Chapter 22

Tarrin expected something amazing, something absolutely breathtaking, something incredible when Spyder Teleported them to her home, the mystical, legendary wedge of flat forest between two mountain ranges and the sea on the continent of Arathorn, a place eternally shrouded in a light mist that was known as Haven around the entire world.

He was decidedly disappointed.

Spyder’s home was a rather modest manor house that slowly appeared out of the thin mist that shrouded ancient hardwood trees, close enough to the sea to hear the waves lapping against the shore. It stood on a slight rise that came up from the beach of rocks and pebbles rather than sand, looking out over a narrow inlet that was littered with any number of jagged rocks. It was surrounded by a low wall of gray stone that enclosed a neat, tidy and very orderly garden. It was a three story affair, strangely small, made of the same gray stone as the wall, with large windows on the side that he could see. There was a simple pair of double doors on a raised porch, reached by a pair of sweeping staircases that flared out from each side of it and curved back towards a gravel path that wound from the wall’s gate to the manor. The manor house had a flat roof, which was something of an oddity outside of Yar Arak or Saranam, which didn’t quite fit its Western architecture. It almost looked like a Giant had come along and pulled off the roof.

But there was much more here than met the eye. The low stone wall was a physical border, but it was also the anchor of a massive, powerful Ward, so powerful that he’d felt it the instant they arrived, some league distant from the house itself, and felt it only grow stronger as they walked towards it. It was a weave of staggering proportions, not for its size, but for its raw power. The Ward was designed to stop absolutely everything, and its raw power would ensure that nothing could force its way through it. It was something so vastly complicated that only a god or Spyder could have made it.

“Haven,” Spyder said in an earthy kind of way, stopping at the gate. “My home.”

“I thought it would be bigger,” Tarrin said honestly, looking at it.

“It suits my needs. Why would I have more space than I require?” she asked simply.

“Well said,” he said with an agreeing nod. “Since we walked all the way here in silence, are you going to start explaining things to me now, or wait until we get into the house?”

“There is actually little effort involved in this task, Tarrin,” she answered as she waved her hand before the gate. It opened, and what was more, a breach formed in the Ward to allow them entry. He had no sense of anything at all in that; whatever she did, it wasn’t Sorcery. “Mostly, it requires your patience. That is all.”

“My patience?” he asked as she led him within. The air inside was fresh and warm, which surprised him since the Ward also prevented air from flowing through it, and smelled of flowers and grass from her garden. It was also absolutely still, not even the faintest breeze. Fireflash jumped from his shoulder and streaked out over the gardens, wild with curiosity, and quickly disappeared. Tarrin paid his drake little mind; he would return when he wanted to return, and he was more than able to take care of himself.

“You will not stand vigil over the gate at all times,” she told him with a slight smile. “Were that necessary, you would never see me outside of its chamber.”

He’d never thought of that. “Well, how do you know when to be there?”

“I will give you a charm,” she answered. “An item of magic, ancient in its making, crafted by the hands of the Elder Gods.” She reached into her black tunic and withdrew her amulet, then turned it over. Affixed to the back of it was a golden inlay with strangely compelling runes that glowed with a faint white light. “The charm endows you with certain benefits, and will warn you when you must return to the gate chamber to cast out that which comes through.”

“Benefits?”

“While you are the Guardian, you will not sleep,” she told him simply. “Ever. I have not slept for nearly ten thousand years.”

He tried to grasp the concept of it. He wouldn’t sleep, day or night, day after day. Ten thousand years of unbroken monotony, aware of the passing of every single second? Goddess, that was a torture, not a benefit.

She studied his face, and nodded. “You see the silent curse of it,” she affirmed.

“Why did they set it up that way?” he asked.

“To ensure that something did not come through while I slept,” she shrugged. “Given that I am mortal, and they still do not entirely understand the aspects of my limitations, I assume they felt that even for me to sleep was too much of a danger. Rather than simply setting the charm to wake me, they set it so I would never require sleep, nor ever feel the urge to do so. So long as you have your charm, you will never even feel drowsy. You will be incapable of sleeping.”

That was a creepy thought, but he put that aside as they moved through her garden, which was meticulously manicured. Given she had every second of the day and night, he understood why it was so neat. Spyder probably had any number of hobbies to occupy all that time.

“You will get used to it. Eventually,” she added darkly. “The requirements of the task are simple. When a being enters the gate from the Astral, the charm will warn you. Shellar, the god of Time, has placed a spell which causes time to slow for those within the gate, slowing their progress and giving you time to prepare for their arrival. When you get the warning, you will have ten minutes to return to the gate chamber. Your task once they arrive is to send them back through the gate and warn them of the dangers of returning. The Elder Gods have decreed that we will not kill those who have come through the gate only once. We must eject them physically, if necessary, but we may not kill unless they have not heeded our warning and returned. But this is not a mandatory requirement, and there is one exception,” she told him. “The exception are Demons. You will destroy any Demon that enters through the gate. The charm will tell you if you face a Demon in a disguised form. When it warns you that you face a Demon, destroy it. Do not let them flee back through the gate. If they escape, they will know where the gate is located in the Astral and return with reinforcements.”

“I understand.”

“Also, certain individuals visit me using the gate on a regular basis. They bring me information, entertainment, and conversation, and I am allowed to do this so long as they do not leave the gate chamber. I would ask that you do not kill these people,” she said evenly. “You will know who they are, as they will probably be quite surprised to see you and ask about me.”

“Alright,” he nodded. “I’ll be careful and not kill anyone until I have them sorted out.”

She nodded. “Certain beings will require considerable physical and magical discouragement,” she told him. “The gate chamber has been enchanted to be invulnerable to all magic and physical force, so do not worry about doing harm to the chamber. Do whatever it takes to remove the invader, no matter how extreme it is. There have been times I have been forced to fall back on magic that would have sunk Arathorn into the sea to evict certain powerful entities. There is no such thing as too much when it comes to defending the gate chamber, Tarrin. Remember that.”

“I will,” he promised.

“That is all it requires,” she said with a slight smile. “You know everything you need to know to take my place.”

“Except where the gate is,” he pointed out.

“We will come to that presently,” she said as they reached the stairs. He followed them up and saw the door open by itself, and they reached the landing and went through. They stepped into a plain entry foyer with rich dark wood panelling on the walls and a floor of white tiles with black squares disbursed in even intervals through it. “Though you know what is needful, there are certain things I can pass along to make it easier,” she said. “Firstly, you must overwhelm the invader with a display of intimidation. That means that you should be present with your wings out and visible. Let them see that they do not face an ordinary being.”

“I’m usually intimidating enough.”

“This is a different realm,” she told him pointedly. “You will face the Avatars of gods, Demon Lords, Deva, and even entropic entities. They will not be impressed by a tall, furry humanoid with big hands. They will, on the other hand, be very impressed by a mortal who carries a touch of divine power, and the threat of the overwhelming magical force that touch will imply. Trust me in this, Tarrin. Display your power openly for them to see, and you will have far less trouble.”

“Is that how you do it?” he asked.

She nodded. “I do not have wings, but I have this,” she said, grabbing the hem of her cloak of utter blackness. “Most beings of great power know what it is, and they fear what it can do.”

