Chapter 5

 

        The Happy Hunting Grounds were anything but that.

        Tarrin had learned almost immediately that that name, though not the true name of this plane, was a deceptive misnomer.

        All the animals in this pristine woodland paradise were not targets for a happy hunt.  All of them, every single one, were larger, stronger, and smarter than the animals they resembled.  Most of them could communicate in sentient languages, and some of them were sufficiently intelligent to use magic.  These animals were extremely dangerous, a lesson Tarrin had learned within minutes of arriving within the plane, with a pack of Deva hot on Fury’s tail.

        Fury.  Things would have gone much smoother had he sent her to Pyrosia sooner.  After arriving in the Beastlands, all the animals of this place, sensing her presence within the plane, immediately moved to attack her.  Tarrin had had his Firewing land and go into the forest to hide from the twenty Deva that had followed them through the portal and had been searching for them, and that just played right into the hands of the sentient animal denizens.  The pair had found themselves besieged by a small army of furious animals, some of them throwing spells at the pair.  It had taken quite a bit of work, and not a few messy fatalities, to force them to back off…but the commotion had attracted the attention of the Deva, and they had intercepted Tarrin before he could escape.

        The shimmering crystal medallion secured by a platinum chain wrapped around his wrist was a clear testament to the outcome of that short, ugly fight.

        Taking the amulet of a Deva had been…terrifying.  Reaching into that Deva, he had almost felt like his paw had taken grip on something that could not be pulled through it, and then he felt a sudden massive resistance, as if something had grabbed hold of his paw and was trying to drag him into wherever it was that he had reached.  His arm had sank into the male Deva’s chest all the way up to the shoulder before a panicked reflex had caused him to tear free of whatever had taken hold of him and tear free the prize he had sought.  It was not the same as it had been when he did it to the Demons, and in a way, he should have expected that.  But where he had been reaching into the Abyss to take the soul of a Demon, he had been reaching into a place that no mortal or god had ever been or would ever go when he reached through the Deva and pulled forth its soul.  He had reached into a place that existed beyond rational comprehension, a place outside the multiverse, a place that did not exist.

        Just thinking about it made him look once again, and wonder what had happened in that place, because he had not come out of it unscathed.

        The fur of his right arm, from the tips of his claws to his elbow, was now snowy white.

        Tarrin wasn’t exactly mortal or flesh and blood in a normal sense, so his fur didn’t grow.  But he could control its appearance, and yet this white fur resisted any attempt to change its color.  Not even magic could undo what had been done.  The white fur was permanent, a permanent mark, or scar, the consequence of reaching into a place beyond mortal ken and touching on something not even the gods had any business touching.

        The amulet hanging from his wrist would be the only one he would take if he could manage it, because if he did that again, he might be able to break free, and be pulled in.  And if that happened, he had no idea what would happen to him.

        It did look strange, though.  He put both paws down on the tree limb under him, the ground some hundred spans below, and though for a brief moment that it almost looked like one of Jesmind’s paws had been stuck on his own arm.

        After that ugly fight, where he had stripped one Deva of his soul and killed three others, he had fled with Fury.  They had spent days in a desperate and dangerous game of cat and mouse both with the Deva and with the animal creatures of this plane, and there was nothing he could do to conceal them from their pursuers.  That had been because of Fury.  Her status as an animal native ot Gehenna was like an unholy beacon in this plane, a disharmony in the land that they could all sense, and it kept causing them to come right at them.  He’d lost count of how many animals he’d killed, but he actively avoided fights with the Deva every time they managed to catch up.  He had come to the conclusion that it was going to be impossible to do what he needed to do here so long as Fury remained.

        And so, she was now gone.  Two days ago, he had found enough of a breathing space to memorize the spell he needed to send Fury to Pyrosia, and he had done so.  Fury was now there, with Dolanna and the others, and he had every confidence that they would take very good care of her, and that Fury would be quite content to be among them.  Fury’s safe departure had allowed him to escape from both the Deva and the animals that roamed this plane, and had given him time to rest and recover from his encounter with the Deva.

        He looked at his white right paw again, lifting it off the branch, then he closed his fist and looked at the glittering crystal of the amulet tied to his forearm by a platinum chain, looped through both ends of the medallion and affixed to his arm almost like a bracer..  He kept it tied to his forearm because the crystal made him very uncomfortable if he kept it anywhere else.  It burned in an odd way, even through belt pouches and packs, and it did so in a way that he found painful.  But for some reason, his white-furred right arm felt no discomfort when it touched that amulet, as if the nature of his right arm had been changed when he reached into that place where the Deva’s soul had resided and allowed it to come to no harm when handling the crystal amulet.

        Mother Wynn had hinted that the power he was meddling with would try to change him.  He had managed to take the amulets of the Demons unscathed, but it was apparent that attacking Deva in the same way was an entirely different animal, and he had not gotten through it without their power affecting him in some way.

        Worries for another day, he supposed.

        One worry, one he’d been pondering for a while, was the Solar.  Once he had the location of the One, he would have to tackle one of those mythically powerful beings in order to complete the next step of his plan.  The problem was, quite simply, that he could not match up to a Solar on a direct level.  Solar were staggeringly powerful creatures, possessed of powers and abilities that were just a small step under those of a god.  A Solar could be a god with the power that it had.  His fighting skills and his magic were just not going to be enough to face a Solar, not unless he was very careful.  Add to that the status of a Solar as commanders of hosts of Deva, which they could call upon at any time to help them, and it got very messy very quickly.  Even if he could match a Solar blow for blow, the Solar would simply summon its subordinates to help it if Tarrin proved to be a troublesome adversary.

        What he needed for that Solar…was a plan.

        Staring at his right arm, he realized that all the elements of a successful plan were already out on the field.  All he had to do was set them up properly and then choose the right battleground, and he could get what he needed from the Solar.  It would be dangerous and risky, but the only way he was going to beat a Solar was by going for broke.  Against such a powerful opponent, he had to be bold, daring, and take risks.

        And be ruthless.

        He had an idea of what to do, but he’d have to think about it more, flesh it out, work out the specifics.  But after he managed that, then he had to come up with a plan for dealing with Spyder.  That would be more problematic, because there were some very touchy issues around her.  He still wasn’t sure how he was going to manage Spyder, because the last thing he could do was get into a massive battle with her, but he knew that that was exactly what the Elder Gods were going to order her to do the instant he set foot in Sennadar.  They would order her to fight him, and that was a fight that he did not want.  He had to find a way to get around Spyder without a direct confrontation, or at least figure out a plan to go about minimizing the fighting between them.  He didn’t want to hurt her, and for the Goddess’ sake, he did not want to provoke her into using the kind of power that he knew she possessed.

        Fighting her might be inevitable, but in that fight, he had to be very, very careful to remain in a defensive posture at all times, to stall her, to just stay away from her until he could find a way to either get around her or neutralize her without doing any harm.  Provoking Spyder would be the biggest mistake any being could ever make.  She was one of the most powerful beings in the multiverse, more powerful than even she knew.  There was no way he wanted to face her in her full glory.  He had to do everything in his power to ensure that he did not push her over that threshold.

        He’d be fighting with his paws tied, but he couldn’t see any other way to do it.  Stealth and deception would not work against Spyder, and she wouldn’t disobey if the gods ordered her to try to evict him.

        He’d have to put that particular problem on hold, though.  He had more pressing problems to deal with, such as the three shadows that passed over him.  They were Deva, two males and a female, soaring high over the canopy with their maces and swords in hand, searching for him.  There were hundreds of them out there now, maybe even thousands, and they were all searching for him.  He had no doubt why; his attack on the Deva days ago and the taking of the soul of one of them had incited this massive response.  They were now determined to find him, to take back what he had stolen and most likely kill him.  Where the Demons were terrified of him and would not face him anywhere he was in a position to take their amulets, the Deva were galvanized into response, acting in concert to track him down and deal with him.  It was hard to tell time here because the sun never moved, creating an eternal day, but he was fairly certain that they’d been trying to find him for at least five days.

