Chapter 8

They had no idea that they were doomed.

Mist carefully wandered through the streets of this large city in her human form at first, and then in her cat form, a city filled with buildings and streets of red stone and gray slate roofs, the same red stone as the solitary, steep-sloped mountain that rose high to the north, a mountain that Mist saw was an active volcano. It was nearly the color of blood, and in Mist’s mind, that was almost fitting. These animals worshipped a monster for a god, and they were about to face their punishment for doing so.

Unlike most of those around Tarrin, or Tarrin himself, Mist did not have any compassion, or compunction to spare these people. Centuries of ferality had hardened her in ways that most did not understand, and the Cat had no warm feelings for these people. That meant that if they all died, it wouldn’t even so much as make her bat an eye. In fact, the Cat in her cried out to destroy them, because they were more cruel than she had ever been.

The differences in them were so obvious. The people involved with the church wore either black or red, cassocks or robes of flowing splendor, escorted by guards and soldiers wearing plate armor with red surcoats and carrying broadswords. Then there were the rich city folk, who wore finery out on the red-bricked streets, carried in litters, riding in carriages, or walking, but never without armed men protecting them at all times. Then there was everyone else, dressed in rough homespun clothing, moving through the streets with fear in their eyes. Twice she had seen instances of the guards or soldiers of the rich beating on some hapless poor person, who had done something that someone had taken offense to.

She felt no pity for them, however. There were a thousand times more poor people than rich people, and they allowed it to happen to themselves. They had the power to make it stop, but they let fear rule them. And even if they died, well, dying for something you believed in was much better than living in fear all your life.

She knew what it was like to live in fear. For centuries she was trapped by her own fear. After the Were hunter had wounded her and made her barren, she had become feral, and had been miserable. Afraid of everything and everyone, unable to even trust those she respected, like Triana, she was condemned to a life of unending solitude. She had hated it, hated it with every fiber of her being, but she just could not overcome the fear. She had even wanted to kill herself, but the instincts of the Cat would not allow it. The instinct of self-preservation would prevent any attempt to end things…she knew that oh too well. So she lived in that prison for hundreds of years, alone, afraid, tormented by what she had become, and haunted by what she wanted to be.

Kimmie had been her first true victory over her fear…if it could be called that. The poor girl was half crazy when Mist found her, but her life wasn’t any easier after she took her in. Mist had been afraid of Kimmie, and Kimmie seemed to sense it, because she was always very careful around her bond-mother. But Kimmie was her first true conquest of her ferality, aided by her instinct, her need, to raise a child. She had never felt any love for the dark-haired girl, only an instinctive need to teach her the ways of Were. Her ferality even overruled the instinctive need to protect the girl, for by protecting her she would have to put herself in a position where she could not protect herself against Kimmie.

But then Tarrin came. The injured cub had healed away the scar in her body, the scar in her mind, with the gentlest of touches, and that first time he had touched her, she had sensed the beauty inside him. She had wanted that beauty from the instant she became aware of it, but she was afraid of him. So instead she managed to conquer her fear for the briefest of times to allow herself to take him for mate, with the hope that he would give her a child of her own, a little piece of the beauty of him that would be part of her life forever afterward.

It was safe to say that Mist had instantly fallen in love with him, but it was love at first touch rather than love at first sight. She just hadn’t understood what she was feeling back then, she knew now.

He had sired Eron, and Eron had filled the void in her heart, and in his own way, had healed his mother of much of her feral nature. Her life’s single wish had been fulfilled, she had a child of her own, and it caused her to mellow out quite a bit. She had even reconciled with Kimmie and came to discover love in her heart for her former bond-child, and it brought a richness, a warmth into her life that steadily, quietly, and gently lifted the cold hands of fear from her soul, allowed her to accept her ferality, but chain its power, bringing it to heel. She was feral, would always be feral, but now she had control of her ferality. It did not rule her anymore. She could still sense the fear, but it no longer ruled her life.

But her love for Tarrin was much more than love, even she seemed to understand it. She loved him, but in a way, she was devoted to him in a way that even frightened her. Of all the females, she was the only one that didn’t go crazy when he was turned human, because she knew in her heart that he would want to be Were, and that knowledge gave her comfort. She trusted him far more than she trusted herself, a trust that was nearly blind in its faith. There was nothing that she would not do for him. She knew that, accepted it in a calm way despite the alien concept of it, because what she felt for him had nothing at all to do with her instincts, and despite how far she had come, she was still feral, and always would be.

Being Tarrin’s mate, finally, had made her the happiest female anywhere. She knew that he didn’t love her quite the same way yet, but again, she had faith in him, and faith that her love would open his eyes, just as Kimmie’s had done. Until the day when she heard him say those words, she would wait. And unlike most Were-cats, Mist had the patience of a stone. Before turning feral she had been grounded in common sense, and that sense told her that sometimes one had to wait to get something worthwhile. She would wait as long as it took to get what she wanted.

Perhaps that had been why turning feral had been so hard on her. She had been very un-Were in her outlook before being wounded, and then had the full brunt of the worst aspects of her Were nature thrust upon her. She had not handled it well, and that only made her ferality worse.

But that was all in the past, and the past had no meaning for a were-cat.

The main cathedral of the One was certainly unmistakable, and she had been moving steadily towards it all morning. It was a huge black-walled monstrosity built at the far end of the city, on the edge of the slope of that volcano. It was vast, towering over all the other buildings of the city with its black walls and its towering minarets and towers rising around a main building that was capped by a gold dome that whose top would rival the central tower of the Tower complex at Suld. It was built on a shelf of sorts that put it higher than the ground of the city before it, so it was visible to everyone in the city at all times, an eternal reminder of their god and his station over them.

Kimmie was in a dungeon under that thing, and that Demon bitch Shaz’Baket was also there…and those were Mist’s current two reasons for living. To retrieve her daughter, and kill that Demoness.

Tarrin was coming…she could feel it, like a whispering in her soul that grew faintly stronger with every passing moment. His fury was growing with every second, and when he arrived, he would be a hurricane of furious wrath. He was not a god, not even close to the power of one, but his fury and the rightness of what he was doing would give him what he needed to face the One and defeat him. Tarrin had faced adversaries much stronger than himself before, and he’d won every time, because that was what he did. She had no doubt that he would triumph over the One. He had bested that dragon in Sha’Kari, he had defeated Val, so there was no doubt in her mind that he would defeat the One. It may not be easy, and it might not be pretty, but he would win. She knew he would, and since she knew it, it was simply a matter of calm acceptance for her. All she had to do was ensure that her mate could attack the One without reservation, and that meant getting into that cathedral and hiding somewhere close to Kimmie, so she could act when she knew it was time to do so.

Getting there was no problem. Nobody accosted her, even in her human form, because one glare was enough to make anyone back away from her quickly. Though she wasn’t dressed in frilly finery, her clothes were very well made, clean, and neat in appearance, making the poor people believe she was rich, and the rich people think she was crazy for not going out without armed escort. She simply marched through them all, uncaring about them.

It took her nearly an hour to reach the cathedral, because she didn’t want to make it obvious that that was where she was going. It was well separated from the rest of the city by a large wall around the base of a gentle slope that led to the plateau where the thing was built, with a heavily fortified gatehouse defending the breach in the wall. Getting further simply required a little change. She slunk off into an alley and shapeshifted into her cat form, then idled on the road leading to the gatehouse long enough to catch a ride on a fancy carriage that was going up to the cathedral. She sat on the axle beneath the carriage calmly and steadily as it rocked and bounced on the red brick street, then rode it as it carried her up to the cathedral building.

Nobody paid much attention to Mist as she crept past fearsome-looking guards and into the cathedral proper, entering a vast antechamber filled with gold statues, ivory-inlaid stone and wood sculpture on the walls and doorframes, and velvet curtains hanging before each doorway, tied back and away. Mist got a cold chill in her soul when she entered that room, entered the base of power of the One, literally walking into the mouth of the beast. She could feel his presence in the place like a palpable aura of cold settling around her, and had the distinct feeling that he would notice if she were there…if it wasn’t for the fact that he wasn’t distracted.