“What is it?”

“It is a cloak made out of the physical manifestation of space itself,” she answered. “It is known to most as the Cloak of Shadows. There are only a handful of them in all the multiverse. Most beings versed in planar travel have heard the legends of it, and many come here seeking to wrest it from me.”

“What does it do that makes it so powerful?”

“It gives me the power to control space,” she answered. “Remember when you put your arm into it? How your arm vanished into the cloak itself? That was a manipulation of space, something akin to how your amulet functions. But among other things, this cloak can also send something that enters it into the Void, a place of absolute nothingness that exists outside of space, utterly destroying it. That is the power that they seek.”

He could see the great power of that. While Spyder wore the cloak, she was virtually invulnerable. It protected her physically, and her vast powers of Sorcery protected her from magic. She was untouchable, and would be the ultimate adversary for anyone who tried to get past her and out of the gate chamber.

They passed into a grand, vast library that existed just off the foyer. It had bookshelves all the way to the ceiling, row after row of them, in what looked to be initially meant to be a ballroom. “There are three floors in this manor, but most are set up as you see here,” she told him. “I have found that books most easily pass the time, so I read a great deal. If you find a book you intend to read, remove it from the shelf,” she warned. “Each time you enter a room, the contents of the shelves change. If you put the book back, it will not be there when you return.”

He reached out to assense the bookshelves, and found a very complicated weave over them that accomplished this task. Each time someone crossed the threshold, the shelves Teleported the books in the shelves to a central point and then Teleported in new books to replace them. Since both of them had passed through, they had done this twice.

“That way it always seems different,” he mused.

She nodded. “My library is more extensive than any other, but to put them in one place would make them lose their appeal. This way, sometimes I do not see a book for over a century, and enjoy reading it again. Much of my free time is spent searching for new books to read.”

“Anything new,” he reasoned.

“Anything,” she agreed. “When you live as long as I have, boredom is your greatest enemy.”

“That’s understandable.”

She wasn’t kidding about her house. Virtually every room was nothing but bookshelves, bookshelves, and more bookshelves. She led him through six rooms to a stairwell leading down into the cellar, and they all were bookshelves, as were the rooms he looked into as they moved. “You may move about the house freely,” she told him. “But there are two rooms that I ask you do not enter. Both are on the third floor, and both have the doors closed. One is my personal chamber. The other holds an object I am keeping safe for a very old friend, which is very dear to him, and is also sensitive to shifts in the Weave. I have the room Warded to protect it, but the effect that you and I have on the Weave makes it dangerous for us to enter that chamber.”

“Alright.”

“Come. I will show you the gate chamber.”

The gate chamber was at the base of a set of stairs that descended from the main hall that came off the foyer, a simple stone staircase nearly thirty spans wide and fifty spans high once it dropped past the level of the floor, large enough for a Giant to travel easily. There was a simple black metal door there, unadorned and quite plain looking, if one ignored the fact that it was of the same dimensions as the passageway. Despite its massive appearance, it swung open silently and easily at a wave of Spyder’s hand. Again, he sensed no use of magic. However Spyder controlled things like the Ward and the door, he had no idea. Beyond was a chamber of polished black marble stones that stretched across a black-walled chamber of polished obsidian glass, dark yet shimmering a reflection of a blue circle of swirling energy contained within a white stone ring that stood on a raised dais at the far end of the room. The gate looked like a whirlpool of magical energy swirling off into infinity, and every once in a while little motes of white light were dispelled from it, to drift lazily to the marble floor. The gate was about thirty spans in diameter, and the lower edge was sunk into the dais, he guessed so whatever came through it could step easily onto the floor.

“This is it,” she told him. “The last working gate into our world.”

He could feel its magical power, which was surprisingly subtle, a power that stretched off beyond his ability to sense it, leaving their plane of being and rising up into that other dimension of existence called the Astral. This was the last functional gate that entered their world, though there were quite a few of them that were one way, going out, that still worked. And it would be his job to defend it for a while.

“So, that’s it, isn’t it?” he asked. “All you intend to tell me.”

She smiled. “You learn quickly,” she answered. “There is nothing more to show you, and as you have noticed, I am not fond of inane chatter.” She reached within her cloak, and removed a thin golden shaeram. “Affix this to the back of yours,” she instructed. “It will bond itself to your amulet, but you will find that you can remove it easily, and only you may remove it. So long as you wear this with your shaeram, the Ward and the powers of the manor will obey your will. Since none enter the gate that speaks our langauge, the charm also allows any who hears your voice to hear your words in their native tongue, while you will hear the words of any langauge you do not know in your own.”

“You’re not going to teach me how it works?”

“I will,” she assured him. “But we will do that outside the Ward. You must ground yourself at the entrance to the manor so you may return to that spot. I cannot leave until you are grounded.”

“That won’t take long,” he told her. “I can ground myself in a place in just a couple of hours.”

“As it should be,” she said simply. “Now embed the charm.”

He held his amulet up, and then got the two of them aligned. That done, he pressed the gold inlay against the back of his shaeram, and he felt and saw it fuse with his amulet. Suddenly, he felt a strange surge rush through him, as well as a sense of connection to a greater power, a more direct link between him and the Elder Gods. It was their voices that brought the warnings that Spyder described.

Given that he wasn’t very happy with the Elder Gods at the moment, this wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

He also felt strangely alert. His mind was sharp, focused, clear, and it felt oddly refreshing after a fashion. That had to be the effect that would render him unable to sleep. He blinked several times and put a paw to his head, then looked at Spyder.

“You will get used to it,” she repeated. “Now, let us go back to the gate. You may Conjure us a meal and we will talk of affairs while you ground yourself.”

It was odd to sit and talk with Spyder. Her age and wisdom were very intimidating, and he felt like a baby next to her. But he found that she had a dry, witty sense of humor, and she was more than willing to talk about nearly anything he had on his mind. They sat on a Conjured blanket and ate a meal of roasted caribou—Spyder’s favorite meal—and spring onions chopped up and mixed in with a green leafy plant she called lettuce and another red fruit she called tomatoes. She called the vegetable concoction a salad, and it was that dish that got them started down the path of conversation he secretly wanted to be on when she mentioned it was an Urzani invention. “The Urzani were originally vegetarians,” she mentioned in passing. “But exile into the Underdark turned us into carnivores.”

“What did happen back then, Spyder? Between the Urzani and that other race?”

“They were called the Trilla,” she said. “Or that was what we called them. Where we are brown-skinned and light-haired, they were pale-skinned and dark-haired. We were mirror images of one another. They retreated into the forests and rejected contact with the other races, while the Urzani marshalled their strength in the caves below and prepared for war. When the world above had forgotten about the Urzani, they returned with armies and conquered the entire Known World.”

“Mother said they died out.”

“They did.”

“She also said that both of your races descended from a parent race, one of the original four. She wouldn’t tell me who they were.”

“Mother sometimes uses mystery to spark interest,” she answered. “I find it occasionally tiresome. They were called Elves.”

“That’s a strange name.”

She nodded. “A plague killed most of them, and that caused two separate colonies to eventually become the Trilla and the Urzani. The same race with two names, who eventually truly became separate races. It happened again to my own people, after the Blood War, when the Urzani came to be no more, living on with a new name, the Sha’Kar, while two new races were born from them. Actually, the Sha’Kar are the true Urzani. It would not be incorrect to call them Urzani. The Selani and Wikuni are branch species of our blood.”

