Chapter 17

        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