        He guessed he should have been flattered that they were so determined, and they had brought in more than just the Deva.  Though they were formidable in combat, the Deva—the real Deva and not another type of Aasimon, since all Aasimon were commonly referred to as Deva—didn’t specialize in fighting.  That was the job of the Agathinon, the Warriors of Truth, the militant arm of the Deva, and they were here as well.  The Agathinon didn’t have wings and could not fly, and they were why he was up in the trees.  For every patrol of Deva that passed overhead, a patrol of Agathinon passed on the ground far below, searching for him.  They would have been very hard to avoid if not for the fact that these trees were hundreds of spans tall, and the branches were so thick that he was completely concealed from the ground by branches and foliage as he was from the air.  And since no magic could be used to track, trace, or locate him, it required them to use good old fashioned eyes and ears to find him.  They were the ones that he did not want to get tangled up with.  The Deva were good fighters, strong and intelligent, but the Agathinon were warriors by design.  There were different levels of fighters among the mortals, from the common soldier to the Arakite Legionaire to the Sulasian Ranger to the Wikuni Marine to the Ungardt to the Vendari to the Selani, and the Deva were no different.  A Deva was a strong fighter, but they were much less skilled than the Agathinon, much akin to the Knights among the Deva.  Staying away from the Agathinon was more important than finding a Mortai in the short run.

        Getting into a fight with the Deva had been inevitable, and even necessary.  It was the only way he was going to draw out a Solar and get it in a position where he could get what he needed from it.  His original plan was to escalate the confrontations with them, to keep beating them until they had no choice but to send out a Solar to deal with him, but it was just bad luck that he’d been caught out in the open by the Deva and had been forced to fight.  He hadn’t wanted that, because now it was seriously hampering him.  The Mortai were gigantic beings who floated on the wind, high above the ground, but Tarrin was trapped under the canopy by the searching Deva, forced to peek out here and there when the skies were clear of Deva to look for a Mortai as he travelled in random directions.  If a Deva spotted him, a horde of Agathinon would be on him in moments, and he’d have one serious fight on his paws.

        The only good thing about it all was that the indigenous animals seemed totally oblivious to him now that Fury had been sent to Pyrosia.  Not only did they take no notice of him, they seemed completely unconcerned about him, as if he was just a part of the scenery.  One owl-sized sparrow even landed on his shoulder as if he were a tree branch.  It had startled him, but the animal took no notice of his flinch.  It preened its wing for a moment, then took off again and disappeared into the forest.  The other side of that good fortune was that it seemed that the intelligent animals weren’t telling the Deva where he was, or they’d have come after him already.

        So at least he had one small bit of good luck.

        After making sure they had passed out of sight, he stood up on the branch and poked his head out from the canopy, exposing himself to the view of anything in the air.  He looked around quickly, scanning the blue skies, then dropped back down out of sight after finding the skies empty.  He drifted down among the stronger branches, sturdy limbs that intermeshed a hundred spans above the ground and served him just as well as solid ground served the Agathinon below, providing him with a fast and easy means of getting around, but one that hid him from both those above and those below.  He knelt on the thick branch and then leaned over slightly and looked down, peering through the branches below and to the ground, where six Agathinon, with their blue-white skin, bald heads, and brilliant silver plate mail catching his eyes easily, even as the sound of their muffled clanking carried to his ears.  They seemed to always move about in units of six, five soldiers and a squad leader, who was the one with the gold shoulder guards.  Tarrin crept along the branch on all fours to keep them in sight as they marched below, the six of them scouting the area carefully with their eyes, trying to move quietly judging by the muffled sound of their armor.  Much like any landbound creature, they almost never looked up, and certainly not up enough to see him.

        He came to a stop and watched them march ahead, and they were quickly hidden by the branches of the trees, leaving him alone once more.  He turned and vaulted from one branch to another some ten spans distant, deciding on a path perpendicular to the route of the Agathinon, but not that it really mattered.  The Mortai were high in the sky, and he had no idea where they were or where they went.  There was nothing he could really do but wander around aimlessly—

        Or was there?

        The animals of this place were intelligent.  Though they had been hostile to him before, they were not hostile now, that hostility was only because of Fury.  Since he couldn’t easily find the Mortai, especially not with the Deva chasing him, and the animals of this place were neutral to both him and the Deva, perhaps maybe they knew where the Mortai could be found?

        It certainly had possibilities.  They hadn’t revealed him to the Deva yet, so he guessed that they weren’t going to do so.  This was their native plane, and they might know something about the Mortai that he did not.  Maybe one of them could point him in the right direction.

        Finding an animal certainly was not difficult, as they were everywhere.  Within five minutes, he had found his first potential informant, a squirrel the size of a large dog, but that animal either could not or would not deign to speak with him.  He moved on to try to communicate with an eagle-sized owl and a vulture-sized thrush, and again the animals would not speak to him.  He quieted down and watched as another patrol of Agathinon passed underneath him, laying on the branch and watching them as they marched by.  He slipped up onto his paws and feet and crept along the branch silently and watched them march away, then turned around—

        —and found himself staring at a strange cat-like creature face to face, though the other face was upside down.

        Tarrin was almost impossible to surprise, but this creature had done it.  It was bipedal, almost human in appearance and shape, but his skin was covered in short gray fur, and his face looked more feline than human.  He looked almost exactly like a cat Wikuni, except he had human ears.  He wore a pair of ragged breeches that were black, and Tarrin noticed that this creature had no tail.  He had short black hair that was wild and unkempt, though it was clean, and he moved with a sinuous grace that was much more feline than human.  It was hanging from a branch overhead, secured by claws on hands and feet, dangling over his own branch.

        Tarrin backed up quickly as the creature dropped to his branch, then he rose up on his feet and stared down at the smaller creature, covering over his surprise with a dark scowl.  He too rose up onto his feet and looked up at him with unimpressed eyes.  “They said the Mortal God had come to the Beastlands,” he said in a sibilant voice, almost like a purr.  “It has taken me much time to find you.  You are elusive.”

        “Who are you?” Tarrin demanded.

        He chuckled.  “Were you still the mortal, you would know who I am,” he said simply.  “But since you have lost the song of the Cat, then you would not know.  I am Thraxi, one of the ten Cat Lords, master of cats and embodiment of the spirit of that which is feline.”  He then bowed gracefully.  “And you are Tarrin Kael, the Mortal God, who was once my kinsman, but who now only wears the shape of what he once was.”

        “Cat Lord?  I’ve never heard of you.”

        “I would not expect you to know of my kind,” he said simply, taking a step back and then flopping into a cross-legged seated position on the branch.  “Be seated, if you would, please.”

        Tarrin felt no hostility at all from this creature, so he did as he asked and seated himself, wrapping his tail around his legs to keep it out of trouble.

        “You have nothing to fear from me, Tarrin Kael.  The Cat Lords do not involve themselves in matters that do not concern them, and you do not concern us.  Even if you did, we wouldn’t turn against you, since you are one of us.  That you wear the shape you once possessed in life tells me that you still consider yourself to be Were-cat, and still a part of our brotherhood, even if you’ve lost that part of yourself.  That makes you kin, and the Cat Lords do not harm kin.”

        “Well, that’s good to know,” Tarrin said, and his senses seemed to agree with what this creature was saying.  He felt oddly comfortable with this Thraxi, as if the echo of the mortal in him found an affinity with this being, much as he had had an affinity for Miranda.

        “Ah, so that is why they are so determined to find you,” the creature said, reaching out and pointing at the crystal medallion tied to his right forearm.  “I did not think that possible.  But then again, given who you are, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

        “You seem to know a lot about me,” Tarrin said suspiciously.

        “I know much about you,” he replied easily.  “The Deva have already come to me to ask if you had tried to make contact with me, and after they left, I became curious.  So I made certain inquiries with certain beings, entities, and powers that had knowledge of you.  A cat’s curiosity must be satisfied,” he said with a smile.  “How did you do it?” he asked with eager eyes.

        “Do what?”

        “Take the soul of a Deva,” he answered immediately.  “I thought only the Deva could go Beyond, but obviously that is wrong, for you must have reached into the Beyond in order to take that medallion.”

        Tarrin clasped his right paw into a fist, holding up his arm and looking at it almost unconsciously.  “It…was not pleasant,” he answered truthfully.  “It did this to me.”

        “To reach into a place that does not exist and expect it not to leave its mark on you is foolish,” he said sagely.

        Tarrin ignored that.  “Why would they think I’d seek you out?”

        “I am a Cat Lord,” he said simply.  “They seemed to think that you would search me out to gather information from me.  You see, they know you came here for a reason, but they don’t know what it is.  They were hoping to find your reason for coming here and use it to try to find you.”

        “That was a good tactic,” Tarrin noted aloud after thinking about it a moment.

        “Yes, the Deva are not fools,” Thraxi agreed.  “Would you care to dine with me and my mate later?  Arami would be overjoyed to meet you.”