“Mother said you were once the Empress of the entire world. What was it like?”

“Boring,” she said with a surprising smile. “Very, very boring. My reign was short, Tarrin. I ruled for only nine years.”

“What happened?”

“I abdicated the throne to my brother to pursue Sorcery,” she answered. “It was a relief to me. He wanted it, I did not. We both became happy with the result.”

“What happened to him?”

“Him? He ruled wisely and well for nearly a century, and then he died. It is agreed upon by most that my brother’s rule was the last of the great dynasties. The decadence that destroyed the Urzani Empire began to set in after my niece Shalaria took the throne. She was a weak Empress, and was assassinated by her son Anthor. He was ruthless, but he was also a hedonist, and he fatally poisoned the Empire with his excess and his decadence. It was under his rule that the gladitorial games began, and the laws protecting the welfare of slaves were abolished. Had those two events not occurred, there is a good chance that there would still be an Urzani Empire.”

“How could that destroy the Empire?”

“It changed the very fabric of the moral structure of the citizens,” she answered. “Arthos made it legal to torture and murder one’s slaves, and he turned death into a sport with the gladitorial games. He began to introduce the elements of sadism and brutality that had been a part of us when we conquered the world, but had lost in favor of more cultured and civil traits when the world was ours. That steeled the slave races against us, who ultimately revolted and destroyed the Empire.”

“The Urzani were evil?”

“They were the epitomy of evil,” she said honestly. “But after they conquered the world, they abandoned their evil ways and created a rather harmonious society. The other races were slaves, but they had legal rights and protections, they earned wages, and they could retire and receive pensions after fifty years of service just like any Imperial soldier could. The slaves actually taught the Urzani the value of moral traits like honesty, love, and kindness, and at its height, the Empire was a bloom of unity and harmony. Even the slaves were happy to be a part of the Empire. But Arthos destroyed that unity, and by then, our armies had lost the battle skills that had won the Urzani the world. They were no match for the slave armies that rose up to challenge them.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Few living do.”

He leaned back on a paw and regarded her. “Someday you’ll have to write all of it down,” he told her. “Everything you’ve seen.”

“I have,” she answered calmly. “You will find them in my book collection.”

“And how am I going to find them?” he asked pointedly.

She smiled. “Go to the library.”

“They’re all the library!”

“The true one. The chamber just off the kitchen, the one with the rosewood desk. Sit at that desk and request a book of a certain subject. The book that most closely matches your description will appear on the desk. If you wish to read my memoirs, simply ask for the first book in the collection of my memoirs, and it will appear.”

“That’s a neat trick.”

“It lets me find the book I require immediately. The spell will conduct the search by book title or contents of the book. So you can ask by title or give a description of what you seek, and the spell will deliver the book that most closely fits your requirements.”

He chuckled. “That’s a weird word.”

“What?”

“Elves. What’s the singular? Elv?”

“Elf,” she corrected. “A dead race from the dawn of time. They were small, frail beings, no larger than Bruga, that died out quickly. Only we, the hardiest of their descendents, remain.

“Well, the Goblins and the Dwarves are dead too, so I guess only the humans live on.”

“There are Dwarves, Elves, and Goblins on other worlds,” she told him. “They are not the same as those who once lived here, but they are close. But there are descendents of all the races still here, so in a way, they do live on. The Elves live on in the Sha’Kar, the Dwarves live on in the Gnomes, and the Goblins spawned any number of splinter races. There are similar races elsewhere, but the circumstances of our world made this world’s version of each race unique.”

“How?” he asked curiously.

“The power of magic is extreme here,” she told him. “There are no Sorcerers outside of Sennadar, my friend. The magical weave of most worlds cannot support our power. On another world, our powers would seem godlike, but here, they are simply normal. This saturation of magical power extends down to the very smallest insect, as it has infused all living things here. On our world, the Dwarves could use Wizard magic, and actively pursued magical knowledge. On virtually all other worlds, Dwarves shun Wizard magic and are only capable of Priest magic.”

“I remember Mother telling me something along those lines, when she was explaining magic to me,” he mused. “That even the dumbest man alive can cast simple cantrips.”

“That is correct. Now that the Weave is whole, when people realize it, you will see Wizards begin to teach common people cantrips. The ability to use magic is virtually ingrained into all natives of Sennadar. I could teach a child the words for a simple cantrip, and he could successfully cause it to function. We are magical peoples who have the vast fortune of living in one of the most magically charged dimensions in the multiverse. That is why we must defend this plane from the Demons, Tarrin. If the Demons gained control over the power of our universe, they could pose a grave threat to all other planes.”

“I know, Mother’s told me that. I wonder.”

“What?”

“If we would seem godlike to some person in some other world, what would one of our gods look like?”

She glanced at him, then she actually laughed. “Our gods are highly respected and feared,” she told him with a wink. “Even the weakest of the Younger Gods, Pygas, is a monstrous power to be reckoned with outside of this world. Any one of our Elder Gods have a power far beyond anything that Elder Gods of other dimensions attain.” She brushed her silver hair from her face. “They have this power because of the magic of our world, and also to help defend it. The stronger the magic of the plane, the stronger the gods who control and protect it. It is a universal principle.”

“And the stronger the mortals who live inside it,” he added.

She nodded. “What you will do, Tarrin, it is the most important job that there is for a mortal in this world. The Elder Gods would not have selected you for it hastily or without testing you many times to ensure you had both the power and the mentality to perform this task. It is a task that you must never fail, not even once. If but one Demon enters this world through that gate and escapes the gate chamber, he can summon forth more, and each of them will summon forth more, and so on and so on, and then it will be the Blood War all over again.”

“I know all about their tests, Spyder,” he said darkly. “I have wings now because of them.”

“Do not be angry forever,” she told him. “The wings would have appeared no matter what. It was but a matter of time. And given the extreme importance of this task, would you feel comfortable if they did not test the single mortal who defends the entire world from another Demonic invasion?”

When she put it that way, he was hard pressed to justify his anger.

Attend.

Tarrin looked up, his ears picking up at the sound, and Spyder sighed. “Someone is coming through the gate,” she announced, gracefully standing up. “We must perform our duty.”

“I’m grounded here anyway,” he told her. “I was just lingering because I like talking with you.”

“That was fast.”

“I’m very good at grounding. It’s a Were-cat thing.”

“You are part of the land. It only makes sense,” she nodded. “Come. I will let you handle this.”

They returned to the gate chamber, and he saw that the bluish energy within was slowly turning white. “Wings out, present forth a weapon,” she commanded, drawing her cloak around herself and stepping back near to the doorway. “Remember, intimidation will save you grief.”

It had been nearly a year since he had released the wings. The skin sealing over the pools of living fire on his back retreated, and then they burst forth gloriously, spreading out to their full span, stretching after so long confined, then easily folded behind him. He felt a subtle yet profound shift in his senses, picking up on those things that mortals could not detect, amplified by the sense of alertness imparted on him by the charm affixed to his amulet. He looked at the gate…and he could almost see where it went, see a vast gray emptiness behind that blue-white swirl of energy, a place of utter emptiness that extended eternally in every direction. That was the Astral, a place that more or less glued all the other planes of existence together, touched them all without being part of any of them. That was the place where all gates to and from every world either went or passed through, and that made the Astral the cosmic highway along which all inter-planar travelers went.

