Chapter 19

The tunnel was very long, very dark, and was roughly circular in shape. It descended down into the heart of the volcano, and every step that Tarrin took brought him down deeper into the depths of the place, where the air became hotter and hotter, and the smell of sulfur, smoke, fire, and brimstone burned more and more at his nose and eyes. The stone beneath the pads on his feet grew warmer and warmer, but there was very little sound in the tunnel but the sound of his own breathing. At the end of the tunnel there was a very faint, wavering red light, barely visible it was so far away. Tarrin reasoned that the tunnel had to be more than a longspan in length.

There was more and more fear now. Every step down into the heart of the volcano took him further and further away from the surface, and the alien environment of the tunnel unnerved him. The bolstering he had felt at Dolanna's gesture had faded, and every step down deeper into the volcano was one more step away from his friends, away from their support. He was alone now, beyond their aid, beyond their reassurance. Whatever lay waiting for him at the end of the tunnel, he would have to face it, conquer it, alone.

Alone. He was alone. The sense of the Goddess was still distant, blocked by the Ward. Always before, she had been there for him, with him, watching over him. She wasn't there now. It was almost like being a child again, knowing he was in trouble and not having mother there to save him. Not even she could help him here, help him now. It was a situation of the most desolate loneliness he had ever experienced, and that alien feeling caused him fear. Fear itself was not a strange emotion, but this unnatural need to have others near annoyed and confused the Cat, and felt them extraneous.

He was depending on the Cat now. Its mentality would serve him well by making him ready for anything, living in the moment, his every sense awake and alert. It caused him to creep slowly along the tunnel, for there was no need to rush. Not here, not now. When facing an unknown, it was best to learn as much about it as possible before committing to a course of action. Even the Cat understood this, adhered to this, and it caused him to pick his way very carefully, like a cat stalking prey, moving with a slow sureness that made no sound and caused no sudden movements that may catch the eye.

Glancing back, he saw that the light at the opening of the tunnel was no longer visible. The tunnel had curved slightly a while back, hiding the opening from him now. Perhaps it was best that he couldn't see the opening, couldn't dwell on it. He couldn't go back. Not now. Too much was depending on this. No matter what happened, no matter what he ended up facing at the end of that tunnel, only one thought raced through his mind.

I must not fail.

Failure was not an option. If Tarrin couldn't defeat the Guardian, then he doubted that any of the others could either. And they would try. If he didn't come back within a reasonable amount of time, they were going to try. And they would come down here, one by one, and die. He couldn't allow that. It was a masked blessing to him that he had to come alone, because it meant that none of the others were going to be in any danger. None of the others could get killed. But if he failed, they were going to come, and they would probably die.

And that was only his friends. If he failed, someone else may get the Firestaff. And if they used it, then everyone he cared for would be in danger. His children, his two loves, Mist, Triana, Janette, his parents, his sisters, his friends. Everyone would be in danger, and it would all be his fault. He couldn't allow that, not under any circumstances.

No, there was absolutely no room for error in this. This is what the Goddess had tasked him to do. This is why the Tower had him turned Were. This is what he had devoted his life to accomplishing. Everything that had been happening in the West for nearly ten years all boiled down to this place, this time, this event. The ki'zadun had planned for ten years to prevent this, but they failed. The Tower had searched for years to find him, so he could be there at that moment and do what he was doing now. The Goddess had gone far beyond what she afforded other mortals with him, being his friend, building his trust in her, being there for him and supporting him, just so he would obey her and take up the quest, so he could be where he was now, acting as her champion, striving to protect the world from being ravaged in the throes of a war between gods. The eyes of man and god both, if they could perceive them, would be fixed upon him at this moment, as he stepped out of the end of the tunnel and faced the final obstacle set in his path, the final challenge to overcome.

This was the time. This was the place. There was no more need for planning or traveling, searching or solving puzzles. All that was said and done. Now it came down to one confrontation, and the result of it would probably alter the course of the future of the entire world.

The light at the end of the tunnel grew brighter and brighter. It looked like firelight, and the heat was becoming stronger and stronger. It was already hot enough to boil water in the tunnel, and the heat was getting greater as he reasoned that he was getting closer to the source of the heat. There was no wind in the tunnel, as it was blocked by the barrier at the top, making it stale and thick with the smell of brimstone, sulfur, and smoke. That defeated his sense of smell, and it also burned at his eyes a little, forcing him to stop from time to time and wipe his eyes with the fur on the back of his paw. His eyes did slowly become accustomed to the acrid air, and as the opening of the tunnel loomed larger and larger before him, he found he could focus on it.

He could hear sounds now. A bubbling sound, and a whooshing sound, and a hissing sound, like water on fire. He was about fifty spans from the end of the tunnel, and he could see that it opened onto a level area that blocked him from seeing anything of the chamber into which it opened. Tarrin dropped down to all fours and crept down the angled passageway with agonizing slowness, moving a single limb at a time, curiosity starting to seep into the relentless anxiety and fear that he'd been feeling as he walked down the tunnel. Going down headfirst let him see more and more of the landing as he got closer and closer. Twenty spans. Fifteen spans. He could see a landing of rock now, and more light. Ten spans. It was a wide landing, the rock irregular at the mouth of the tunnel. Five spans. The landing seemed to drop off, and he could make out red-illuminated rock behind it. He slowly crept down to where he could see out level, and he had to gape in amazement.

The tunnel opened into a vast chamber in the heart of the volcano, nearly a longspan wide. The roof of the massive chamber was a dome of volcanic rock, the roof of which probably formed the caldera at the top of the volcano on the outside. The light was from lava, and the landing to which the tunnel opened was nothing but a wide ledge on the edge of that lava lake, lava that had gouts of gas and flame erupt from it from time to time. There were glowing boulders of rock dispersed through the lava, the solid rock smoking and hissing as the heat of the lava sought to melt it. The lava formed a moat of sorts around an island in the center, roughly circular with irregular edges. The island's middle was gone, melted by lava from underneath, forming a ring of lava around a ring of island which enclosed a pool of lava, which had a single spire of rock jutting up from the middle of it, a hundred spans high.

And there, at the top of that spire of rock, protected by deadly lava, was the Firestaff.

It looked to be hovering in midair just a span over the tip of the spire, and Tarrin was a little surprised. He had never really tried to imagine what it would look like, and if he had, he would have been disappointed. It was a piece of reddish wood, or at least something that looked like wood, like cedar or cherry or firesap. It looked remarkably nondescript. But at closer inspection, as he wiped his eyes again to clear the tears from them and peered at it, he saw a wispy tongue of flame licking at the top of the staff, dancing over the surface without seeming to consume the wood. If that was what it was. He also realized that it was emitting a soft white radiance about it, drawing his eye, which hadn't been apparent before with all the light cast by the glowing lava. Tarrin realized that the Firestaff was sitting directly in a very large Conduit, probably the main Conduit that fed this enclosed area of the Weave. The Conduit rose right out of the volcano, through the Firestaff, and then terminated into an explosion of strands just before it reached the roof of the chamber. Tarrin had never seen the end of a Conduit before. It was like a tree trunk that yielded itself to the many branches beyond it.

Tarrin froze and looked around. He saw nothing that could be classified as a living thing in the chamber. No Giants, no Catoblepas, no Salamanders or Fire Elementals. No lava slugs—if they really existed, Tarrin felt that maybe Phandebrass was pulling his leg about that one—no nothing at all. Granted, it was a big chamber, but he could see almost all of it. And there was nothing there.

Tarrin smelled smoke, and realized that the heat was getting to his leather clothing. He wove a quick spell and released it into the leather, fortifying it against the heat of the lava, making it resistant to fire. Getting his clothes burned off wouldn't be a good thing, especially if there was a guardian, and it thought it amusing to face a naked opponent. Tarrin had no modesty, but to be laughed at was another matter entirely.

No Guardian, though. At least nothing that he could see or hear. Was Camara Tal right? Had the Guardian actually died after five thousand years?

It was a possibility, but he wasn't going to assume it to be true. Tarrin remembered the Demon that came out of nowhere when he went after the Book of Ages, how it had very nearly killed Sarraya because she rushed headlong into the chamber without thinking about the possible danger. Tarrin was not going to make the same mistake. He may see his goal and not see a defender, but that didn't mean that there wasn't one lurking around somewhere.

He crept out of the tunnel slowly and carefully, slinking out onto the ledge while still on all fours. He would not stand up and draw attention to himself. He looked over the ledge and got superheated blasted in his face, drying his eyes, and had he not been immune to fire, it would have boiled his eyes right out of their sockets. There was lava about fifteen spans down from the ledge, and the stone under his pads was so hot that it would have set fire to clothing or parchment placed atop it. His leather breeches would have burst into flames if he put his knees down on the ledge, had he not used Sorcery to protect them.

Still no sign of an adversary. Tarrin pondered for a moment how to get across the lava. It looked like the consistency of thick mud, and while it couldn't burn him, it could still quite effectively drown him. He didn't think it would be a good idea to try to swim across it. The idea of using Sorcery to cross did occur to him, but if something did jump out at him, he didn't want to be caught high in the air and at the mercy of something that may be able to fly.

Using Sorcery would work, and still allow him to keep his feet on the ground—as it were—where he would feel most in control. Using a weave of pure Fire, Tarrin sucked the heat out of the lava directly before him, diffusing its energy into the Weave. The result was that the lava suddenly crusted over and solidified, then hissed savagely as the lava beneath it sought to heat it. The cooled lava suddenly split in half with a loud crack, so loud it startled him nearly into falling off the ledge. Tarrin had never expected it to do that! He looked around desperately for a moment, fearful the noise alerted some hidden lurker, but there was still no sign of an opponent and no movement from anywhere in the chamber.

But his idea would work. Using the same weave, he sucked the heat out of the lava on the surface and to a depth of about five spans down, over a width of about five spans, and across from the ledge to the island, forming a solid bridge between the base of the ledge and the solid ring island in the center. It was about a thousand span walk from the edge to the island, and the rock bridge he created was already starting to break and undulate as the dynamic lava beneath it churned.