        “I’m sorry, but I’m a little busy right now.  And besides, I don’t think you’d want the Deva to invite themselves.  If they’ve talked to you, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were keeping an eye on you.”

        “Oh they’re trying,” he said with a sly smile.  “They’re not doing very well, but they are trying.”

        The impish look on his face made him laugh in spite of himself.  “I’m surprised you’d want to talk to me, if you knew anything about what’s going on.”

        “Oh, I’ve heard.  Blew up a building in Crossroads, rightly infuriated the Deva, and now you’ve attacked them and taken something that they value more than life itself.”

        “What?”

        “That, of course,” he said, pointing at the medallion.  “Destroying a Deva simply banishes them back to where they came from, that’s all.  They’re truly unkillable, because their souls are said to exist in that place where the God of Gods resides, a place that does not exist.  As you know, the only way to truly kill a being of the Upper World is to kill them in their home plane, but you can’t get to the home plane of the Deva.  But you, you sly one, you attacked them in a way that does cause them permanent harm.  You’ve taken one of their number hostage, and now they’ll tear the multiverse apart to find you and get him back.”

        “Ah, that does explain why they’re so determined,” Tarrin mused, looking down at the ground.  “I just thought it was because I was forced into a fight with some Deva and killed a few of them.”

        “Killing a Deva doesn’t really do anything,” Thraxi shrugged.  “He’ll just be back in one hundred years.  But the one trapped in that medallion certainly won’t be back.  Not unless the other Deva can take it from you and return it to that place where their souls are.  And now they’re trying to save one of their own, and that makes them very determined.  The one thing you cannot fault the Deva over is their loyalty.  They have lost a brother, and now they will do whatever it takes to recover him.”

        Tarrin was quiet a moment.  In that moment, he had an epiphany of clarity, and understood in that moment exactly how he could use that information to his advantage.

        “I’m surprised you’re taking it so easily, Thraxi,” he said.  “I was told that if I ever attacked the Deva in this manner, then just about everyone would come after me as an enemy, not just the Deva.  It certainly doesn’t seem to bother you what I’ve done.”

        “It doesn’t really personally concern me, Tarrin Kael,” he shrugged.  “How you treat me matters to me much more than how you treat others.  You have been honest and polite, and so I will treat you the same.  We are not enemies, and that is all that really concerns me.  Your relations to others are irrelevant.”

        That certainly fit into a trait he would expect from a being that was part cat.  Cats were very selfish.  “Well, since you’re here, I guess I should do what the Deva thought I was doing,” Tarrin said to him.  “I wasn’t really planning on it, but you might be able to help me take care of my business here and be on my way.”

        “What do you need, kinsman?” he asked.

        “Just simple information,” he answered.  “I have a question that needs to be answered, and I’ve been told that there’s only one being that can give me the answer.”

        Thraxi’s eyes brightened.  “You come seeking a Mortai!” he exclaimed.

        He nodded.  “That’s why I’m here.”

        “That is what the Deva suspect, since you had been so involved with the Sages of Crossroads, but they didn’t know for sure.  They didn’t know if you’d found your answer and was here acting on it, or you were here seeking an answer to the question the Sages could not answer.”  He scratched at his hair vigorously for a moment.  “Well, my kinsman, you’re in the wrong plane to find a Mortai.”

        “But, I was told they only live here in the Beastlands,” Tarrin said.

        “Yes, but not in the Realm of Day,” he answered.  “They prefer the Realm of Sunset.  You might sometimes see a Mortai here in the Realm of Day, but only once in a great while.  If you want to find a Mortai quickly, then you need to go to the Realm of Sunset.  Here,” he said, pointing off to Tarrin’s left and slightly behind him.  “About two day’s travel in that direction, you’ll find a very large, old tree that has a hollow in its bole.  That hollow is a boundary between the Realm of Day and the Realm of Sunset.  Go into it, and you will come out of a similar tree in the Realm of Sunset.  If you get lost, simply ask any animals you encounter for directions, and they’ll get you back on the right track.”

        Tarrin turned to face that direction, and then looked back at the Cat Lord.  “Two days’ travel, you say?  On foot or in the trees or by flying?”

        “In the trees,” he answered.  “I rarely drop the forest floor.  It’s much more fun up here,” he smiled.

        “So, about forty longspans or so?”

        “If I knew that measurement, I could answer,” he said with a shrug.

        “You look pretty healthy, so let’s go with fifty,” he said, rising to his feet and reaching into a belt pounch, and withdrawing a pinch of powdered iron.  He chanted the words of Arcane magic, the discordant language of the Wizards, speaking the words of a rather simple spell.  He spoke the Sulasian words for fifty longspans at the completion of his spell, and then tossed the powdered iron into the air.  It shimmered for an instant, and then vanished.  As soon as it did so, Tarrin had an innate sense of direction that would always point him to the spot he had named in the spell, and that spot was fifty longspans in the direction he faced when casting the spell.

        “You know Wizard magic, eh?” Thraxi stated, then he laughed.  “You are certainly full of surprises.”

        “Thank you, and thank you for the information, Thraxi.  You’ve helped me a great deal, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you now.  The business I’m here to deal with is very important, and I need to complete it as quickly as I can.  Now that I have a solid lead on where to go next, I need to get there quickly, before the Deva can figure out what I’m doing and try to cut me off.”

        “Oh, I understand, Tarrin of the Were-cats.  I wish you good fortune on your journey, and may your business be concluded to your satisfaction.”

        “I’ll take all the blessings I can get, Thraxi,” Tarrin said seriously.  “I think I’m going to need them.”

        Thraxi’s laughter followed Tarrin as he made his way towards his magically targeted point, vaulting from branch to branch, leaving the Cat lord behind him…but he was hearing faint rustling in the branches ahead and to the sides.  He was about to slow to a stop and investigate, but he heard a startled curse from behind him.  It was Thraxi’s voice he heard, which made him turn around and vault onto a higher branch, which gave him a view back in that direction through a void in the canopy.

        Thraxi the Cat Lord was vaulting through the branches with an Agathinon hot on his heels.

        Tarrin resisted the impulse to surge forward to assist, but he saw quickly that Thraxi needed no assistance.  The Agathinon, too encumbered by his plate armor to follow physically, was instead teleporting from branch to branch to try to get in front of the Cat Lord, his sword and shield at the ready.  But Thraxi followed no predictable path, turning, dropping, and rising in the branches at whim, making it almost impossible for the blue-eyed warrior Deva to predict his movements.  Thraxi always seemed to be where the Agathinon didn’t think he would be, forcing him to vanish from one place and appear in another, only to find that he had guessed incorrectly again.  Thraxi evaded a sudden swipe of a sword as two more Agathinon appeared near where he landed and attacked him, floated between two branches, landed on a particularly thick branch, put his hands and feet on it, and then he simply wavered and vanished.  Having tired of the game, Thraxi seemed to have taken his leave of them in a manner in which they could not follow.

        Tarrin saw all three of those Agathinon immediately look right at where he was lurking within the foliage, and he knew then that he’d been discovered.

        Turning and vaulting, Tarrin put almost twenty spans of air between him and the branch he’d been on, even as his mind feverishly considered all options.  Landing and fighting them on the ground would give them the advantage; he was better of fighting them up here, in the trees, where his superior agility and their armor would combine to give him a tremendous advantage.  However, Tarrin’s inclination for large weapons worked against him in this situation; this was not a battlefield where a staff or glaive or trident were going to be effective.  The long weapons would snarl on the surrounding branches.  That left him only two options…fight unarmed, or battle them using something small and lethal, like his Cat’s Claws.

        As much as that idea appealed to him at the moment, he knew that it wasn’t an option.  They’d be perfect for this kind of combat, but they were objects of Sorcery, and not only was he not sure they would even work out here in the outer planes, they were artifacts of the Goddess that would be tracked back to her, and might get her in trouble if items of her creation were being used to slaughter Deva.  Sorcery did not function here, and he was fuzzy on the possibility that objects created by Sorcery and utilizing Sorcery would work outside of the prime material plane.

        But perhaps, there was a happy medium there.  Tarrin didn’t need the Cat’s Claws themselves, but he did need one of the aspects of them that he had come to be quite proficient in using over the years.