“When it turns all white, they will step through,” she instructed. “Remember, no killing first offendors.”

They waited perhaps another moment, and Tarrin brought forth his trusty Ironwood staff, curiosity surging through him. What was going to come through the gate? Would they be friendly? Would they be human, or Demons, or some exotic race he had never seen before? Would it come down to a fight? He had no idea, and part of that secretly thrilled him. After so many years of knowing what was going on, of living a quiet and peaceful life, he found the idea of a little danger…exciting.

He didn’t have to wait long. The gate suddenly flared white, and then three hazy shapes appeared within that white. They became solid, real, and three humans stepped out of the gate and onto the dais before the gate itself. All three were wearing ornate red robes, had shaved heads and long, pointed beards, and wore belts with pouches and satchels affixed to them. All three carried staves of different kinds of wood, each with a blue crystal embedded at the top. They looked around quickly, then all three locked their eyes on Tarrin.

It was probably overkill, but Tarrin flexed his wings and took a step forward, levelling his staff at them. “Go back,” he ordered. “Nobody may come here. If you ever return, you’ll be killed.”

“Who are you to order us around?” the lead, a man with a thin, sharp, wrinkled face demanded.

“I’m your executioner if you don’t turn around and go back through that gate,” he answered as his eyes exploded from within with a bright green radiance, and fire erupted from the fetlocks on his wrists and ankles. “Now go.”

The one to the lead’s left levelled the crystal of his staff at Tarrin, and he sensed a sudden surge of magical power flow through the Weave, directed towards that crystal. It was a simple matter to cut it off, and just to be safe, he isolated all three of them from the Weave completely, rendering all the magical items and their spells useless.

The man gasped, looking at the light in the crystal flicker, then go out. “Care to try again?” Tarrin asked pugnaciously, raising a paw and touching High Sorcery. Magelight exploded from his paw, which quickly merged with the fire licking at his wrists, causing ghostly flames of white and red to flicker around his upraised paw. “Turn around and leave, or I’ll burn you to ashes where you stand.” To prove his point, he flared out his wings and caused them to radiate strong heat, which hit the three men in the face like a hot wind. “Now turn around and go back. And remember, if you come back, I’ll use your ashes to make a new drinking glass.”

They seemed to hesitate, but Tarrin made up their minds for them. With a wave of his paw, he wove a fast burst of Air that swept them off their feet and threw them back through the gate, which flared white for just a second before returning to its bluish swirl.

“Just so,” Spyder said with a nod. “And since I am satisfied you can perform the task, I will go.”

“What do you have planned?” he asked curiously.

“I intend to sleep,” she said with a dreamy kind of smile, reaching under her shirt and producing her amulet, then pulling the golden inlay from the back in a deliberate move. “For at least five days. From there, I have no real plans other than to relax.”

“Well, enjoy,” he told her. “Want me to stay out of the manor for a while?”

“I have set up a vacation home,” she told him. “Worry not about that. Wait here for a few minutes to ensure they do not simply turn around and come back, and then you may do whatever you wish. You do not have to stay here at the manor, Tarrin. Just return to deal with invaders. The rest of your time is your own.”

“I do have some ideas,” he admitted. “I’d like to do a little wandering. And I need to find my drake before we go,” he added.

“Then I will see you when I return. Whenever that may be.”

And then she turned and walked from the bare chamber.

Tarrin watched her go, and he had to smile just a little. It had been ten thousand years since Spyder had so much as slept a second, and he certainly felt that she was due. He hoped that she enjoyed her time off. She certainly needed it.

Spyder’s manor was the stuff of great legend. There were any number of stories bandied about concerning what possible treasures might be hidden within the legendary figure’s secret abode.

The reality was that Spyder’s home was surprisingly one-sided. If one loved books, it was the grandest, most incredible trove of treasure in all the world. If one didn’t like books, Spyder’s home was a bitter disappointment.

Spyder was not materialistic. She did not collect gold or gems or valuables, though Tarrin did find a small vault in the cellar holding a modest fortune—then again, after ten thousand years, she certainly would have collected some money. She owned fragile artifacts from all over the world, sitting on tables and pedestals scattered through her home. Shields, weapons, pieces of sculpture in stone or metal or wood or glass, paintings, tapestries, antique furniture, they were all present in her home, if one knew where to look for them. Some were recognizable in form or making, but some, he had no idea. He found a few dainty things that he’d swear were even older than Spyder, delicate glass sculptures that screamed of incredible age, things he would bet were made by the Trilla, or even their parent race, the Elves. There were a few crude totem-like things that were equally old, things he felt were Goblin in creation. There were Dwarven runestones hanging on special mounts which were on the walls, flat stones carved with large Duthak symbols for luck, protection, or favor. Dwarves, he’d discovered in his studies, were superstitious as a race. There was this mask surrounded by feathers, of a style he had never seen before, as well as a strange club-like weapon set with rows of razor-sharp obsidian flakes hanging on the wall below it. Tarrin had taken that one down and studied it, and realized that it was a real weapon, that it had been used in battle. But why obsidian? Why not a good sword?

Then again, if the race that made it had no access to iron, then obsidian would be a practical alternative for making a weapon.

The thing was wickedly nasty, and it made his flesh creep a little even at the thought of being hit by it.

Spyder certainly had some exotic weaponry. There was this other thing that looked like a wide, thick swordblade that seemed more like an axe head, and what made this weapon stand out was the hawk’s bill at the end of that heavy blade, sharpened along the inside edge. Tarrin had to refer to a book of weapons to discover its name. It was called a lochobre axe, a weapon invented by the Folk of the Stormhaven Isles and used some two thousand years ago, before the isles were united under a single monarch and the battles ceased. The weapon was brutal in design, and if swung by a strong arm, it would easily lop off limbs or heads. The book mentioned that the blade was often affixed to the head of a polearm, but short-handled versions were often used by nobles in combat.

Good Goddess…the thing was probably just as nasty as a sword. Maybe even more so.

But it was her books that truly caught his attention. His intent to wander a bit was put off when he started sampling her library, and found books that would make the librarians in the Imperial Library faint dead away if they saw them. There were Dwarven books, Gnomish books, Urzani books, Sha’Kar books, Wikuni books, Human books from every corner of the world, and much to his surprise, there were even Goblin books. The original Goblins were actually quite intelligent, and had their own written language, something that none of their descendent races possessed. There were books, scrolls, tablets of dried clay, tablets of stone. There were books made of paper, of parchment, of tree bark, of flakes of huge sheets of mica, thin plates of metal, plates of stone, even some that looked to be made of animal hide. They were written in languages he had never seen before, but the charm affixed to his amulet gave him the ability to read them all, just as it gave him the ability to understand all spoken languages. He heard other languages as Sulasian, and when he read these alien languages, Sulasian writing seemed to replace it to his eyes, though the page actually never changed.