Tarrin. She was going to kiss that man when this was over. His approach was distracting the One, just as he said it would, and it was allowing her to invade his personal domain unnoticed.

Secure in her anonymity, Mist crept through a doorway, her mind locked on the mission before her. She would find out where Kimmie was, and then hide somewhere nearby. When Tarrin arrived, she would spring into action. She would free her daughter and then escape with her, and that would give Tarrin freedom to exact righteous vengeance on the One without fear of harming Kimmie. She would do her part, and do it exactly as Tarrin expected it to be done.

She would not fail him. She would never fail Tarrin. No matter what it took, she would find a way to succeed, because he expected it of her, just as she knew he would succeed because she expected it of him.

He had faith in her. She would not let him down.

Not ever.

It was a day spent in tense, anxious silence.

From the instant the Pegasi lifted up from the ground, nobody said a single word for the entire time that they were airborne. The only sounds were the wind in their ears and the deep whoosh which emanated from the large wings of the Pegasi on which they rode, as none of them seemed willing to break the pregnant silence around them. The winged horses followed Tarrin as if they had been commanded to do so, as if the brilliant light that emanated from his wings had enraptured them and caused them to follow him blindly.

They landed once around midday, and Dolanna dared to break the silence to ask why. Tarrin simply pointed to a nearby brook and said not a word, immediately sitting cross-legged on the ground and putting his sword in his lap, a sword that still had the ghostly white radiance around it that announced to them all that it was in contact with the Weave. The others rested and grabbed a quick meal, but Tarrin did not move a finger while they were doing so, did not speak. When the others were ready to go, Tarrin did not move, forcing them to wait on him, which seemed to them to be counter to what they were doing.

But they didn’t understand. Timing was everything. The battle with the red dragon on Sha’Kari had taught him that brutal lesson. Timing was everything, and he was not going to mess things up by getting there at the wrong time. The optimal time to reach Pyros was sunset, and the engagement with the One should take place in the dark of night. In that environment, with no daylight to diffuse the light of his wings, their brightness would serve almost as well as the sun in the face of a charging army. They would attract the eye, and when his sword dipped in front of them, it would be lost in the background light of them. That would give him the advantage. It also gave Mist plenty of time to find Kimmie and get into position, for what she had to do was also a matter of critical timing, and he wanted her to have plenty of time to be ready.

And so, he caused them to wait a while, then he finally deigned to allow them to go. They flew for most of the midday and afternoon, and as they moved north, he became aware of the gnawing sensation that he knew was the One ahead of him. They were close enough to sense one another now, and he felt a sudden explosion of anger and anticipation…and not a little excitement. The One was looking forward to this, wanted to fight. Tarrin, on the other hand, only emanated raw, naked fury, so much so that the One could not possibly feel anything else. That also served to prevent the One from sensing that Tarrin did have a plan, and it had already been set into motion. From what the One could feel from Tarrin, all he knew was that the Were-cat was so angry that he barely contained any rational thought. The One probably thought that that gave him an advantage, but he didn’t understand the complexities of his opponent, whose mind was effectively layered. He was able to be that angry and think at the same time, because the Cat did all the raging while the Human did all the thinking. The duality of his mind could often be as much an asset to him as it was a liability, when its unique aspects were used the correct way.

Tarrin stopped them one more time about a half an hour before sunset, when the spires and towers of Pyros were just beginning to become visible over the northern horizon. He did not sit this time, only stood there with his sword in his paw, still as a stone. The only thing that changed about him was that the glowing white radiance around his sword flickered, and then vanished. He turned to look to his side, then extended a paw and pointed his open palm at the ground some spans away. A sudden blast of fire issued forth from his hand, striking the ground and swirling around itself, and it remained after Tarrin ceased the gout of flame, burning angrily in the grass, remaining even after it consumed its fuel, but not spreading from where it was burning. He then reached out with his paw and wove a frighteningly complicated Ward that was nearly five hundred spans across, a dome of absolute protection that would stop any magic from crossing its boundary, and canceling all magic but Sorcery within it. No Demon could Teleport within their midst, and the Ward would render their magic unusable. That would give them the ability to kill them relatively easily, for few Demons were a match for Azakar, Ulger, or Haley in a battle with weapons, and the magic of Miranda and Dolanna would destroy them quickly. He pointed at the ground, and a fire erupted from the ground, burning brightly and without fuel, in the middle of an open area that would serve as a good camp.

“Stay here,” Tarrin finally spoke, sending his gaze over them all. “This is as close as you can get.”

“For what, dear one?”

“For you to stay safe,” he answered in a detached manner.

“But we’re still two leagues out of Pyros,” Ulger objected. “It’ll take us ten minutes to get there from here!”

Tarrin fixed Ulger with such a penetrating, emotionless stare that it made Ulger flinch.

“Uh, I think that Tarrin means that we’re much safer way over here,” Haley said lightly. “And we’ll be out of his hair.”

“Well said,” Miranda nodded soberly.

Tarrin spread his wings and rose just slightly into the air, looking down at them. “Wait here,” he ordered. “I’ll be right back.”

“Tarrin, be careful,” Dolanna warned. “Remember, he is a god, and Pyros is filled with Demons who will aid him against you. He will have powers, just as you do, and may know magic. Do not underestimate him.”

“I won’t,” Tarrin replied. “I don’t have to kill him to win, Dolanna. Remember that. All I have to do is get to Kimmie.”

Dolanna nodded knowingly. “May the Goddess’ light and love shine down on you and protect you, my dear one.”

Tarrin closed his eyes and nodded his head ever so slightly, then turned and flew off towards the north, towards Pyros, and towards the One.

“Do you think he’ll be alright, Dolanna?” Miranda asked, reflexively reaching out and putting her arm around Zyri’s shoulder, as the little girl watched Tarrin fly away with frightened eyes.

“I think that if all goes as he envisions, then he will be well,” Dolanna said, then she took hold of her amulet in a steady hand. “Well, on to matters, then. We need something to eat.”

The others got down to the business of preparing the evening meal, for now they could do nothing other than wait. But Zyri stood in place, hugging Fireflash to her breast, simply watching Tarrin dwindle into the distance, until only the light of his wings could be seen, and then well after even that was gone from her eyes. She did not move, she only looked to the north with an expression of haunted fear. Tarrin, the scary non-human who had shown her such kindness, was going off to fight with the One. She knew what had happened to him, that he was more than a mortal, but he also made sure to explain to her that he was by no means a god. And now he was going off to fight with a god. The others seemed to think that he could win.

Well, if he could fight a god and win, wouldn’t that make him a god? Maybe he was, and he just didn’t know it. Adults loved to say that, that people were this or that, and just didn’t know it.

Either way, she was worried about him. In his own way, him and Mistress Mist had become like her own mother and father, taking in her and Jal and caring for them, teaching them things, showing them kindness, even a little bit of love. For two orphans, that was more than they could have ever dreamed to get. She often felt lost and confused traveling with this group of people from another world, but no matter how lost she was, just feeling like she belonged with them, that they like her and her brother, that they didn’t throw them out after Telven betrayed them, was all she could have dreamed about.

And now Master Tarrin, a towering figure of authority, of power and strength, and a surprising wellspring of wisdom and guidance for her, was going away to fight the One to get back his friend. And he was doing it without showing a whit of fear. She always felt so safe when he was near, so protected, knowing that he was so strong and he would protect her from whatever would do her harm. And oddly enough, she still felt safe and protected, even knowing that he was gone and where he was going, what he was about to do. But it didn’t lighten the burden of worry from her heart.

“Be careful, Master Tarrin,” she whispered in Penali. How rarely they used her native tongue now, always speaking in that Sulasian language that Tarrin had taught her with magic, but speaking words from her heart itself. “Come home soon.”

Sunset. The last sunset that Pyros would ever see.