        Hooking a branch and pulling himself up, he immediately began chanting in the language of magic, casting a spell that would allow him to cast the next spell without the need of a material component.  While his ears kept track of the sound around him, as Agathinon used their innate power to teleport to shift their positions around him to try to find him, using his voice to try to locate him, he then cast the spell of Vocarate, which would allow him to cast five spells without the need to speak, only using somatic gestures and pure will.  He dropped almost fifty spans in matter of seconds, using the branches around him to selectively break his fall to keep himself from going too fast, then landed lightly on a paw, foot, and knee on a particularly thick and heavy branch as wide as a wagon track, still nearly a hundred spans off the ground.  The sounds around him distanced themselves quickly after he fell from that height, as they stopped to try to find the sound of his voice and use it to lead them to him.

        The instant he was stable, he was on his feet and casting another spell, his paws making a fast series of exacting movements before him.  Casting spells using Vocarate required him to perform the somatics of a spell twice, once and then once again, causing it to take longer, but at least his voice was not giving away his position.  He again cast the spell that freed him of the need to use a material component for his next spell, and then began casting that spell immediately.  Tarrin removed two small rubies from his belt pouch and set them on the branch before him, and then cast the spell; though the spell required no component to cast, this particular spell did require the presence of gemstones…using the Materialis spell only freed him of the need to use a pinch of diamond dust, that he did not have.  He cast the spell, a spell known as Polymorph.  It was a spell that transformed one object into another object, within certain conditions.  A material couldn’t be changed outside its kingdom of existence, but could become almost anything within that same kingdom.  A rock could not be changed into a fish, since one was a mineral and the other an animal, but a rock could be changed into a diamond, or steel, or into another kind of rock.  Tarrin needed the gems because he intended to transform a mineral, and it required him to use a mineral.  It was a more limited Wizard version of a Sorcerer’s ability to Transmute, though Tarrin knew that there were much more powerful versions of the Polymorph spell in his spellbook.  He just didn’t have them memorized.

        He performed the last gesture of the second set of somatics, which completed the spell, and the two rubies on the branch before him shimmered, and then began to glow with a bright light.  The light flared suddenly, and then it waned into extinction.  Where before there had been two rubies, now there were two plain bracers, made of a sleek black metal.  Tarrin quickly reached down and picked them up, removed the amulet of the Deva’s soul from his wrist, and slid the bracers over his paws.  He then cast a simple spell to change their size, causing them to fit snugly.  The bracers weren’t solid, they were elegant twists and loops of pure Adamantite, forming a crosshatched spiral pattern that ran from the bottom of each bracer to the top, with a large circular hole in each one.  He took the amulet of the Deva in his left paw, sucking his breath in at the touch of it in his unaltered paw, and affixed it to his right bracer.  The amulet locked into the hole Tarrin had purposefully left for it perfectly.  The hole on the other bracer wasn’t entirely planned, for in his haste he had made both bracers identical, but the hole would serve a purpose nonetheless.  Tarrin fished the soul amulet of  one of the Demons he had killed out of his belt pouch and snapped it into place in the second bracer, more to fill the hole than anything else.

        That left only a weapon.  He didn’t want to fight armored foes with his claws, especially not foes like Agathinon, but he had few options available to him.  His first impulse was to call upon the sword Jenna made for him, but that sword was now in the possession of his shadow.  It would have been perfect, given that the original weapon, unaltered, would have been the perfect length.  He thought about using Wizard magic to take the sword of a former enemy, like Jegojah or Stragos Bane, but he wasn’t sure if the spell would pull that off.  He had touched those swords, but they were not his, and it had been a long time ago.  He couldn’t call on the Goddess or Jenna for help either, to find him something suitable.  That left him being creative, or being forced to use weapons not suited for the environment.  Maybe—

        —no, there was another option.  He couldn’t use magic to summon a powerful weapon to him, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have the ability to create a suitable weapon on the spot, a weapon that, being a creation of magic, would carry within it the innate power to harm a Deva.  He pulled out two more gemstones, a topaz and an amethyst, and again cast the spell of Polymorph, using up the last casting of his Vocarate spell.  He performed the somatics of the spell, and then repeated them to satisfy the demands of both the Polymorph and Vocarate spells, and then watched as the two gemstones flared with sudden light.

        The light brightened and elongated, then flashed brilliantly, and then faded away.  In its wake two weapons exactly like his old sword appeared, smaller weapons meant for one paw only, both perfect duplicates of that sword.  They were black metal blades, Adamantite, and as sharp as they could possibly be.  But unlike his sword, these were more decorative.  The hilts and crosspieces were like the sword Jenna gave him, appearing to be dragons, with the blades extending out of maws that seemed to bite the blades.  These were of a size similar to the weapons Tsukatta used, weapons he called katana, though these weapons that Tarrin would use in one paw would be two-handed weapons for a smaller creature.  These weapons had wirebound grips rather than leather, for Tarrin couldn’t create leather using the spell, but that was a small price to pay.  The weapons were literally tailor made just for him.  They were light, almost unbreakable, and so sharp that the edges could not even be touched without drawing blood.  They were not powerful magic weapons, but they were weapons created with properties that made them just as good.

        They would work just fine.

        Tarrin ran to the edge of the branch and vaulted high into the air, dancing among the branches with grace despite the fact that his paws were holding the swords, racing up and over and around branches, ghosting through clumps of leaves without making a whisper of sound.  He could hear no fewer than seven Agathinon up in the branches, moving in random directions above and below him.  He jumped up onto a heavy branch and skidded to a halt when an Agathinon wavered into being directly in front of him.  The creature was tall and thin, with angled, almond shaped eyes that glowed with a soft bluish light, though he appeared to be human in all other ways.  He wore plate armor that was burnished to a silvery sheen, gleaming in the dappled sunlight that managed to reach them through the foliage above, and he wielded a double-edged longsword and a circular shield with a sunburst design etched into the metal surface.

        Surrender what you have stolen, the creature’s voice echoed in his mind a mental voice full of outrage and determination.

        Tarrin held up his white-furred right arm, displaying the crystal medallion locked within the Adamantite bracer defiantly, his eyes narrow and his expression utterly emotionless.  “Come and take it.”

        So be it, the Deva stated, and it raised its weapon and rushed forward without hesitation.  It brought its sword up to swing at him, a testing blow that any seasoned warrior would use at the initial engagement of combat, but it almost fell off the branch trying to stop itself when, instead of trying to evade the attack or parry with his sword, Tarrin instead presented that amulet-bearing bracer to the Agathinon’s sword.  Tarrin wasted no time taking advantage of the Agathinon’s sudden reversal by slashing at its neck with his weapon.

        The weapon did not penetrate the Agathinon’s skin.  The latent magic left over from the creation of the sword was not enough to allow it to do harm to the Deva.

        However, much like his battles with the Cambisi years ago, Tarrin saw that the swords did lend themselves certain simple unavoidable charactersitics that the Agathinon could not resist, such as physics.  The raw power behind the blow, delivered at a downward angle against an off balance opponent, sent the Agathinon flying off the branch and spiralling towards the ground some distance below.  Though the Agathinon’s sword could not in any way damage or destroy the crystalline amulet embedded in the bracer, the creature nonetheless did not even want to risk it in any way, and Tarrin had exploited that protective bent.

        But that was only one Agathinon of many, and Tarrin knew that the Deva were telepathic and could teleport, so that meant that any second now there was going to be a swarm of them converging on his position, and he was armed with weapons that could only be used in defense until he could find the time to imbue them with magical power.  He vaulted up twenty spans to another branch, even as several armored Agathinon appeared on the branch he had just vacated.  They looked up almost in unison at the sound of the shuddering branch above, and Tarrin saw two of them appear in front of him, weapons raised, one behind the other.  He ducked under the heavy blow of a thick-bladed sword and slammed his fist into the Deva’s stomach, then drove him forward and into his companion.  He knew that he couldn’t remain vertical for more than a second, and pushed off the Deva even as he lunged downward.  The whoosh of air over his head told him everything he needed to know, as an Agathinon had teleported in behind him and had tried to decapitate him with his broadsword.  Tarrin’s tail lashed out and swiped the feet out from under his surprise attacker as the two in front of him stumbled backwards, missed the narrowing branch, and then toppled over.  The one behind slammed into the branch on his side, and his lower half slid off the branch.  He let go of his weapon and scrabbled to hold onto the branch, clawing at the bark, but Tarrin’s tail reared up and then slammed down into his face, breaking his nose and dislodging him from his tenuous grip.  He too fell towards the branches below, but another Agathinon simply appeared in his place, his sword and shield held at the ready.  Tarrin had to twist aside to avoid being skewered, and then again, and then he gasped and rolled aside as another Agathinon popped into being just over his head and tried to stab him through the eye.  Tarrin rolled over the edge of the branch, and both Agathinon lunged towards where he was falling, most likely to report to their comrades where he was going.  He rolled off and into empty air, but then he vanished to the eyes of the Agathinon.