Dropping down onto his unstable creation, Tarrin realized that speed of movement was going to be necessary to get across without falling in. He'd never swam in lava before, and he didn't think that this was a good time to try it and see what it was like. So he rose up onto his legs and moved both quickly and trying to be quiet, dancing along the broken sections of his rock bridge as they rose and fell in the hellish tides of the boiling lava. Despite the shifting of the rocks, he managed to get across both quickly and gracefully, jumping up the ten spans from the surface of the lava to the top of the rock island without much difficulty. As soon as he alighted, he again dropped down onto all fours and surveyed the ringed island thoroughly.

It was the same as it looked before. Relatively flat but with enough knobs and protrusions to make footing tricky in some places. Its interior sections were noticeably lower than the edges, almost as if some Giant had scooped out the middle with a great spade. Spats of cooled lava along the edges formed irregular formations and grooved or ridged rock along those borders, where bubbles of lava spat chunks of the gooey substance up onto the island, and it would cool, harden, and build up the rock. That was why the edges of the ringed island were higher than the middle.

His gaze rose higher and higher, until he looked up at the Firestaff. It was so close now! Just a little more, and he would have it!

No rushing. He told himself that over and over, conjuring an image of that Demon swiping Sarraya right out of the air and holding it firmly in his mind. Haste could get him killed, and this was no time to die. Not when he was almost in physical reach of his goal! It couldn't be this easy. There had to be something here. Maybe he had to get closer to the Firestaff before it would show itself and challenge him.

And so, with painstaking care, setting each foot or paw on the ground as if it would break through and cast him down into a bottomless pit, Tarrin slowly and cautiously shuffled his way towards the inner pool of lava, towards the Firestaff. He stopped almost every time he set down a foot or paw, staying on all fours, and swept the area with his eyes to look for any change, any sign of motion. Before he made his next move forward, he would carefully check the rock for any sign of foreign material. He would not be blindsided, and he would not fall into a trap.

About halfway across, as he looked down to check the ground, he noticed something that stood out. It was red, like glowing lava, and it was wedged into the rock. He pinched it with his claws and yanked it out, and found himself staring at a roughly diamond-shaped thing about the size of a small book, with chipped edges. It was scarlet, like dark blood, and it had the hardness and consistency of stone.

Tarrin peered at it for a very long moment, until a memory tickled him, a memory that made his blood absolutely run cold.

That thing was a scale. And it had the same shape as the scales on the drakes. But where theirs were the size of flakes of snow, this one was as big as a book. It had to be a hundred times larger than Sapphire's scales… and that meant that it had to be a hundred times bigger than Sapphire.

Tarrin stood up, forgetting himself, holding the scale in front of him with both curiosity and fear in his eyes. What could have shed something like this? He couldn't smell anything off of it, so covered over with the smells of the volcano it was, and it looked very, very old. It was chipped and nicked and scratched, and it just didn't seem like it was fresh. If it really was that big, then where was it? There was nowhere something so huge could hide in here. There was nothing but flat rock and lava. What was it doing, hiding in the rock itself?

No matter if it was there or not, it spooked Tarrin badly. He stopped where he was and looked up at the Firestaff, almost yearning for it now that it was so close. Maybe, he considered, he should stop thinking like a Were-cat and start thinking like a Sha'Kar. He didn't have to get any closer to it than this to recover it. Sorcery could bring it to him, and since he knew it was safe the way he came, he could retreat back that way and get out of the caldera before anything happened.

It was worth a try. What could it hurt?

Setting his feet, he considered what spell to use. An Air weave would be simplest and easiest. That would be best. He set his will against the Weave and pulled out flows of Air and Divine, readying to create a net of soft Air to capture the floating Firestaff and bring it towards him.

There was a rumbling beneath his feet.

Tarrin stopped what he was doing and felt the tremors beneath his pads. Was it an earthquake? Was the volcano about to erupt? He looked around, and saw no Guardian. There was nothing there. He realized that it had to be an earthquake. They happened all the time around volcanoes. He was just getting jumpy. He bent himself back to the task at hand, and looked up at the Firestaff. He set his will against the Weave—

And then hell exploded in his face.

He was staggered back as the lava in the pool between him and the Firestaff erupted in a massive geyser of spraying, flying lava, and the rock beneath his feet shuddered and vibrated from the power of the eruption. But the mass of the eruption didn't scatter as the lava did, and it caught his eye. Two dark masses spread out from the central one, above and to the sides of it. Tarrin backed up a few more paces as the dark mass seemed to rise even higher, and then it dropped slightly. Tarrin felt the stone under his pads rock as if the caldera dome had fallen down on it. The dark mass loomed more and more as the lava of the geyser fell away.

And that was when he saw the eyes.

Eyes as big as the Twin Moons at zenith, eyes bigger than kite shields, two amber, serpentine eyes that stared down at him from an unfathomable height, so far above him, blocking his view of the Firestaff.

Tarrin gave ground, trying to fight a sudden wave of mindless panic. The Cat, for the first time ever, fled from him, unable to comprehend, to face, to stand against what now rose before him in all its terrible, majestic glory.

It was a dragon!

Dumbstuck, absolutely shocked, and almost terrified into insensibility, Tarrin gaped at the monstrous beast as its incredibly huge forepaws shifted on the edge of the rock pool. It was so huge! He could only see half its body, and the tips of its wings were higher up than the Firestaff was! It had to be five hundred spans long! Covered in iridescent red and scarlet scales, the titanic replica of the drakes looked down at him with those huge eyes, regarding him, assessing him. It had the same general build as Sapphire, with the wings and the long, serpentine neck, and the backswept horns over those massive eyes. It had a boxed snout, unlike Sapphire, with flares at the tip for nostrils and containing a huge maw full of teeth that were as long as bastard sword blades. It too had spines growing down the backbone, as well as hair-like tendrils that grew in tufts between the bony spines. Those tufts of tendril were also under its chin, giving it the appearance of having a dark red beard of sorts.

Tarrin felt as nothing compared to something so absolutely immense, like a flea staring up at an angry dog that it had just bitten. He would fit in the grasp of its forepaw! It could swallow him whole with no effort!

How was he supposed to fight something like that?

It shifted, and he saw the Firestaff again, right between its wings. No! He couldn't give up now! He couldn't bow to fear! His children were depending on him! His mother, his mates, his parents, his sisters, they all needed him! He couldn't give up!

No matter how big it was, if it could bleed, then it could die. He realized that he just had to survive long enough to figure out how to kill it.

Sorcery. He couldn't fight something that big with claws. He had to use Sorcery!

Screwing up his courage, Tarrin set his feet apart and stared up at it, hopefully without an expression of terror marring his attempt to stand against it. He felt the nearness of the Conduit, felt it singing in his soul, and he reached out to that power—

—And it was not there.

Tarrin blinked in shock. He could feel it, but it was as if something had set itself between him and the Weave! He tried again, and felt the Weave dissolve away from him, as if something had grabbed it and pulled it beyond his grasp.

He didn't understand. What was happening? His power had never failed him before! No, wait, he had felt that once before, a long time ago. It was a city, with strange devices called cranes. He was hiding on top of a warehouse, hiding from Triana—

Triana.

Tarrin backed up even more as the dragon seemed to comprehend, and it looked amused.

That thing was a Druid!

It moved with a speed that defied imagination. Nothing that big should have been able to move that fast. Tarrin barely registered it through his shock and dismay, his consuming chagrin that the dragon could block his power, and just barely managed to dive aside as one of its forepaws blasted into the rock right where he'd been standing. The ground shook as if an earthquake had struck and bits of rock flew in every direction, pelting him stingingly, and that pain shocked him back to reality. It was a Druid. He couldn't do anything about that. But he couldn't give up! Not now! He rolled to his feet and turned tail to the dragon, dashing back towards the outer ring of lava. That thing was half in, half out of the inner pool, and the time it would take it to get up onto the ring would buy him precious time. His mind worked feverishly as he ran through his options. It wasn't attacking him with magic, so it seemed content to use its vastly superior physical advantage to finish him. And it was vast. One blow would finish him, regeneration or no regeneration. It had just proven its speed to him, and if it was anything like Sapphire, it would also be deceptively agile and surprisingly light on its feet. Everything about it was a weapon. The forepaws and the mouth were the major ones, but a strike from that long, long tail would cut him in half, and a blow from those wings would send him flying. There was no safe approach to try to get close to something with its incredible physical size and power. Its advantages were speed, power, sheer size, and its Druidic ability to cut him off from the Weave.

Tarrin's advantages were agility, a little bit of insanity, and the fact that he had other magical means at his disposal.

To the dragon's surprise, Tarrin turned in midstride and summoned his sword from the elsewhere. If he could keep it a little off balance, maybe he could survive long enough to come up with a plan. That meant that he would need to do the unexpected, make it pause to try to figure him out. And turning and attacking something that was so overwhelmingly superior would definitely make it think.

The dragon had climbed up onto the rock, and he realized that all its vital organs were hanging about twenty spans over his head. It was so big that when it reared up on its hind legs, the only thing he could possibly strike were its legs and tail. A blow there would only irritate it. It leaned forward, looming over him like a mountain of death, and he sensed more than saw that forepaw hurtling towards him. He slipped aside with barely room to spare, nearly losing his footing as the stone beneath his feet buckled from the crushing impact and dust and bits of stone shrapnel shot out from the dragon's paw. He reflexively slashed his sword across its scaly wrist as he ran by at full speed, slicing the scales neatly and getting a satisfying eruption of blood from the wound for his troubles. The dragon recoiled its forepaw with a hiss of surprise, but Tarrin still rushed madly towards its main body. He jumped over the whipping tail, moving so fast it cracked the air like a whip, evaded another forepaw crushing into the ground, then literally dove between its jaws as it tried to snap over him. He rolled and came up running, getting closer and closer to its soft underbelly, the target of his mad rush.