Tarrin had traversed the distance to the large city quickly, then, when he got within a longspan of it, he landed on the well-worn road leading to Pyros and began walking. Every step brought him more and more into focus, prepared him for what was to come. He knew exactly what he was going to do, exactly how to make it happen, and went over the steps of it in his mind over and over again as the Cat’s rage built with each step, drowning out those rational thoughts to any Demon or god that might try to eavesdrop on his thoughts.

This had to be a physical confrontation. Tarrin was well aware that the One’s magical power far outstripped his own, because the One was a god. He had a full charge of Sorcery and every Wizard spell he could comprehend memorized, but he knew that it might not be enough. The One would have the innate powers that were a part of him, part of his being a god. Every god had those kinds of powers, just like Tarrin’s mastery of fire, but the One’s would be different, because he was a god of mortals rather than of a natural force. Tarrin would be at a disadvantage in that regard, because the One knew what Tarrin could do—roughly—while Tarrin had no idea what powers the One possessed. On top of that, the One could certainly use magic. He doubted that a god who hated any non-Priest magic would actively use Wizard magic, but Tarrin knew that he could use every Priest spell that existed, because gods could use any spell that they could bestow upon a mortal, and the One was a powerful enough god to grant the most powerful spells to his Priests. So he had to take it to the One with his sword, force the One to deal with him weapon to weapon, try to take magic out of the game as quickly as possible. It had to be a loud and explosive confrontation, to alert Mist that he was there and that he had engaged the One, and give her time to get to Kimmie. Then, after Tarrin felt that Mist had had enough time, he would simply disengage from the One and attack the One’s cathedral. If the One’s icon was in that cathedral, and Tarrin could get to it, then the battle was over.

Tarrin didn’t have to fight the One to beat the One. The battle was nothing more than a stalling tactic.

Oh, but there would be some serious fighting. Tarrin’s fury demanded ripping out the One’s eyes and stuffing them down his throat. If he could kill the One’s physical manifestation, his avatar, before going on and destroying his icon, well, that was just that much better. He doubted that he could do it, but it would be very, very wonderful if he could.

The gates of Pyros stood before him, closed, and were heavily manned with both human guards and Demons. Vrock, Glabrezu, Hezrou, and Nalfeshnee, the four lowest rungs of the strongest of Demonkind, were present on that wall and in front of that gate, waiting for him. Behind that gate was a very large city built of reddish stone, the same reddish stone as the steep-sloped volcano which stood behind the city itself. The roofs were covered with gray slate, and the architecture was crisp and exacting, much different from the rude mud hovels of the serfs and the ragged timber buildings in most of the smaller towns. This was the pinnacle of Pyrosian society, and they held back their riches and glory for themselves and themselves only, as if to make Pyros seem even more grand by making it beautiful while actively keeping all other holdings of the One ugly and poor. It spoke much of the One’s mentality.

Tarrin came to a stop some distance from those front gates, studying them. The One was not here. He was not going to meet Tarrin immediately, he wanted Tarrin to fight his way through his minions.

Very well. That was his first mistake.

He started forward, walking at an inexorable pace, as if nothing was going to prevent him from moving forward. But every step became longer and longer, and his pace quickened with each step, until he went from a walk to a blistering run, sword bursting into flame as he took it up in both paws, just before his feet left the ground and his wings snapped out, carrying him forth along the ground like a diving eagle. He did not rise his feet more than a finger off the ground, displaying with his actions his intent to go through that gate rather than over it.

The Demons all took on a surprised expression when they realized that they could not Teleport to him. The Ward that Tarrin had woven to protect them while they were flying was still active, and it was centered on him. When they came within the Ward, their magic would no longer function. They quickly formed up in front of the gates, vrock carrying their glaives while the other Demons intended to use nothing but claws, teeth, or fists.

Not that it would help them.

Tarrin rammed into the very center of their line like a Wikuni cannonball, sword over his head, then he whipped it down on the vrock in the center. The vulture-like Demon raised his glaive up to defend itself, but the burning sword sheared through the metal haft of the weapon and cleaved the Demon’s head in two. The Demon fell back, but Tarrin turned and drove the tip of his sword into the chest of a hezrou, then ducked under the lunge of a Glabrezu’s pincers. That pincered hand sailed away with the stroke of Tarrin’s sword, then the Demon squealed in agony when a dozen fiery lances erupted from the inside curves of Tarrin’s wings and plunged into its body. Those lances withdrew, and then Tarrin’s wings divided into irregular tendrils, then spread out. The Demons found themselves facing a foe not with wings, but with an innumerable number of ropy, whip-like tendrils attached to his back. And to their horror, they discovered that the Were-cat could move each one independently.

It was like fighting a foe with twenty arms. The Demons were immediately pushed back as those whipping tendrils whizzed around in a dizzying frenzy of motion, striking with such force that they cut into the bodies they impacted. A few Demons backed away from him fearfully, some lifted their arms to protect their faces, but the armed vrocks pressed in, using the reach of their weapons to strike at the Were-cat from outside the seeming range of his fiery whips. All five vrocks lost their heads as a pair of whip-like appendages expanded in length and slashed across their necks, each whip changing trajectory to strike true as it passed from the last victim.

Using the sudden reel of his foes, Tarrin reformed his wings and turned on them with his sword. Black blood flew with every stroke of his burning sword as the staggering Demons found themselves overwhelmed by the raw fury of his attack. The Were-cat’s face twisted in a snarling mask of pure hatred and Demons were struck down with every blow, overwhelmed by the ferocity of his attack and off kilter from losing their ability to use magic.

After striking down the last Demon, surrounded by pools of smoking black sludge, Tarrin turned on the gates themselves, massive gates of brass-banded hardwood and with a portcullis before it. Tarrin’s paw suddenly was engulfed in flame, flame that coalesced and brightened, until he leveled his paw at the gates and unleashed that might. A concentrated blast of fire, hotter than anything the humans and Demons above the gatehouse could imagine, blasted out from the enraged Were-cat’s paw. The fire was not red, or yellow, or even white, it was blue, and when it struck the portcullis, it caused the metal to instantly wither away like wax thrown into a bonfire. When the fire struck the wooden gates, it caused the wood to explode, sending shards of fiery wooden splinters flying for hundreds of spans in every direction. The shockwave of that detonation shattered what was left of the gates, and collapsed the red stone archway over the gates. Stone squealed and men screamed as the gatehouse collapsed into the passageway, causing a cloud of dust to billow out from it in both directions.

There was a moment of eerie silence, as the last of the echoes of the collapse bounced back to them, and before the moans of the injured in the twisted wreckage of the gatehouse became too loud. The air around Tarrin became hazy, like the shimmering of air over a hot rock in the desert, and when he moved forward, blackened imprints were left behind from his feet as he walked. Tarrin’s eyes glowed green in the fading light, backlit by the brilliance of his fiery wings, and the shards of wood in the wreckage upon which he tread as he climbed over the ruins of the gatehouse burst into flame as he pass over it.

In dramatic fashion, Tarrin had gained entry into the capitol city of the One’s large empire, Pyros. And he was there to destroy it.

“I HAVE COME!” Tarrin bellowed in a voice that was impossibly loud for any mortal being. The sound of his voice shook the dust from the rafters of buildings across the entire city, shattered windows, and terrified the population of Pyros. “COME OUT AND FACE ME, YOU COWARD! YOU WANTED TO FIGHT ME? THEN STOP COWERING IN FEAR BEHIND MY MATE AND FACE ME, YOU SPINELESS DOG!”

Tarrin’s wings suddenly expanded to five times their normal size, then they collapsed in on him as he turned his power on himself, became the fire, and then caused himself to assume a different form. The fire of him expanded, extended, grew to immense dimensions, then it vanished from him in a wave of flame as it left flesh and bone behind. Tarrin had again assumed the form of a gold dragon, and that dragon keened a mighty roar that again shook the foundations of Pyros, then he turned his massive head, craned his neck as he sucked in his breath, then unleashed a hellish inferno of fire on the buildings to the right of the street leading in from the gatehouse. The stone was volcanic rock, highly resistant to heat, but even that was no defense against the withering might of Tarrin’s breath weapon. Slate exploded, reddish volcanic rock shattered, and everything within those buildings was either melted to slag or burned to ash in the blink of an eye. Tarrin sustained his breath weapon, raking it across a large swath of the city block adjoining the city gate, leaving behind a massive fire in his wake when he finally ceased the blast.