        They never saw it coming.  Tarrin’s tail had hooked the narrow branch, and he swung around the bottom of the branch, twisted, then came back up and around the other side.  He didn’t have enough momentum to get back onto the branch, so he planted both swords into the narrow branch, which caused it to shudder.  The Deva seemed to understand that something was wrong and started to whirl around to look behind them, but it was too late.  Using the two swords as anchors, Tarrin used his arms to power up, brought his legs out and around as his entire body invested into his legs a broad sweeping circular motion.  He let go of one sword and swung far out to the side as the nearer of the two Agathinon registered that he hadn’t fallen down to the branches below, but it was too late for him now, for he didn’t fathom what Tarrin was doing.  His legs arced out and then back in with a powerful circular rotation, and his shin made punishing contact with the closer Deva right in the side, striking with so much force that it dented his steel breastplate.  The Agathinon was sent flying into his companion, and their momentum carried them far out, blasting them off the branch and sending them hurtling out into empty space.  Tarrin landed in a kneeling position on the narrow branch, pausing only to pull his swords free of the branch and preparing to vault up and away from his current position, but yet more Agathinon appeared, one in front and one behind.  Tarrin slithered aside even as rose to his feet as the Agathinon behind tried to impale him, then parried aside the sword blow of the one in front of him with his sword.  His legs bunched and then flexed, and the two Agathinon watched as he soared straight up and over their heads, arms down and holding his swords out and to the sides, pointed down.  His target was a thicker, heavier branch some fifteen spans over them, which ran perpendicular to the branch upon which they were standing.  The two Agathinon wavered and vanished, then appeared on the branch above, then turned to intercept the Were-cat on his ascent.

        He never arrived.

        Under the branch, Tarrin rotated in midair and then struck his feet into the base, driving his claws into the wood.  Thrusting both swords through his belt behind him in a quick motion, he hung upside down on the branch as he heard the two Agathinon above him moving on the branch, looking over both sides, trying to figure out where he went.  He powered himself up to where he could get his paws into contact with the branch, and then hung there on the underside of the branch by his claws as the Agathinon seemed to be searching for him.  When he heard them change positions, moving to get a better vantage point, Tarrin turned and scrabbled along the underside of the branch towards the trunk, faster than a human could run, but making almost no sound, only the faint skritch-skritch of his claws digging into the bark.  He reached the trunk, then climbed around to the far side of the trunk, away from the Deva, and then rushed upwards by literally jumping up the length of the trunk in surging springs, sending small bits and shavings of bark drifting to the ground far below with each lunge upwards.  He wanted to be much higher, up where the branches were smaller and thinner, where a heavily armored Agathinon was going to have serious trouble moving, if his weight didn’t break the branches first.

        A flash of light to his left was the only warning he got.  He pushed off from the trunk with all his might, and he saw a small swarm of small fiery darts of magical power rushing towards where he had been.  The seven magical missles turned effortlessly, homing in on him with unerring accuracy.  “Khizu Shodai!” Tarrin commanded in the language of Arcane magic, which caused a glimmering shield of magical energy to appear in front of his outstretched paws, which his legs penetrated.  He curled in his legs as those magic missles streaked towards him, and then struck his magical shield, splaying angry reddish-orange light across its shimmering blue surface.  The missles struck the shield in rapid succession but did not penetrate, instead flattening themselves against the shield before vanishing..  That spell of shielding had been specifically created to counter the Magic Missle spell, a spell which created fiery darts of magical power that never missed their target.  Tarrin laid out and rotated in the air, selected an appropriate branch, and then hooked it with his claws as he went past.  He altered his downward trajectory into a horizontal one, then tucked and somersaulted, and then landed lightly on a branch not far below where he had been.

        That spell required line of sight, so a Deva had to be able to see him, and that could only mean that any second now he was going to be confronted by an Agathinon.  Tarrin quickly pulled the swords into his paws and turned sideways on the branch so the Deva could not teleport behind him without teleporting out into empty air.  The Agathinon appeared to his right, between him and the trunk, his sabre and shield ready.  Sparks flew as Tarrin fenced with the Agathinon for a brief moment, the sparks testament to the fury of the clash.  This Agathinon was very fast, faster than the others, and he wielded his sabre with exacting precision and confidence.  Tarrin’s katana weaved complex patterns in the air before him as he worked against the Deva’s single weapon and shield, each weapon moving in harmonious symbiosis with its mate as the Were-cat fended off the Deva’s skillful attack, his sabre slicing curious and effective angles designed to knock Tarrin off balance and leave him open to taking an impact from the front of the Deva’s shield.  This Deva understood that a shield was not just a defensive tool, it was also a weapon, and this one was trying to use his shield to knock Tarrin off the branch, no doubt into the waiting clutches of many Agathinon who had appeared on the branches below to take advantage of his plummet, or to deny him any chance to land safely on any branch below him.  But Tarrin’s Ungardt training was still the foundation of his style, and that style caused him to attack his opponent’s shield instead of his weapon, to batter it down, damage it, and also force the adversary to work while moving that shield around.  Shields weighed much more than swords, and working the shield would tire out his opponent even as his relentless assault against it would weaken the shield itself.

        The Deva seemed taken aback when Tarrin went after his shield, seeming to play right into his hands.  But when he tried to slam the shield into his opponent, the Deva was shocked when the Were-cat simply melted away, despite the fact that the branch was so narrow that neither of them could move to the sides.  Tarrin’s katana slashed into the shield a multitude of times as the Deva tried to withdraw his shield, battering at it and pushing the Deva back.  The Deva was even more shocked when the Were-cat suddenly vanished from in front of him, only the glimpse of a tail rising up and out of sight.  The Deva looked up to see the Were-cat in the air, spinning lazily in the air while in a layout position, and spinning away from the Deva.  The Agathinon moved to rush forward, but another Agathinon appeared on the branch before him, which would have been behind the Were-cat, and in that moment the Agathinon realized that the Were-cat would not have enough momentum to get behind the Agathinon that had just teleported onto the branch.

        The Agathinon who had just appeared suddenly buckled as Tarrin landed on top of him, a foot on each shoulder, as the Were-cat’s entire body seemed to hunch over that perch, until his elbows were on either side of the Agathinon’s helmet.  Those elbows suddenly cinched that helmet and wrenched it, twisting it askew and causing the metal helm to cover the eyes of the Deva, blinding him.  The sabre-wielding Agathinon drew himself up short from his forward surge as the Were-cat slid his legs down the breastplate of the Agathinon on which he had landed, then he spun backwards and out of sight, only his shins and feet visible.  It confused the Agathinon for just a split second, but by then it was too late to warn his companion or react.  Those shins suddenly crossed over the victim’s breastplate as the Were-cat’s paws appeared behind and between the legs of the Agathinon, sword-holding fists punching in to give him traction, and then his entire body flexed.  The Agathinon was suddenly yanked from being bowed forward to being whipped backwards in an arc that would carry him downwards.  Instead of letting go and throwing his victim, the Were-cat kept his legs locked around the chest of his victim, carrying him in a powerful, swift arc.

        The Agathinon in Tarrin’s clutches impacted the branch head first, caught in the scissors of Tarrin’s legs, and the Were-cat had used every ounce of his power to make that impact as punishing as possible.  There was a loud clang as the Deva’s head slammed into the branch, causing its entire length to shudder violently as the Deva’s body collapsed around his head.  His body literally bounced off the branch, but Tarrin’s legs released him even as he was carried into the air along with the Deva’s body.  He twisted in the air and landed on a foot, knee, and fist as his victim’s body spun wildly off to the side, and then dropped down and out of sight, only the occasional loud clang reaching them to inform them that the body was bouncing off the branches below on its trip to the ground.

