Fight we must, but to be uncivil, it is unnecessary, yes. Against ye, nothing personal Jegojah has, no."
Tarrin still said nothing, and would not stand.
"Much differently, Jegojah could have come, yes," it said. "Instead, a fair fight Jegojah wanted, a fight to see which of us is the better. Twice before, luck and outsiders interfered, yes, and Jegojah wants to know. Jegojah wants to see who is the better man."
The Doomwalker began to walk forward. Tarrin reached down and picked up his staff, then uncrossed his legs. He slowly stood as the Doomwalker approached him, but Jegojah came to an instant halt about ten spans away when Tarrin rose up to his full height, rose up and stared down at the much smaller Doomwalker with flat, emotionless eyes glowing with their green fire, an expression of mercilessness upon his face. Tarrin let him size up the new Tarrin, a tall, lean, menacing sight that towered over the smaller undead warrior.
The consternation on Jegojah's face was ultimately satisfying. No matter what happened to him after that moment, no matter how much joy or sorrow he may experience, one of his fondest memories would be the look on Jegojah's face when it stared up at him, stared at him with fear flowing through its glowing red eyes.
That brief moment of peace was shattered when Tarrin roared mightily at the Doomwalker, ears going back and staff coming up, showing the Doomwalker formidable, long fangs and a great deal of furious attitude. Tarrin's control wavered at that instant, the moment he had been anticipating for a month and more. He gave into his fury, surrendered to his consuming hatred for and need to destroy the Doomwalker, destroy it once and for all. With a lunge that took the Doomwalker completely by surprise, Tarrin seemed to flow forward in a way that looked impossible, as if his feet never touched the ground. It looked as if he slid across the sand of the arena floor, floating above the ground as he closed that ten span gap in the blink of an eye, and struck the Doomwalker squarely in the hastily upraised shield. The power of the blow knocked the Doomwalker off its feet, sending it sailing to the side, to land on the ground in a crumpled heap.
The chiming clang of that first blow rang from the walls of the arena floor, like a bell tolling doom, and it still reverberated through the sandy arena as the Doomwalker rolled quickly to its feet and squared off against him. The creature's shield had a formidable dent in its upper outside edge, testament to the raw power behind the Were-cat's blow.
Jegojah cackled. "Come on then," it said in a swaggering tone, inviting Tarrin in with the tip of its sword.
The first blows were not the careful measured strikes of warriors feeling one another out. Tarrin assaulted the Doomwalker in a fury of powerful blows, battering the smaller opponent around like a practice dummy. It looked as if Jegojah was getting pounded, but the Doomwalker always caught the staff blows on its shield or against the heavier sections of its armor. It did not try to fight back, it merely settled in and allowed the Were-cat to beat on it, letting Tarrin vent this initial explosion of angry offense. Tarrin knew that his staff could do the Doomwalker no permanent injury, and that was a part of his initial plan. His objective was not to do in the Doomwalker, his objective was to smash up its armor and render its shield useless. A solid blow in a joint would cause the metal to interfere with Jegojah's ability to move, and that would translate to an advantage. Tarrin looked like he was in the throes of utter rage, but he was actually very calm and calculating in his assault. Heavy blow after heavy blow slammed into the Doomwalker, knocking it to and fro, but it did little more than absorb the punishment.
At least until a savage overhanded blow came in behind a badly presented shield and caved in the left shoulder of its armor, pressing the metal against its dessicated body. Jegojah struck back instantaneously after that, seeming to comprehend exactly what the Were-cat was doing, his sword thrusting out and seeking the Were-cat's belly. Tarrin twisted to the side and withdrew his staff, taking a step back and surveying his work. The Doomwalker's shield was badly beaten up, and he'd put that heavy notch in the left shoulder of the breastplate. Not much damage, but that dented shoulder would keep the Doomwalker from raising its shield to protect from high-angled attacks. That was something to remember.
Tarrin waded back in immediately, but was more careful now. Jegojah's sword had started doing more than parrying, using those same light, shallow slashing movements that were so effective, seeking out Tarrin's paws on his staff as they traded blows. It would defend against the staff and seek to take off a finger or two as Tarrin pulled away. Tarrin irritated the Doomwalker by shifting to the end-grip, wielding the staff like a spear and imposing five spans of wood between the Doomwalker's sword and his paws. But that attempt at irritation nearly cost him his left arm. Jegojah snapped forward in a dizzyingly fast rush, sword working him at angles that were now awkward because of the Doomwalker's proximity and the length of his own weapon. It was inside his weapon's arc, and it eliminated his ability to defend with his staff. It slapped his staff out wide to his right with the face of its shield, using it as a weapon instead of a defensive barrier, and then slashed in heavily with its sword, going for the elbow of his left arm. Were it not for the manacles on his wrists, he would have lost his left arm at the elbow, quickly letting go of his staff with that paw and using the metal cuff as a shield, blocking the Doomwalker's sword. He cocked his arm back and punched Jegojah dead in the face with his left paw after sending the sword wide, a move so fast that the Doomwalker didn't register it until it was staggering back from the impact.
Damned clever! Tarrin's irritation bloomed into anger when he realized that Jegojah baited him into shifting into the end-grip, just to do exactly what it did. Were it not for Tarrin's superior speed and reflexes, he would have lost his left arm.
He recovered himself, collected back into a guard stance as the Doomwalker leered at him, slapping its sword against its shield in an insulting manner. That served to unhinge Tarrin's control, which was probably what the Doomwalker was trying to do in the first place. With an infuriated roar, the Cat rising up inside him and threatening to take control, Tarrin closed the distance with the Doomwalker and tried to smash it into the ground. The Doomwalker sidestepped the blow easily, and flicked its sword at the recovering Were-cat's head. Tarrin flinched away, but not before a blazing line of pain drew across his left cheek, and warm blood began flowing down the side of his face.
The intense, angry burning of that purely cosmetic injury immediately caught his attention. It was some kind of magical attack! The pain of the minor cut was almost blinding, as if he had had the entire side of his head torn off. Blood flowed profusely down the side of his face and neck, much too much blood for such a small cut. The sense of that magic became apparent to him, a latent magical effect passed on by the sword, a magic designed to amplify pain the sword inflicted, and also attacked the body in such a way that prevented his body from stopping the bleeding. The sword was evil, it was designed to either cause such flinching at the pain it inflicted that it gave the wielder an easy kill, or make the victim bleed to death after the battle, should he get away. A single scratch from that sword would be fatal to a human being.
Tarrin backed off a few steps, joining with the Weave to come to an understanding of the magic attacking him. He picked out its function quickly, then wove together a proper counterspell to neutralize its effects. The pain quickly faded, and the blood pouring out of his face reduced to a natural rate of flow.
Jegojah cackled, waggling the tip of the sword in Tarrin's face. It had let him back off, let him experience the magical bite of its sword, to make the Were-cat fear getting cut by the blade again. The Doomwalker didn't seem to notice that the blood coming out of Tarrin's face was much less now, because the entire left side of his face and neck were covered in blood, and much of his torso had lines of blood all over it.
The Doomwalker was trying to bait him into flying into a rage! He realized that now, understood that the Cat's disregard for what would be minor cuts and nicks would kill it, as the magical sword would literally bleed him to death while he sought to tear the Doomwalker to pieces. It was a weapon well suited to taking advantage of Tarrin's weakness, and that weakness was his temper.