Demons again rushed at him from the walls, but Tarrin simply turned his head, sucked in his breath, and then unleashed another cone of fire. Demons were immune to heat and fire, just as he was, but they could not resist the force of the blast, as all that superheated fire and air slammed into them like an avalanche. They leaned into the cone of fire, protecting their faces, but one by one they lost purchase and were sent flying, tumbling along the ground. And when the fire ended, they didn’t think quite fast enough. The first one never saw it coming as Tarrin’s monstrous forepaw crushed it into the red bricks of the ground, which now glowed a ruddy red from being superheated. Tarrin was not native to this world, and neither was the dragon form which he occupied, so the Demon had no defense against him. There was nothing left but a black smudge among shattered red bricks. The second one saw it coming, but couldn’t Teleport itself to safety. It tried to do that first without thinking, without realizing that Tarrin’s Ward was still up, and it too was crushed into a liquid by Tarrin’s titanic weight. The others, realizing that they had no magic and nothing but teeth and claws against a creature so massive that they could do little more than bite at its feet, scrambled up off the ground and fled towards the open land beyond the shattered gate.

Tarrin let them go, turning his head back to the city. He unleashed yet another blast of fire to his left, setting another massive fire among the ruins of what was not instantly destroyed, then he turned and unleashed the last of his fire at the walls themselves, killing several dozen city guardsman who were scrambling about in fear and confusion. His gas sacks were depleted, and he could use no more of his breath weapon.

But the form had served its purpose by intimidating the Demons into giving up. The massive dragon form turned to flame, then dissipated, leaving nothing behind but Tarrin, wrapped within his own wings, at the center of it. He unfurled his wings and lightly descended to the ground.

Obviously, Tarrin was not going to draw out the One with wanton destruction. It seemed that he didn’t care about the state of his city. The One wanted him to come forward before he acted, for some reason. He didn’t understand why. The One should have come out the instant he arrived, to defend the city, but he did not. He was allowing Tarrin to advance, maybe all the way to the cathedral itself. Was he that arrogantly overconfident? Was he going to allow Tarrin to come within striking distance, confident that Kimmie’s captivity would stay his paw?

Spreading his wings, Tarrin rose into the air and lifted himself above the buildings, then started towards the cathedral. But when he did so, he sensed an immediate reaction from inside that cathedral. He distinctly felt a sense of manifestation, as the direct might of the One came from wherever he truly was and took solid form here, in the material plane. That convinced him that the One’s icon was definitely in that cathedral, and that his decision to abandon destroying everything along the way and just come right after the One had provoked a reaction. He didn’t understand why, though.

On the far side of the city, a massive column of light descended from the heavens and illuminated the golden dome of the building, and there was a strange harmonic hum shimmering in the air. The One was resorting to theatrics, Tarrin realized in surprise, because his material form was already here. The light became incandescent, almost too bright to look at directly, and then it began to wane. Within the light was a silhouette, a form that became visible as the light faded from around it.

It was the One.

He resembled a human, wearing gleaming silver plate armor and carrying a broadsword and a kite shield with a center spike. He had no helmet, showing a perfectly handsome face and piercing blue eyes to the world, as well as a head full of platinum-blond hair that was long and flowing, pulled back from his face in a tail. And to complete his majestic appearance, he had a pair of feathery wings on his back, spread out as he appeared, and then folded behind him. A nimbus of soft light surrounded him, and even from that distance, Tarrin could tell that he was at least twenty spans tall.

“Cease, minion of evil!” the One’s voice boomed in Penali across all of Pyros, echoing off the volcano behind him. “Thy reign of terror ends here!”

The sight of the instigator of the abduction of his mate caused Tarrin’s control to waver, then succumb to the fury within. He gave no frilly speeches, no dramatic standoffs, he simply charged at the One with such speed that he left a trail of flames behind him with a furious howl that was nearly as loud as the One’s booming voice. Tarrin was only dimly aware of his body briefly becoming pure flame, becoming the fire, then expanding. When the flames extinguished, his body was larger, the same size as the One’s, some part of Tarrin’s mind having made him big enough to fight the One weapon to weapon. Tarrin’s sword had enlarged as well to stay the same size to Tarrin, and he held it in both paws as he streaked directly at the glowing god. The One moved forward to interecept him away from the cathedral, flying but not using his wings. He raised his sword and shield as Tarrin advanced upon him, ready to do battle.

The first contact between them sent shockwaves through the city. Tarrin reared back with his sword over his head as he careened at the One, then brought it down with every fiber of his being. The One blocked it with his shield, and the impact between sword and shield created a brilliant flare of light and a cascade of angry sparks to rain down on Pyros. The One staggered back through the air with the raw power behind the blow, and there was a look of shocked surprise in his eyes. But Tarrin did not relent, immediately striking again, and again, not bothering to try to get around the One’s defenses, instead beating directly on his shield, falling back on the classic Ungardt tactic of shield destruction. The One’s entire body shuddered as the burning blade of Tarrin’s sword impacted his shield, sending a steady rain of glowing sparks raining down on the city below. Tarrin did not relent, striking with such raw power and such speed that the One could do nothing but protect himself with his shield, until one particularly savage blow, where Tarrin turned in a full circle and chopped at the One like a woodsman cutting down a tree, sent him careening back and put a charred slash through the gleaming metal of his shield. The Were-cat immediately took one paw off his sword and began chanting in the discordant language of magic, making a single gesture with his free paw.

A bolt of jagged lightning issued forth from his paw and blasted through the open space between them, but the One was quick to counter. He raised his shield and presented it to that attack, which struck it and harmlessly reflected away, lancing through the night to Tarrin’s left. The lightning created an earth-shaking BOOM that shuddered the entire city.

Foolish mortal, thy magic has no effect on a god! the One’s voice taunted within his mind.

Tarrin did not even think a reply. The attack had served its purpose. It was never meant to harm the One. But it was a loud declaration that Tarrin had engaged the One in battle.

The nimbus of light brightened around the One, and he surged forward. He pointed his sword at Tarrin, and Tarrin felt a wave of raw power issue from the god’s material form, as a god unleashed his divine might into the world. An incandescent blast of power raced towards him, but Tarrin simply slithered to the side like a skimmer on the surface of a pond, then his wings snapped out and he hurtled forward with his sword leading, closing the distance before the One could try again. He could not allow this to become a battle of power; it had to remain a physical confrontation, or he would lose.

The One assumed a defensive posture, his feet looking as if they were standing on solid ground, and met Tarrin’s blow with his shield. Tarrin did the same, putting his feet on a solid nothing beneath them, and continued his frenzied assault. The One’s face became serious as the Were-cat unleashed a flurry of quick, shallow slashes with his huge weapon, moving it with dizzying speed and grace. The One barely managed to keep up with that whirling blade, which trailed flame as it moved that distracted the eye, blocking with his shield or parrying with his broadsword when the weapon came at him from the right instead of the left. Tarrin raised his weapon and started a downward chop, then shifted the angle of the blade with such speed that it totally fooled his foe. Tarrin’s sword dipped under the edge of the shield, slashing across the metal of the One’s armored greave, leaving a deep rend in the metal protecting his shin. There was a brilliant burst of sparks and a strange bluish light emanating from that slash through his armor, and it effectively wiped the smirk off the One’s face when he realized that he was facing a master of armed combat.

Tarrin had scored first blood, and it infuriated the One. With a howl of furied outrage, the One pressed in, his broadsword dancing with the grace of a flitting Faerie, but Tarrin was more than capable of keeping up with it. Tarrin parried a series of light strokes and several shallow stabs with ridiculous ease. The One was a fencer, and fencers relied on speed and deception. But the One’s fighting style was crude compared to many warriors Tarrin had faced in his life. His style was simplistic and relied on speed, but against Tarrin his speed was no advantage. Forget a demigod, the One would lose a battle with Allia or Tsukatta hands down.