        The sabre-wielding Agathinon was so taken aback by this bizarre tactic that he almost missed the Were-cat lunging at him from that kneeling position so quickly that it seemed impossible.  The air between Tarrin and the Agathinon was a blur of black metal, steel, and sparks as the Deva furiously worked to keep those swords away from him, as they continued to cut into, nick, bite, and otherwise batter the Deva’s shield with almost obsessive determination.  But the instant the Deva tried to pull back his shield and parry, those swords would seek out his head or neck, forcing him to continue to sacrifice the integrity of his shield, not even giving him an instant to recover from his defensive posture and regain any kind of footing against the Were-cat.  Tarrin had already figured out that these Agathinon had no idea that his swords couldn’t hurt them, so they were acting as if they could.  Usually that was the best course of action.  But in this case, Tarrin didn’t want to connect with a Deva in a way that would allow them to see it and understand that his weapons could do no harm, it would rob him of an important advantage.  The one he had hit before had been struck from behind, and the Agathinon he’d struck wouldn’t have been able to really tell the difference between the blade and Tarrin’s paw or arm, not when one was hit that hard.

        Again, Tarrin sensed that this would be the perfect time for another Deva to appear behind him and try to take advantage of his focus on the one before him, and he reacted.  He hopped back just a tiny bit even as an Agathinon appeared behind him, but he was so close to the Agathinon that there was barely a finger’s width between the Agathinon’s breastplate and Tarrin’s back.  The Agathinon staggered backwards when his vision was filled with nothing but Tarrin’s braid, and that move proved to be foolish.  Tarrin lifted one foot, tilted his hips, then raised one paw as he lowered the other to counter his momentum as he performed a standing split-kick.  Tarrin’s foot claws punched in under the Agathinon’s helmet, snapping his head backwards with so much force that it would have ripped the head right off a human had he been kicked in that manner.  Glittering red blood flew in a high arc from the Agathinon’s chin and throat as he was picked up off the branch by the impact, but a foot that when straightened out was nearly two spans over the Agathinon’s head.  That Agathinon sailed backwards in a lazy arc, then slammed into the branch nearly ten spans behind Tarrin, landing on his shoulder.  He flopped over onto his back, bounced off the branch, then slid over the side and disappeared into the gulf below.

        The Deva before him seemed startled, and in that split second of inaction, Tarrin struck, he struck in the only manner he had available to him to permanently take these Agathinon out of action, he struck completely out of reflex, before he even thought about what he was doing.  Tarrin’s right paw released the sword, causing it to spin out of his grip, and he lanced forward.  The Agathinon tried to move to defend himself, but that split second of surprise was a fatal delay.  Tarrin’s paw lashed in between the Agathinon’s shield and sword, struck his breastplate, and then penetrated into him.  Tarrin’s paw drove into the Deva, and then reached through him, beyond him, reaching through the dimensions and reaching into that place where the Agathinon’s soul was kept.

        Again, he felt…the power.  His paw grabbed hold of what he sought, and it was like grabbing hold of pure energy, of solid fire, and caused intense tingles to coarse up his arm, and caused him physical pain.   But Tarrin was committed now, and there was only one thing to do.  He took a firm grip on the shuddering Agathinon’s soul, put a foot on his hip, and then pulled with all his might.  Again, he felt that powerful resistance, a sudden counterforce that grabbed his paw and wrist and pulled back, tried to pull him into the Deva’s body  The Deva’s sabre fell from a nerveless grip and feebly tried to grab the arm driven into him to prevent him from completing the grisly task, his glowing eyes wide with shock and fear, staring at him with mute supplication, almost pleading.  In that moment, with his arm in that place where the Deva dwelled, he could almost hear a sudden cacophony of sound that was not sound, a resounding chorus of agony and dismay, as if thousands of voices rose up in unison and cried out in fear, in pain, and in anger.  Tarrin felt that cry pierce his soul, and it filled with him with sudden nameless dread, so powerful that it chilled his very soul.

        With strength born of desperation, Tarrin tore his arm free of the Deva, but it did not come out empty.  A glimmering crystal amulet was clenched in the bloody paw, blood that turned to fine red dust and fell away from him even as the body before him seemed to shudder, fell to its knees, and then crumbled in on itself and decayed away to dust within the span of three heartbeats.

        Tarrin had to resist a sudden panic.  Such power!  And such fury!  In that moment he had heard the telepathic communion of the Deva, and they had felt the pain of their companion as Tarrin had ripped out his soul!  The act of it left him suddenly weak and dizzy, as the strength he had been forced to exert to pull the amulet through bled away from him, causing him to sink to one knee.  It would have been the perfect opportunity for the Deva to strike, but they too were momentarily stunned, for they had felt he pain of their brother, they had felt what it was like to have one’s soul torn away, and it was not something from which any of them could quickly recover.

        Shaking it off, he slowly stood up, as a sudden wind rustled the leaves above and below and pulled at his braid and tail.  He held the amulet before him, looking down at the starburst design, and could only feel…cold.  He had touched on the power beyond all comprehension, and though is still throbbed throug his arm, the touch of it, the feel, was both exhilerating and terrifying.  The power echoing through his arm made the rest of him feel cold.  Without much thought, he beckoned to the sword he had cast aside, and it rose up from the abyss below and into his waiting paw, a paw already holding the amulet.  He had nowhere to put the amulet, and he couldn’t hold it anywhere but in his right paw, so he set down his other sword, gritted his teeth, and took the amulet in his left paw.  It burned his paw, driving shooting pains up his arm, set both of them down, and then cast a fast spell, making four precise gestures.  The amulet then shrank visibly, becoming smaller and smaller, until it was the size of a gold noble.  He picked it up and then the sword, pressed the amulet against the base of the blade, and then cast another spell, a spell which made the metal of the sword tractable.  He pushed the amulet into the metal until it was snugly secured, then ended the spell, which caused the sword’s metal to become impervious once again.  With the amulet embedded in the blade, it put the amulet in something that he could touch with either paw, and something he could quickly and easily discard if he found a desperate need to distract the Deva.  He was fairly certain that if he threw the sword away, they would go after the sword and not him.

        He had wasted too much time, so caught up in the need to put the amulet somewhere that he had ignored an obvious need to move.  If he had shaken off the effect of what he had done, then the other Deva must have begun to recover as well, and they would be coming after him.  He had to move, to change positions and get out of sight before that spellcaster realized that he had a clear view of him and could cast spells without endangering any of the others.  He turned and bolted down the branch, then vaulted twenty spans over a gulf to set a foot on a branch running sideways, then pushed off and soared throgh thirty spans of empty air to land on the very tip of a narrow branch that descended sharply down with numerous smaller branches jutting from it at odd angles.  He navigated that branch expertly and then jumped up to another branch, pushed off the side, then landed on a branch on the far side of the trunk he had just circumnavigated.  He didn’t miss a step when he saw an Agathinon in front of him, hunched over on a wide but short branch, breathing heavily as he tried to recover from the pain of being telepathically linked to the one that had had his soul stripped from him.  The Agathinon whipped his head up to look at Tarrin, and there was twisted on his face a look of utter rage.  He took one look at the sword, with the crystal amulet affixed to the base of the blade, and he stood up and brandished his heavy spiked mace and shield.

        “Come on,” Tarrin hissed, his eyes flaring with the unholy greenish aura that marked his anger, ears laying back as he held his swords out and low, an extension of his usual slouching fighting stance.  “I still have one more sword that needs decorating.”

        The sounds of weapons clashing marred the sound of the wind through the leaves as the infuriated Agathinon launched himself at Tarrin with almost suicidal furor.  Tarrin turned aside the spiked mace with his swords again and again and again, taking a few steps back to absorb the full impact of the Deva’s charge, his clawed feet navigating the uneven branch with light deftness.  The Agathinon pressed with frenzied eyes, his spiked mace trying to rip Tarrin’s face off with every blow, leaving himself almost enticingly open to Tarrin’s swords…but those were openings he could not exploit, lest the fact that his weapons could do no harm to the Deva become known.  He instead worked on stalling the Deva’s charge with solid defense, strong parries and lightning-fast dodges without giving up any more ground to the Agathinon, until he had the Deva back on his heels instead of on the balls of his feet.  The Deva was pushed back with several strong blows to his shield, threatening to overbalance him and send him careening to one side and off the branch.  He nearly slipped on a knot in the narrow branch as he took a step backwards, but recovered before Tarrin could knock him completely off balance and deliver a kick.

        Something struck him heavily from above and behind, and he cursed inwardly when he realized that more Deva had recovered.  One had appeared over his head instead of behind him, and had landed atop him without any weapons in his hands.  This one grappled with Tarrin, grabbing at his arms and trying to pull them down, to give his companion an opening to use his mace, but it was the hand reaching for the bracer and sword holding Deva amulets that was most frenzied, most desperate, as the Deva struggled to reach the captured souls of his brothers.