That was what got him. He almost missed his appointed two days back in his library with Kimmie and his children, and while he was there, he was a little distracted. He’d brought one of the books with him to show to Kimmie, a Wikuni book that chronicled their departure from the Known World, back when they still looked like Sha’Kar. Kimmie was impressed by the book, and he made a copy of it for her so she could read it.

It was always an annoyance when he was called to duty to cast people out of the gate chamber. Spyder was right about the intimidation, because many of the first time visitors were all arrogant and quite confrontational when he issued the ultimatum. Over ten days, he’d been called to the gate fourteen times. Six were human parties he evicted quickly, two were Avatars of gods of other worlds which seemed to realize where they were and tried to talk Tarrin into letting them pass, three were winged Deva who politely excused themselves and returned through the gate, one was a weak Demon that Tarrin immediately destroyed without any real trouble, and two were humans that seemed to know Spyder. Both, a tall, handsome male Wizard in a black robe and a woman wearing a heavy cossack, asked after Spyder, and when he told them she was taking a break, they said they understood and said they’d be back another day. After the third time, the task of defending the gate was already tedious, and it got no better. So far, not one person coming through the gate intrigued him or seemed interesting to him in any way. He thought it would be more exciting being the Guardian, and he was a bit disappointed. He dealt with gods all the time, so their Avatars didn’t seem very interesting. The Deva were interesting, handsome human-like men and women with white-feathered wings on their backs, but they looked too much like Aeradalla to seem exotic, and they were too damn nice. The only Demon he’d encountered was a pitiful little ball of flesh that was stupid as a stump and so weak it was barely an effort to destroy it, obviously one of their weakest that was probably just lost.

Jasana was absolutely furious with him after the first time he returned home, after he told them what he was doing. She wanted to come to Haven, but he knew that Spyder and the gods would not allow that. She took it personally when he told her no, and refused to see him the next time he came home to visit. But, much to her dismay, he was tremendously unmoved by her tantrum, and he refused to see her the next time he returned home. She was quite contrite afterwards.

But it wasn’t always boring. Nineteen days after he took over Spyder’s job, he got a rather unusual visitor through the gate. It was a solitary human man wearing exotic colored armor, armor like that portrait from the inn in Shoran’s Fork, that Eastern armor with its wide plates and wicker-looking appearance. It was capped by a large helm with a very ugly mask made to look like a face, fashioned from steel and painted red that fit over the face of the man, probably something to intimidate the opponent. He had two slender, curved swords of the same style as his own tucked into a sash around his waist. He stepped from the gate and gave Tarrin a look of surprise, then removed his helmet and bowed politely. “A thousand apologies, honored one, but where is Spyder-san?”

“She’s taking a rest,” he answered levelly.

“Ah. Might I ask when she shall return?”

“I honestly don’t know, but it’ll probably be a while. A few years, maybe.”

“It is good she rests, but I regret the lost opportunity to defeat her,” he sighed.

“Defeat her?” he asked curiously.

“For ten years, I have labored to best Spyder-san in honorable combat, but I have found myself lacking,” he answered. “She teaches me rightful humility and makes me a better man for my defeats, but I make myself a better man by continuing to try until I finally succeed.” He gave Tarrin a curious look. “Are you the equal of Spyder-san?”

Tarrin laughed. “Maybe in five thousand years,” he answered bluntly.

“I will return to my home, but I offer you a friendly challenge,” he declared. “I will return in twenty days. If you wish to face me in honorable combat, we will test ourselves against one another. Non-lethal, of course,” he added quickly. “It is unseemly to kill honorable opponents without cause or reason.”

That intrigued Tarrin not a little bit. “I just might take you up on that,” he said. “I was trained by the best warriors in this world. I’d like to see how they stack up against one of the best from another.”

“Then I eagerly await our meeting,” he said with a bow.

“Why not now?”

“It is not my custom to issue an immediate challenge. I prefer my foe to be at his absolute best, so I always give him time to prepare for our contest.”

Tarrin chuckled. “I swear, you sound like a Selani,” he mused.

“Spyder-san has made the same observation. In twenty days, we will battle. Until then, may your days be filled with peace and your estates prosper.” He bowed once again, then turned and entered the gate.

Despite being the Guardian, he found that he still had plenty of time for his family…if ony because never sleeping gave him plenty of spare time. He talked to them through the amulets every day, and managed to return home for a family meal with his parents and Jenna ever three days, at the request of his father. His mother had been getting a bit depressed, and having her children around her more often, his father felt, would be just what she needed. Jasana had a storm of pique when she found out about them, because she wasn’t invited. But then again, neither were any of Tarrin’s other children, so her arguments lost a great deal of their weight when she argued about not being included. But Kimmie managed to quite effectively explain to her that it was quiet time that Tarrin’s first family needed, just like the time that Tarrin spent with them. She pointed out that Tarrin lived in two separate worlds, the human world and the Were-cat world, and that meant that there had to be a degree of separation between them. Much to his surprise, Jasana accepted the explanation, and was actually rather gracious about it afterward. She even started going through the gate by herself to spend time with her grandparents, so they’d have some company. Jasana was of an age where she was allowed to do a little tight wandering around the house on her own, because nothing in its right mind would attack Tarrin Kael’s home, and the Woodkin that lived near him would always keep an eye on the wandering cub to make sure she didn’t get into too much trouble. Going through the gate to see his grandparents was more than allowed, but she wasn’t allowed to leave the farm. And she knew better than to disobey. Tarrin and Jesmind had a very long arm, and she knew that if she disobeyed, they would find out. Even though they wouldn’t talk to each other, she knew that if one of them found out, she’d get it from both of them, and that was not a good thing. Jesmind’s punishments were physical, but Tarrin’s punishments were psychological. She got it from both ends when she ran awry of her parents, and she’d learned the hard way that the best way to avoid getting a thrashing and some serious mental stress in her young life was to simply not disobey in the first place.

Tarrin felt that that more than anything brightened his mother’s mood. Elke Kael always needed to feel needed. She was a true mother; a nurturer, a teacher, a supporter, a guide, and not having any children around to teach and love was starting to depress her. Tarrin’s departure was planned, but Jenna’s was unexpected, and his mother had buried her grief of that loss for years before it started eating through the armored defense she had erected against it.

After initially getting lost in Spyder’s library for two rides, he decided that perhaps it was certainly worth his time to start wandering around a while to see things. At first he was going to start in Suld, but he already knew Sulasia rather well, and he was too well known in the West. So he decided to start from Abrodar instead. He was certainly well known in that ancient city, but he doubted the peasants and commoners a day’s walk from its aged walls would even know his name. And he’d never really seen anything of the magical kingdom of Sharadar other than the capital city.

He’d almost forgotten about his little “appointment.” Twenty days later, exactly twenty days, he was called to the gate once again, and the eastern warrior stepped from it, wearing the same armor as he had the first time Tarrin had seen him. He bowed elegantly as soon as he saw him. “Good day to you, Guardian. Have you considered my offer?”

“My name is Tarrin,” he answered. “And yes, as long as it’s spar, I’m more than interested. I haven’t had these for very long,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at his wings, “and I’ve never fought since I got them. I need to practice to learn how they’ll change my style, and it’s always best to practice against someone who is at least your equal. I think you’re probably better than me, so I think you’d be a perfect partner.”