Unless it was all a feint, of course. The One suddenly pressed Tarrin with a blindingly fast series of slashes at Tarrin’s head, but Tarrin had little trouble dealing with this sudden onslaught, for he was still slower than Tarrin. The One had been hiding his true speed behind a deceptive feint, then unleashed his full speed in a burst to try to take Tarrin off guard, which was admittedly a clever tactic. Tarrin had done the same thing himself many times.

“What’s the matter?” Tarrin hissed in a low growl. “Having trouble battling a mortal, even with a sword and shield? Here, let me make it more interesting for you.” Tarrin took his left paw off his sword and extended the Cat’s Claws, then immediately put the One on the defensive as the god had to deal with a truly stunning array of lightning-fast attacks from both the sword and the five lethal blades extending from the Were-cat’s left paw. Despite the large difference in reach between his huge sword and the claws on his paw, Tarrin managed to use them both, slashing his sword against the One’s shield, continuing to concentrate on that defensive barrier, then lunging in with the Cat’s Claws and driving them before him like a spear, or raking them at the edge of the One’s shield, or turning the back of his paw to the One’s sword and parrying it away harmlessly. The One became so consumed by trying to protect himself from the sword and Cat’s Claws that he left himself totally open. So, when Tarrin struck heavily with his sword against the One’s shield, then slashed the Cat’s Claws against its edge, he was totally surprised when the Were-cat spun in the air and brought out his foot, claws out and leading, and smashed it into the One’s pretty little face. The claws caught him just in front of the ear and hooked his jaw, and they dug into his flesh and ripped nasty gashes through his face as the foot continued along. The pad on the ball of his foot hit him right on the edge of his mouth, and they sent teeth flying as the One’s head was snapped to the side.

The One spun to the side, then staggered back and righted himself, a gauntleted hand to his face. His face was a mask of outrage and fury. “You, you, you hurt me!” he screamed incredulously, taking his hand away to reveal three deep gashes in his cheek, one of which cut clear through and into the cavity of his mouth.

Tarrin just glared at him viciously, then quickly pulled in his arms. His wings snapped out, and a dozen slender lances of fire erupted from the inner surface of his wings, streaking towards the One, aiming for his head and his body. But the One made a furious slashing gesture with his shield, and Tarrin’s lances struck something solid and were deflected away. Tarrin withdrew them as the One gave him a look of utter contempt, and then pushed out with both of his arms.

What came next was not a bolt, but a wave of pure power, and Tarrin had nowhere to go. He found himself staring a wall of white energy that took up his entire field of vision, hurtling at him with shocking speed. Instead of trying to defend himself, Tarrin took his sword up in both paws and slashed at that power as it reached for him. The blade struck it, and he felt resistance, as if he were striking a solid object. Tarrin didn’t let up, he sheared his blade through the wave of the One’s power, which caused it to part before him like a curtain. It went to either side of him harmlessly, but did catch on his wings, which pulled him off balance before he could make them fluid and pliable and slide through the hole without resistance. The One looked shocked that his blast of power had not caught Tarrin, but did not delay or relent. He made a slashing motion with his sword, and Tarrin felt something impact him from the side, like a gigantic fist. It struck with such force that Tarrin felt that his head was going to come off. Stunned, he was swept off the invisible platform on which they had been battling, hurtling towards the city at an alarming rate. He shook off the cobwebs and sensed his quick approach to the ground, then flared out his wings and arrested his descent. He felt them pull at his back as they defied his momentum, but they prevented him from slamming into a gray-slated roof, under which was a window where two children watched on in muted awe. He landed on the roof of the building, and spotted another wave of power hurtling towards him. In an instant of protectiveness, he called on the power of Sorcery. He wove a weave of Air and Fire and released it from his paws, then projected it before him as a shield of pure force. Even though he had marked all within Pyros as doomed, seeing a child in danger had caused him to rise up and protect without even thinking, as his instincts overwhelmed his reasoning.

Tarrin was crushed down to one knee as the wave of power struck his shield, assaulting him as if he were holding it up with his own paws. He clenched his teeth and poured more power into the shield as the wave of force threatened to tear the weaving, as a shimmering globe of blue opposed the white energy which was the One’s attack. That attack shattered the buildings to each side of the row house upon which Tarrin stood, and the slates under his feet cracked under the strain, but the shield of magic held up against the assault.

The shield dissolved as Tarrin streaked back into the air, sword held in both paws as he raced to close the distance. It was quickly degenerating, and he had to reestablish a physical confrontation, to avoid having to fight the One power against power. But the One, who had been stung in a physical clash, seemed determined to prevent Tarrin from getting anywhere near him. He backed away as he began chanting in the language of the gods, preparing to cast a Priest spell, which caused Tarrin to double his speed to reach him before he could finish. The One finished his spell before Tarrin could reach him, however, and a raging column of fire descended from the heavens and struck Tarrin, engulfing him in a raging inferno.

Idiot! Didn’t he have any sense at all?

Tarrin burst forth from the column of fire unscathed, but found that the One was gone. The brief moment that Tarrin’s vision had been blocked by the fire had allowed him to vanish. Tarrin opened his senses and quickly located the One, for the power he emanated could not be hidden, and Tarrin turned and slashed his sword through another blast of power that had screamed in at him from the left flank. The One flowed backwards in the air and prepared to do it again, but Tarrin had had enough. He wove together a weave of Air, Fire, Water, and Divine power, with token flows from all the other spheres, a chaotic mess of flows that formed one of his favorite and most powerful magical attacks. Tarrin’s paws burst forth with the glowing, wispy nimbus of Magelight as he used a spell of High Sorcery, snapping it down and releasing it just as another incandescent wave of force was unleashed from the One’s sweeping sword.

The brilliant bolt of chaotic magic Tarrin unleashed lanced through the air and slammed into the wave of force unleashed by the One, then punched through it and raced towards the One. But the One simply raised his shield, and Tarrin’s attack was deflected harmlessly up into the sky. Tarrin streaked straight up and away from the wave of force, which passed under him and slammed into the city below, shattering even more buildings. The One seemed to not care about his city or his people. It didn’t matter how many died as long as he got Tarrin. The One spread his feathered wings, and motes of light appeared before them. Those motes got larger, turning into little white balls, and then they all streaked directly at Tarrin with amazing speed. Tarrin careened to a halt and instantly started chanting in the discordant language of magic, then made a slashing motion with his left paw. A scillinting wave of magical power erupted from his paw, growing and expanding as it traveled away from him, and it intercepted the illuminated orbs. In brilliant puffs, each orb exploded into harmless light as they touched the effects of Tarrin’s spell, a spell designed to dispel magic that touched it…and even the divine power of gods was considered magic, as far as the spell was concerned.

Tarrin and the One both started chanting in unison, Tarrin in the language of magic, the One in the language of the gods, their voices unnaturally loud as their words echoed from the buildings and from one another. Tarrin heard the words, knew that the One was about to use a spell intended to kill instantly, one of the mightiest Priest spells of all…a spell that focused the power of a god into a touch that caused instant death. Tarrin continued to chant even after the One completed the spell, and an ominous black cloud formed around each of his hands. Now the One would rush in and engage in melee, and try to touch him. He had nearly five minutes until the power of the spell dissipated, five minutes to touch Tarrin’s bare skin with his own, or touch him through organic material, like his clothing. Tarrin continued to chant, his voice strong and unwavering as death dove on him from above, those black-shrouded hands leading as the One sought to end the contest quickly. Tarrin made six precise gestures, then snipped the thongs of a belt pouch with a claw, grabbed it, and slung its contents into the air around him. Thousands of motes of glittering light surrounded the Were-cat as the quartz dust refracted the light from his wings, from his eyes, creating a display awe-inspiring in its majestic, terrible beauty. Tarrin completed the spell with a final shouted word, and then he flinched in the oddest manner.