Damned clever. Tarrin had to respect that, respect Jegojah's creative resourcefulness. It had found the one weapon that could have easily killed Tarrin, a weapon that, when coupled with Tarrin's rage, would have literally nicked him to death, and the Cat would not have realized its mistake until it was too late. But Tarrin wasn't the same as he had been. He still suffered from rages, but he was more controlled now, more able to deflect that blind fury, and it was absolutely vital that he keep control now. He couldn't allow the Cat to rush in and get them both killed.
One thing was very certain now. He absolutely had to get that sword out of Jegojah's hand.
Defiantly putting his staff in the end-grip, he hissed menacingly at the Doomwalker. Jegojah accepted the invitation and advanced confidently forward, seeming to be assured by Tarrin's comprehension of the great danger the sword posed, or perhaps confident that the bleeding was already starting to weaken the larger foe. He began with a familar in-out combination of shallow slashes that he used often, something that Tarrin remembered from prior battles and easily countered. The Doomwalker attacked quickly and precisely, using the forms that Tarrin remembered, that same quick, efficient style that marked the Doomwalker's formidable fighting skills. Tarrin nearly fell into the trap of expecting certain moves to come next, when what should have been a wide slash became a tight upward thrust directed at his belly. Tarrin smacked the sword aside with his staff and moved with the momentum, bringing up a foot and plastering it right into the helmet of the left side of Jegojah's face. The Doomwalker spun in a complete circle from the blow, and its helmet was askew when it returned to facing him. It backed off quickly, shield-bearing hand adjusting the helmet the right way even as Tarrin pressed the sudden advantage, but the wicked sword in its hand stopped his advance when it tried to cut into his leg. But Tarrin's weapon was longer, so he stopped short to stay out of its range, then hit it squarely in the head with his staff, snapping the head unnaturally to the side. The skeletal being didn't show any hint of pain, but it did back off one more step and get its helmet on right, just in time to raise its shield to parry another swat from the staff directed at its head.
With a growling cry, Jegojah bulled forward, sword leading. Tarrin parried the weapon and pinned it to the side, and the pair of them were suddenly pushing against one another. Tarrin's claws dug into the loose sandy soil as he felt the strength of the Doomwalker, that unnatural strength that at one time had been a match for his own. But that was before. Tarrin turned the Doomwalker's sword further and further out, pushing it away from his body methodically, and the surprise at being outpowered showed clearly on the gray, taut, bony face of the Doomwalker. Tarrin grounded one end of his staff and used that grounding as a fulchrum, levering the sword out even more, then took a paw off the staff and drove his fingers right into the glowing eye sockets of the Doomwalker's face. Claws got a grip on those sockets, and Tarrin pinioned to the side and dragged the Doomwalker along with him. Jegojah's body left the ground as Tarrin whipped him around the side of his body, and sent him flying quite a distance to crash to the sandy ground.
The bone that had separated the Doomwalker's eye sockets was gone when he got up, as well as most of the gray, dead skin and flesh that had covered its skull. It hung down in tatters, like a drooping flag, and the missing bone exposed putrified bone fragments and the empty cavity behind those glowing eyes, a black pit where a brain had once rested, a black sea in which the glowing points of red light now floated. Tarrin threw the piece of bone aside contemptuously, then growled at Jegojah as it put a tentative hand to its face.
"Improved, ye have, yes," it grunted. "And stronger ye are now. A worthy opponent ye are now, not the lucky boy from before."
Tarrin's tail lashed back and forth behind him angrily, then thumped into the ground hard enough to raise a small cloud of dust. The Doomwalker reached up and clamped down the visor on its helm, something it had never used before, and then charged forward with a strong cry.
In moments, the ground around them was chewed up from padded foot and armored boot, as the two combatants assaulted each other with renewed ferocity. Heavy blows, blows that would have killed a human being, were traded between them liberally, causing the arena to echo with the strange sound of steel striking Ironwood, which was a nearly metallic sound. Tarrin kept that sword from cutting him again as he strove to smash the shield off the arm of his adversary, taking the arm with it if necessary. Jegojah was completely different now, Tarrin felt it, it had dropped all restraints and attacked Tarrin with the same intensity that Tarrin had always shown to it. He had to concentrate intensely to keep track of that sword, parrying it or dodging it, even blocking it with his manacles, as he continued to concentrate on relieving the Doomwalker of the advantage that its shield afforded it. Tarrin fell back into the forms of the Dance and the Ways, styles of fighting taught to him by the best, merging the two into a singular style that was all Tarrin's own, a style that took advantage of his height and strength. The Doomwalker began to get flustered in their furious exchange, unable to keep up with the faster opponent, and being physically outpowered when sword met staff, literally finding itself being thrashed about like a rag doll. Instead of backing out, however, the Doomwalker merely grinned that hideous grin and redoubled its efforts, fighting on despite its disadvantage, almost seeming to enjoy it.
Somewhere in that exchange, something happened to cause the two of them to separate, if only for a moment. Jegojah had battered dents all over its armor, and Tarrin just became aware of a furious pain in his belly. He glanced down to see a very long line from that sword, a superficial, skin-deep cut, pouring out blood at a frightening rate. Tarrin wove the appropriate counterspell quickly, but not before allowing the blood to cover his lower body, to hide the fact that the bleeding was subsiding. The Doomwalker was still pushing hard, still trying to tire him out, thinking that he was losing blood the entire time. If it thought to wear him down using the unnatural advantage of that blood-sucking sword, it was going to be in for quite a shock.
Tarrin rushed back into the fray immediatley, not giving the Doomwalker the chance to notice that Tarrin wasn't weakening, pressing it quickly and forcing it to devote its entire attention to the fight. He kept attacking Jegojah's shield, kept putting pressure on the Doomwalker's left side, and it was a tactic that seemed to continue to confound and fluster his undead opponent. The Doomwalker worked well at minimizing the damage to the shield, but had to use too much of its sword to help protect against Tarrin's relentless attack. Every time it tried to turn the tide of battle, it found itself again trying to defend its left, defending it with a shield that was beginning to show signs of heavy abuse. The thick staff, heavy and strong, pummelled the Doomwalker's flank with punishing blows. Jegojah dropped back a step and thrust at Tarrin when he moved to close the distance, but the Were-cat easily evaded the move. Only at the last second did he realize that it was a feint, that the Doomwalker was turning and slashing the sword's edge at him as he twisted aside, and he was forced to duck under that blow. Tarrin turned in that croch and whipped out his tail, slashing it across the backs of the ankles of Jegojah, and it was strong enough to sweep the feet out from under his lighter foe. Jegojah was spilled to the ground, which effectively ended that short attempt at offense from the Doomwalker.
