The next morning had dawned clear and calm. There was still a bit of a dusty pall in the air from the sandstorm, and climbing onto the boulder showed him that the strong Ward he had made had been a very good idea. The Ward had about a span of sand built up around its border, and the sand was noticably higher between the boulders now than it had been before the storm. A span of sand wouldn't have buried them, but it would have collapsed the tent and left them exposed to the power of the scouring wind.
Sarraya flitted up and landed on his shoulder. "Dusty," she remarked, then she sneezed.
"The storm was a big one," Tarrin replied. "It's going to be dusty for a couple of days, at least." As he said that, he took the red scarf the girl gave him and settled it over his face, then donned his violet-shaded visor. The sun wasn't bright enough through the dust to be painful, but it would keep the dust out of his eyes. "You're going to have to navigate, Sarraya. I can't see the Skybands in this dust."
"Not a problem."
"What about the tent? Want to take it with us?"
"Why?" she asked. "If we need a tent, we'll just make another one. Let the Selani have it."
"I keep forgetting about that."
"That's why I'm the brains of this outfit," Sarraya teased.
"A Faerie, the brains of an outfit. I'm doomed."
"Hey!"
Navigating the boulder field was easy enough for him, he simply jumped from rock to rock, hopscotching his way through it. What made it a chore was that the boulder field was very, very large, longspans wide, and a couple of longspans of methodical jumping began to tire him.
"I wonder what happened to put this many rocks in one place," Tarrin mused to Sarraya as he jumped onto a particularly big rock, towering over the others.
"I'm not really sure," she replied. "The rocks don't look like they were in water, but something had to spill them out here."
"How can you tell they weren't in water?"
"They'd be smoothed down," she replied. "Water is even more corrosive than a sandstorm, over time. "Ever notice that the rocks you find in streams are smooth and look polished?"
"I never thought of that," he admitted. "You sound as smart as Phandebrass sometimes."
"I'm not sure if that's a complement or not," she said uncertainly.
The passage through the boulder field was more or less uneventful, at least up to a point. It changed quickly when he jumped from one rock to another, and his feet immediately sank down into the rock on which he landed. It wasn't stone!
Dislodged by a sudden, violent shift of the rock beneath him, Tarrin was spilled to the ground as the rock on which he had landed seemed to unfold itself, unbend, and he found himself looking up into the hungry gaze of a small kajat. It had huddled down, and it had looked so much like a rock with its brown scaly hide, he had literally jumped on top of it.
Snapping jaws instantly sought him out, and in desperation, before he could even feel fear, he twisted on the ground and got a foot on the lower jaw and both paws on the upper. Crushing pressure instantly struck him, and his foot was punctured by the spearpoint of a tooth, but his inhuman power proved to be the match of the monster's jaw muscles, if only just. Trembling with effort, staring into the maw of the huge lizard, Tarrin struggled against the vice-like crush of the monster's jaws. The pressure the monster put on him was astounding, threatening to shatter the bones in his arms and legs and he fought with all his strength to keep the jaws from closing on him. The things' fetid, hot breath blew over him, fueling his purpose, inciting the Cat within to lend all of its strength to keep him alive. With a growling roar of a cry, he pushed the jaws apart just a little, enough to straighten out his back and try to reach the sword on his back with his tail. But the monstrous reptile picked him up off the ground and began whipping its head from side to side, seeking to dislodge its meal enough to where it couldn't resist its jaws any longer. He hung on for dear life, both trying to keep the jaws from crushing him and keep his paws and feet where they were to keep the monster from killing him in one bite.
His paws slipped. He started falling backwards, out of its maw, but the fanged mouth snapped shut on his thigh, severing his right leg just above the knee. He tumbled to the ground as the intense pain of losing his leg ripped through him, before quickly being replaced with the angry tingling that told him that the leg was already starting to regenerate. The pain and the shock of the ambush pushed him over the edge, causing the Cat to rise up within him and cause his human consciousness to be shunted to the side. He got up onto his one remaining foot and jumped up onto a boulder, eyes consumed with the unholy greenish fire of his anger as he roared his challenge to the massive reptile.
It got a good look at him, got a sight of the rather gruesome process of regeneration when Tarrin lost a limb, as the leg literally grew out from the mangled stump bone first, fleshing out as it progressed, and then finally covering over with skin and fur grown from the stump down. Tarrin put his weight down on his new right leg, anger and fury overwhelming good sense. As the Cat always did, it sought out its most powerful, destructive option immediately, seeking to destroy the threat before it without considering the consequences of its actions.
The power of the Weave suddenly rampaging into him, through him, seeking to burn him to ash within heartbeats, the Cat used raw fury to bring the maelstrom under some sense of control, ignoring the burning from within of so much power, a burning that was very real. The kajat recoiled slightly as the fire-like numbus of Magelight suddenly exploded from the Were-cat's body, limning him in gentle bluish light that wavered and pulsated as if being carried by some invisible wind. Weaving together a chaotic mixture of Air, Fire, Water, and Divine energies, with only token flows the other Spheres woven in to grant the weave the power of High Sorcery, the Cat used that Weave it had used so many times before, a weave of such power that nothing could withstand it. The Cat rose a single paw and presented it palm-out to the beast, then thrust it towards the monster as it released the Weave.
An incandescent bolt of pure magical power, carrying the heat of a thousand bonfires, unleashed from Tarrin's upraised palm, ripping through the air as it travelled from Tarrin's palm to the terminus of its power in the blink of an eye. Its path carried it directly through the kajat's head, vaporizing everything it struck from just above that bloody maw to the top of its head in a perfect circle about a span across, then continuing on for nearly four longspans before the power of the weave reached its limit and dissipated. A cracking sound, something like thunder, proceeded the blast of magical fury, the sound of the air being instantly displaced and superheated by the power of the weave.
The kajat stood numbly for a long moment, then toppled to the side, partially on a large rock. Tarrin found himself struggling against the unmitigated power of the Weave, as it almost instantly replaced all the energy he had expended creating the killing weave, feeling like a man drowning in a sea of fire. But then the power flowing into him began to slow, and he sensed Sarraya using her Druidic magic to restrict that flow, to get it to where Tarrin could resist or control what was coming into him. But she was a basket trying to hold an avalanche. He could feel her struggling with her Druidic magic with everything she had, reaching the limits of her power, and it had very little effect on his connection to the Weave.
In that instant, as the Cat fled him, he understood the incredible danger he was in. If Sarraya could not reduce what was coming into him, he could not cut himself off without having the backlash kill him. If she couldn't, he would be burned alive from within, destroyed by the power of the Weave, he would be Consumed.
It was just too much power. He could feel that Sarraya was at the limit of her ability, and the power did not slow down enough to allow him to cut himself off without killing himself. He threw himself into controlling that power, to push against what was coming into him, even going so far as to seeking to use the power within directly against the power outside, seeking to have them strike one another and cancel each other out, just as a misweaved spell fizzled if flows of the same Sphere touched.