Just before two perfect duplicates of himself separated from his body.

The One pulled out of his dive, confused and swearing as three Tarrins, each moving independently of the others, suddenly raced towards him, each wielding a burning sword. Tarrin charged fearlessly, despite the fact that the two duplicates were merely shadows, solid magic that looked like the caster of the spell, and could do no harm. They would be disrupted the instant they were touched. But each of those simulacrums gave off the exact sense of presence as their creator, which was to say that there was no sense of him at all thanks to Tarrin’s amulet and its ability to hide him from magical detection, so the One absolutely could not tell the fakes from the original. Only one could harm, but since he had to defend against three, and also the fact that the death spell would discharge into a simulacrum if he touched it and render it useless, the One had reason to be intimidated by this counterstroke. The One pulled up and began chanting in the language of the gods, the Priest version of the exact same spell that Tarrin had used, the spell to dispel magic.

There was a counterspell for that, and now they were close enough to each other for the One to be in range of its effect. Without thinking, Tarrin also began to chant, pulling up and uttering the words of the spell, then he completed it and pointed at the One. Tarrin felt the strangest surge from deep within him, like a power that had been hidden had suddenly been awakened. Newfound power flooded into him, through him, then was released from him and crossed the distance to the One. A sphere of magical silence settled around the god’s Avatar, taking his voice and leaving him unable to complete the spell. It was a simple spell, a quick spell, a spell that neophytes used, but it had valid tactical worth even in a duel using magic of the magnitude they were using.

Tarrin felt dizzy. He wavered a bit in the air even as his duplicates surged ahead, putting a paw to his forehead, feeling both drained and energized at the same moment, confused and out of sorts.

Silence was a Priest spell. And the energy that had powered it came from him.

He had used a Priest spell! And the power had not come from the Goddess, it had come from himself. He had granted himself the power to cast a spell!

That was impossible! He couldn’t do that like he was! Maybe if he was in his divine form, if the sword changed him, then maybe, but not with his mortal body!

The One’s eyes were wild, and a look of absolute shock was gracing it. That look of shock was mirrored on Tarrin’s own for a brief moment, but the Were-cat snapped out of it and lunged ahead, flames from his wings trailing behind him as he took up his sword in both paws and held it to his side.

Toying with me? If you wish to use your full power, then so be it! I was but providing you with a shell of greater power than your own to make sport of you! Now face my true power!

The voice, indignant and outraged, thundered into his brain from everywhere at once, and Tarrin sensed a sudden eruption of divine energy, the likes of which he only felt when a god was doing something so powerful that it altered the very texture of reality. The Avatar of the One became incandescently bright as the god channeled incredible power into it, infusing it with such might that it no longer adhered to mortal boundaries. It ceased being a mortal Avatar and became a direct manifestation of the god, a true Avatar, the wounds on his face vanishing and the black cloud disappearing from his hands.

For a moment, Tarrin had a terrifying vision of the shadow of Val. That was the same kind of power he was sensing now coming from the One. The gloves were off, the One was not playing anymore. This was a divine being, and now Tarrin’s magic would no longer work against it. All he had were his divine-imparted abilities of fire and his sword as weapons.

The One brushed aside Tarrin’s simulacrums with a wave of his hand, making them vanish, then he thrust his open palm at Tarrin. There was no spell, no magic, just a release of divine will as the One brought his direct power to bear in the mortal realm.

It was like being struck with a hundred mountains. The air was crushed out of him as a pure force of staggering dimensions literally smashed him out of the air. Nearly every bone in his body was broken as that force impacted him, sent him racing towards the ground, and he could do nothing more than swim in a sea of pain. He felt the sword slip out of his shattered paw, a paw that was already beginning to knit itself back together, and the intense pain eased enough to allow him to think. He was not going to stop himself in time before he hit the ground, he knew that. Since he could not arrest his descent, he had to find a way to mitigate the impact, because slamming into the ground was perfectly natural, and it would kill him.

Easily done.

Tarrin folded his wings around himself and caused his body to merge with the flames, to be one with his power, to become the fire. His mortal form melted into flame, but the wings remained, causing him to become a being of pure fire surrounded by a material shell that was invulnerable to anything but a god. Turning to pure flame would protect him against the impact of hitting the ground, as fire liquid, fluid, and wouldn’t be hurt by something like hitting the ground, while his wings would prevent that impact from causing his form to dissipate when it hit.

The orb of solid flame that had become Tarrin punched through the roof of a warehouse, then slammed into the floor beneath. There was a huge explosion of wood and dirt as Tarrin hit like a cannonball, but his wings did not falter in containing his fiery form, and that immaterial body was immune to the physical impact of hitting the ground. He returned to his physical form as his wings unfolded from around himself, and to his surprise he found himself uninjured. He had reformed himself without the broken bones, in effect healing himself during the transformation. He has lost his sword, but knew that he could get it back with a thought, and knew that moving right now was absolutely imperative. He turned and lanced through the back wall of the warehouse, just as the entire building literally vanished in a blazing column of incredible might, like silver flames, as the One used his divine power to consume the building in a column of pure divine energy.

Rising up from the smoke and dust created by the One’s powerful attack, Tarrin called his sword to him, and the instant his paw closed over it, he felt the sword’s power explode, felt in that touch that the sword’s true power was unlocking, and unlocking the power within him. The sword blazed forth with intensely bright flame as the power that Tarrin had once possessed was released from its prison. Incandescent flame flowed over the sword, then up his arm, quickly enveloping him in the purity of its radiant might. That power touched him, infused him, saturated itself into the core of his being even as the fire continued up into the heavens, as once more the sword released the true power of Tarrin’s divine nature. He felt the almost ecstatic rush of power rage through him, felt his mind expand as it was touched by divine power, and felt his body’s very nature change in a subtle manner as the power transformed him into something capable of wielding it. The column of fire enveloping him slowly dissipated, until the One found himself staring at a being with hair and fur that was flame, radiating a heat so intense that wood and cloth would instantly turn to ash if it were placed close to him. The One found himself facing a being that could fight back.

Again, Tarrin ceased to be a mortal. Just as the One had infused his Avatar with direct power, so Tarrin had once again infused himself with his own imprisoned power, and become an Avatar, a direct physical manifestation of his own power.

The urgent calls began almost instantly. Run! Run! a startling number of voices screamed at him urgently, distracting him for the slightest of moments. He realized immediately that these voices were the other gods of this world, and now that Tarrin was a being more sensitive to the workings of gods, things that a mortal could not sense, they could directly communicate with him. But Tarrin ignored them. He focused on the One, on keeping the One’s attention for just a few moments more, to make absolutely sure that Mist had gotten Kimmie away from the cathedral before he acted. By the God of Gods, you must flee! One voice rose above the others, but Tarrin ignored them. The One is more powerful than you are! Do not face him!

Tarrin could sense that power. Yes, the One was much stronger than he was, but that didn’t matter. Tarrin had faced beings much stronger than himself before.

Faster than a mortal eye could track, Tarrin was again in the face of the One, who seemed unsurprised at Tarrin’s revelation. Burning sword met kite shield, and their touch created a storm of spark-like motes of pure magical energy to rain down on Pyros. That blow seemed to shock the One, because Tarrin had sensed that the One had been expecting something much more than a purely physical attack. The One replied with his broadsword, but Tarrin parried it easily away from him. But behind that sword there seemed to be a strange sense of might, an odd power, almost limitless, focused on Tarrin’s form. But that power could not touch him, sliding through him, like a phantom wind that went through him harmlessly.

Then he understood. The One was trying to fight Tarrin in more than just the mortal realm. But Tarrin had no power outside the mortal realm, did not exist anywhere but here. He was a being of divine power trapped in the mortal world, and only power that affected the mortal world could touch him. It was the limitation he suffered for being what he was, but in its own way it was also his advantage, for the One could not use his full, true power against him. He could only use the power he could manifest in the physical realm, which had to be limited to avoid unraveling the very fabric of reality. The material world was just not sturdy enough to support the true power of a god.

