"You see truth," she said in a calm voice. "You know me now. You fear it."
"Y-Y-You're-You're a Sha'Kar!" he managed to get out.
"If giving me such title pleases you," she told him mysteriously.
"What do you want from me?"
"You have heard my call," she said again. "It is time."
"Time? Time for what?"
"Time," she replied, pulling a slender arm from beneath her cloak and simply pointing a delicate finger at him.
And with that word and gesture, the ground in front of him just simply exploded. The impact of it blasted the breath from his lungs, picked him up, carried him along with the shockwave of the explosion as bits of rock and debris drove into him. He felt himself flying through the air, and then was tumbling on the ground with a dozen shouts of pain emanating from various parts of his body. He rolled to a stop, his body a bit dazed, but his mind whirling like a hurricane. There had been no touching the Weave, no sense of Sorcery from her! It was as if she'd woven the spell outside his senses!
She attacked him! She was a Sha'Kar, an Ancient, and she had attacked him! How was he going to fight an Ancient? How was he supposed to stand against that kind of incredible power?
He rose up to his feet, crouching down over them, tail slashing back and forth as an instinctual need to face this challenger battled with the human realization that this was no being to fight. Panting from the pain of the shrapnel, pain that eased as his body mended itself, he looked up and saw her descending from the top of the spire slower than would be natural, as if the air was holding onto her and lowering her gently to the ground.
His mind raced through innumerable possibilities, but it kept returning to two simple conclusions. One, that there was no escape from someone like this. Her magic could easily keep him from escaping. And since he could not flee, he had to fight. Sarraya wasn't here, so that made his most poweful weapon unavailable to him, but that didn't mean that he was just going to lie down and die for her benefit. He was a Were-cat. He knew how to fight without Sorcery.
That one thought nearly scared him into losing his composure. Fight an Ancient? It was madness! Something very close to abject terror closed on him as the woman's feet hit the ground, as she lowered those eyes on him. She outmatched him in every sense of the word… but then again, he'd been outmatched before, and he had found ways to win. It was live or die, so he'd better get his mind going and find a way to either defeat her or escape from her.
With deliberate slowness, he drew his sword, letting her hear the sound, trying to do anything to rattle her steely composure. He was much taller than her, and he was a physically intimidating person. It had worked on many others before her. Perhaps it would work on her as well.
She simply stood there, staring at him.
He couldn't show fear. Gritting his teeth, feeling like he was about to run into the mouth of some giant predator, Tarrin exploded forward out of nowhere, moving with all the speed and power his body could give to him. Sword held point towards her, he covered the distance between them faster than a thoroughbred could sprint, his fear and adrenaline granting him incredible speed. She simply watched him coming, and made no move to avoid him or defend herself. He knew that that was a very important observation, but if she wasn't going to move, he was going to take his shot at her. He charged right at her, on top of her in the blink of an eye, and he thrust the black-bladed sword directly at her chest.
And she made no move to evade, until the very last second, when she pulled her cloak around her.
The blade met nothing. It simply kept going, and going, even as Tarrin's feet slid to a stop just before her. It sank into the impenetrable blackness of her cloak, swallowed up by it, and it met nothing to slow it down. He thrust through her so hard that his paw also dipped into that inky blackness, and when it did he felt an agonizing, biting cold slash through his paw and arm, like the touch of a Wraith. Crying out, he recoiled from that icy cold, letting go of the sword in his haste to free himself from that painful touch. He pulled his paw back, seeing that the fur had frost on it, and his fingers were numb and nerveless.
The sword was simply gone.
It had went inside the cloak! The cloak wasn't natural, it was some kind of magical artifact!
She gave him the slightest of knowing smiles as he staggered back away from her. She reached within her cloak, and with deliberate slowness, drew out his sword, holding it by the middle of the blade. It was nearly as tall as she was, but she held it with a surety and confidence that told him that she was much stronger than she appeared. She glanced at the blade casually, then tossed it aside like it was so much dross.
Feeling was returning to his paw. He flexed it a few times as he took a few more steps back from her, trying to figure out what to do next. But she only gave him a slight look, a shift in the set of her eyes, and that was all he needed to react to whatever was about to happen. He spun aside and sprinted away from her, diving over a large rock, then turning and rushing towards the nearest rock spire. This was insanity! What was he supposed to do against something like that? She couldn't be injured by weapons, and he'd destroy himself with Sorcery long before he got anywhere near her!
He reached the spire, hiding behind it for cover, trying to recover his breath and his racing mind, as his heart pounded in his chest. Think, he had to think! He couldn't use Sorcery, and he couldn't fight her hand to paw. That didn't leave him many options. He could use some Druidic magic, but he'd never tried to use it in a fight before, at least not consciously. And Sarraya had never taught him any Druidic spells that would be useful in a fight.
"You shame us," the woman called out. "Must I force it of you?"
And with that, the rock spire against which he was leaning began to shudder and vibrate. For a fleeting moment, he could feel the magic from her, feel it through the weave, a rippling and pulsating energy that vibrated through it like the plucking of a lute's string. The sound of cracking rock reached him, and he looked up in time to see several large chunks of the spire beginning to fall down to the desert floor. He scampered aside as a big one hit very close to him. He raced away from the spire as it shuddered and groaned, then ear-splitting sound of ripping stone raked over his ears. He turned back in time to see the entire rock spire shudder, then begin to topple to one side. It struck the desert floor in a massive cloud of dust, with so much energy that the rock and ground beneath his feet heaved violently from the blow, nearly knocking him down in its convulsions. The sound of the impact nearly deafened him, sent a huge cloud of dust roaring over him.
Merciful Goddess! he thought frantically. What power! And without High Sorcery!
She was just too powerful! There was no way to fight her, no way to hide from her, no way to run from her!
He had no choice. He couldn't fight someone like this. He needed High Sorcery.
Paws limning over in Magelight, Tarrin reached out to the Weave, felt it connect to him, and then try to drown him in a tidal wave of its power. More than ever before, he felt a modicum of control over the power, as if his abilities had reached a point where he could control High Sorcery to a limited degree. He found that he could push against that power, resist it at least enough to be able to use the power within before it built up past the point where he could contain it. It flooded into him, joined with him, and that power caused him to become more attuned and connected to the Weave. He could feel her magic now, feel it flow and eddy within the strands. With a primal scream, he harnessed that power within him, used it against the Weave, caused the strands to expel flows of the Spheres. Those flows coalesced around his paws as he wove them into a spell, and then he released its power. The weave manifested as a powerful blast of wind, shattering the dust cloud and then sending it back the other way. The force of the wind was enough to pick up small stones, sending a cloud of debris flying back at the Sha'Kar with enough force to injure, maybe even kill if they hit right.