The Doomwalker rolled frantically to the side as Tarrin was instantly on his feet, and trying to drive the butt of his staff through the visor of his foe. He grabbed the staff in one paw and whipped it down like a club, smashing the Doomwalker across the thighs, bending armor with a squealing clang. He reared the staff up for another blow, but the Doomwalker managed to roll to its feet, and was quickly all over Tarrin as he tried to readjust his grip on the staff. Tarrin dropped the weapon instead, falling back on the unarmed techniques to parry a vicious series of heavy thrusts at Tarrin's stomach. One in particular came in too deeply, and Tarrin lashed back as Jegojah tried to recover, grabbing the wrist in a crushing grip. He hauled the Doomwalker off the ground by that hold on its arm, then turned and whipped it over his head and slammed it into the ground. He picked it up, turned, and did it again, then agian, then yet again, pounding the Doomwalker mercilessly into the ground over and over again, trying to make it let go of that deadly sword. It finally managed to squirm free when one particularly heavy slam into the ground jarred its wrist loose from Tarrin's grip, and to its credit, it kept hold of its sword the entire time. It tried to take a piece out of him with the edge of that wicked blade as it recoiled away from him, but Tarrin managed to slither out of the way in time.
Separated from his staff, Tarrin backed up as that lethal sword came after him. He evaded, twisted, dodged it, doing Allia proud with a dazzling display of nimble footwork. He was like a blade of grass in the wind, bending, twisting, always just outside the reach of his opponent's deadly magical weapon, trying to get enough of a cushion of distance to either Summon his staff or draw his sword. But the Doomwalker knew how to press and advantage, keeping right in Tarrin's face as its sword sought to put a few killing cuts in Tarrin's hide.
In the face of such a furious assault, Tarrin did the only thing he could think of. He suddenly turned on his heel and rushed headlong into Jegojah's face with a loud cry of fury. The Doomwalker raised its sword to impale the suddenly aggressive Were-cat on the end of that deadly weapon-
– -and then the Were-cat wasn't there anymore. Just as it had helped him against the Demon, it helped him now. A black cat suddenly darted between the Doomwalker's spread legs, legs spread out to give stability to receive Tarrin's charge, but now served to give the Were-cat an escape route. He ran just far enough to shapeshift back and reach his staff, kicking it up into his grip as the Doomwalker turned around and charged headlong, chagrin showing on the lower section of its face that he could see. Instead of engaging the Doomwalker, Tarrin retreated instead. It was getting too comfortable on the open, level ground, and that deadly weapon it held made it very difficult to fight his kind of battle without worrying about every little scratch and nick he may receive. Tarrin moved into the area beside the hill of blocks, a place littered with large building stones that served to mine the footing. Jegojah was right on his heels, and he no sooner turned around than he had to raise his staff and defend himself from that wicked weapon.
They engaged again, but now Jegojah did not move around nearly as much. The many stones made footing treacherous, so it kept its feet more or less planted and moved with caution and care, and never very far. Tarrin, however, knew the floor of the arena like the back of his paw, and he moved with utter confidence over the bumpy ground, darting in to harass the Doomwalker, then backing out of its reach when it began to get the upper hand in those brief, furious exchanges. The tactic looked to be getting on the Doomwalker's nerves, and its frustration became more and more apparent each time Tarrin danced back out of its reach. Obviously annoyed enough to change the rules of the game.
The Doomwalker raised the tip of its sword towards him, and Tarrin instantaneously reacted to that display. Drawing out the flows as quickly as the energy flowed through the Weave to the Doomwalker, Tarrin wove together a spell of Air, Earth, and Divine flows, forming an reflective barrier to the magical assault he knew was coming. Jegojah pushed its sword forth, and a sizzling bolt of lightning blasted into the air between them, charging at him at a speed that was almost impossible to follow.
At least for a human. Tarrin reared a paw back and swiped it across his body in a backhanded motion, and when the leading edge of that bolt of lightning struck the blurring paw, it was deflected away from Tarrin's body. The bolt blasted to the side of him, striking and rebounding off the wall of the arena, then struck the sand of the arena floor to melt the sand and form a puddle of bubbling glass.
If Tarrin thought that Jegojah was surprised before, the look on its face now-or what was left that he could see, with that visor down-was one of utter disbelief.
"Ye can do magic!" it gasped. "But if ye could destroy Jegojah, already it would have been done, yes," it reasoned immediately thereafter. "Ye full power, it is not yet back, no."
Tarrin said nothing. He wove together a short, simple weave of Fire and then unleashed it at the Doomwalker. If it wanted to play magic, Tarrin would be more than willing to oblige. A huge gout of flame erupted from the Were-cat's paw, lashing out in the Doomwalker's direction, forcing it to dive to the ground to avoid getting cooked. Its form then sank into the ground, disappearing from sight. Tarrin had never seen it do that before, and the newness of it caused him to delay a heartbeat too long. The blade of its sword suddenly plunged out from the ground, right up between Tarrin's legs, and only fast reflexes saved him from getting that blade up the inside of his left calf. It still managed to cut a shallow line through his fur, a line that spewed blood immediately. Tarrin wove the counterspell again to stem the bleeding, then realized that it couldn't fight the Doomwalker when it was hiding under the ground. Weaving together a platorm of Air some ten spans off the ground, Tarrin jumped up onto that invisible landing, standing seemingly on midair, crouching down and watching the ground below him intently.
It didn't emerge for several moments. It seemed to realize that Tarrin was no longer on the ground, and it refused to come out where it would get attacked immediately upon resurfacing. And with it inside the ground, Tarrin's sense of it from the Weave was muffled. He couldn't tell exactly where it was, only that it was somewhere underneath him.
Tarrin considered it. It obviously wouldn't come up where Tarrin could get at it, so its logical next move would be to come up somwhere else, like within the walls of the arena, then come out of them in that manner. If it could pass through solid rock, anyway. If not, its best bet was to surface on the far side of the jagged mound of building stones that pierced the arena wall, where Tarrin couldn't see it. Either way, looking down wasn't the place he should be looking. He started scanning the entire arena floor and even the stands, watching for the Doomwalker from any possible approach.
It emerged again not a distance away, but directly underneath him. That surprised Tarrin considerably, but no less so than when the Doomwalker raised its sword to blast him with lightning again. Instead of jumping or defending, Tarrin instead rose up and blasted the entire area with a huge gust of wind, thanks to a quick weave of Air, which served to kick up the dust of the arena and immediately hide him from the Doomwalker's sight in a cloudy fog of dust and sand.
Two could play the hiding game.
Tarrin expanded his platform to allow him to move from his aerial position in utter silence, without having to get on the ground, then lightly set his feet on the top of the mound of rubble on the west side of the arena's floor. He stopped maintaining the Air platform, but instead wove an Illusion of himself, exact down the most minute detail, and projected it down onto the arena floor below. The Illusion made quite a show of moving slowly and quietly, each foot painstakingly coming down so there would be no noise. Tarrin was even thoughtful enough to add footprints behind the Illusion's progress, depressions in the disturbed sand that anyone could easily track.
The Doomwalker took the bait. It rushed out of the haze with very little sound, sword leading. Tarrin made a point of having the Illusion quickly raise up and into a defensive stance, seeking to parry the point of that deadly sword. Jegojah's sword slid under the upraised staff, and effortly plunged into the midsection of its oppenent. It felt no resistance, and continued to feel no resistance as its body stumbled right through the disrupting Illusion.
It cursed and raised its shield as a weave of focused Air, a scything blade of pure Air, lashed down from the top of the mound of rubble at terrific speed, released with a slashing motion of Tarrin's arm. The Doomwalker managed to get its shield up in time, and to Tarrin's surprise, the shield resisted the power of the blow. The ground on either side of the Doomwalker shuddered, and a dark line appeared across the sand for a moment before the shifting sand and dust settled into the incision left in the neatly sliced ground. The Doomwalker staggered back from the impact of the Weave on its unusual shield, now showing a deep, clean, neat slice across its featureless face. It screamed another curse at him and raised its sword, unleashing another blast of lightning in the direction from which Tarrin's weave originated, but its aim was off. It couldn't see Tarrin very well in the dusty haze, and its magical attack flew harmlessly over Tarrin's head.