The dragon reared up a bit more and then flexed its wings sharply, beating them down. The sudden blast of wind picked up the ash and dust and smoke from the chamber and hurled it into the air, stinging at Tarrin's eyes. He faltered in his charge, and just barely managed to sense the oncoming of another forepaw. He jumped aside as it slammed into the rock, and he sliced another bleeding gash in that same forepaw as it tried to withdraw it. It beat its wings again, kicking up more ash and dust, and Tarrin had to turn his back to that onslaught to protect his eyes, running at full speed to the side of the dragon, his frontal charge thwarted. He got out to where the dust and ash weren't so thick and immediately turned around, found the body of the dragon hazy and partially concealed by the cloud of dust and ash. If he could get close enough to throw the sword, he may have enough force behind it to—

—he never saw it coming. The dragon's tail whipped around its body, coming out of that concealing cloud of dust with terrific speed, and the tip of it hit Tarrin squarely on the side. Bones shattered as his body was bent in double around the very tip, a wave of agony as split skin sprayed blood and bits of bone onto the stone to hiss and bubble from the heat. He was virtually catapulted across the chamber, sailing a hundred spans in the air after his broken body came free of the tail, and he slammed so hard into one of the jutting boulders of rock rising out of the outer lava pool that it split in twain. The impact knocked him senseless, and he was only dimly aware of his body falling into the mud-like lava, sinking down into it as liquid rock seeped into the hideous wound in his side. Somehow, he wasn't sure how, he had protected his head. He could feel his regeneration already at work repairing the ghastly damage done to him, and he was honestly surprised that the blow from the tail, whipping with such incredible force, had not torn him in half. He felt like he'd been ripped in half, that was certain. He lay partially in the lava, its gooey nature allowing him to sink only very slowly, then he clawed at it with a ragged intake of breath as his lungs were restored to the point where he could breathe again. He clambered across the surface of the lava, half swimming half crawling on its elastic surface back towards the ring of rock, which only about ten spans from where he landed.

There was no fear now. The pain scoured it out of him, and left him calm, almost emotionless. He had to come up with some way to fight the dragon, or it was going to kill him. There was no way he could attack it physically, and he couldn't use Sorcery.

But he'd bet that it didn't know that he was also a Druid. A wild plan formed in his mind, a crazy scheme that probably didn't have a prayer of succeeding.

That would work. After all, what other choice did he have?

The dragon's greatest advantage was its titanic size. Tarrin had to eliminate that advantage, either physically or forcing it into a situation where it couldn't use that size against him.

It regarded him with some surprise as Tarrin clawed his way out of the lava pool and back up onto the ring of stone. There was still an unnatural bulge on one side of his torso as his regeneration sorted out the massive damage done to his midsection, having to grow new organs to replace ones virtually liquefied by the impact of the tail. His skin split and grisly blood and ichor spewed from that bulge as his body purged itself of the excess matter. Tarrin reached within, through the Cat, and made a connection to the boundless energy of the All. Firstly, he Summoned his sword back to his paw, and then he touched it again with a new image and intent clear in his mind.

The dragon seemed startled when Tarrin used Druidic power, and it suddenly sucked in its breath.

Tarrin tried to concentrate on what he was doing, but it seemed like hell itself blasted out of the dragon's open mouth, a withering inferno of intense fire that roared towards him. It could do him no harm, but the sight of it startled him badly, so badly that he lost his concentration. The All, still in touch with him, lost his image and his intent, picking up on the first wild thought that crossed Tarrin's mind. It was the worst thing that a Druid could have happen, to lose concentration and have the All read what was not intended. It often had disastrous results.

The fire could not hurt him, but the physical force it exerted against him was like trying to stand in the face of a tidal wave. Tarrin was picked up off his feet and hurled backwards. That caused the first wild thought to cross his mind, an attempt to stop himself from falling back into the lava, and the All picked up this thought, puzzled on the lack of image, the lack of direction that usually accompanied a Druid's use of its power, and then simply decided to accomplish the task in a manner of its own choosing.

Tarrin felt the power of the All blast through him like an avalanche as an enormous amount of energy used him as a conduit to the material world. Behind him, a large patch of the lava lake turned solid in the blink of an eye, a circular area nearly fifty spans across.

Tarrin landed hard on his back on that newly cooled stone and rolled to a stop, feeling completely drained. That damned clever dragon! It felt him use Druidic magic, and had breathed that fire at him to scare him into losing his concentration! He saw it advancing on him, but the amusement was gone from its face. He felt it touch the All itself, and he realized if he didn't do something fast, it was going to do something very nasty.

He tried again, trying to ignore the dragon. He closed his eyes, centered himself on his Druidic magic. He reached to it through the Cat, felt it make touch with him. His image was pure thought, pure need, and his intent very simple.

The Weave is part of the All, he told himself. So I should be able to touch the Weave through the All!

It was an idea elegant for its simplicity. Tarrin felt the All shudder at his idea, at his command, and for a moment he felt it… crawling. And then he felt it, sensed it, touched it. The power of the Weave roared up through the All like a fountain of life, and he drank it in like a man dying of thirst in the desert. The power of Sorcery filled him, being channeled through a protective sheathe of Druidic power, which insulated it from any attempt to cut him off from it. He filled himself with the power of the Weave, the power of the Goddess, a power that made him suck in his breath as his entire body exploded into Magelight, and then that Magelight formed the four-pointed star that marked a sui'kun holding power near or at his maximum.

It was like trying to control a hurricane inside him, but he was fully aware that if he did not do something right now, the dragon was going to kill him. He opened his eyes and found that the dragon was taken aback, a look of intense concentration on its face now. He felt it use its power, sensed it as a magical attack of raw power, but of monstrous proportions. This dragon could give Triana lessons in Druidic magic! Tarrin countered with a counterspell of Sorcery, that chaotic weave of Fire, Air, Water, Divine power, and token flows of the other spheres to grant his weave the power of High Sorcery. With a primal scream, an audible declaration that he was not about to lay down and die for its benefit, Tarrin raised his free paw unleashed his weave just as the visible magic erupted from the dragon's outstretched forepaws.

The power of the All struck the power of Sorcery, and in their meeting came a spectacular explosion of force. A gigantic broiling ball of pure energy expanded between Druid and Sorcerer, and then it detonated like a keg of gunpowder. The entire volcano rocked and shuddered, great blocks of stone dropped from the domed ceiling. Tarrin quickly shielded himself from the wave of magical fire with a shield of Air, felt it eating at the integrity of its protection as he was engulfed in the magical chaos caused by the collision of two such powerful magical forces.

After it cleared, the air between the dragon and the Were-cat was literally alive with wild magical currents, as the two of them continued to hurl magical power at one another, trying to break the stalemate. Fist clenched so tightly around the sword that Tarrin lost feeling in his fingers, he kept drawing on the Weave through the All, feeling the exertion quickly, struggling against the stress and demands that using two orders of magic simultaneously were placing on him. Tarrin dropped the sword and put both paws out, as if using the other paw would give him more push, teeth tightly clenched as spots danced before his eyes, so fully he committed to the assault. He drew on the power of the Weave faster than the All could siphon it from the Weave, and he realized that it was just too inefficient and exhausting to do what he was doing. If only he could touch the Weave directly! But the spell the dragon placed had not lost its energy yet, and he could do nothing until it consumed its reserves and was exhausted.

It was winning. It was winning! Tarrin felt its power push against him, crush down on him, forcing him to commit more and more just to holding it back. His concentration began to suffer, and he realized that that was what it was trying to do! It could tell that he was using Druidic magic and Sorcery at the same time, so it was again trying to disrupt his concentration. He had to break this contest, but it took everything he had to keep its power off of him. He couldn't even move!

A flash of memory, a fight in a domed room, with a book in its center. How similar it was to this, he realized! He remembered that Demon, how it confounded him with its ability to Teleport. It—

Why, Teleport, of course. How else would we travel?

In an instant, the echo of how that was done touched him. It was a complicated spell, requiring more power than someone not da'shar could bring to bear.

With a ragged scream, Tarrin redoubled his efforts and pushed against the dragon's power with all his might. He felt it give ground to him, finger by finger, little by little, until he had actually started turning the tide. But instead of pressing his advantage, Tarrin suddenly withdrew his power from the contest and turned it into the weave of Mind, Divine, Earth, Water, and Air, the flows weaving themselves together around him like a cocoon even as the dragon's power suddenly roared back at him without resistance. Tarrin finished the spell and snapped it down around him. He felt it reach out to his target area, felt tendrils of Air and Earth enclose an area on the other side of the spell—

—and they exchanged.

There was no flash, no sense of motion. First he was looking the dragon's power in the face, and then he was standing behind the dragon, still crouched down with his paws out, as if to push the power away. The dragon's power slammed into the rock where he'd been and destroyed it in an angry explosion of fire and flying stone. The dragon didn't sense this sudden shift in his position, and the dust and debris of the explosion would keep its attention off of him for a few critical seconds. The battle of power with the dragon had drained him, weakened him, and he needed time to recover, time for its choking spell to wane so he could touch the Weave without having to go through the All. He couldn't capitalize on his advantage quite yet. He first though to just grab the Firestaff and Teleport back into the tunnel mouth, but he remembered the poem's warning. If he died touching it with that dragon still here, then he would accomplish nothing. Not wanting to risk Summoning his sword and giving away his position, Tarrin turned and ran behind the dragon, towards the Firestaff, and then shapeshifted into cat form and hid under a large rock protrusion. Panting from exertion, he tried to regather himself, tried to buy time. He knew it was a terrible risk to be in cat form right now, for he'd given away his mobility, the only thing that would save him from the dragon's massive forepaws. But it would see him if he stayed in his normal form, and he needed the time.

He needed time!

Then, to his horror, the dragon spoke.