“Your praise honors me, and you are right, introductions are certainly in order. I am Tsukatta, humble Samurai in service to my daisho, Lord Yukuzomi Kasawara. Your friend, Lady Spyder-san, taught me much. I would be honored to be of service to the one who helps her now.”

Tarrin nodded and called forth his Ironwood staff from the elsewhere. “I won’t use magic,” he promised.

“Then for now, neither shall I,” he answered politely, drawing one of his elegant swords in a smooth, graceful motion.

Tsukatta, Samurai warrior, was a monster. He had the ultimate, perfect balance of speed, power, and skill, and it was only Tarrin’s Were-cat gifts and extensive training that allowed him to stand up to him. This man, though human, far outstripped any mortal human Tarrin had ever seen with both his blinding speed and his incredible power. He was as fast as a Selani and as strong as a Troll, and that was a deadly combination. Tsukatta had skill to match his physical prowess, wielding his elegant weapon with a level of mastery Tarrin had only seen in the Selani. They sparred for nearly four hours, and in that four hours Tarrin learned a great deal, both about his wings and about his fighting.

His wings, he’d discovered quickly, didn’t really impact his balance or fighting style. They were effectively weightless, so they didn’t alter his balance at all, but moving them did shift his momentum or alter his center of gravity. Not from the weight of them, but from the fact that they pushed the air as they moved, and that air resistance fed back into his movements. Tsukatta allowed him to work through learning how that worked by simply moving into a defensive posture and letting him practice, then pressing him with amazingly complicated attacks once he had an idea of it, to refine his understanding.

After he got an idea of how to move with his wings, he battled Tsukatta in earnest, and learned a great deal about finesse. Tsukatta’s major threat was from his light, elegant handling of his weapon, where a mere repositioning of his wrist could launch him into a new attack routine. The man was a whirlwind, and that weapon of his seemed to come from every direction at once. But after an hour or so, Tarrin started understanding his moves, learning his patterns very well, and became a much more significant threat to him. Tsukatta was, admittedly, more skilled than Tarrin, but Tarrin showed that he was no opponent to take lightly.

“Excellent, Tarrin-san!” Tsukatta said brightly after nearly four hours of spar, as they ended to have a meal. Neither of them were even winded, and Tarrin had a suspicion that some kind of magic was at work here, something he couldn’t feel. “You would do honor to any daisho you serve.”

“I had good teachers,” he answered. “I’ve never met a human as strong as you are.”

He tapped the wide belt around his waist lightly. “This is a magical object that gives the strength of an oni,” he answered, using a word not even Tarrin’s charm could translate. “I have found that great strength also creates great speed. My strength has little weight to move, so it gives me great speed.” He laughed. “It took me nearly a month to learn how to walk without jumping up and hitting my head against the ceiling.”

“I didn’t have that much trouble,” he said absently.

“I noticed your strength. What gives it to you?”

He waved his paw before him. “This does. As you noticed, I’m not human. I’m a Lycanthrope, a Were-cat. One aspect of it is the proportional strength of a cat, and cats are very powerful animals.”

“You were not born so?”

He shook his head. “I’ve adjusted to it, though. Truth be told, I don’t want to change back.”

“Then you are as you should be so long as you what you wish to be,” he said sagely. “Well, I must go. I will return in twenty days, and we shall better each other once again. Is this acceptable to you?”

“I’m already looking forward to it,” he smiled.

“Thank you for the meal. Next time, I shall bring food from my world for you to sample.”

“I think I’d like that,” he said sincerely.

Tsukatta bowed, and Tarrin did the same, then he stepped through the gate and left Sennadar. Tarrin had to chuckle a little bit. Spyder was right, there were some interesting people that came through the gate.

The main problem with wandering, he discovered quickly, was the eternal threat of being called back to Haven.

It never failed. Just when he found a place that he thought was interesting, he would get called back to Haven, and then he would be incapable of returning there unless he’d had time to ground himself. He started getting a bit surly about the entire affair after the first ride, when he reached a tiny village full of very nice and interesting people about a day’s walk from Abrodar no more than four separate times and was called back to Haven before he could ground himself and give him a new forward point from which to begin when his work at the gate was done. It made him rather short-tempered with the people that came through the gate, and he offended several Avatars of gods who had come through out of curiosity when they stumbled across the the lone gate to Sennadar. But on Sennadar, their divinity wasn’t worth a pile of Dargu skulls, and he made sure they understood that by manhandling them in a very abrupt manner when they arrived.

The solution, he’d discovered, was flying. Tarrin didn’t fly very much, exactly because he enjoyed it. He didn’t want to enjoy it too much, for he was still careful about coming to enjoy his divine gifts so much that it caused him to separate from the mortal world. But flying served as the solution to his problem, allowing him to make huge jumps of distance and land to ground himself, then return to moving on foot and exploring the local territory. The tactic served his needs perfectly, and as a result, he had grounding points all over Sharadar within two months, all of them within two day’s walk of one another or two hour’s flying, allowing him to go nearly anywhere in Sharadar within two hours. Fireflash certainly approved of Tarrin’s solution, though the drake often had trouble keeping up with him, so more often than not he was a passenger in a satchel Tarrin made for him, carrying his drake much as Ariana once carried him from the city of Amy Dimeon and to the ground below.

Needless to say, sightings of the winged Were-cat were flying all over Sharadar, and myths were already starting to sprout up about his unique appearance and the fact that from the ground, he was rather hard to see because he flew several thousand spans above the ground, mainly to avoid crashing into birds, and also to give him a very panoramic view of the ground below.

Hitting birds was not pleasant. The last time it happened, he was picking goose feathers and guts out of his hair for nearly a day.

Tuskatta continued to visit, appearing every twenty days, when they would spar. Tarrin learned from the Samurai more than he thought he would, and Tsukatta was more than willing to serve as a test subject for some of Tarrin’s experiments. One of the more eye-opening tricks Tarrin perfected in his spars with Tsukatta was using his wings as a weapon in combat. They were totally mutable, and much as he had used them as spears to try to impale the shadow of Val, he could change their shape, control them, and unleash them against his opponents. He found that changing them into whip-like tentacles was quite effective, for they would go as far as he wanted and they moved with extreme speed. When doing that, he could flail at Tsukatta from a safe distance. The other trick he’d learned was to flare them out and cause a multitude of tiny lances to blast out from the inside volume of them, like a storm of arrows but still attached to his wings, but this trick wasn’t easy. He had to create each and every lance, and concentrating on so many and making them all move at one time scattered his concentration more often than not. But he did learn how to do it with about eight or ten of them. Tarrin was no centipede, he didn’t have an instinctual understanding of how to control that many limbs at the same time, and the ability to control them was the main limitation he had with the technique.

Time seemed a strange thing when one didn’t sleep. It seemed to flow by slowly, but the progression of it was actually rather brisk. What seemed like rides to him actually turned out to be months, when he stopped and thought about where he’d been and how long it had taken him. He’d explored Sharadar, the jungles of Darrigon, the desert of Kypernius, and the upper plains of northern Stygia and Arathorn. He even went south to see the snowcapped Burning Mountains, where almost every mountain in the chain was a volcano of some kind, be it active or extinct, in a wild unclaimed territory called the Burning Lands. Nearly the entire southern third of the continent was uninhabited by humans, or at least inhabited in an organized manner. There were lots of miners in those mountains, hunting for diamonds and gold and other precious ores and gems, but it had to be very dangerous work with the threat of volcanic activity. There were also any number of hermits, fur trappers, and woodsmen who made the forests on the northern edge of it, near the jungles of southern Darrigon, their home.