One thing became apparent. In a battle of magic, even without High Sorcery, Tarrin would win. Jegojah was not a magic-user in the pure sense of the word. He had only limited abilities, and Tarrin had seen most of them. He could not improvise, make up new spells, use magic in a creative manner as Tarrin could. He could only apply those things that he could do to the situation, and make the best of them. But the thought of picking Jegojah apart from afar with magic offended his sense of vengeance. He wanted to be in the Doomwalker's face, wanted to look it in the eyes. Revenge was not something exacted from a distance. Tarrin could easily raise an Elemental to do battle with the Doomwalker, or split the earth and cast him down into the crevice, or pick it up with Air and send it flying to the moons, but he didn't want to do those things. He wanted to beat Jegojah down like a dog with his own two paws. He had been very content to fight without magic until the Doomwalker resorted to it first.
But the Doomwalker had other ideas. The lightning not finding the mark, Jegojah resorted to its most powerful attack. Tarrin felt it in the ground even as it unleashed it, that sesmic shockwave that shook the earth. The ground trembled and rumbled as the rubble pile began to vibrate like the string of a lute, then blocks and masonry went flying as the shockwave struck the pile. Tarrin was quickly inundated in flying rocks, and the shifting stones beneath his feet parted and caused him to sink down into the debris as if it were quicksand. Rocks jabbed and pounded at him, their shifting pinched and cut into him, and it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience as he found himself getting buried beneath the rubble he had thought would be his advantage. The pile continued to shift, and he clearly felt his tail snap under the strain of being pinched between two large rocks. The pain made him suck in air sharply and start thrashing against the shifting rubble.
Now things were not good. Tarrin wriggled out of the rubble as he heard the Doomwalker cackling evilly. He had not forgotten about that power, but he had never expected it to be that strong. It hadn't shown that kind of strength before. He'd been saving that up, obviously.
"Jegojah is not as easy as that!" the Doomwalker taunted up at him as Tarrin crept about the top of the newly shifted rockpile. The stones had done him considerable harm, and though they had been shaped by artificial means, the many years had removed that taint of working, turning them again into weapons of nature. That made all the bruises, nicks, cuts, and his broken tail true injuries, that would not regenerate. He had to retreat, if only for a moment, give himself time to heal the damage with magic.
Turning, Tarrin dashed up the rock pile, then vaulted over to the arena seats that were still standing. He raced along those stands, ducking when a bolt of lighting lashed in from the arena floor, and then ducked into one of the passages leading to the alleyways where he had traps. He heard the metalshod boots of Jegogah coming up from behing him almost as soon as he entered the passageway.
Charging out into one of the choked alleyways, he heard the Doomwalker racing up behind him. He turned a corner and moved into the stretch that held one of his nasty traps, the falling block. He slowed down to close the gap with the Doomwalker, getting that critical distance, setting up what he had worked through in his mind many times before. He got to the proper pace, checked the little landmarks he had assigned for this trap, and then when he crossed the line just past the set of double windows on the left building, he slashed the supports holding up that huge block some forty spans over his head. It immediately began to plummet from the rooftops, and Tarrin raced under its expanding shadow easily. He took but three steps more, and it slammed home. The squealing of armor and the sudden surprised shout from the Doomwalker told him that it had hit its mark. He skidded to a halt and looked back, and saw that the Doomwalker was pinned under the massive stone block only by an ankle. He was disappointed that the block didn't do much damage, but it gave Tarrin critical time to get some distance from the Doomwalker. He scamped up the buildings, literally jumping from the side of one building to another, criss-crossing his way up to the rooftops. There he knelt and immediately bent to the task of healing the damage done to him.
This was one of the things that he realized made Weavespinners so very hard to kill. Weavespinners could use magic on themselves, and that included healing. Tarrin sent the healing flows, Earth, Water, and Divine, into himself, then set them to attack the many minor cuts, bruises, and the broken tail that he had suffered in the shifting rocks. He felt the icy blast roll through him, making him suck in his breath, and immediately felt a curious weariness. He could heal himself, he discovered, but it cost him a great deal more in energy than it would have cost had he healed someone else, or received healing from another. Sorcerer's Healing took something from both the healer and the one being healed. Since he was both, he had to pay both of those tolls in strength, and they were considerably more when taken together than when they were taken seperately. Tarrin knew that if he wanted to use any other magic of any moderate power, he couldn't heal himself again.
But it had done its job. Tarrin looked down into the alleyway and found Jegojah gone, which was what he had expected. The thing could merge into the rock of the alley, it would be easy for it to escape from under the stone.
The building under him began to shudder! Tarrin realized that Jegojah was attacking the building itself, and the power of its ability to shake the earth would bring the building down! He scrambled across the rooftop, then lept to another rooftop relatively close by. Just in time, from the sound of it, for a horrendous cracking sound heralded the tumultuous collapse of the building upon which he had been standing, sending an ear-splitting roar into the air and kicking up a huge cloud of dust.
Staying out in the city was now a death sentence. The Doomwalker's surprisingly powerful ability to shake the earth would make the buildings nothing but a series of deathtraps for Tarrin. The only safe thing he could do was go back to the arena, where the open floor of it would take away any overhead objects the Doomwalker could drop on his head. He jumped from rooftop to rooftop, faster than the Doomwalker could draw a bead on him, but it didn't stop it from trying. It collapsed three buildings in methodical fashion, then got smart and tried to bring down the building to which Tarrin was trying to jump. The continuous roar of the shifting rubble had masked the Doomwalker's clever attack on his path, but Tarrin managed to reach the building, cross its roof, and make the twenty span jump to a large building immediately beside the old arena before the rooftop collapsed. It was a scary sensation to feel the roof sagging beneath his feet, but he had very little choice in the matter. Out in the city, he absolutely could not engage the Doomwalker on the ground. It would simply drop everything available on his head.
Tarrin climbed down the side of the building quickly and ran back into the arena, and he heard at least one metal shod boot coming up from behind him. He ran down the stands and dropped back into the arena's sand-covered floor, then turned and brandished his staff as the Doomwalker walked right out of the arena wall. Its left boot was gone, but its skeletal foot was undamaged. The armor had taken the brunt of the crushing blow.
"Jegojah makes an offer," it said in a grim tone. "Magic, it will bring this place down, yes, and Jegojah does not wish to destroy this place. If ye agree not to use magic, so Jegojah will abide by that as well. Skill against skill, it shall decide who is better, yes?"
Tarrin drew himself up and considered it. In the arena, Tarrin held the advantage in magic. But he had intended to stop using magic anyway, so he simply ignored the Doomwalker. It could take his silence as an agreement or a denial, whatever it decided, for Tarrin did not play by another's rules.
The only thing he had decided so far that a change of weaponry was in order. Tarrin had beaten on Jegojah with his staff, but it had not gotten rid of that shield. The slashing cut of Air had done more damage in one blow than fifty hits on the shield had with his staff, so perhaps a large, heavy weapon with a very sharp edge would be more successful. Tarrin had beaten up the Doomwalker pretty well, so he felt that losing the advantage of his staff was a fair trade for the chance to rid it of that shield.