"Clever move," it said in flawless Sha'Kar, an impressed voice, a voice so deep that it vibrated the rock beneath his paws. "I can smell you in here, invader. Trying to delay the inevitable? Or simply buying time to recover?"

Tarrin felt the shuddering of the rock under him. The dragon was moving, each monstrous paw coming down and shaking the island with its tremendous weight. The sound of its voice shifted as he realized it was moving its head great distances on that long, serpentine neck. "You're not invisible," it mused. "I would sense your power. You're too large to hide behind a rock. You're da'shar, so you may be hiding in the lava. It can't harm you any more than it can harm me. Yes, that would make sense. But you're also a Druid, and a very clever one at that. I never thought you'd think of something like drawing the Weave through the All. You are a worthy opponent. It's a pity I must kill you."

The shuddering grew stronger and stronger, and he realized that the dragon had turned around, and was moving in his direction. He fought a Cat-induced impulse to flee in panic, to run and climb high, climb out of its reach. If he moved, it would see him! He hunkered down on his belly, still panting from the exertion as well as from more than a little terror, feeling very small, very vulnerable, and as if it was going to step on him at any moment.

"Two orders of magic," it mused. "I never thought I'd see that in a biped. You must be Fae-da'Nar. Were, from the look of you, but a type of Were-kin I've never seen before. I know I took a lot out of you. Using both of your magical gifts at the same time? I'm impressed you could even manage it. A Were-kin needing time to recover will always revert to his instincts, and I'd say your first instinct was to hide. So, are you cowering in your animal form in here, my worthy adversary?" it asked in a conversational voice. "Trying to recover your strength and challenge me again?"

Tarrin felt his heart seize. It was as smart as it was powerful!

"Say, about… here?"

Tarrin scrambled forward just as the rock over his head was shattered into fine dust by the huge forepaw of the dragon. The shockwave it caused sent him flying, and he shapeshifted back into his base form even as he tumbled through the air. He barely managed to come down on his feet, and was off to the races, trying to get out of reach of that hundred-span long tail, a weapon that gave the dragon a reach that extended almost over the entire ring of rock. He could hear it whistling, he knew that it was coming.

He knew that it was coming.

Tarrin scanned both sides of him, and then he saw it. A blur of red, glowing in the light of the lava, coming from his right side. Tarrin swerved quickly to his right and Summoned his sword to him. He could see it now uncoiling, lashing out at him.

Bracing himself with his feet, digging his claws into the rock beneath him, Tarrin turned his sword before him vertically and braced the tip of the blade against his other arm before him and locked his elbows, presenting a deadly cutting edge to that whipping tail. The dragon didn't react to his sudden change of tactics quickly enough, as it tried to raise its lashing tail over the Were-cat's sword. Tarrin was knocked to the ground with dragon blood sprayed all over him as two spans of his sword dug into the tail as it tried to go over him. The arm bracing the top of the sword was broken from the impact, and as the dragon roared in sudden pain, Tarrin grabbed the arm and wrenched it back into place, feeling a shockwave of pain.

He grabbed his sword from where it had fallen to the ground and sprinted away, feeling refreshed enough to try to use Sorcery again.

"Agh, damn clever!" the dragon growled. "Audo mosenthi gratta—"

Tarrin almost fell down in shock. The dragon was casting a Wizard spell! He knew the sound of those words, he heard Kimmie mutter them all the time!

"—montho compendus sensi ingratia!"

Everything turned insane. The floor and the cavern walls began to undulate wildly to his eyes, the floor beneath him buckled and rolled like he was standing on the surface of a churning sea. The scents in his nose went wild as he smelled grass, then rabbits, then humans, then wood, then honey. The bubbling and hissing sounds in the cavern took on a surreal quality as they grew louder and softer, then started sounding like things that made no sense, like pans banging together, then a baby's crying, then the laughter of an old man, then the sound of wind blowing through tree branches and rustling leaves. Tarrin teetered like a drunken sailor trying to cross the deck in a hurricane, staggering this way and that as the floor tried to throw him off his feet. Only by supreme concentration and his Were agility did he keep his feet, but the assault of nonsense to his ears, eyes, and nose distracted and confused the Were-cat, nearly to the point of blind terror. Tarrin was a being completely ruled by his senses, for they defined his reality in a way that no human could comprehend. The Cat roared up into his mind in confusion, unable to make sense of the avalanche of bizarre things it was seeing, hearing, smelling, interfering with his rational mind at the worst possible time. Dimly, Tarrin realized that the dragon's spell wasn't causing reality to go crazy, it was attacking his senses.

Fighting a wave of sudden panic, Tarrin realized that the dragon was going to use this moment of incapacity to crush him. With a speed born of pure self-preservation, Tarrin reached within, through the Cat, and the instant he felt his connection to the All, he caused it to bring forth the power of Sorcery. He wove that same spell again, Mind, Divine, Air, Water, and Earth, and wrapped it around himself. It exchanged space with an area on the far side of the cavern, to the far side of the ring of rock, so that the rock spire that had the Firestaff atop it was between them.

A paw to his head, he shook it as he felt the Wizard magic attacking his mind, attacking his senses and feeding them nonsense. What a clever spell! Again in touch with the Weave, Tarrin killed the spell inside him by cutting its connection to the magical energy that fed it. Mercifully, the wild undulation of the ground ceased, his ears and nose cleared, and the rolling nature of what was before his eyes solidified.

Tarrin took that brief moment to change his strategy. He couldn't fight the dragon with magic, because so long as it used its power to block his and forced him to draw Sorcery the way he was, it simply outpowered him. He couldn't use any sustained spells, like summoning an Elemental or flying or walking on the walls, because the dragon could kill his spells. That limited him to fast spells with immediate effects, things the dragon could only counter by out-thinking him, outguessing his intent. And Tarrin respected this foe enough to grant that it probably could do just that. That meant that he had to attack it physically, and use his magic in a manner that would allow him to get close enough to try to figure out a way to kill something whose vital organs were so far inside its body that his sword would never reach them. He could cut it so much that it bled to death, but that would take hours, and he wouldn't last that long.

Wait. There was one vital organ he could reach. Its brain. It couldn't be too deep inside that huge head. Either his sword or staff should be able to reach it if he could get in a position to try to stab it in the head. Tarrin drew on his knowledge of Sapphire's anatomy as he watched the dragon's mighty head swivel around the rock spire and lock its eyes on him. Its skull would be too thick on top or in the back. Trying to go through the eye was out, it was too great a distance from the eye through the eye socket to the skull, and it could easily shake him off before he could get a weapon in that far. But if he tried attacking it upward, from inside the mouth…

That was absolutely insane. But sometimes, crazy works.

All he had to do was trick the dragon into trying to swallow him, and somehow avoid getting torn apart by those deadly teeth after he ended up in its mouth. Then he could recall his staff from the elsewhere and make his move. It had a greater reach, and since it was wood, Tarrin could charge it with his Druidic power and make it grow, becoming a living spear that would eventually get to its brain. But he had to do it in the thin bone between its palate and its brain, bone the staff's blunt end could penetrate with a good strong thrust. Then grow the staff out, like slowly impaling a victim on a stake, until the staff hit brain and put the dragon down.

That may work. It was the only thing he could think of, a desperate plan for a desperate situation.

And desperate times called for desperate actions.

Reaching within once more, through the Cat, Tarrin came into touch with his Druidic power, joined in communion with the All. He showed it his image and let it read his intent, and it responded.

The dragon began to slow down, more and more as it waddled along the rock towards him on all fours, until its tail seemed to drift behind it lazily, and every step became a slow ballet of ponderous movement.

He'd used this spell before. He knew what kind of a toll it was going to take on him, and he knew he could only hold it for a few moments at the very most. He raced towards the dragon with a speed that, to it, would be absolutely unbelievable, a blur of black on the dark stone that moved like living lightning. That would be its perception. To Tarrin, it moved with an almost ridiculous slowness. Bubbles of lava popped languidly, throwing blobs of lava through the air that were almost pretty as they drifted along in the air, slowly changing their shape, and all sound had taken on a deep, basslike quality, a rumbling slowness that his ears had trouble comprehending.

Tarrin blazed right by the dragon, evading a smashing forepaw with such ridiculous ease that he could have gone down on all fours and crawled out of its path. He raced behind it and picked up his sword, then turned and darted right back at it, as he saw its comprehending expression slowly bloom on its face. It was a Druid, so it probably understood the nature of the spell, and it also probably knew that all it had to do was stall him until the demands of the spell forced him to release it. It tried to back away from him, but now Tarrin had the advantage, slashing at its ankle on its back right leg as it put its weight down on it, trying to sever tendons. The sword caused an eruption of blood that boiled lazily out from between scarlet scales, not spraying out fast enough to touch him as he whizzed by. He turned and bore down on the other back leg, in the air and moving back towards the inner lava pool. The dragon was going to try to get into the pool, where Tarrin's sudden speed and agility would do him no good.

But then the foot changed direction and came down towards him, and he had to swerve to avoid getting trampled. It outguessed him! He did manage to stab his blade into the top of its huge foot after he jumped out of the way, feeling his heart pound harder and harder in his chest and his ribs ache from the incredible strain the spell was putting on his body. He glanced up and saw the wings unfurl, realizing it was going to kick up another storm of ash and dust to blind him, further reducing his current advantage. Tarrin took the sword in both paws and released the spell of acceleration, and before the strain of it could hit him, he called forth Sorcery once more and again wove the spell of Teleportation.

Much to the dragon's eternal shock and dismay, Tarrin suddenly appeared about ten spans in the air over its head. He landed on its snout, a snout wide enough for him to stand upon easily, and then drove the sword in his paws down into the scales beneath his feet, plunging more than half his blade down into the dragon's nose. The sword caught in bone or cartilage or something hard in there and became wedged. The dragon roared in sudden pain and whipped its head from side to side as it turned in place, swinging them over the inner lava pool, but Tarrin refused to let go, getting snapped back and forth as his body began to feel the effects of the speeding spell, as his muscles burned and throbbed and his heart raced like a rabbit in his chest, but he gritted his teeth and kept his grip, despite the wild, punishing ride. Those two huge eyes looked down at him in sudden baleful hatred, chilling his blood, and he sensed the oncoming paw well before it reached him. It would be the dragon's automatic reflex to something stinging it on the snout. Swat it.

