Separated from his staff, Tarrin backed up as that lethal sword came after him. He evaded, twisted, dodged it, doing Allia proud with a dazzling display of nimble footwork. He was like a blade of grass in the wind, bending, twisting, always just outside the reach of his opponent's deadly magical weapon, trying to get enough of a cushion of distance to either Summon his staff or draw his sword. But the Doomwalker knew how to press and advantage, keeping right in Tarrin's face as its sword sought to put a few killing cuts in Tarrin's hide.
In the face of such a furious assault, Tarrin did the only thing he could think of. He suddenly turned on his heel and rushed headlong into Jegojah's face with a loud cry of fury. The Doomwalker raised its sword to impale the suddenly aggressive Were-cat on the end of that deadly weapon-
– -and then the Were-cat wasn't there anymore. Just as it had helped him against the Demon, it helped him now. A black cat suddenly darted between the Doomwalker's spread legs, legs spread out to give stability to receive Tarrin's charge, but now served to give the Were-cat an escape route. He ran just far enough to shapeshift back and reach his staff, kicking it up into his grip as the Doomwalker turned around and charged headlong, chagrin showing on the lower section of its face that he could see. Instead of engaging the Doomwalker, Tarrin retreated instead. It was getting too comfortable on the open, level ground, and that deadly weapon it held made it very difficult to fight his kind of battle without worrying about every little scratch and nick he may receive. Tarrin moved into the area beside the hill of blocks, a place littered with large building stones that served to mine the footing. Jegojah was right on his heels, and he no sooner turned around than he had to raise his staff and defend himself from that wicked weapon.
They engaged again, but now Jegojah did not move around nearly as much. The many stones made footing treacherous, so it kept its feet more or less planted and moved with caution and care, and never very far. Tarrin, however, knew the floor of the arena like the back of his paw, and he moved with utter confidence over the bumpy ground, darting in to harass the Doomwalker, then backing out of its reach when it began to get the upper hand in those brief, furious exchanges. The tactic looked to be getting on the Doomwalker's nerves, and its frustration became more and more apparent each time Tarrin danced back out of its reach. Obviously annoyed enough to change the rules of the game.
The Doomwalker raised the tip of its sword towards him, and Tarrin instantaneously reacted to that display. Drawing out the flows as quickly as the energy flowed through the Weave to the Doomwalker, Tarrin wove together a spell of Air, Earth, and Divine flows, forming an reflective barrier to the magical assault he knew was coming. Jegojah pushed its sword forth, and a sizzling bolt of lightning blasted into the air between them, charging at him at a speed that was almost impossible to follow.
At least for a human. Tarrin reared a paw back and swiped it across his body in a backhanded motion, and when the leading edge of that bolt of lightning struck the blurring paw, it was deflected away from Tarrin's body. The bolt blasted to the side of him, striking and rebounding off the wall of the arena, then struck the sand of the arena floor to melt the sand and form a puddle of bubbling glass.
If Tarrin thought that Jegojah was surprised before, the look on its face now-or what was left that he could see, with that visor down-was one of utter disbelief.
"Ye can do magic!" it gasped. "But if ye could destroy Jegojah, already it would have been done, yes," it reasoned immediately thereafter. "Ye full power, it is not yet back, no."
Tarrin said nothing. He wove together a short, simple weave of Fire and then unleashed it at the Doomwalker. If it wanted to play magic, Tarrin would be more than willing to oblige. A huge gout of flame erupted from the Were-cat's paw, lashing out in the Doomwalker's direction, forcing it to dive to the ground to avoid getting cooked. Its form then sank into the ground, disappearing from sight. Tarrin had never seen it do that before, and the newness of it caused him to delay a heartbeat too long. The blade of its sword suddenly plunged out from the ground, right up between Tarrin's legs, and only fast reflexes saved him from getting that blade up the inside of his left calf. It still managed to cut a shallow line through his fur, a line that spewed blood immediately. Tarrin wove the counterspell again to stem the bleeding, then realized that it couldn't fight the Doomwalker when it was hiding under the ground. Weaving together a platorm of Air some ten spans off the ground, Tarrin jumped up onto that invisible landing, standing seemingly on midair, crouching down and watching the ground below him intently.
It didn't emerge for several moments. It seemed to realize that Tarrin was no longer on the ground, and it refused to come out where it would get attacked immediately upon resurfacing. And with it inside the ground, Tarrin's sense of it from the Weave was muffled. He couldn't tell exactly where it was, only that it was somewhere underneath him.
Tarrin considered it. It obviously wouldn't come up where Tarrin could get at it, so its logical next move would be to come up somwhere else, like within the walls of the arena, then come out of them in that manner. If it could pass through solid rock, anyway. If not, its best bet was to surface on the far side of the jagged mound of building stones that pierced the arena wall, where Tarrin couldn't see it. Either way, looking down wasn't the place he should be looking. He started scanning the entire arena floor and even the stands, watching for the Doomwalker from any possible approach.
It emerged again not a distance away, but directly underneath him. That surprised Tarrin considerably, but no less so than when the Doomwalker raised its sword to blast him with lightning again. Instead of jumping or defending, Tarrin instead rose up and blasted the entire area with a huge gust of wind, thanks to a quick weave of Air, which served to kick up the dust of the arena and immediately hide him from the Doomwalker's sight in a cloudy fog of dust and sand.
Two could play the hiding game.
Tarrin expanded his platform to allow him to move from his aerial position in utter silence, without having to get on the ground, then lightly set his feet on the top of the mound of rubble on the west side of the arena's floor. He stopped maintaining the Air platform, but instead wove an Illusion of himself, exact down the most minute detail, and projected it down onto the arena floor below. The Illusion made quite a show of moving slowly and quietly, each foot painstakingly coming down so there would be no noise. Tarrin was even thoughtful enough to add footprints behind the Illusion's progress, depressions in the disturbed sand that anyone could easily track.
The Doomwalker took the bait. It rushed out of the haze with very little sound, sword leading. Tarrin made a point of having the Illusion quickly raise up and into a defensive stance, seeking to parry the point of that deadly sword. Jegojah's sword slid under the upraised staff, and effortly plunged into the midsection of its oppenent. It felt no resistance, and continued to feel no resistance as its body stumbled right through the disrupting Illusion.
It cursed and raised its shield as a weave of focused Air, a scything blade of pure Air, lashed down from the top of the mound of rubble at terrific speed, released with a slashing motion of Tarrin's arm. The Doomwalker managed to get its shield up in time, and to Tarrin's surprise, the shield resisted the power of the blow. The ground on either side of the Doomwalker shuddered, and a dark line appeared across the sand for a moment before the shifting sand and dust settled into the incision left in the neatly sliced ground. The Doomwalker staggered back from the impact of the Weave on its unusual shield, now showing a deep, clean, neat slice across its featureless face. It screamed another curse at him and raised its sword, unleashing another blast of lightning in the direction from which Tarrin's weave originated, but its aim was off. It couldn't see Tarrin very well in the dusty haze, and its magical attack flew harmlessly over Tarrin's head.