Tarrin sent his staff into the elsewhere, then deliberately and slowly drew his black-bladed sword.
This startled and confused Jegojah, and made it approach him with a wariness, as if they were fighting for the first time. Tarrin held the sleek, deadly sword lightly in both paws, tip down, eyes utterly flat and expression still totally emotionless.
It was more of an education than a feeling out for Jegojah. Tarrin ignored the customary feeling out process and went right after it, hacking away with that long, deadly weapon with tremendous speed. The blade slashed the air, whistling shrilly as Tarrin assaulted the Doomwalker's left flank yet again, going after that shield with a single-minded determination that the Doomwalker still did not seem to comprehend. The attacks on the shield stopped when the Doomwalker turned its body and managed to turn it into a fencing match, but it was quickly taught that Tarrin knew intimately how to use the weapon in his paws. Deadly blood-sucking sword struck the sleek black Eastern weapon again and again, neither combatant managing to slip past the defense of the other, the arena's walls ringing with a sound that had not graced their confines for five thousand years.
Tarrin backed up and utlized his reach advantage to slice the chisel point of his weapon across the breastplate of the Doomwalker. It didn't flinch away from the attack, probably realizing that its armor would stop the shallow blow, and instead stabbed at Tarrin's wrists and arms with its own weapon as a counterstroke. Tarrin slid his paws around the edge of that sword, sidestepped quickly, then slashed the long Eastern sword in a tremendous arc over the thrusted sword of his opponent. The Doomwalker twisted aside frantically, bringing up its shield to defend itself, but the lethally sharp edge of that blade bit into the edge of the shield and went right through. In a vast arc, Tarrin completed the slash, carrying along the top third of the Doomwalker's circular shield along with it.
All it cost him was his sword. Jegojah's deadly blade slice across the forearm of his left arm as he tried to recover, and the intense pain it caused made him flinch, and drop his weapon. Tarrin staggered back quickly, weaving the counterspell to neutralize that evil weapon's magical bite, and had to bring his staff back from the elsewhere hastily to fend off a sudden explosion of offense from the Doomwalker. Probably realizing that Tarrin had been methodically trying to beat down its defenses, the Doomwalker threw everything into an all-out attack, trying to bull into its larger foe and bring him down in a furious series of heavy, nearly reckless blows. Tarrin managed to parry or evade the frenzied attack, backing up just enough to give himself room, working with blurring paws on his staff to intercept or deflect that deadly sword again and again, so fast that a human spectator would not have been able to follow the blazing movements of the two inhuman combatants. Tarrin ended the sudden press by kicking the Doomwalker in the hip when it went too far with a savage blow meant to cut Tarrin in half at the ribcage, sending it stumbling out of its offensive posture and giving Tarrin a hasty second to scoop up his sword and replace it in its scabbard. The Doomwalker took that second to adjust the damaged shield on its arm so the missing section of it was turned down instead of up, affording the most protection to where it was most needed. After that ever-so-brief pause, they engaged one another yet again.
It was another heated, furious exchange of blows. Jegojah constantly sought to drive the point of its sword into some part of him, to open a wound that went more than skin deep, as Tarrin continued to batter Jegojah's shield, to literally break it apart. The metal shield had already begun to buckle, and now it wavered dangerously every time it absorbed one of those punishing blows from Tarrin's unbreakable staff. Jegojah had to abandon its attempt to stab Tarrin and use its sword to parry those blows, often having to intercept the staff as it tried to stab or punch around the sword to get at that shield. Tarrin worked feverishly to get to the shield, even leaving himself open a few times to see what the Doomwalker would do. It didn't try to go for him, it protected its shield, trying to get as much use out of the device as it could before having to discard it.
That was what Tarrin had been waiting for.
He moved to smash his staff down in a broad overhanded chop, and Jegojah raised its sword and turned its shield arm aside to give it room to parry the weapon completely, allow it to go around its body and hit the ground. But Tarrin suddenly pulled back, pulled back out of range of his own staff with on wide step and began to turn towards Jegojah's sword side. He slid the staff out and down into an end-grip when it was hidden behind his body to the Doomwalker's eyes, and then came around the other side in a fast spinning motion, whipping the staff around his body with horrendous force. Tarrin was out of range of his own staff when it was in center-grip, but Jegojah's face registered shock when it saw Tarrin holding the end of that staff as he brought it around, brought it around with such force that it ripped the air as it passed through it. The Doomwalker tried to backpedal frantically, but it didn't understand what Tarrin was doing until it was already done.
With a sickening crack, the very end of Tarrin's staff struck the armored gauntlet of Jegojah's sword hand, and that knocked the deadly sword out of its grip. The sword spun hilt over point high into the air, in a gentle arc that sent it fifty spans to the side, to clatter loudly onto the stones of the stands.
Tarrin didn't see it land. He recovered his feet even as the Doomwalker frantically went for its other sword, and it just barely managed to get the weapon out in time to deflect a blow that would have struck the Doomwalker's shield from the inside, and that would have broken the straps holding it to the skeletal creature's arm. It managed to stab Tarrin in the shoulder with the new sword as the Were-cat tried to recover from the risky move, and though it hurt like crazy, it was not the deady pain that the other weapon caused, and it wasn't so deep that it even threatened the mobility of his arm.
Getting that weapon out of Jegojah's hands had been like opening a door. The Cat suddenly roared out of its place in his mind, roared out and took immdiate control of him. Rational thought dissolved away as the need to keep his wits about him had been removed, and his full animalistic fury rose up and took control of him. Throwing the staff aside, the Cat reached out for what had always been there-
– -but could not find it. The power that had always been there before no longer was, and the Cat seemed to sense that this was a permanent situation. It was neither disappointed nor worried about this change. What was lost was lost, and it no longer had any meaning to the Cat. The power of that magic was tremendous, but the Cat had other weapons that served it just as well. It fell back on things it knew, so it roared mindlessly and pounced directly at Jegojah, and the Doomwalker didn't have the chance to try to get out of the way. The smaller opponent was slammed to the ground by Tarrin's greater weight and strength, and the Were-cat was already starting in on the Doomwalker before they hit the ground. Claws ripped and tore and slashed at the heavy armor of the smaller foe, rending it and gouging it, even tearing holes in it. The claws on his feet hooked into the swordbelt and codpiece and literally ripped them apart, tearing huge pieces out of Jegojah's hips and thighs as the three-finger long claws shredded anything that they could snag. He even bit savagely at the Doomwalker, ignoring the foul, putrid taste of the necrotic flesh to do as much damage as possible in the shortest time. Tarrin's jaws snapped the lower mandible bone of the Doomwalker at the chin, and ripped what tattered flesh remained attached to it, fanged teeth and powerful jaw muscles breaking the bone in their vise-like grip. It was a mindless flurry of frenzied motion, a clawed dance of total destruction that sought nothing less than to rip the Doomwalker into as many pieces as possible.