After finishing there, he moved north, into Telluria, and was amazed at the civilization he found there. Telluria was devoted to technology, and their cities were nearly as advanced as Wikuna. They too had paved streets, but of large grayish bricks rather than that concrete that Keritanima’s scientists had developed. Tellurians seemed more interested in the science of mechanical contraptions than overall advancement, though. When he visited the city of Telluria he saw a young man riding by on a strange metal frame that had two wheels on it, propelled by a crank he turned with his feet that was attached to the back wheel by a chain. When he asked someone what it was, the woman called it a bicycle, and lamented that it wasn’t considered proper for a lady to ride one. They had clocks all over their cities, on the corners of major intersections, each of them precisely in agreement with all others, a testament to the Tellurian skill of clockmaking. He’d seen any number of strange devices that were built of gears, pulleys, chains, and springs, from a mechanical lift that whisked goods from the ground to a large window on the fourth floor of a warehouse to a little toy soldier that a young boy was playing with, which was wound up with a key like a clock he’d once seen and put on the ground. When released, it walked around in jerky, erratic circles until whatever propelled it was exhausted. Then the boy simply picked it up, put the key in its back, turned it to wind it up, then did it all over again.

But he didn’t spend all his time wandering. When not wandering he was with his family, and when not with them he was reading in Spyder’s library, and when not doing that he was usually dealing with interlopers at the gate. The interlopers that came in through the gate were as varied as Spyder warned they would be, and after nearly a year, he’d certainly had enough experience to be able to tell the serious ones from the utterly ridiculous, and some which were nothing more than bizarre.

One such example of the ridiculous happened about four months after Tarrin started defending the gate. They certainly didn’t look very ridiculous at first, and when he first saw them, Tarrin had been very curious. One was a truly monstrous human, nearly as tall as Tarrin, with small dark eyes and a fierce black beard, and the other was a Dwarf! An actual Dwarf, one of the Dwarves that lived in other worlds! Seeing him reminded Tarrin of all his Dwarven sculptures and portraits, and he realized that this one looked remarkably like the Dwarves that had once lived on Sennadar, for he was short, barrel-chested, wide-shouldered, thickly bearded, and looked solidly powerful.

Perhaps the first clue that these two weren’t exactly all there should have been the Dwarf’s helmet. Both were wearing plate armor, the armor of warriors, but the Dwarf had on a helmet that had a double-headed battle axe blade affixed to its top, and the open faced helmet had a stout chinstrap that kept it firmly on the Dwarf’s head.

Despite his curiosity, he also had a task to complete. “Go back,” he had told them sternly, ruffling his wings in an impressive manner that drew attention to them—a trick he learned from Spyder about intimidation. “This world is forbidden to all visitors. Go back, and never return. If you come back, you’ll die in this room.”

“I am Aragoth, the mightiest warrior in the universe!” the tall human shouted arrogantly, though his eyes were a bit wild. “No man threatens me and lives!”

“That wasn’t a threat,” Tarrin said with narrowed eyes, which ignited from within with their unholy greenish aura. “But I’ll be happy to give you one. Now get out, or I’ll kill you here and now.”

“You dare command ME?” he screamed. “Grunger, to my hand!”

Then, the most insanely ridiculous thing that Tarrin had ever seen occurred. The Dwarf turned and jumped into the air, and the human dipped down and caught the Dwarf’s ankles in a huge hand. The Dwarf pulled his arms in across his chest, and the human started flailing that Dwarf around like a weapon!

It was ridiculous! Here was this huge man swinging a Dwarf around by the ankles, but Tarrin’s confusion ended swiftly when that double-headed axeblade on the Dwarf’s helmet suddenly made perfect sense, in a twisted sort of way. The Dwarf’s helmet made him a living battle axe!

Tarrin probably made an eternal enemy that day. After backpedalling to get clear of the axe-capped Dwarf, he started laughing uncontrollably. Aragoth’s face turned purple with fury, and the Dwarf Grunger started hurling curses at him. “You mock the legendary axe Grunger?” the Dwarf screamed. “I’ll have you know I was the most powerful weapon ever made before a curse turned me into a Dwarf! Now I’ll drink your blood, you fire-winged hairball!”

A single sweep of Sorcery through the Dwarf told him that he was, in fact, nothing more than a Dwarf. He just thought he was a legendary axe.

Still laughing, Tarrin paused to weave four quick spells, Summoning forth his four Elementals. Partly because it was time for him to do it, and also because he wanted them to see this. The four of them took one look at the odd pair, and they too burst into their own form of laughter.

“He fears us, Grunger!” the human boomed confidently as Tarrin continued to move back. “He conjures reinforcements!”

“I just wanted them to see how stupid you two look,” Tarrin told them with another laugh, then swept the human off his feet with a wave of his arm and a strong weave of Air.

And I thought that humans could get no stranger, his Water Elemental said to him with amusement. His relationship with his Elementals didn’t really change very much even after he got his wings, though it did require just a little tweaking with his Water Elemental. Tarrin was now a divine being aligned against Water, and at first she was a little worried that it was going to cause problems. But her bonding with him was an aspect of his Sorcery, not of his divine power, and that kept the two of them distinctly separate, and thus allowed them to interact without any problems. It did, on the other hand, give his Fire Elemental a serious ego problem, and for a while it felt that it was superior and favored over his other Elementals. He had to disabuse it of that notion quickly. They both were beings of fire, but they were still simply one aspect of a complicated relationship that had four sides.

“You insult me? Now you die!” Aragoth shrieked insanely, jumping to his feet.

“Get your sorry butt out of my dimension,” Tarrin said scathingly. “You’re not even worth my time.”

Shall we dispatch them for you? his Air Elemental asked.

“Don’t kill them, but herd them out the gate,” he answered aloud. “Show them how unimpressed we are with them.”

With pleasure, his Fire Elemental said eagerly.

To make it even more insulting, Tarrin sat down and watched as his four Elementals tormented, harassed, and humiliated the two ridiculous males. The Water Elemental sprayed a torrent of water in the face of the human, then the Earth Elemental followed it up by grinding its club-like hand in his face, leaving his face smeared with thick mud. The Air Elemental held the Dwarf rigidly immobile in midair as the Fire Elemental spanked him with a fiery paddle, leaving scorchmarks on the tail of the chain mail shirt that protected his backside. Tarrin had to laugh as the two invaders got free, and got chased around the room by four Elementals who were thoroughly enjoying themselves. The Earth Elemental softened the stone of the floor and trapped the human by the feet, then the Air Elemental planted the Dwarf’s axehead helmet in the stone beside him. The Water Elemental soaked both of them, then the Air Elemental used its power over air temperature to unleash a blast of arctic wind on them, freezing the water and leaving ice in the beards of both of them. Then the Fire Elemental rose up in the face of the human and radiated a flash of heat, instantly turning the man’s face red, like he was sunburned.

