The light faded to its blinding incandescence, but remained as a painfully bright shaft of pure white light that illumunated the Nave as if someone had pulled the sun into the chamber. Allia winced against that painful brilliance, then her mouth dropped when the silhouette of a humanoid being appeared within that radiance, fading enough to show the outline of a long tail. Even with the light, Allia could see that he was absolutely covered in blood. From head to foot. And he had arrows sticking out of him!
"Tarrin!" Allia screamed in surprise, joy, and fear, shouting over the pulsating, choral shimmering sound emanating from that bright light. She feared her brother at that moment.
Floating within a cushion of his own power, Tarrin rose from the molten tunnel created by his weaving, raised into the Nave of the Cathedral of Karas, utter fury making his face a twisted mask of rage. Incandescent white eyes, blazing from within with the power of High Sorcery, locked on the pulpit where Irvon stood. The fat cleric stared at Tarrin in pure horror, unable to move, unable to act, unable to do anything but watch.
A black ball of sizzling power formed in his paw, crackling with electrical energy, as Tarrin built a weave of Confluence and Divine energies, with only token flows of the other spheres added to give the weave the power of High Sorcery. That black ball swallowed up the light, dimming it around him, sucked up the light into its utter black depths, even pulled the air into it. Tarrin gave the priest a merciless, snarling shout, and then hurled it at him. The priest, paralyzed by his own fear, could only stand there and watch as his doom hurtled towards him.
It struck him in the face, and where it touched him, it sucked everything inside it. Irvon's head contracted, pulling into that ball, bone splitting and spraying blood into the air, blood which stopped flying outward and fell back into the black ball. Irvon's body began to be sucked into the small ball, crushing down and into the small thing, no larger than a child's toy, yet pulling the entirety of the fat priest's corporeal form inside. The gloriously decorated and gilded pulpit too crushed under the magical force of that black ball, breaking asunder and following Irvon's body into its unimaginable black depths. The ball hovered in midair a moment, hovering over where Irvon and his pulpit once stood, and then it simply vanished.
Tarrin whirled around within his shaft of light, and his eyes fell on Allia. That face, that beautiful face, was like a slap in the face to him. It declared to the Cat beyond any measure that he was indeed free. Allia was near him, Allia would protect him. She would gather him up and carry him to safety, because he knew that as soon as he let go of the Weave, he would fall unconscious. He has pushed himself too far. The Cat looked at its sibling, its sister, and it rejoiced, fading back into the background of Tarrin's mind, allowing his consciousness to regain control.
Tarrin looked on Allia with pure horror in his eyes, and then those eyes rolled back into his head.
The light rising up from the floor of the Nave wavered, and then it vanished. Tarrin's inert body crashed to the floor, unmoving, leaving an entire church full of awed, terrified observers to stare at him in shock.
To: Title EoF
Chapter 20
He had no idea where he was.
He only knew that he was clean, dressed in a soft cotton nightshirt, and the room held traces of the scents of Allia and Keritanima.
He was alone, and the room was illuminated by a single candle, burned well near to the nub. His body still ached, but it was a faint pain, distant and weak, and it would soon be gone. He felt extremely weak, and it was an effort to sit up in the bed and put his back against the headrest. His tail was tingling from where he was laying on it.
The manacles. They were still on his wrists. Nightmarish images swirled around the dark corners of his mind, images of what he had done while out of control. He couldn't remember details, but he knew that he had killed many people. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about that, but he was so weary that he knew that in his current condition, he wouldn't care if he destroyed an entire kingdom. He was just too tired, too numb. He knew that he would have to reckon with what he had done later, but at that moment, he was still in shock. It wasn't the time. Physically, he wasn't much better off. He had been healed, or he had healed himself, but it had left him so weak that he could barely move. He felt a bit dizzy any time he moved his head, and there was a light fuzz over his consciousness that demanded he return to sleep. But where the body was willing, the mind was not. A tremendous amount had happened, and his mind couldn't reconcile with putting it off until later.
He had snapped. Really snapped, not just lost his temper. It was exactly what Jesmind had been talking about, something she said would happen eventually, no matter how careful he was. He had never felt so helpless in his life. That much, he clearly remembered. The Cat had kicked him aside like a misbehaving pet and taken full control of him, and he watched himself acting and reacting through eyes he could no longer control. He still couldn't recall specifics of what happened, but something deep inside told him that he didn't want to know. He did remember killing. Many, many people. That much was clear, but not how many, and how, and where he was. He only remembered searching for a way out, and killing anyone who got in his way.
Leaning forward, he put his paw to his cheek and rested his elbow on his knee, freeing his tail and feeling an angry buzz flow down it with the restoration of blood into the appendage. He didn't remember much of what happened after being freed of the collar, but he remembered everything before that with perfect clarity. Was this Firestaff what the katzh-dashi wanted from him? Jula had mentioned it. That Tarrin had the power to defeat the Guardian and claim it, and that it would bring back someone named Val. He had never heard of it before. What was it, anyway? It seemed logical that this Firestaff thing was what everything was about. But why keep it a secret?
He just didn't know enough about it to really know what to think. He had only heard that one reference. But he did remember her talking about some group named the ki'zadun. The Black Network. The name, Tarrin had not heard, but the title was somewhat common knowledge. They were a large organization of men and women devoted to ruling the entire world. They were rumored to be supported by the Black Kingdom, Stygia, one of Sharadar's closest neighbors and oldest enemies. It was reputed that the Witch-King of Stygia was the ultimate leader of the organization, using them as a covert army to spread his influence throughout the world. But whether that was true or not, Tarrin did not know. It was, after all, only rumor and gossip, tales told around the parlor on stormy winter nights.
Could Kravon be a member of that network? That was the only name that Tarrin had ever gleaned out of his would-be assassins.
Tarrin winced slightly, and a growl issued from the back of his throat. Jula. He didn't know if he got her, but she was going to pay. He trusted her! He trusted her enough to turn his back on her, and she drove the proverbial dagger into it! It was a betrayal at a high level in his mind, and a part of him had been permanently hardened against trusting others. He knew the term for it. Feral. But he didn't care. He would never trust anyone like that again unless they proved themselves to him beyond absolutely any shadow of a doubt. He would not let that happen again, no matter what. Even if it meant sleeping with his back to the wall for the rest of his life. Nobody would imprison him again! Just the thought of it sent a cold chill through him, and he felt the Cat rouse from its corner in his mind and assess possible threat to its freedom. The Cat was still active, still vigilant so soon after it had taken control, sezied his body to do what his conscious mind could not, or was not doing fast enough.