A hand managed to press against Tarrin's chest, and a magical bolt of lightning managed to get the Were-cat off of it. Tarrin's body was driven up by the power of the spell, to land lightly on its feet some ten spans away with a blackened circle in his chest, pain he barely registered. Jegojah rolled to its feet, and it showed that it had been savaged in the powerful attack, armor ripped and gouged, jawbone broken and both pieces dangling limply from their anchors on either side of its head, a huge chunk of both its legs laying in little pieces all over the ground. The straps of its shield had been broken in the assault, leaving it laying on the ground, so it held its sword in both hands now, its mangled expression unreadable and its ability to speak destroyed. Tarrin spat out a mouthful of decayed flesh, then spread his paws wide and crouched down into that slouching stance he used when fighting unarmed.
It was an exchange no less furious than what had happened on the ground, but this time the wounding went both ways. Tarrin literally ignored the sword as it concentrated on tearing the Doomwalker apart, and the Doomwalker took advantage of that by carving up the enraged Were-cat at every available opportunity. Jegojah kept backing up, kept from getting hooked and driven to the ground, where certain destruction awaited it. It backed up in circles, getting ripped up by those deadly claws, but managing to give back as good as it got. Jegojah had used Tarrin's rage against him before, so it knew exactly what to do, and it was doing it perfectly. Back up, keep from getting grappled, and do as much damage as physically possible until the amount of injury the Were-cat sustained was enough to bring it back to its senses.
But the Were-cat showed no signs of backing off, of coming to its senses. It was absolutely enraged, and Jegojah sensed that it would not stop coming until it was dead. And given the horrific damage the Doomwalker had taken, it knew which would reach that state first. So it backed away even faster, getting a chance to open some distance between them, and motioned towards the ground.
"Come!" it managed to say through a shattered face. "Jegojah needs ye now!"
The Were-cat backed up in confusion when a second vile scent arose from the earth. It looked to see a second figure much like the first, armored and helmeted with a visor, the smell of death and the cold of the grave surrounding it like a shroud. This one was stockier than the first, that hated, known scent, stockier and a bit shorter, and it held a large broadsword in its gauntleted hand and a shield strapped to the other arm. It had literally risen up from the ground, a ground that showed no signs of disturbance, like a ghost.
But the Cat was not afraid. One was nearly destroyed, and the second was nothing more than an obstacle to get to the first.
The Cat was quickly disabused of that notion. This second one was every bit as quick and strong as the first, and it attacked with the same mindless fearlessness the Cat itself employed. It charged forward with sword raised, not even trying to defend itself, sword seeking out the Cat's heart immediately. This unusual tactic was enough to put the Cat aback, force it to back up and give ground, defending itself from this strange, fearless enemy. The sword slashed across the Were-cat's upper left arm, just under the brand, and the pain that caused was enough to make the Cat understand that raw brutality was not going to win this fight. It needed a plan, and that meant that it had to give some control back to the Human in it.
As always, Tarrin was a little disoriented when the rage slipped away, and he couldn't remember anything that had happened while he was raging. All he could see was that Jegojah was pretty much well done for, with rips and tears all over its body. It had summoned forth another combatant, he saw, a stocky one with maggots wriggling from between the holes in its visor. Tarrin had quite a few injuries, but none of them were severe enough to slow him down.
That was about all he managed to take in. The new combatant charged him with a kind of mindless intensity, not even raising its shield in defense as it rushed him. Just as it did to the Cat, this confused Tarrin, who backed away from the seemingly suicidal attack instead of attempting to engage. It had to have a reason for being so confident, for being so uncaring for its own welfare, and Tarrin was wounded enough to respect the need to not get any more holes in him. He didn't understand this new assailant. It was obviously undead, but it didn't act like Jegojah. Was it some kind of sycophant or assistant, raised to defend the Doomwalker?
Tarrin backed away from it as it tried to chop him with that sword, trying to puzzle out this strange turn of events. He Summoned his staff back to his paws and used it to fend off this attacker's blows in sudden wariness. What was this thing? He retreated faster than the thing could advance, then turned and scampered up the pile of loose rocks, to force it to come at him over uneven ground. It did so without hesitation, slipping more than once, but continuing to advance.
Tarrin looked down at it, and saw Jegojah standing some distance behind, trying to recover itself. The afternoon sun shone over Tarrin's shoulder, striking the swordblade of this new enemy in a way that made it reflect back the reddening sun's light in his face, turning the blade red to his eyes.
Like fire.
No! It couldn't be! Tarrin looked more closely at his advancing opponent. Though the armor was blackened and dirty, the design and shape of it was unmistakable, the heavy-shoulderded design used by the Knights. The rend in the breastplate of the armor was visible now that he was looking for it, and he saw the black wisps of curly hair extending out from the bottom of that burgonet helmet.
This new undead foe was Faalken!
The dream hadn't been a symbol or metaphor, it had been literal!
It was impossible! They had animated the dead body of his slain friend to attack him! Tarrin backed away, shaking his head in disbelief, stunned at this turn of events. He kept backing away as the dead body of Faalken advanced on him, still swinging that broadsword to try to take off Tarrin's head. They couldn't have! They must have robbed Faalken's grave, stolen his body and taken it back to do this to him, to disturb his rest and force his body to seek out Tarrin and destroy him! Had they no honor, no shame? Faalken had died a heroic death, one filled with honor, and they defiled everything that death stood for by reanimating his body, denying him the peace and rest he had so greatly deserved. No! This couldn't be, it couldn't be happening!
But the undead form of Faalken stalked him relentlessly, stepping forward for every step Tarrin took back, up the uneven slope and further away from Jegojah.
No! It couldn't be! Not Faalken! He'd have to fight his own friend, and destroy him! Those bastard ki'zadun!
Tarrin's backwards motion stopped, and his shoulders literally shook from rage and consternation. Not like this, not like this! How dare they defile the memory of his friend! How dare they use him as nothing more than a playing piece to get to him! First Jula, now Faalken! They were animals, using people until they had nothing left, then throwing them away like garbage!
The dead body of Faalken reached Tarrin's point and raised its sword, then chopped it down at the shoulder of its larger foe-
– -and the blade stopped some safe distance from Tarrin's body, stopped by the palm of his paw, a palm nearly cut all the way through. Tarrin's radiant green eyes seemed to waver in their color and intensity, and a look of abject indignation appeared on his face.
"You… BASTARDS!" Tarrin shrieked, finally breaking his silence. The Weave seemed to writhe at his bellowing cry, and it started to shift in ways that he could feel. He reached out to the Weave, felt it, sensed it, became one with it, then, instead of reaching out and touching it, he drew it inside of himself.
However differently it was done, the end result was still the same. Tarrin's eyes shifted from green to incandescent white, and the unmistakable ghostly aura of Magelight surrounded his body. Tarrin was absolutely livid, but this was not the mindless fury of the Cat. This came purely from his Human side, a rage at what injustice had been perpetrated upon his dear friend that it absolutely could not be allowed to remain. This was an icy fury, a cold anger of purpose, and that control was what allowed the Human in him to do what the Cat now could not.
Summon the power of High Sorcery.
Where before there had been rage and pain, now there was nothing but purity, sweetness. The raging torrent of High Sorcery filled him, filled him in an instant to his maximum potential, but then it struck the dam created by his transformation, a dam that would not allow it to threaten his body. In that moment he understood how his power increased, for before he could only hold a portion of his maximum potential safely. Now, he could hold it all with no danger to himself, no threat of being destroyed by the power. It still required effort to use, but it would not kill him.