Tarrin let go as the dragon ducked its head to get it within reach of its forepaws, and couldn't help but feel a grim satisfaction when the dragon slapped at its own snout, driving the sword even deeper into its own nose. He plummeted nearly eighty spans from the dragon's snout to the pool of lava beneath and had the breath knocked out of him as he splashed into it. This lava was much hotter than the lava on the outside, and was much more fluid, lacking the rubbery consistency of the cooler lava. It was thicker than water, but he found that he could almost swim in it. He was about twenty spans from the nearest rock, but that would be too far in any case. The weariness of the spell he had used left him weak and disoriented, but he couldn't stay in one place too long. He reached within, through the Cat, and it became very hard to him now. He was getting tired, losing his edge, but he could not stop. He barely managed to gain communion with the All, and he again called forth the power of the Weave from within it. Weaving the spell of Teleportation once more, he moved himself to the far side of the rock spire once more, as far as he could get from the dragon and still be on the ring of rock.

He left his sword behind on purpose. He wanted the dragon to think that now, he was unarmed. And he doubted he'd have the strength to Summon it out of the dragon's snout in any case. He was breathing so heavily that his breath rattled in his throat. His heart hammered in his chest, and his muscles all felt like they were made of water. All he could do was bend over and pant like a winded runner, feeling the blood rush though his veins, feel and see it pound behind his eyes, feel the pulse in his neck and wrists, even in his legs. He hadn't exerted himself like this since he was in the Desert of Swirling Sands!

"Oh, you are a clever one!" the dragon called, sounding amused. "I never dreamed a biped would give me this much trouble. But I can hear your heart, Were-kin. You don't have much left, do you?"

Maybe he didn't, but he only had to have enough left for one more spell. If only he could get into a position to use it.

Rising up, not showing his weariness, Tarrin first started walking, then jogging, then he was running around the ring, his ears back, his eyes glowing green, and showing this titanic adversary that he would not go down without a fight.


Far away from the great battle that was taking place in Sha'Kari, far from the small island, far from everything, there was a tiny village settled in the mountains of Nyr, along the Spine of Gold. It was a very rural place, where the common Nyrians cultivated their golden fields, taking advantage of the rain that the mountains above them wrung from the sky as the wind blew the clouds over them. Nestled on a small plateau along the windward side of the low mountains, it was a place of peace and happiness called Shora Myrr, which meant Child's Gold in the Nyrian language.

It was a place where nothing exciting ever happened. The four hundred villagers scattered across the plateau spent their days working in the fields, and then they would come home and enjoy the rewards of their labor. It was a dull place, if not a happy one, but most of the villagers much preferred dull over exciting. There were no raiders that far out, no Goblinoids in the mountains, only an occasional rock lion or bear intruding on the humans' chosen range. A place of peace and security, a good place to raise children.

But today was a day of excitement for Parl and Kiki Shon, a young couple only a year on their new holding, a small farm on the very edges of the community. They were newlyweds, only a year together, and today Parl paced nervously along the wide porch on the side of his cottage, a place that remained dry during the daily rains that were common during the summer. The rain came down this day, as it did every afternoon around that time, pattering the wooden slats of the roof and dripping to the grassy lawn, where ducks and geese waddled up from a small artificial pond dug for them in the barnyard.

His wife was pregnant, and right now she was in labor, trying to give birth.

He had been waiting for hours and hours, as he heard his wife groan and shout within with the village matrons. She had been in labor too long! He was growing worried that there were complications. Childbirth was never an easy thing, and sometimes it could be threatening to the life of the mother. His excitement and happiness at the impending birth had become dark worry and despair, for he feared that something was terribly wrong, and he would lose both his wife and his new baby. It had been too long!

And then someone touched him on the shoulder. He whirled around in surprise, and found himself staring at the strangest woman he had ever seen in his life. She had white skin. He had never seen that before! The merchants that visited said that the people on Arathorn and Draconia had pale skin, like parchment, but he never believed them. But here she was! She was tall and statuesque, this woman, much taller than a Nyrian. Her hair was wild, a clash of seven different colors that were arrayed in stripes on her head, and her eyes actually glowed with an amber radiance that hid the pupils and irises. She was beautiful, this woman, something out of a man's wildest fantasy, a kind of beauty that any race, any culture, any society would appreciate. She wore a shimmering gown that sparkled as she moved, clung to her curves in a very appealing manner. And she was smiling at him, a most wondrously gentle and reassuring smile that it caused him to immediately relax, despite the fact that never before in his life had he met someone quite like her.

"Easy, my friend," she said in perfect Nyrian. "All goes well with your wife and daughter."

"D-Daughter?" he stammered. "How do you know? Who are you?"

"See? Here she comes now," she said distantly, raising her head to the sky and closing her eyes. "She's about to open her eyes," she said in a dreamy tone. "That's the moment, you know. When they take their first look at the world and discover their place in it. That is… the moment."

"Parl! She's come through!" Matron Vila called from inside the cottage. "It's a girl!" she said with a relieved laugh.

From inside the hut, there came a slight smack, and the sound of a baby crying.

"Open your eyes, my darling," the woman said in a strange voice, a voice that almost seemed to be more than one coming from a single mouth. "Open your eyes. Take your place, my daughter. Complete me!"

Within the hut, the wet, birth-stained infant, dark of skin but with red hair, the most unusual thing that the mother and matrons had ever seen, slowly opened her eyes. They were blue, and within them was a comprehension, an awareness of things that seemed absolutely unnatural. They focused on the first thing they saw, their sweaty, crying mother who looked up at her in absolute joy, and then they simply understood.

Parl stared at the woman, and then to his absolute shock, she simply vanished into thin air.

What a strange and exciting day!


She was the seventh sui'kun, and her birth restored the last of the seven major Conduits, restored the final missing section of the Weave. The Weave was again complete, and the Goddess burst forth from the Heart as her power was completely restored.

To again be free.


Within the domed volcanic chamber, Tarrin felt the Weave around him suddenly began to writhe, as if someone has set fire to a cobweb. It was a Weavequake! The violence of the Weavequake struck him as hard as the dragon's blow ever could have, causing him to crash to the ground as his insides squirmed and wriggled like the weave, sending a shockwave of debilitating pain through him. The Weave had reached out and touched him in its throes, and Tarrin had been to weak and exhausted to prevent it! So intimately connected to the Weave, its turmoil was his turmoil, and the strain of the strands translated into a pain that shot through him unprotested. His claws scrabbling on the stone, all he could do was lay there and gasp for breath and find some way to marvel at the sheer power of it, the unmitigated violence of what was happening within the Weave. Was it another Breaking? Had Spyder or one of the other sui'kun somehow been killed?

He could feel the enormity of it. Whatever it was, it was happening everywhere. Not just within their isolated section.

The pain, it was incredible! Tarrin rose up on his knees and put his paws to his head as Magelight exploded from him, screaming out as it felt like his insides were being turned inside out, and pain blasted behind his eyes with every beat of his heart.

The dragon too could sense the magnitude of the event. It looked around in confusion and fear, and then it suddenly gave out a great cry, dancing aside as a massive boulder dislodged from the ceiling and nearly struck it on the back. But its eyes were locked on Tarrin, and after it evaded that rain of rock, it advanced on the incapacitated Were-cat with designs to finish the battle.

Tarrin struggled to find rational thought, and when he did, he sought to cut himself off from the Weave. It was because he was connected to it, that was what was causing the pain! He had to get away from it! Hissing with intense concentration, fighting through the massive onslaught that threatened to drown him into unconsciousness, Tarrin turned the power within him against itself, sought to use it to sever his ties that was making him share the Weave's turmoil, which caused the incredible pain. But it was too much. He was too tired, too weary, in too much pain to bring enough will to bear to fight against the avalanche. Defeated, Tarrin slumped to the ground, slave to the racking pains the Weave tore through him. He could feel the shuddering of the rock beneath him, knew that the dragon was within striking distance, but he could do nothing.

The Weave itself had betrayed him at the worst possible moment, and now he was going to die.

And then there was… peace. The pain eased. The throbbing behind his eyes stopped, even as he knew that it still continued in the Weave. An old power, long forgotten, washed over him, isolated him, protected him, a gentle power that had laid submerged in the depths of his soul, a power that cradled him as a child in its mother's arms. A power placed inside him by the gentle lips of a Goddess, a long time ago. It rose up and defended him from the power of the Weave, protecting him in his most dire hour of need.

He became aware at the last possible instant. His writhing stopped and he scrambled forward even as the dragon's forepaw shattered the rock where he had been laying, leaving a rubble-filled crater in its wake. Panting from the aftereffects of the pain and his own weariness, he managed to get to his feet and ran right under the dragon, between its hind legs.


The Weavequake reached even to the Sha'Kar. They screamed in fright as the da'shar among them distanced themselves from the Weave as quickly as they could. They had never sensed its like before, not even during the breaking.

It reached through all of Sha'Kari. The spells causing the wind were torn asunder by the Weavequake, their ancient weavings undone. The void in the Weave that separated that within from that without suddenly bloomed with new strands, as the Weave mended the lingering areas of damage that still existed since the day of the Breaking. The strands grew out from the newest Conduit, which thrust itself directly into the heart of the void, main strands and feeder strands stretching out from that core of power like cracks creeping through a piece of broken glass.

When the new strands reached the massive construction of the black dome of the Ward, they plunged into it to rejoin the strands on the other side. The weaving of the Ward reacted violently to the intrusion, and the Ward's delicate weaving was pierced in too many places at once for its monumentally complicated patterns to hold themselves.