Tarrin took advantage of that revelation for the One to try to end it quickly. He pressed in, sword slashing with such blazing speed that the mortal eye would see nothing but a fiery blur, pressing the One and forcing him to back up. Tarrin continued his single-minded focus on the One’s shield, marring the smooth silver finish of its outer face, trying to remove it from the duel by either destroying it or ripping it off the One’s arm. The One seemed the stagger for a moment, then Tarrin sensed that he had recovered, and was about to reply.

He felt the power build up, sensed the One call it into the mortal world, and Tarrin was forced to do the same. He called to the endless power within him, summoning it forth, focusing it into his off paw, and then projected it forth in the form of a defensive barrier as the One unleashed his power in the form of an attack.

Again, it was like being struck with a mountain. Tarrin snapped out his wings and was pushed back by the power the One hurled at him, but the defensive barrier held, deflecting it away. The One came charging in behind the blow he had released, but Tarrin was ready for him. He shifted the texture of his barrier to turn it into a physical force, and it caused the One to bounce off of it as he tried to get to Tarrin before the Were-cat could recover. Tarrin manifested his power as fire hotter than anything that could ever be created in a mortal realm, then unleashed it at the One in a concentrated, spiraling blast. But the blast struck the One’s shield and was deflected, bouncing up and racing into the heavens without touching the One.

Tarrin had expected that. He took up his sword and charged the One, who now had a smug look on his face, and tried to take his head off. The One parried that blow, sending another cascade of white sparks to the city below, then presented the face of his shield to Tarrin and released his power once more. Tarrin evaded it by dropping down, then rose up with a mighty slash of his sword, trailing an arc of fire, which the One narrowly avoided. The One raced through that fire, sword taking on an incandescent glow as he rushed in on the Were-cat’s defenseless flank as he recovered from his blow, then stabbed it through the exposed flank of the Were-cat.

But the Were-cat’s body simply dissolved into smoke an instant before the sword reached him. The arc of fire behind the One suddenly twisted and reformed into Tarrin’s physical form, and the Were-cat reared back with his sword over his head, then chopped it into the One’s winged back without hesitation.

It almost worked. The One somehow managed to turn around and barely managed to catch the weapon on his shield, but it was a poorly executed block, putting the One at a disadvantage. Nonplussed, the Were-cat rained massive blows down on the One, using raw power to prevent a quick recovery, which were parried or blocked with sword and shield awkwardly as the winged god tried to recover himself. Tarrin pressed in, causing the One to back up step by step on the empty air on which they battled, raining heavy blows on the One’s shield and sending a steady stream of spark-like motes of pure magical energy flying with every strike. The air around them began to writhe and distort as it was saturated with magical energy, and the sky above them began to cloud over, the clouds racing around a nexus that was directly over the pair. The power they were releasing into the world was beginning to affect the reality of the material plane, unnaturally twisting the natural order, but neither of them noticed as the One managed to recover himself, then began to counterattack, flicking light stabs and slashes of his weapon in reply when Tarrin struck at his shield, forcing the Were-cat to quickly parry or evade the weapon. It halted his forward progress, and put them on even footing once more.

But why was the One not using his power more liberally? Tarrin didn’t quite understand. He had changed into a direct manifestation to unleash his might, then tried to fight Tarrin god to god, but now he seemed perfectly comfortable with a pure sparring match of weapon to weapon after that single attempt to use his power.

Simple, my doomed, hobbled opponent, the One’s voice crooned in his mind. You cannot defeat me. So have at me. Your fighting will do nothing but inspire more awe in my subjects when I destroy you. After all, the epic battle is remembered much longer than the easy victory.

“Hardly,” Tarrin snarled aloud, snapping his wings out, which instantly grew five times their normal size, and calling on the power inside him. It focused in his paws, and then he unleashed it through his sword. Just as he had done when fighting the shadow of Val, Tarrin released his power in a raw state, nothing but power itself, and that raging maelstrom of divine energy lashed at the One. The One rose up and met that power with his own, and when they touched it set off a violent explosion of power that knocked both of them away from each other. Tarrin raced through the chaos of magical energy left over from that detonation, like a soup of pure magical energy, and brought his sword down on the One’s raised weapon. “Seeing you struggle against me will make them wonder why their god couldn’t kill a mortal so easily,” Tarrin hissed at him scathingly. “And if you admit that I’m something other than a mortal, well, then how can there be more than the One when the One says that there’s not?”

You are the Demon Prince, the One replied jovially. And I must say, you look the part. You have risen up to challenge my mastery of your kind, and when you are dead, my people will rejoice that the Defiled once more serve their betters.

Tarrin growled. So, that was the game. He reached out with his senses and realized that Mist and Kimmie had not left Pyros yet, and that made him wary. He had to hold off the One a little bit longer, but he couldn’t make it apparent that he was stalling.

Or did he? No, he did not.

“You haven’t finished it yet, One,” Tarrin growled at him, in a voice loud enough for the people beneath him to hear. “I can sense the other gods of this world, and I can’t sense any kind of interest from the creating god of this dimension. Even now they cry out to me, and your creator doesn’t seem to care. They’re weak, but they are there. How did they get away from you? Can’t find their faithful, can you? Your Hunters can’t reach them, can they?”

They are cowards, and will die soon, he answered.

Tarrin dropped down from the air until his feet dangled just over the level of the roofs of the buildings and raised a single paw, calling again on the boundless power within him. It surged forth and gathered inside him. He focused it into his paw, built it up like water behind a dam, then unleashed it as a brilliant spiraling cone of blue-white fire. It raged through the air, falling well short of touching the One, passing under him harmlessly as the One descended to engage Tarrin. At first the One smirked at him, then looked back and realized that he had never been the target of the attack.

The blast of spiraling fire was aimed directly at the One’s cathedral.

NO! the One’s voice screeched in outrage and shock, and his glowing body simply vanished from where it was and reappeared in front of his cathedral, shield presented and ready to deflect the blast to protect what was within.

Connected to his fire, Tarrin yielded to his fire, merged with it, became the fire, then touched the fire of his attack. Fire was connected to itself, it was separate manifestations of the same thing, and as such it was all merely fire. Tarrin’s fiery form vanished in a gentle puff of expanding flame.

The vanguard of Tarrin’s blast suddenly contorted, then expanded as Tarrin reformed his physical body from that fire. That fire was traveling at incredible speed, so when the fire faded and left Tarrin’s physical body behind, he was racing ahead dizzyingly with the rest of that stream of fire immediately behind him. He took up his sword in both paws as the One’s glowing eyes widened in shock, then coiled up like a spring with his sword to his side. He uncoiled and whipped his sword from the One’s right to his left, the tip of his sword catching the One’s shield, which had been positioned to deflect Tarrin’s attack of fire, and jarred it far out to the side. Tarrin slammed into the One with his shoulder, and the fire behind him caught up, pushing them both forward, like riding a cannonball fired from a Wikuni cannon. The One screamed in surprise and outrage and then simply vanished, but Tarrin did not. He impacted the side of the One’s cathedral and was slammed through.

In an explosion of stone and dust, Tarrin penetrated the outer wall of the One’s center of worship. He found himself in a vast chapel with many pews and benches facing a raised altar to his right, and behind that altar stood a regal statue of a winged human holding a sword and shield, nearly twenty spans tall, the detail of the sculpture so amazing that the sculpture nearly looked like a living thing.

It was the One’s icon.

The fire of Tarrin’s attack struck the far wall and exploded back into the chapel, instantly setting fire to anything that could burn, creating a hellish firestorm contained within the cathedral’s walls. Tarrin surged out of that inferno with his sword raised, lancing through the air at the One’s icon, sword suddenly burning brightly, eagerly, in anticipation of delivering the telling blow.