With almost no thought, Tarrin wrapped the dead body of Faalken up in flows of Air and picked him up, then literally pinned him into thin air some fifty spans overhead, getting him out of the way of the object of his rage. Jegojah. The aura of Magelight around Tarrin coalesced into a coherent sheathe of light as Tarrin rose up into the air himself, carried by his own power, looking down on the Doomwalker with utter fury, looking for all the world like an avenging god bearing down on the subject of his wrath, surrounded by the concave, four-pointed star symbol that truly represented his Goddess.
With a primal shout, Tarrin unleashed a blasting bolt of raw magical power, that same weave of Fire, Water, Air, Divine, and token flows of the other Spheres to grant the weave the power of High Sorcery. The incandescent bolt lashed out from his outstretched paws. The bolt was magical, but it depended on Tarrin's aim, and his fury had made his aim short. Jegojah dove aside as the bolt slammed into the ground, causing an instantaneous explosion as superhot magic struck and detonated when coming into contact with something it couldn't instantly vaporize. A vast weave of Air slammed the Doomwalker to the ground in mid-dive, and it rolled to the side just in time to avoid being burned in half by another of those powerful magical weaves.
"How dare you do that to him!" Tarrin raged in a voice so powerful it could be heard at the edges of the city. The Doomwalker sank into the earth just as the body of Faalken had arisen from it, but Tarrin wasn't about to allow it to get away that easily. Weaving together a powerful weave of Earth and Fire, with token flows of the other Spheres to give the weave the power of High Sorcery, Tarrin sent it into the ground and caused it to infuse the ground beneath him. It began to tremble and shake, and then the entirety of the arena floor erupted in a vast explosion of dust, sand, dirt, rocks, debris, sending it hurtling in every direction, raising a cloud of dust that billowed up into the sky.
The body of the Doomwalker crashed to the broken ground a moment after it had been hurtled into the air, and it remained still as small rocks and other debris rained down upon it. Tarrin had literally yanked the undead creature out of the ground.
The power inside was exhausting him, and doing it quickly. He realized that it took effort to draw that power now, where it had come to him unabated before. He had to reduce the power he was drawing in. He made the necessary adjustments, slowly lowering himself to the ground as the star surrounding him wavered and vanished, but his paws continued to be surrounded by Magelight. He stalked the prone Doomwalker like Death Herself come to claim it, and it rolled over in time to raise an arm in feeble defense as the Were-cat's paw lashed out, grabbing it by the neck and heaving it off the ground.
"How dare you do that to Faalken!" he raged, his eyes burning into the Doomwalker's face.
"Jegojah had nothing to do with that," it said weakly, holding onto his wrist with both bony hands. "Wrong, it was, but Jegojah has no choice but to obey when they say go with your friend."
Wrong? Wrong? Tarrin looked into the Doomwalker's shattered face, and remembered that the creature often exhibited signs of honor. He remembered what Dolanna and Phandebrass told him about Doomwalkers, that they were undead creatures created when the souls of slain men of great fighting prowess, like Faalken or Jegojah, were trapped in the mortal plane. They had said that those souls were of evil men, but they had to be wrong. Faalken was not an evil man, and yet they had managed to raise him as a Doomwalker. The soul that animated the body he now held was a long way away, and that was the reason why Doomwalkers could not be easily destroyed. The animating force simply abandoned the current body and sought out another, controlled by that soul from its remote location.
"Be done with it," the Doomalker said calmly. "Jegojah grows tired of this. Soon Jegojah's soul will belong to a Demon, and Jegojah will trouble you no more."
The soul. Of course! That was how to stop Jegojah once and for all! All he had to do was either destroy or wrest the soul of Jegojah from the clutches of those who used it for their own ends. He had made a brushing contact with that soul once before, the last time they fought, when he charged Jegojah's body beyond the bursting point with magical power. He remembered that there was a magical connection between the Doomwalker's animated body and its soul, a connection that he could follow back to the soul's location.
That was how it could be done. That was what he needed to do.
But what to do? Tarrin looked at the battered body of Jegojah, considering. Jegojah had killed Faalken, had attacked his family, had tried to kill him three separate times. But Jegojah was an unwilling participant. He understood that now, looking at the battered undead body. He was doing what he was told to do, because his very soul hung in the balance. The Doomwalker had never acted with any spite or malice, he realized when he looked back on the encounters they had had. Sure there had been posturing and threats, but never outright malice. The Doomwalker had always fought with a kind of honor, and Tarrin felt that the Doomwalker probably didn't like what it was being forced to do. But that was the key of it, it was being forced to do it .
He had felt tremendous hatred and rage at Jegojah, but now… it was slipping away. He realized that that hatred had been misplaced, badly misplaced. The hatred he felt for Jegojah should have been affixed to those who created him, created him and sent him out to attack him and his family. Those were the ones to blame, not this imprisoned soul. He blew out his breath. He didn't want to let go of his anger towards Jegojah, but it was too late for that. Helping Jegojah now seemed wrong, but on the other hand, he had to do something for Faalken. He couldn't leave Faalken's soul in the clutches of those inhuman monsters another moment longer. If it meant freeing Jegojah as well, then so be it. Either way, at least Jegojah would never attack him again afterward. And in the end, that was the most important thing.
Closing his eyes, he reached within himself, and found his own connection to the Weave. Then he assensed the body of the Doomwalker in his paw, still held up, and found the mystical connection that linked it with its animating force. It represented itself in his eyes as a black current running through the Weave, a dark magic that flowed from that source and into the dead body before him. He quickly and effortlessly joined with the Weave and followed that foul magic back, racing through the Weave until he found its headwater. He pushed out a projection of himself from the Weave and occupied it, and then opened his eyes. He wanted to see this place where Jegojah's soul was being held.
He was standing in a very large chamber of gray stone. There were braziers and a large chandelier holding globes of soft glowing light, magical spells of some sort, and the room was strangely bare and cold. It held little more than a large desk, a bookshelf that dominated the wall behind that desk, a large door of wood bound in brass on one wall, and a door of glass panes that led outside to a balcony on the opposite wall. The view through those panes of glass was wavery, but it was obvious that rugged mountains stood outside that doorway. Upon the desk, standing on elegant golden stands, were two strange crystal-like devices that glowed from within with a strange light.
Soultraps. Those were what held the souls of Faalken and Jegojah.
Tarrin moved the projection closer to the desk, which was bare aside from those two strange jewels and the stands that supported them. They were ugly things, no matter how pretty they appeared, for the foul stench of their purpose stained them in his magically-augmented sight. He looked at them, into them, starting to work out the powerful magic that had created them. It was very strong, and it entwined the souls it trapped in such a way that the disruption of the magic would also disrupt the soul, destroying it. Looking at them, he realized that the Soultraps could not be destroyed.
He leaned in and looked closely at the two devices, studying them with eyes that looked directly into the magic that constituted them rather than into the gems they appeared to be. Using force against those prisons was out of the question without destroying the souls inside, so instead of breaking the bars, perhaps he'd have better luck trying to open the door.