The black dome that was the Ward shimmered, the sheer featureless black boiling like great clouds within, and then, in a surprisingly fast motion, a blazing glow appeared low on its south side and quickly stretched for longspans in a diagonal line up its side. A hole in the Ward. The hole tore the weaving of the Ward like a man pulling on torn cloth, ripping it asunder. The entire Ward wavered at that fatal blow, and then all the millions of individual flows that made up its staggering construction suddenly lost their connection to one another as the core of the Ward's construction was compromised, the source of its power cut off.

With no sound, no flash, no sign at all to those who could see it, the black dome that had enclosed the island of Sha'Kari simply vanished, evaporating like smoke before the wind, and then it was gone.

The Ward came down.


Dar was in awe of what was happening. It had to be another Breaking! It had to be! What else could cause something like this… unless it was Tarrin! But he couldn't do this, Dar could feel it. It wasn't just here. He could tell that whatever it was, it was massive in scale, affecting the entire Weave. What had happened? What could have caused such a violent Weavequake, if it wasn't another Breaking?

He clutched at the chair in which he was sitting in Tarrin's borrowed room as Iselde, Allyn, and Auli held onto one another, fully aware of what was going on. Iselde was whimpering with terror, and Auli was looking up at that ceiling like it was about to collapse on them at any moment. But there was no shaking of the earth, no violence being done in a physical sense. The strands were shaking and shifting with more violent action than he ever dreamed possible, but they could not affect the physical world. The land went on as it always had, and those who had not magical aptitude would not feel what was happening.

It wasn't limited to Sorcerers. Kimmie held Sapphire very close to her as she looked around with wild eyes, fully sensing what was going on. The drake was hissing and squealing, as if in pain, and there was a desperation about her that Dar noticed even in his moment of terror.

Even Zarina and Liza seemed to sense what was happening, clutching one another and bowing their heads, keeping their eyes tightly shut.

The Weavequake began to ease. Dar could feel the strands slowly begin to settle down, but he was awed at how they had changed. If it was possible, they were even stronger now than they had been before. Some of them had broken, but those left behind were even more richly charged with magical energy. The Weave seemed to be almost alive, thriving with magical power, almost visible to him with their newfound vigor.

Dar stared at them in awe. Now he understood. It wasn't a Breaking, it was the birth of the final sui'kun!

The Weave was again whole!

"O-Outside!" Sapphire gasped, keeping her eyes tightly closed. "Kimmie, take me outside! Quickly!"

Sapphire? What's the matter?" she asked, putting her paw over the drake's shoulder.

"Take me outside! Hurry! There is no time!"

Kimmie didn't argue. She jumped up and, clutching the drake tightly to her, she ran to the door and raced out. Dar rose and raced after them, but he was no match for the Were-cat's speed. He knew where they were going, however, so he wasted no time getting to the entrance hall and saw that the door had been left open. He reached the door and looked down the steps to see Kimmie kneeling on the lawn, putting Sapphire down on the grass, and the hurried down the stairs to find out what was wrong.

"Back up!" Sapphire told Kimmie. "Kimmie, move away from me! Do it quickly!"

"Sapphire, what's the matter? Can I help?"

"No! Just move away! I can't control it much longer!"

Fearful, Kimmie backed away, as she was told. Her paws to her chin in concern, she watched as Sapphire writhed on the grass, her scales shining with the morning dew. Wings beating, she put her four legs under her, and then raised her head to the sky and screeched, as if in pain.

Her entire form suddenly radiated intense white light, a powerful magical brilliance that concealed her beneath it for a long moment. Then it exploded away from her forcefully, flowing over Kimmie, who shielded herself from it like it was some kind of physical attack. Dar rushed to her side as the drake began to back up, swinging her head from side to side.

And she began to get bigger.

Dar could see it, watching in awe as she grew from her small size to the size of a small dog. Then a large dog. Then the size of a small elk. Then she was the size of a lion, and still she was growing! Her growth became faster and faster as she grew, her claws tearing the earth as the elongation of her body skidded her paws across the grass. Kimmie grabbed him as they backpedalled furiously to get out from under her as she grew so large that they could have walked under her without their heads touching her belly, and still she grew! He had to look up higher and higher to look at her head, a head that grew as big as a horse, then as big as a wagon, then the size of a small cottage! Wings unfurled as the creature gave out an ear-splitting shriek, a voice so incredibly powerful! Wings that cast shadows over the entire front of the manor house!

And then, it was over. The blue-scaled creature stared down at them with powerful amber eyes. It was the same Sapphire, with the same body and the same appearance, but before, where she could sit on Tarrin's shoulder, now she had to be five hundred spans long! She was the size of the manor house itself! Her head was a fifty spans over their head she craned her neck, then bent it down to look at the two tiny creatures.

She was gigantic! She was immense! He had never seen anything as big as she was in his entire life.

"By the river's draw!" Kimmie gasped. "She's a dragon!"

She was majestic! She was magnificent!

Dar looked at her in terror.

She was angry!

"Tarrin!" she screamed, a voice that shook dust from the walls of the manor, turning her head towards the volcano. "No! He will not harm you!"

Those unbelievably large wings, bigger than sails, almost as big as a caravel, they unfurled and beat down with such force that it sent a powerful blast of wind over the Were-cat and the human, making Kimmie grab hold of Dar to keep him from being blown off his feet.

The wind was like a hurricane, pulling at them, threatening to even knock Kimmie over. A shadow passed over them, and the wind began to calm. They looked up and saw in utter amazement that that massive animal was airborne, flying towards the volcano like an arrow fired from a bow.

"A—A—A dragon!" Dar stuttered in shock, clutching Kimmie so hard his knuckles turned white. "Oh, Goddess! Chopstick and Turnkey!" he gasped. "They're still in the house! They'll destroy it!"

"They won't," Kimmie said with tears in her eyes. "Don't you understand, Dar? Don't you see? Sapphire said she was different from the drakes, but she didn't know how, or why. This is why! Sapphire is a dragon, Dar, and she didn't even know it! She's been hiding as a drake all this time!"

"She's going after Tarrin!" Dar gasped.

Kimmie laughed happily. "Whatever Tarrin may be fighting in that volcano, I think it's about to get its butt kicked!" she said in glee. "What in this world can possibly fight a dragon?"


With a savage snarl and a growling cry, Tarrin just barely managed to avoid getting his body ripped in half by the slashing rake of claws as long as his legs.

He was virtually underneath the dragon, and it had reared up to put its vital areas out of his reach, and was now trying to kill him like a cat playing with a capture mouse. But it was no game of fun for the dragon, which growled and hissed and got more and more frustrated as the agile Were-cat proved to be a wily adversary. No matter how hard it tried, no matter how fast it moved, it just couldn't pin its diminutive foe down in one place long enough to kill it. He was like the most annoying fly in the world, buzzing in the dragon's face but just too fast for it to swat him. It kept him trapped, blocking him off every time he tried to get behind it, back away from it, keeping him jumping in a direction that kept him squarely out in the open.

He was running out of options here. He was too tired to try to use magic, and the dragon had him right out in the open, where he had no protection, no defenses. He scrambled aside from another claw slash, then dove forward to avoid another. He rolled over and jumped up using all four limbs as that tail came flying at him once again. Landing on all fours, he scuttled forward to avoid another forepaw, and then leaped clear over the other as it raked at him.

The dragon wasn't trying to crush him now, it was trying to catch him! That's why it had its paws open like that, trying to scoop him up. He scrambled backwards, trying to get out of reach of those forty span long forelegs, give himself more room to maneuver. He jumped clean over its swiping forepaw again, giving himself the opportunity to back up further and further, to where he could turn and run, hoping he could get outside its reach before it leaned forward and got itself back in range.

The dragon slammed its tail against the rock near him just as Tarrin landed, and the shock shifted the abused, tortured stone. Tarrin stumbled when he hit the ground as the rock slipped out from under him. He caught himself with one arm before he completely fell over, his feet scrabbling on loose rock to try to find purchase. His claws struck a solid foundation and he pushed off, diving forward—

—right into the palm of the dragon's forepaw.

Tarrin impacted those tight diamond scales and rebounded off of them, but the fingers closed over him tightly before he went far. His arms pinned to his body and breaking his tail, he struggled against that powerful hold on him, trying to wriggle free. Trying just to breathe. The grip was incredible, but he realized with a wheeze that it could have been much stronger. It could have crushed him like a bug, but it did not.

It lifted him up, fifty spans off the ground, sixty, eighty, a hundred, and he found himself staring right at the dragon's face. Maybe… maybe this wasn't a bad thing. If it tried to eat him, he could try to kill it, if he could survive those vicious teeth. But he could not look at that massive face and not feel raw terror flow through him like water under a bridge. It was like staring into the eyes of Death Himself.

"You have been an aggravation," he said in a hissing tone, his voice vibrating Tarrin's teeth with its deep bass power. "But, I haven't had that much fun in centuries," it added in an amused manner. "Were it not for my duty, I would let you go. But alas, that is impossible. But in recognition for your worthiness, I will end you quickly and without pain. Brave souls like you deserve to die with honor. Any last words?" it asked conversationally.

Tarrin wheezed in his breath as the dragon relaxed its grip on him just enough to breathe. It was going to let him talk!

"Yes, I have something to say," he said in a pant, staring up at the dragon's eyes. "Audo mosenthi gratta montho—" the dragon suddenly looked at him wildly, and Tarrin felt the tendons in its forepaw bunch to crush him before he could finish— "compendus sensi ingratia!"

He finished with a ragged shout, pouring his whole being into the words. Tarrin felt something inside, something appear from something else, move through him, and then leave him, taking some of his own energy with it, energy that left him utterly drained and weak as a kitten. There was no other action, no other indication that anything had happened.

Then the dragon's grip loosened, and it began to sway like a reed in the wind.

It had worked! He couldn't believe it! He had cast a Wizard spell!