        The Deva’s body flinched, and then he fell forward in a cloud of glittering gold as the body of Tarrin Kael beneath simply exploded into a harmless cloud of dust.  He landed heavily on the gnarled branch, his shoulders slid over the side, and then he toppled head over heels over the side of the branch.  The mace-wielding Deva looked at the cloud of dust in mute shock, so much so that he didn’t sense or see the looming shadow that rose up behind him.  He was twice as surprised when Tarrin Kael’s foot slammed into the back of his head, stunning him and sending him careening forward.  He slammed heavily into the trunk of the massive tree, rebounded, his foot came down on empty air, and then he tumbled off the branch to begin the three hundred span fall to the forest floor below.

        Tarrin glanced over the branch, his expression mildly amused.  “Surprise,” he said softly.

        He sensed movement behind him, and whirled around, swords held ready.  Before him was a blue-skinned humanoid with purple hair tied into a topknot but shaved on the sides, wearing black baggy trousers with a red sash.  He wore an ornate breastplate similar to those of the Agathinon, and he wielded a scimitar and a round steel shield with a sunburst design enamelled upon it.  Tarrin had seen pictures of these beings in Kimmie’s spellbooks, it was a Djinn, a denizen of the Elemental plane of Air.  But this was not a Djinn.  The sense of this creature was holy, just as it was with the Deva…Tarrin wasn’t much of a god, but he had enough divine power to be able to see through this false shape and see the truth within.  This was an Agathinon, utilizing some kind of magic to shapeshift into a form that could defy gravity.

        Surprise, the Deva mirrored, brandishing his scimitar.

        In an instant, Tarrin had lost the advantage.  The airborne Deva, who could float, hover, and dart back and forth, harried Tarrin with his lone scimitar, then would slide back and out of reach any time it was worked out of an offensive position.  Tarrin wasted long moments fighting the floating Deva in a running battle that went all the way down to the end of the branch, as he carefully tested out the Deva’s ability to react, testing his reflexes.  The Deva suddenly backed off, making Tarrin pause for a split second to try to understand this unusual maneuver.  Why back off when he had the advantage?

        He almost lost his head as another Deva roared in, himself wearing the form and shape of Djinn, arcing in out of nowhere and trying to decapitate the Were-cat with his longsword.  Tarrin saw him at the last instant and ducked, then reversed his direction and launched himself off the branch in the wake of the hurtling Deva, using him as a shield.  The Deva lanced down and under the branch, out of sight, and the Deva whom he’d been fighting gaped in astonishment as the Were-cat rose up over the form of the Deva who was flying down, leading not with his swords, but with his feet.  Both feet impacted the Deva squarely in the chest at a downward angle, striking so hard that Tarrin was launched straight up after the impact even as the Deva was slammed downward.  The Deva struck a branch crossways, right across the lower back, bowing around it in an unnatural manner.  Tarrin drove both swords into the branch above him as the Deva slid off the branch below head first, slowly, then somersaulted down into the tangle of branches below, bouncing off them at odd angles on his way down.

        Tarrin didn’t have long to consider things.  Another Deva posing as a Djinn raced in, and it was then that Tarrin understood that they were using magic to take an airborne form, all of them, because fighting him on the branches had proved to be difficult for them.  Tarrin had to curl up and around the branch above him to get out of the path of the Deva’s sabre, then he ducked another Deva, then had to jump clear as a third came at him from yet another angle.

        Too much open space.  They had too much room to fly.  He didn’t even glance, he simply vaulted up, pushed off a branch, then another, then another, rising higher and higher as he vaulted effortlessly from branch to branch, getting higher, where the branches beneath his feet became smaller, shorter, thinner, and their density thickened with every new branch he touched.  At first it was a simple matter of adjusting himself to reach the next branch, but the higher he went, the more branches there were to choose from, and the less room with which to maneuver.  He found himself slithering like a snake through the gaps in the branches as the Deva beneath gave chase, threading themselves through the holes and gaps at a faster speed than that which Tarrin could manage climbing, allowing them to slowly but steadily catch up.

        They caught up to him in a small hollow in the maze of brown, and the Were-cat immediately established that in this area, they had no advantage.  The branches to each side made it difficult for them to simply dart out of reach, for the multitude of branches about allowed the Were-cat to simply chase them as they backed off.  Two of them engaged Tarrin in that small hollow in the branches, and they were quickly put on the defensive.  The Were-cat was a whirlwind of explosive movements, falling on the pair like a Revenant in sight of his quarry, his two swords blurring in the confined space, seeking them out, forcing them to fence desperately to keep them away.  They faced him fearlessly, until he drove his right sword into the branch to his side, released it, and then spread out his fingers of that white-furred paw, claws out, and drove it right towards the torso of the nearer Deva.  That move, that action, caused instant panic in the two Deva, causing the one his paw attacked to hurtle backwards, slamming into several branches, breaking them in his desperate rush to avoid contact with that paw.  The other one, instead of fleeing, charged ahead in a frantic attempt to kill him before he could turn that deadly paw against him, lancing his sword in to stab Tarrin in the side, right under his arm.  Tarrin lunged backwards, his back hitting a crossing branch behind him, and he simply rolled over it as the Deva passed in front of him.  The Deva turned in his trajectory with unnatural agility and drove his sword at the Were-cat in a broad stroke, but Tarrin rolled clear of its arc, his feet coming down on the fork of the branch beneath.  He pushed off from that foundation, the Deva’s legs clearly in his vision as he exploded from under the branch.  The Deva tried to rise up and over the branch to stab him on the other side, but all he saw were the Were-cat’s feet disappearing under the branch.

        Tarrin grabbed hold of the Deva by the foot, and yanked it along as he slid along the branch, turning on the branch and whipping the Deva along with him, slamming him against the branch with stunning force.  Instead of letting go, Tarrin slammed him into a branch beside him as he regained his feet, slammed his head into a branch above them, then grabbed hold of that foot with both paws, spun in a circle, whipped the Deva behind him and then over his head, and then drove him directly towards his companion.  His companion tried to catch him or break his fall, causing him to impact his companion with stunning force.  Both of them were driven out of the cubby in an explosion of shattering branches and twigs, and Tarrin distinctly saw one grab the other, then both vanished in the blink of an eye.

        “Can’t teleport away without taking me with you as long as I have hold of you, can you Deva?” Tarrin asked absently to no one in an unholy voice, grabbing his sword and then climing up into denser and denser foliage, where he had to twist and turn, where there was no room to fight unless one had the agility and suppleness of a Were-cat.  He could see six of the Djinn-transformed Agathinon down under him, looking up, pointing, though they made no sounds.  They were obviously debating how to get at him, or calling on aid from others, or both.  But they didn’t hesitate for long.  In unison, all of them shimmered and blurred, their forms compacted, until he saw himself looking at six red-skinned, horned creatures wielding the weapons the Agathinon had been carrying them shrunk down as well.

        Mephits!  They were denizens of the Elemental planes, minor creatures, but some of them could innately fly, such as the Air and Fire mephits.  Those were Fire mephits, and they were small, quick, and agile.  They were perfect shapes for fighting in the terrain to which Tarrin had moved.

        They moved in a group, showing Tarrin two things.  First, that they were intelligent, very much so.  They knew that it was dangerous, almost suicidal, to try to fight him one on one, not when all he had to do was touch one of them to drive his paw in and try to take their souls.  Secondly, it showed him that they were adapting quickly to his tactics, learning, trying to exploit his decisions.  He still was puzzled over one thing, though.  Aside from one use of a very low-level wizard spell and their use of their ability to teleport, and this new shapechanging trick, they had not tried to use any magic at all.  Why?  Agathinon had innate magical powers, why weren’t they using them?  The only reason Tarrin could think of was that they were still trying to stop him instead of kill him.  They were trying to take the soul amulets he’d taken away from him, and it seemed to him that they were unwilling to escalate the matter beyond a certain point.  They didn’t want to make him furious and cause him to attempt to destroy the amulets, that was the nearest thing he could figure.  They had been trying to ambush him, and the one Deva who had actually managed to get through his defenses had not gone after him, he had instead tried to go after the amulet on his bracer.  And he also realized that they had not yet really tried anything overtly lethal.

        That had to be it.  Ironic, that.  They were in the same fix he was in with his looming fight with Spyder, unwilling to take it past a certain point, and struggling to come up with a way to achieve victory while remaining within the boundaries they had set for themselves.

        Tarrin sucked in his breath, reflexively turning his head to look towards his right.

        No, they’d been waiting.