There was a connection to them, and that connection allowed passage of energy both into and out of the Soultraps. That was the controlling energy used by the souls to control the bodies they animated. All he had to do, he saw, was attack that portal into the Soultrap, attack it and render it incapable of stopping the soul within from leaving using that portal. Destroying the Soultrap was impossible, but this was just as good. He wouldn't be disrupting the magic of the Soultrap, only interdicting it in one very narrow place, causing it to lose what it contained without breaking down the spell. The Soultrap would still be functional, it would just contain no soul. The souls, when freed, would be carried down the magical connection between body and soul, and the souls would enter the bodies they were currently animating.
He could do it. The necessary mixture of flows to counteract the Wizard magic sprang to mind, and they seemed to be proper.
Reaching out, Tarrin put his spectral paws directly inside the Soultrap holding Jegojah's soul. Jegojah first. If it worked without danger, he would free Faalken. Once he felt the magic in his fingers, he began weaving together the very complicated spell together to alter that Wizard magic without destroying it, changing a few features of the magic in ways that did what he wanted them to do, rather than what they had been designed to do. He wove it loosely, for it was a full six-flow weave, very large and complicated, just inside the boundary before High Sorcery would be required. He wove it loosely, then after making sure that all the flows were woven in the proper order, he snapped the weave down and activated it by charging it with magical energy.
Then he stepped back and watched intently.
The Soultrap seemed to shudder from within, and the light that emanated from inside it flared incandescently for a moment, then the light faded back to normal.
"That's it," Tarrin said in his spectral form. "Come on, Jegojah, I opened the door for you. Find it. Find it and get out of there!" The light became bright again, and the Soultrap actually began to vibrate on its stand. The light within suddenly flashed brilliantly, so brightly that if Tarrin had actually been there, the light would have blinded him, and then it faded out completely.
Tarrin clearly felt Jegojah's soul squeeze through the opening he had presented it, free itself of that hated prison and be carried along by the latent magic of the Soultrap, carried back to the body still being held in Tarrin's paw.
"Yes!" Tarrin said triumphantly. It worked! Now for Faalken, he had to get Faalken out of that damned prison!
Very quickly, Tarrin turned his attention to the other Soultrap. He wove the same spell, much more quickly now that he had done it once before, and after a quick check of it for proper weaving, he released it and let it do its work. Faalken's Soultrap did the same thing, flared in sudden incandescence, but unlike the first, this one went straight from bright flare to darkness. Faalken's soul had fled the Soultrap the absolute instant an opening had been made for it, and it too was carried into the Weave, carried to the body to which it was connected.
It was done. Tarrin reached through his own body and assensed the corpse of Jegojah. It was still animated, but he clearly felt Jegojah's soul inside that mortal shell. All ties between Jegojah and the Soultrap vanished when the soul was freed, even the magical connection between Soultrap and soul were severed as the soul was carried into the animated body. The Soultraps were now empty.
In a fit of anger, Tarrin smashed the two Soultraps with weaves of Fire and Earth, fiery lances that struck the gemlike lattices of them and disrupted them. In little tinkling puffs, both Soultraps shattered, leaving nothing but fine gem dust atop those polished golden stands.
Snorting, Tarrin nodded firmly to himself. That was all he needed to do. He was starting to tire, and he had to get back before Jegojah took advantage of Tarrin's comatose state and cut off his head.
When he opened his real eyes, he was absolutely awed at what he now held in his paw. It was Jegojah, but it was whole Jegojah, looking exactly as it did the first time he saw it, complete with armor. But this armor was silvery and shimmering, a brilliant blaze of relfected light from the setting sun. Tarrin let go of the limp body and took a step back, then instantly turned and looked up, where he had hung Faalken's body in midair. The body was still there, but the armor was still blackened, the body still unchanged.
Tarrin brought it down and laid it on the ground. It wasn't moving. He knelt by the body and raised the visor, and found a face that he remembered, a face not eaten with maggots. The restoration of the soul had brought with it a restoration of the body as well, and he now looked exactly as he had on the day he died. But there was no soul in that body, he could tell. Where Jegojah's soul had somehow managed to remain affixed to the body, Faalken's had not. He reached out with his senses and felt it, felt the presence of Death Herself disappearing into the nether, and along with Her was the soul of Faalken Strongsword, Knight of Karas and beloved friend. Taking him home, where he was supposed to go from the beginning, delivering him to the Hammer Hall of Karas, the spiritual realm of the God of Sulasia, the God of Law.
Tarrin looked down at the peaceful face of Faalken, and he began to weep. He had had no idea what was going to happen, but some part of him was hoping that Faalken's spirit would have remained a while, remained long enough for them to talk, for Tarrin to apologize for getting him killed, stayed long enough to absolve Tarrin for his part in Faalken's death. But he had not. And what was worse, Tarrin looked down at that cheeky face and desperately missed his friend, feeling him die all over again.
A restored Jegojah knelt beside Tarrin, his undead, taut face sober, the light filling its eye sockets now white instead of red. "Freed us, ye did, Were-cat," he said quietly. "No amount of thanks can Jegojah give, aside from this. This man was a valiant warrior, and it is right to grieve his death. But he moves on to a better place, a place of rest, where he can finally gain the rewards he so richly deserves. Know that he never blamed you for his own death. That death was his choice, and there were no regrets. Dishonor not that memory. Remember him always as he was, a great man deserving of your eternal respect."
For no earthly reason he could explain, that did make Tarrin feel a great deal better. And the Doomwalker was right. Faalken had died protecting Dolanna. It was a choice, a conscious choice, and it was something that he had accepted without remorse or regret. Faalken was a hero, a hero in every sense of the word, a man of bravery and intelligence, a man of warmth and compassion, a man who Tarrin had called friend. He was a man who deserved every honor that could be bestowed upon him, and he would not belittle that choice, that death, with his own tortured self-blame.
Wiping the tears from his eyes, Tarrin looked down at the restored body of Faalken Strongsword, Knight of Karas, and silently rejoiced. No matter what torments he had suffered within the bounds of that crystalline prison, he was now free. He was free to return to the realm beyond, to return to his so tremendously deserved rest.
Faalken was free. And that was what mattered most to Tarrin at the moment.
"Goodbye, my friend," Tarrin whispered, crossing Faalken's arms over his chest, and laying his sword atop him and his shield over the sword, in the death pose of all Knights. To always have his sword in hand and shield at the ready, to be eternally vigilent and ready to serve.
Tarrin stepped back and raised his paws, as the ghostly radiance of Magelight surrounded them. Tarrin wove together a massive weave of Earth, causing a magnificent marble crypt to grow up around the body of his friend, raising him up onto a slab of pure quartz and encased within that beautiful shining stone, clean and white and pristine. It took the form of a hammer, the symbol of Karas, with Faalken's body resting in what was the hammerhead of the building's construction. He then wove spells of Warding into the stone, powerful Wards that would make the tomb all but impervious to any attempt to break into it, forever protecting Faalken's body from another such attempt to use him in so callous and hideous a fashion. Into the side of the building, Tarrin etched in this message:
Resting place of Faalken Strongsword, Knight of Karas, and one of the greatest heroes ever to set foot in this world. May the memory of his sacrifice live on as long as the world draws breath, a world he died to save.
Now, he was certain that Faalken would be eternally safe, and would rest in peace.
Sighing, feeling a whirlwind of emotions racing through him, Tarrin and the restored Jegojah stared on at that crypt in complete silence, stared on in quiet reverence, honoring the man for which it had been created.
Honoring a hero.
To: Title EoF