The dragon weaved back and forth as if drunk, completely letting go of him as it put both forelegs down to steady itself, shaking its head violently from side to side. Tarrin plummeted the hundred spans to the floor and tried wildly to twist, to orient himself to the ground. He did so, but it was so far to fall! He struck the stone like a musket ball, breaking both of his legs and one of his arms from the tremendous impact of the landing. The sudden icy numbness in his limbs told him that it was an injury caused by an unworked weapon of nature, and that meant that he would not regenerate this time. He lay there in teeth-biting agony, suddenly feeling very cold. There were going to be no more tricks now. He had broken both his legs, and he could no longer move. Unless the Goddess sent him a miracle, this fight was over.

The dragon staggered backwards, and then it seemed to right itself and glared at him. Then it laughed! "You are full of surprises!" it said. "You learned that spell by listening to me! What talent! What an amazing talent! I am so impressed with you, my worthy foe! If only there was some way to spare you!" Then its face hardened, and it started towards him, its footsteps shuddering the rock beneath him. "But I have my duty, I'm afraid. I can see your legs are broken, so there will be no more running, and I'll not get close enough to let you pull another clever trick on me. But I promised you a quick, clean death, and I am a dragon of my word. Hold still, and it will be over before you know what happened." It was right over him now, looming over him, staring down at him with serious eyes and a resolute expression.

But he would not hold still. Rising up, raising his one good arm, Tarrin decided that if was going to die, it was going to be on his terms. He reached within, through the Cat, trying to find his connection to the All. It was going to kill him, but he'd make sure the dragon wasn't going to be there to hinder whoever came looking for him.

Before he could make his connection to the All, the dome of the chamber shuddered in a strange manner. The rock under him shivered. Then it shuddered again. Dust and stones fell from the domed ceiling, pattering down on the both of them.

Then the whole roof exploded!

A cascading avalanche of stone and dust blew out from the roof of the chamber and tumbled down. As if by wild luck, the dragon hunkered down to protect itself from the rain of stones, and it leaned down directly over Tarrin as the terrified Were-cat saw the roof collapsing on top of him. He hunkered down himself and put his good arm over his head, then realized that the rocks that would have hit him were bouncing off the dragon's back. Whether it knew what it was doing or not, it had saved him from being crushed! There was the deafening din of falling stone and choking dust obscuring everything, and still more rock fell from the domed roof, a roof that now had sunlight spilling into it.

The dome had collapsed!

The dragon moved, and it moved enough to let Tarrin see the roof above him. What he saw made him gape in absolute awe.

It was another dragon! A blue one, and its massive claws were tearing the stone roof apart! It had torn a huge hole in the ceiling, and another great chunk of roof fell away and plunged into the lava below. It was tearing the stone apart like it was nothing more than paper! What power!

With a shriek, it tore enough of the roof open for it to squirm inside, and it began to do so. The dragon over him stared up at this interloper with as much surprise as Tarrin did, clearly not expecting an uninvited guest. It dropped down to the ring of stone, making the entire volcano shudder with its landing. It was fully as big as the red one, but was sleeker and had a narrower snout. It stood facing the scarlet-scaled dragon with flat eyes and a clearly hostile demeanor, squaring off against it, hissing at the red dragon as sparks of lightning danced around its wicked teeth.

Lightning? Tarrin looked very carefully at this blue dragon, and he saw the sameness of the features.

It was Sapphire!

What had they done to her!? Did the Sha'Kar use magic to make her grow? Had they sent her to help him?

"Get away from him!" Sapphire hissed at the red dragon with fury in her face, her amber eyes boring into the dragon that loomed over Tarrin. "He is mine!"

"S—Sister!" it said in Sha'Kar. "Is it time? Has it happened?"

"It has," Sapphire told him with narrow eyes. "Now get away from him! He is clan to me!"

"Let me explain," the dragon said quickly, raising its forepaws in a mollifying gesture towards her.

"Wrong answer," Sapphire hissed savagely, and she sucked in her breath.

Tarrin seemed to understand what was coming. So did the red dragon. Tarrin flattened himself to the ground, looking at her feet—

—they were being burned. Sapphire wasn't immune to the heat! She was going to die if she stayed in here very long!

"Sapphire, no!" Tarrin called quickly, desperately, trying to stand up. No more would die. No more! Despite intense pain, he managed to get up on his broken legs, trembling and wobbling dangerously. He raised his arm, the other drooping uselessly at his side. If she got into a fight with the red one, he'd drag her into the lava, and it would fry her! "Sapphire! No! Listen to me!"

But it was too late. With a thunderclap, a raking cascade of intertwined bolts of lightning issued forth from Sapphire's mouth, raking across the gulf between her and the red. But the lightning didn't touch him, bouncing away from him harmlessly to discharge into the rock and the lava. He felt it tingling under his feet.

With a shrieking bellow and an unfurling of her wings, Sapphire launched herself at the red dragon, going right over him. The sound of their impact was deafening, shaking the very caldera as the red was driven back by the blue's furious charge, her claws and teeth tearing gaps in his scarlet scaled armor. It was a clash of titans, as they bellowed and struggled against one another, claws flashing red in the light of the lava, the ground beneath him buckling and shuddering from the two behemoths as they struggled against one another. He stood transfixed by the awful sight, as two beasts from legend flailed at one another with their clawed forepaws, tearing away scales and drawing blood, pushing against one another, maws snapping and jockeying to sink those deadly teeth into the soft underportion of the neck of the other. Sapphire clamped her jaws on the upper portion of the red's neck and wrenched its head to the side as a searing blast of hellfire roared from its mouth in a great gout, pulling its head so that killing fire went harmlessly to the side of her. All he could see were the black singe marks on Sapphire's feet, from where the heat of the place was burning her. She had to get out before the heat killed her! Why wouldn't she listen? The red clamped its forepaws on Sapphire's shoulders and pulled her back with it as it gave ground, backing up towards the lava.

"No!" Tarrin screamed, feeling the red dragon's concentration finally waver, and the spell blocking him from the Weave dissipate. The red almost had her at the edge, and she didn't realize it! She was going to get killed, and it was his fault! Why wouldn't she leave? She had to leave! There wasn't going to be another Faalken! No, he wouldn't allow it! Nobody else was going to die! In utter panic, Tarrin opened himself completely to the Weave.

He sensed the change in the Weave immediately, and understood what had happened. It was complete! The Weave was pulsing with magical power now, almost overflowing with it. It was rich in power, so much so that it almost seemed as if the Goddess had poured her very soul into the strands! That power responded to him, washed over him, infused him as he let down every barrier, surrendered his very being up to the power so that it would answer his call.

"I—said—NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" he screamed as the brilliance of the Magelight around him outshone the light from the lava, the light from the sky above. Tarrin was at the center of the Sorcerer's Star, its power picking him up from the rock.

The power was incredible! It was like the Goddess herself in the strands, and it flowed over him, obeying his every command. It kept coming and coming, beyond every limit he had once had, beyond everything he dreamed possible, beyond his wildest imagination! It was like having the Goddess doing his bidding! He hovered in the air, power flowing through him like blood, expanding his consciousness in ways he never imagined. He could feel the Goddess around him, holding him in her hands, shining her love down on him, and her love brought her power to him, more power than he had ever been able to handle before, power that obeyed his every command. Power that healed the broken legs and arm, rejuvenated his exhausted body and restored him as if he were whole and rested. He was one with the power, and its might was his to command. Not just what power he could hold. All of it. The entire might of the Weave would obey him in that moment, and there was nothing he could not do.

Now he understood the difference between da'shar and sui'kun. Da'shar had limits. But so long as the sui'kun was in the favor of the Goddess, was doing her will, he did not. It was not he holding that power, it was the Goddess, acting through him, granting the ability to exceed his maximum potential. So long as her will was done through him, he could draw enough power do absolutely anything needed of him.

If this was what being a god was like, he could understand why Syllis wanted it so badly.

The two dragons paused in their battle to stare at him in shock, the red but one step from the boiling lava. "STOP THIS NOW!" Tarrin screamed at them in a voice that made the volcano shake. "Let go of her!" he commanded the red dragon with a furious snarl. "Your fight is with me!"

"Tarrin!" Sapphire gasped, looking at him with a stunned expression. "What are you doing? Run, run quickly! I will keep him from hurting you!"

The red one gaped at him with a blank stare. And then it laughed.

It released Sapphire, who just then seemed to understand where she was, backpedaling furiously and pulling her most burned foot off the stone wincingly. Tarrin wrapped Sapphire in an invisible weave of Fire and Divine, protecting her from the killing heat, and he blew out a sigh of relief. "Are you insane, Sapphire?" he demanded. "You could have died coming in here!"

"It would be worth it to save you," she said diffidently, putting her paw back down on the stone, now that it couldn't hurt her.

The red dragon laughed again, sitting down quite sedately. "If you would have given me the chance to explain, this would not have been necessary," he told her with a chuckle. "The Ward is broken. The Weave is restored. My term of service with the gods stated that my servitude would end when the Ward was no more. It is no more. Therefore, my duty has been fulfilled, and the rules to which I agreed to defend the Firestaff are no longer binding against me." He looked to Tarrin. "I can do whatever I wish now. I'm not forced to fight you now, and I will not. You risked your life to use your magic and defend her, and displayed admirable qualities to me during the battle. Intelligence, courage, tenacity, cunning, amazing resourcefulness, and an almost ferocious will to succeed. I find you a most noble creature, and I will not fight you now."

"You-You mean… I win?" Tarrin asked in disbelief.

"You win," he said with a smile.

Tarrin felt the power slip away from him. He alighted on the ground, absolutely stunned. All that fighting… and the dragon simply gave up. Because Tarrin had tried to save Sapphire's life.

Tarrin just couldn't help but laugh. Long and loud, laughing at the dark irony of it all.

"Now then, since I promise not to hurt you… will you please take this sword out of my muzzle?" the dragon asked in a plaintive tone. "It stings like all fury!"