        Tarrin could feel it even at that great distance, an aura of power.  There was a new Aasimon here, and it was not an Agathinon, or a Deva.  This one was tremendously powerful, so powerful that the divine part of Tarrin’s soul sensed its presence even from a distance.

        It was a Planetar.

        A Planetar, the captains and colonels of the ranks of the Deva.  They were beings of tremendous power, with a stunning array of innate magical abilities, both offensive and defensive, that made them terrifying foes.  They were the middle grade of Aasimon between the Deva and the Solar, field commanders who only appeared when things were seriously wrong.

        For the Deva, this situation classified as seriously wrong.  And so, they had summoned one of the heavy hitters of the Aasimon to help deal with the situation.

        Tarrin gave a slow, inward little smile.  Well, that proved that.  Now he knew that if he aggravated the Deva enough, or posed enough of a threat, they would summon a stronger Deva to assist.

        That was exactly what he wanted to know.  And what was more, now everything he needed to know was in place for the time when he had to go after a Solar.  His plan would work.  He already had the how and where planned, the only issue had been when.  And what he just learned settled the issue of when.  He could tackle a Solar whenever he was ready to undertake that task.

        The Agathinon, in their mephit forms, looked confident as they formed up some distance away, preparing to harry the Were-cat out of his sheltered cubby.  No doubt they already had a plan in place for driving him out into a position where the Planetar could appear and attack, and he had little doubt that the Planetar was not going to be as careful or as meticulous as the Agathinon.  That Planetar was here to fight, and that was exactly what he was going to bring to the table, not this careful, measured, restrained ballyhoo that the Agathinon were trying.

        Now it was time to show them that he had been holding back as well.  He hadn’t even used a fraction of his ability in this little confrontation, testing his ability to face the Deva without his powers, which was going to be important later on.  They had been holding back to protect the amulets of their brethren, but Tarrin had been holding back to ensure he could hold his own against Deva without using his powers.  He had only been forced to fall back on his powers once, and that had been a reflex action.  There were any number of ways he could have extricated that Agathinon off his back without resorting to his divine abilities.

        And now he knew.

        “Ko jzi BAKH zhee!” Tarrin intoned as he stood, then he stomped one foot on the branch, then another, completing the somatics of the Arcane spell.  His legs were suddenly imbued with great power, amplifying his own muscles, and it caused him to launch from the branch beneath him with such force that it splintered the branch at the trunk, breaking it.  Tarrin streaked upwards with his paws, wrists, and swords crossed before him to keep the slashing branches from hitting him in the face.  Tarrin exploded from the green sea of foliage, like an emerald ocean of leaves that rolled like waves in the gentle warm wind, lancing upwards like a crossbow bolt, exposing himself to the view of the twelve winged Deva circling high above the canopy to search him out.  As one, the twelve Deva, six pairs of them, banked and dove towards him, seeking to strike at him before he dropped back down into the foliage and vanished.  Tarrin’s upward momentum slowed, until he hung in midair for that split second where gravity overcame the power of his magically augmented jump.

        Now it was time to demonstrate the other side of the equation to the Deva that would cause the Solar to come to him on ground of his own choosing, at a time of his own choosing.

        In that instant of motionless, Tarrin closed his eyes and focused all his attention, all his willpower, inward.  He became keenly aware of the feel of the Demonic amulet against his left forearm, felt the dark stain of evil that pulsed within it, and he felt the power that it contained.  It was power that was his to command.

        He reached out with his will and touched that power.

        Instantly, he felt the dark taint of the Demon surge into him, try to go immediately into his soul to twist it, to transform him into a Bodak.  However, the taint found in this prey a mind, a will, a force, so strong that it was stopped, turned aside, and then that power grabbed hold of it and commanded it, forced it to listen, demanded it to submit.  The taint of Demon was taken aback at the raw force of will in this abomination, this being that was neither mortal nor god, a force of will so overwhelming that it was subjugated to that will before it could reach the soul.

        With a squeal of fury and fear, the taint of Demon retreated from its attempt to taint Tarrin’s soul and did as it was commanded.  It called upon the innate power of the vrock whose soul Tarrin had stolen, wrapped Tarrin within that power, and then teleported him away.

        And since the Deva could not track him, detect him, or locate him in any way, it meant that there was no way for them to know where he had gone, or even if he was still on the same plane of existence.

        The Deva hurtling towards him saw the Were-cat open his eyes, smile evilly, then simply vanish.  And even from that distance, they knew.  They knew that the Mortal God had somehow commanded the powers of a Demon using the soul amulet he had taken.

        And they knew then that he could do the same with the amulets he had taken from the Deva.

        They realized that now, there was a being lurking in the multiverse that could command the powers of darkness and light, of chaos and law, of good and evil, a being holding in his hands the power of both the Demons and the Deva, and a power that would only grow as he took more and more amulets, gained access to more and more power.

        And in that moment of awful clarity, they knew fear.

 

        Directly over his marking point, Tarrin Kael wavered into existence, but it was neither a majestic nor triumphant appearance.  His form appeared, and then immediately started plummeting towards the foliage canopy below as his mind swam in pain and shock, as the aftereffects of touching on the corruption of a Demon swam through his mind.  He was only dimly aware that he was falling towards the ground as he struggled to recover his senses, tried to clear the dark evil that tried to take up a residence in his mind.  For a long, torturous moment Tarrin struggled against the taint, until he managed to completely push it free of his mind, push it away from his soul, and regain his faculties enough to understand what was happening to him.

        Wings erupting from his back, his power arrested his fall, slowed him down to where he could pick a thin area of vegetation and slip through.  He ghosted down through the many branches, down hundreds of spans, until his feet made gentle contact with the mossy earth.

        Goddess, what a horrifying sensation!  In the moment he called on the power in the amulet, it opened a window into the mind, body, and soul of a Demon.  In that fleeting instant, it was like he was a Demon, full of dark intent.  It was like worms crawling through his soul, and it was not a sensation he would enjoy repetitively.

        Putting a paw to his head, he banished the last vestiges of the sensation out of his mind, but he was fully aware of the feel that the taint itself was still there, still lurking within him like a toxic shadow.  There was that feeling of lingering corruption, and then there was the burning in his left paw and arm.  He looked down at it, and saw that his paw looked as it always did, with black fur and pads, but the claws of his paw were now blood red, where before they had always been beige.

        Just like sticking his arm into the dimension of the Deva had changed it, touching the evil of a Demon had left a visible mark on him.  He looked at his arm for long moments, turning it to and fro to ensure that the only change was the color of his claws.  He then held up his white-furred arm with its golden claws and compared it.  One touched by the power of ultimate good, the other tainted by the power of ultimate evil.  Just as Mother Wynn had warned, using the power of the amulet had opened himself to that power; even now he could feel the faint stirrings of that darkness inside him, trying to linger, trying to fester, but unable to find any purchase within his body, mind, or soul.

        But, if Mother Wynn was right, he could protect himself from that taint, from becoming a Bodak, by calling on the power of the amulet of a Deva.  By balancing his use of them, he could protect himself from both the taint of the Demons and the purity of the Deva.

        Good and evil, law and chaos, all contained within the left and right arms of a powerless god with a mortal’s mind.  Such were the ironies that summed up the wry sense of humor of existence.

        There were other things to do than stand there and fret over something over which he had no control, and he’d been taught long ago that if you couldn’t do anything about it, leave it be and get on with the things you could do something about.  He couldn’t do anything about the invasion of the powers of the universe into his body, but he could go find a Mortai and find out where the One was hiding.

        And that was exactly what he was going to do.

        It took him only half an hour to track down an animal denizen of this plane, who was both polite and helpful, even taking him to where the boundary between the Realm of Day and the Realm of Twilight was located.  The dog-sized rabbit wished him well and then bounded off, leaving him to stare at a dark hollow in a massive tree that had to be fifty spans across and reach four hundred spans into the sky, a deep bole that was dark within, its interior hidden.  Tarrin grabbed the edge of the bole and put a foot on the lip, looking into it, testing the air.  There was a curious dryness to the air in the bole, unnatural for a dark, enclosed space.  He stepped into it and felt the darkness swallow him up, blocking out all light.  There was no gravity, and he felt himself floating within that darkness for long seconds.  He was beginning to get a little nervous and unsettled, but then light appeared before him, a tiny pinprick of light, but it grew rapidly before his eyes.  He realized he was moving towards the light, and that light was the opening on the other side, the entry into the Realm of Twilight, the second layer of the planes of the Happy Hunting Grounds.

        At first he thought he would cata