“Cowards! Using magic when you lack the courage to face us!” the human screamed, at least before the Earth Elemental shoved a huge glob of mud in his mouth. He continued to try to talk, as muffled sounds like “Grff! Mmblgl mml lmffg blgmml!” escaped through the mud in his mouth.

“That’s enough,” Tarrin chuckled, standing up. “Keep in mind that I never touched you,” he told them, still chuckling. “And I’m much worse than my Elementals are. You can throw them out now,” he told them.

The Earth and Air Elementals picked up the two crazy invaders and physically threw them through the swirling gate. Then, after the last tendrils of their shrieked curses faded, all five of them burst into uncontrollable laughter. “It’s a good thing Fireflash is asleep,” Tarrin wheezed. “Can you imagine how embarrassed those two would feel knowing they were beaten by a drake?”

Fireflash would have taken both of them easily. One blast of paralyzing gas, and it would be over.

Unfortunately, characters like Aragoth and Grunger weren’t the only ones to come through the gate. Five days after that little misadventure, Tarrin faced his first serious opponent in the form of a mighty Demon called a balor. The thing, a twelve span tall monstrosity with a heavy body, horned, ugly head, and large bat-like wings came charging out of the gate with a nasty looking whip in his hand. It was obvious that it knew what to expect on the other side of the gate, for it came out already loaded for bear and ready to do battle. This rash assault put Tarrin out of sorts for a few seconds, but not long enough to quickly use Druidic magic to eliminate all magic in the gate chamber—Demons of that caliber had formidable magical abilities, and he didn’t want that thing to teleport all over the place like the glabrezu did when he fought it for the Book of Ages—and met it head on. Tarrin learned two vital lessons from that experience. The first was that Demons feared him, for when the balor got a good look at him, much of his battle fervor cooled. The second was that his wings weren’t as invulnerable as he once believed. The Demon lashed that whip at Tarrin, who brought his wing around his flank to protect it, and he felt an angry blast of pain lash through his wing. The red-orange of his wing cooled to a line of reddish-black along where the whip struck it, and it was then that he understood the nature of them. His wings enjoyed the same protections that Demons did, that only extra-dimensional beings had the power to harm them. The Demon’s whip was an item that fit that classification.

Tarrin had never felt pain in his wings before, and the shock of it instantly sent him flying into a rage. His feet left the ground as his wings exploded with brilliant light and searing heat, and they trailed tongues of flame as the Were-cat launched himself at the balor with his staff in the end grip and coiled over his head to smash the ugly thing into the floor. A whip was no weapon to use to try to defend against a staff, so the Demon retreated and prepared to try to dodge out away from the attack. Paws shrouded in fire unleashed the staff at the Demon’s face, feet similarly shrouded in fire, hovered over the stones of the floor.

What ensued was a fairly ugly series of traded blows as the balor sought to get some distance from the enraged Were-cat, but the Were-cat simply ignored the savage lashing of the whip as he concentrated on crushing the balor’s skull. Many deep, ragged lacerations striped Tarrin’s sides, lower back, wings, and torso as the Demon ripped away skin and flesh with every strike of the whip, but the Demon showed just as many signs of injury in short order. Tarrin knocked off one of its horns in his flurry of incensed strikes, sending it spinning off towards the gate, then he smashed in the left cheekbone of its ugly face and nearly slammed it to the ground with the sheer power behind the blow. The fact that Tarrin was airborne, carried by a power that Druidic magic couldn’t cancel, factored in tremendously to his advantage, allowing him to get eye to eye with the Demon and giving him much more mobility. The Demon could not retreat, and did get knocked off its feet when Tarrin unloaded a massive overhanded blow, whipping the staff over his head and driving it into the crown of the Demon’s head. When it was down, Tarrin pulled back, hovering over its body, then sent a dozen fiery spikes out of his wings and lanced them into the Demon’s body. Lethal spears of solid fire still atached to his wings penetrated the Demon’s flesh, drove all the way through it and into the stones beneath it. His wings were the manifestation of divine energy, and that kind of power could do harm to a Demon. It squealed only once before it died, and Tarrin pulled the spears out of it before it started to dissolve.

He landed by the decomposing body and caught his breath, the pain of several nasty wounds becoming clearer as he came out of his rage. He remembered quite clearly what happened this time, there was no loss of memory he usually suffered when in a rage, and he noted to himself that those sparring sessions with Tsukatta had already paid off.

After repairing the damage to the floor, he hobbled back upstairs to recover from the battle. It would take some Druidic healing and a few hours of rest to mend the nasty lash wounds the Demon’s whip inflicted.

Spyder’s job suddenly didn’t seem as easy as it had earlier that morning.

Time continued to flow by, the raging torrent that seemed frozen in place, and things did slowly begin to change. Two years crept by, but though it seemed to take forever, Tarrin looked back upon it and wondered where all that time went.

The main change was in his children. Jasana had just turned eight and Eron was seven now, the twins were nearly six, and they were certainly no longer children. Jasana was as tall as her grandfather, starting to fill out in the curvy manner that most Were-cat females enjoyed, and Eron was growing tall, tall, tall. He was going to be a huge Were-cat adult, for he was both tall and solidly built, almost barrel-chested, the most burly Were-cat Tarrin had ever seen. Where Tarrin and most Were-cats were sleek, like panthers, Eron was powerful, built like a lion, and he was monstrously strong even for a Were-cat ten times his age. Tara and Rina had changed physically into sleek adolescents, but their personalities had not changed. Tara was still aggressive, gruff, and blunt, and Rina was still a sweet-natured girl. True to the demeanors of their parents, they were miniature versions of Tarrin and Kimmie.

There were other changes as well. Dar and Tiella had had another child, a little girl named Nayelle, a Sha’Kar name which meant treasure, and Keritanima’s son Faalken was now ambulatory and driving his mother insane. Allia and Allyn were still trying to have a child, which was no longer a social issue for them, since Allyn had passed his tests and taken good brands, and was now a fully recognized member of Selani society. They had missed the first opportunity when Allia came in season because the tribe’s shaman had absolutely refused to consider him, and she kept dragging her feet until well after Allia was out of season. Allia was livid about it and felt that she had done it on purpose to keep them from having a child, and a rare inner-tribe fued very nearly came about because of it. Things got so ugly that Fara’Nae had to personally straighten things out, because Allia was dead set on killing the shaman in revenge for her pettiness, and it turned out that it was all nothing more than a personal grudge that the shaman had with Allyn. Fara’Nae chastised the shaman for allowing her personal views to interfere with the guidance that she gave to her, stripped her of her powers, and ordered her sent to another tribe to start down the path of shaman all over again as an apprentice. It was a terrible blow to the woman’s honor, even more so because Fara’Nae specifically ordered her not to exile herself, so she was robbed of the honorable option of allowing herself to get killed. That Allyn had taken good brands was the twisting of the sword.

King Arren of Sulasia also celebrated a gift, as he and his Draconian wife had a son, a new heir to the throne, named Elvor. That secured the throne for another generation, and it made all of Sulasia sigh in relief. Arren was a great king, wise and just, and his subjects very much wanted to see the next monarch