Tarrin didn't quite know what to do. He was confused. Mightily confused. The dragon was suddenly a friend? After they tried to kill each other? It seemed almost… jovial. It certainly seemed sincere, and Sapphire wasn't going to attack it again, it seemed. Poor Sapphire. The spell they used on her must have been painful to make her grow that big.

"What did they do to you, Sapphire?" he asked. her. "They made you gigantic!"

"They did nothing of the sort," she snorted, looking down at him. "Dear friend, this is my true self."

He stared at her in surprise.

"When the Breaking came, the Weave could no longer sustain us," she told him. "So we regressed to the state of a drake, changing ourselves into something not quite so dependent on the magic. It made us forget who and what we were, and we actually became drakes, simple-minded and bound by instinct. But we survived. When the Weave was restored, the magic that sustains us was renewed, and it caused us to revert back to our true selves. I am not a drake, my friend. I am a dragon."

"You mean—you lived as a drake for a thousand years?" he asked in surprise.

"I don't really remember much of it, but yes, I did," she told him. "I'm sure others survived as well. They have all probably woken up by now, returned to their true shapes."

"The dragons are restored to the world," the red said with a very big smile. "That means that the Weave must be whole."

"Why didn't you regress?" Tarrin asked the red one in sudden insight.

"The magical power of this trapped section of the Weave was enough to sustain me," he said. "I laid in torpor until about twenty years ago, when the birth of a new sui'kun finally brought enough to the Weave to sustain me while awake. I would guess that birth was you," he said with a smile. "Would you please remove your sword? It hurts!"

Tarrin Summoned the sword to him without much thought or effort, and sent it back into the elsewhere. The red dragon scrubbed at its snout with its forepaw and blew out a sigh, accompanied by a hiccup of flame. "Thank you ever so much," he said amiably. "It was starting to throb a bit." He looked up at the sky with a longing expression. "If you two will forgive me, five thousand years in one place can make a dragon a little stir crazy," he told them. "My service is done, but I don't think I'm leaving what I defended in bad hands. I surrender to you the Firestaff, my worthy friend. I'm confident you'll know what to do with it. Defend it well."

"Th-Thank you," he said in confusion.

"Defend him, sister," the red dragon said to Sapphire. "For him, this ordeal is not over. He will need you."

"He is clan. For us blues, clan is all. I will protect him," she said with a stately nod.

"That's why you blues are so respected," the red told her with a toothy grin. "Someday us reds are going to have to try cooperation. But it never seems to work out. Ah well. Farewell, and may the Eternal Dragon grant you prosperity and happiness."

The red dragon nodded to them, then jumped up and beat its wings. Wind blew over him as it pulled itself up to the hole. It wriggled itself through, and then the sound of its wings heralded its departure.

Tarrin stood there with only the sounds of the volcano echoing in his ears. That… was… bizarre. Just like that, it was over. Timing. Timing was everything. Had he been an hour earlier, they would still be fighting, as the red dragon would still be under the strictures of its agreement. An hour later, and he may not have had to fight it at all. It may have clawed its way out of the volcano and left the Firestaff behind, for anyone to come and claim.

And that, he realized, was why they had sent him. The Ward was gone, the dragon was gone. Had Tarrin and his friends not dealt with Syllis the day before, he would be up here right now, trying to take the Firestaff. There were no protections left—except the wind and that reef—to defend the Firestaff from the wrong hands. Little did anyone know that the wrong hands had been on the island for a thousand years. They had come this close to losing the Firestaff to the mad Syllis, who would have taken it, Teleported away, and made getting it back a serious challenge before that appointed day.

The act of protecting Sapphire caused the dragon to yield to him, to yield to him the Firestaff.

The Firestaff.

He looked up to where it was, fearful that the collapse of the roof had swept it away, but it was still there, still hovering just over the rock spire, still waiting for him. And it was now his. His promise to the Goddess was about to be fulfilled. He had persevered. He had survived the ki'zadun in the Tower. He had survived Jegojah and Triana on the journey to Dala Yar Arak. He had survived the desert and his own personal demons on the journey back to Suld. He had survived the attempt by the ki'zadun to banish the Goddess in Suld. And he had survived to get to where he was now, to stand before the Firestaff and to know, to finally know, that he could reach out and claim it any time he wished.

He had won.

It was a heady feeling. It was almost over. Almost over! All he had to do now was hide the Firestaff, move it and protect it until the day of its awakening came and went harmlessly. Then he would be free!

Touching the Weave, exercising the endless power that the Goddess had imparted to him, Tarrin froze the lava in the center of the stone ring, making it solid. Then he caused the rock spire to lower, the Firestaff lowering with it, sinking the spire down into the lava beneath their feet and putting the Firestaff where he could finally claim it.

Sapphire sat on her haunches and watched silently as Tarrin walked up to the Firestaff, step by step by step. The red one said it wasn't over, and that reminded him of the poem. He would have to sacrifice to take the Firestaff. That's what the poem said. It very well may kill him. He came to a stop but arm's length from the priceless artifact, staring at it with careful eyes. It was made of stone, not wood. A reddish stone, the color of blood, that seemed to throb like the beating of a heart before his eyes, but that throb was the pulsing of the power of the Conduit that shimmered around it. It was about six spans long, and had that flicker of fire dancing about the top of the staff like a candle wavering in the breeze.

This was it. This was what he had come to claim.

He assessed the Conduit, and felt no magic about other than the Conduit itself. If there was a magic spell on it, it was well hidden.

He paused, flexing his fingers. Sacrifice. Was he ready to sacrifice? Now that the end was in sight, the possibility that everything would turn out as he wished was within his grasp? It was right there. All he had to do was reach out and take it. But it would cost him. Everything he was, everything he is, and everything he would be. That sounded like death to him.

He was afraid. He had to admit it to himself. He didn't want to sacrifice everything now. Not when he was so happy! But he had a duty. He made a promise. He vowed to the Goddess that he would find the Firestaff and protect it from all others.

How many times had the Goddess helped him? Protected him? Blessed him and forgave him? How many times did she cheer him up, did she make him feel better? He was a coward to be afraid now! So what if had to sacrifice? After everything the Goddess had done for him, he was going to back out on his promise to her now?

And what about his children? His mates, his parents, his sisters, his friends? If he didn't take the Firestaff, which of them would have to sacrifice everything in his place? Who would he send in here to die, because he was too afraid?

Several of them would do it. Dolanna would do it. Camara Tal would do it. Allia would do it without blinking. Azakar would do it. Because they understood that sometimes, in the course of doing right, one had to sacrifice.

No! No one else will die! There won't be another Faalken, even if I have to die to make sure of it!

And in his mind's eye, he saw his children and the uncertain world which would be theirs if he did not do what had to be done.

Gritting his teeth, his face a sudden mask of ultimate determination, Tarrin reached out and snatched the Firestaff out of the Conduit.

It was hot. He could feel it in his paw. He looked at it, watched the fire at its top suddenly flare like a torch, its fire and heat washing over him. It suddenly exploded into a bonfire of flame that enshrouded him, a magical fire that enveloped him, and to his horror, infused him.

That was the spell! That was the final defense!

He felt it descend into the core of him, a lance of white-hot fire, seeking out his soul. He could not hide from it. He could not defend against it. It found his soul and looked within it, he could feel it searching, searching, searching. Searching for something.

All that defines you. All that you were. All you will be.

All that defines you. All that defines you. ALL THAT DEFINES YOU.

It found what it was looking for. The lance of fire plunged into his soul, and it felt as if fire had consumed his body. Fire he could feel, heat that burned into him, incinerated his flesh, blackened his bones. A great agonized scream was torn from his lips as the power of the final defense lashed out against him, scouring into and through his body, a magical fire of purity that burned away all that defined him. It burned through his bones, seared his muscles, set his blood boiling, blackened his skin. It felt as if he were being Consumed all over again, as the magical fire infused the totality of his body, causing him to burn with white-hot flames, flames that roared around him, roared through him, roared into his mind, burned him, burned his brain, burned his memory, burning away—burning away—

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


The fire ceased as quickly as it had appeared.

Sapphire, the blue dragon, blinked from the sudden darkness, her head literally right over him from where she had rushed towards him in near panic. Spots danced in her draconic eyes as she blinked them, trying to fathom what had just happened.

Tarrin, her beloved friend, had taken the Firestaff. He seemed strangely reluctant to do so, standing there for a long moment and just staring at it. That confused her slightly, but she did not interfere. Then, when he did finally take it, it surrounded him with that bright fire. That didn't concern her at first, for fire couldn't harm him, but then he screamed in pain! She had rushed over to see what was wrong, to try to wrest the artifact from him, but the light was so strong! And then he cried out no in a voice of such tremendous loss that it nearly broke her heart. Such great pain tied up in that forlorn wail!

She blinked, found that her vision was clearing, and looked down. He was unconscious, all his clothes burned off, laying there with the magical staff in his limp hand, laying on his back. But he was… different. He had no fur, no tail. The ears were gone, the hands and feet were different. He was much shorter. She gasped.

He looked human.

She was confused. She didn't know he could do that!

Being careful with him, Sapphire collected up her friend and his prize in her mighty forepaw, then jumped up towards the hole. Strange that he would shapeshift like that. She didn't know he could. In any event, he needed someone to care for him, and his mate Kimmie would know what to do. She wriggled out of the hole she had made quickly, losing a few scales in the process. She would take him to her. Kimmie would know what to do.


Across the caldera, standing on the ledge from which he had arrived, a solitary figure stood. She was a tall woman, delicately beautiful, with amazing rainbow-striped hair, glowing amber eyes, and a dress that looked to be spun of silk made from stars. She had her hands to her chin, a look of profound sadness about her, and tears were sliding down her cheeks.

"Oh, my sweet kitten," she said in an anguished tone. "I'm so sorry! I wish it could have been different for you. Please forgive me!"

Wiping the tears from her face, the mysterious woman simply vanished, as if she had never been.

Chapter 20