NO!!!!!! the One shrieked in his mind as the distant voices of the other gods suddenly rose up in breathless anticipation, and the One’s icon animated itself, as the god resorted to his last line of defense to protect his icon…using the icon itself. The stone sword of the icon moved, the shield turned, and caught Tarrin’s savage blow on its stone face, creating an intense flash of light as Tarrin’s direct might made contact with the One’s direct might. He struck again, and again, and again, a blazingly fast flurry of immensely powerful blows, each one sending a shockwave from them that shuddered the cathedral’s walls. The One’s icon did not move smoothly or fluently, but it moved just fast enough to use its shield to protect itself, a shield that lost pieces of itself with every attack, as chips of stone went flying with every blow. Tarrin focused the power within and unleashed it through his sword, but the One’s direct manifestation appeared in the confined space between Tarrin and the One’s icon and caught that blast on his shield, reflecting it directly back at him. Tarrin was forced to slither to the side to avoid his own attack.

The look on the One’s face was almost mindless in its outrage, indignation, and fury. Tarrin had made a direct attack on the One’s link to the material plane, and he seemed just as outraged that Tarrin had known it was there as he was infuriated that he would dare try. How…DARE…you!!!!! he managed to call out into Tarrin’s mind, that voice holding all his immeasurable dismay and anger.

Tarrin retracted to his normal size as he wove a simple weave of Air, but a weave of intense power. A shimmering aura of red formed around the Were-cat’s winged form, as the weave was woven and charged with power, and more power, and even more power. The reddish glow was discordant and chaotic, but the One ignored it as he rushed forward with his sword leading, but Tarrin could sense that the One was preparing to unleash a direct blast of his divine might well before he reached the now smaller Were-cat.

The red glow around Tarrin suddenly became coherent, symmetrical, a globe of angry red energy as Tarrin snapped the weave down…a spell ready to be released.

“Chew on this,” Tarrin said calmly, and he released his spell.

The people of Pyros, who had seen the invading Demon and their god go in the direction of the One’s cathedral, all had their eyes locked on it in that terrible moment. The gold-domed basilica which was the seat of the One’s power simply shattered. The golden dome of the basilica rocketed into the sky, oddly undamaged, as the building under it exploded in every direction, sending jagged pieces of stone arcing high into the air, straight out, sending a cascading shower of smoking rubble raining down on Pyros. The deafening shockwave of sound and pressure washed over the city, an ear-splitting BOOM that shattered every window in the city, and even caused some of the shabbier huts and dilapidated buildings to collapse.

There was a massive cloud of dust where the cathedral used to be, which boiled anew when the huge golden dome of the basilica returned to the ground, sending a squealing sound over the city as it struck the ground and broke apart, sending large, jagged pieces of metal tumbling down the slope of the volcano to the base of the mountain below. But within that cloud of dust was a glowing shine of light, bright white and pristine, and the voice of their god thundered over the city to assure them that he had not been destroyed.

“My beautiful cathedral!” the One’s voice raged. “Now you are DEAD!”

If Tarrin ever really, really wanted to tick off a god, now he knew how to do it.

In that boiling cloud of dust, the light of the shield of divine magic that the One’s Avatar had raised to protect the icon cut through the darkness, illuminating the dust itself in an eerily, hauntingly beautiful display, like tiny particles of solid light suspended in the air. The ground beneath them was scoured clean of everything, but the ground itself was untouched. That was important, for he could sense Mist and Kimmie somewhere beneath him, and that ensured that his attack tried to destroy the One’s icon without putting them in jeopardy.

Tarrin reared back and threw his sword at the icon of the One, and the burning weapon lanced through the air at the stone statue. The One quickly interposed his Avatar, and Tarrin’s sword struck the One’s shield and clattered to the ground, its fire quickly disappearing. Tarrin left it there and called his staff out of the elsewhere, infusing his favorite weapon with divine energies to give it the power to harm the One. The staff began to glow brightly, and continued to glow as Tarrin’s feet left the ground and he surged forward. Holding his staff in the end-grip, almost like a sword. But the One seemed to have lost his taste for the game, for his eyes burned with seething fury. He held out his shield, and a blast of pure power impacted Tarrin, knocking the air out of his lungs and sending him careening off the flat ridge upon which the cathedral had been built. The One boiled out of that cloud like Death Himself, howling with fury and outrage, his face no longer handsome and composed. A concentrated release of power much more powerful than anything that the shadow of Val used against him came raging at him, a blindingly white expression of the One’s power, but the Were-cat simply rose higher into the air, avoiding it as it slammed into the city below. There was no explosion, nothing like that, it simply caused the buildings and red-bricked streets to dissolve as if scoured by the sands of the Sandshield until nothing was left, leaving nothing behind but smoking dust.

I will flay your skin from your flesh! the One raged in Tarrin’s mind as he sent another blast at him, which Tarrin again evaded easily. I will strip the soul out of you and imprison it in a gem to decorate my sword!

“I thought you wanted an epic battle, a grand show,” Tarrin taunted lightly as he raced at the One. Staff stuck shield with a dull thunk, and Tarrin continued past the One and aimed a blow at the back of his head. The One turned and caught the staff on his shield once again. “Doesn’t the destruction of your cathedral make this more epic? Or are you just worried that because I can strike back at you, you don’t look quite so grand and impressive to your people? After all, I just blew up your cathedral…aren’t you god enough to protect it from a measly little nothing like me? Upset that you’re not as invulnerable and all-powerful as you think? That you’re just as limited as the gods you say don’t exist?”

Oh, that did it. That more than did it. The One shrieked in mindless fury and lost all composure, as Tarrin’s taunts caused him to lose his temper. He lashed out at Tarrin with nothing but raw power, power with no finesse, no control. Tarrin evaded it and sent a dozen fiery lances out of his wings at the One in reply, and the One was too angry to coherently consider a defense. He tried to barge through them, deflecting two with his shield, but four of those lances got around his shield and struck him in the chest, left side, and leg. And they penetrated. The One cried out in surprise and pain when Tarrin’s lances penetrated armor and struck at the divine energy beneath, a direct assault on the integrity of the One’s Avatar. An injury.

“Can’t fight me the way you want, can you?” Tarrin continued to dig as he rushed forth and delivered a series of heavy blows at the One’s shield with both ends of his staff. “You can only use energy you can manifest in the physical world against me, and your precious city is under us. If you blow it up, nobody will be here to see your grand victory, will there? So you flail at me with just enough power to try to kill me without doing any permanent damage to the mortal realm…but it’s not enough, is it? I’m a better fighter than you, and you know it. All you have is your power, and you can’t use it the way you want to. Doesn’t that frustrate you? Doesn’t it eat at you to feel so limited in the face of a mere nothing?”

You are being a fool! one of the voices of the gods raged at him. Do not do this! His icon is your goal, you are being stupid!

Tarrin ignored that bit of advice and evaded another savage release of power from the enraged Avatar with delicate grace, then took up his staff and jammed the end of it into the One’s face. His head snapped back and he staggered backwards in the air, and when he came back up it was clearly apparent that his nose was broken. Unimpressed, Tarrin reared back and stabbed at his neck, but the One managed to get his sword up and parry the blow just wide. Tarrin spun away from that, going in the direction the One’s sword had knocked his staff and whipped his tail around, hitting the One in the side of the head with its tip, then slammed the outside curve of his wing into the entirety of the One’s body. Hundreds of small spikes suddenly erupted from the outside curve, driving deep into the One’s Avatar and causing him to scream in pain.

A shockwave of might erupted from the One’s form, sending Tarrin flying backwards, stunning him briefly. Tarrin shook out the cobwebs just in time to twist to the side to avoid getting skewered by the One’s sword. The Cat’s Claws snapped out its claw-like blades over his right paw, and he drove them into the One’s shield. The four extended blades penetrated the marred surface, and Tarrin caused them to bend, to hook into the One’s shield. When Tarrin spun away in the opposite direction, avoiding another swipe of the One’s sword, he yanked with his right arm and tore the shield out of the One’s grip. Instantly, Tarrin brought forth the power deep within and focused it into his left paw, the paw holding the sword, and unleashed it at the One’s now unprotected flank.

The One saw it coming, and unleashed a blast of his own as a counter. Those two