An effect caused by his presence.
With a vicious snarl, Tarrin wove together a weave of Fire and Divine, and the ghostly aura of Magelight around him shifted from white to red. He released it, and the aura around him suddenly expanded, grew, became a living thing unto itself, a massive bird made of pure fire. He imparted the magical construct with self-animating properties, as if the very element of Fire were collected and fused into a coherent magical being. He had no idea what he was doing, how he did it, but he knew what he'd just formed.
An Elemental.
A magical creature under his direct control. It would obey him, do his bidding, until he dismissed it back into the Weave or it was destroyed. He pointed at the Sha'Kar imperiously, and the Elemental understood exactly what it was created to do. With a shrill cry, the bird of Fire streaked away from him, towards the Sha'Kar, talons extended and ready to attack.
The Sha'Kar was smiling. That only enraged the Cat even more, sent it spiralling into the abyss of utter rage. She made a slashing motion with her hand, and he felt the eddies and currents within the strands shift, alter. They suddenly became motive, as if she were controlling them, and they suddenly extended outside the Weave and formed into flows. Flows of Water and Air. They lashed out from the Weave itself, struck the Fire Elemental as if they were arrows, and the flows coalesced within the Elemental to counter the weaving he had done to create it. The bird gave a startled cry, a cry of pain, as the Sha'Kar's weaving unravelled the very magic that made it what it was. The fiery bird spread its wings and began to thrash, and then the fire that made up its form simply broke up and evaporated like smoke.
The Sha'Kar didn't have time to gloat. Another weave of Fire, Water, and Air formed in Tarrin's paws, and he unleashed it on the woman in the form of intense, powerful lightning. She raised her hand, and he could sense the shift of the Weave as it seemed to respond to her. Flows of Earth came free of the Weave and rose up from the ground. The lightning hit that flow of Earth, and the energy of the lightning was absorbed harmlessly into it, deflecting the physical effect of the weave harmlessly.
The power rebuilt within him instantly. It began to haze the air around him as it heated him, heated it, the buildup of power so great that it started to distort the aura of Magelight around him. The Cat sensed this, felt the fiery pain of being so filled with the Weave's power, but it was too angry to care. It only saw the Sha'Kar, and it would not stop until it got her, no matter what the cost. The Cat could shrug off the pain that would have left Tarrin squirming on the ground in agony, as pure, total fury, the need to kill, overrode all sense of self. Tarrin wove again, weaves of pure Earth, sending them into the ground. The weave was on a titanic scale, a weave so vast, so convoluted that the Sha'Kar actually seemed impressed, uncertain as to how to go about stopping it before it was released.
The ground beneath his feet began to shiver. Then to tremble. More and more of the Weave's power infused it, causing it to vibrate in time with the pulsating power he pushed into it, causing the rock spires to sway and dust and rock to fall from them. More and more power was charged into the rocky flat under his feet, until the very earth tingled and trembled, making sand drum up and rising up a cloud of dust from the rocky ground. Tarrin closed his eyes and hunched his shoulders as the strain of weaving such power without releasing it began to wear on him. Sweat streamed from his face, and his paws began to shake, but he would not stop. Hair and fur began to shrivel, singe away from the internal heat of working with such power, but he would not stop. Blood began to thicken as heat caused it to coagulate, but he would not stop. Skin began to redden and blister as the awesome flow of energy through him burned into him like fire into paper, but he would not stop. He let out a gasping cry from the effort, from the pain of such power flowing into and through him, power the likes of which he had never tried to manipulate before.
His eyes snapped open, and he felt the last flows fall into place. Then he released it.
The ground suddenly split open like a melon dropped from a tree. The sound it made was indescribable, as raw stone was split open on a massive scale. The fissure opened just before him, and it raced away from him in the direction of the Sha'Kar, a shockwave of seismic force on a monumental scale, a shockwave so powerful the air above the ground was displaced with such force that it could kill. The ground shook and swayed like a table with broken legs, and an explosion of dust erupted from the ground all around him. One rock spire swayed too far, then toppled over, but the sound of its crashing to the desert floor was lost in the deafening cacophony caused by the rupturing of the earth itself. The fissure ran so deep that it punctured the crust of the land, penetrated all the way down to where the molten core of the world laid hidden. A geyser of ultra-hot liquid rock erupted from the fissure even as it continued racing away from him, spraying hundreds of spans into the air, literally burning the dust from the air as it started falling to the ground like a deadly rain. The fissure raced right towards the Sha'Kar, but the woman made no move to evade or escape it. She simply stood there until the last moment, when she vaulted into the sky with support from weaves of Air. She rose above the shockwave, but not above the sudden spraying eruption of magma that spewed out from the fissure.
Even lost in the throes of total rage, Tarrin was astounded by what he saw. The magma struck the woman, struck her squarely and true, but it did no harm. It simply clung to her like mud, neither burning nor searing. But he knew it struck her truly, for her black clothing burned and seared from contact with it, all of it except that utter-black cloak she wore, for the magma simply struck its surface and vanished within its unfathomable depths. She brushed it away as she rose over the top of the spraying geysers of fire as if it were nothing but troublesome dust, leaving behind unharmed skin showing through the charred holes in her clothing.
She was utterly immune to heat. It could not touch her, it did her no harm whatsoever. He could assense her, he realized that it was no spell or magical effect that was protecting her. Her body itself was immune, though he could sense that the effect had been worked on her by some kind of magical process. It explained her preference for Fire weaves… even if they were turned against her, they could not harm her.
Tarrin and the Cat both were dismayed. He had put almost everything into that weave, so sure they both were that if the shockwave didn't kill her, the spray of magma would. They were both forces of such magnitude that even a Ward would not be able to resist their power. He was exhausted, exhausted even beyond his rage, all his energy used up in the weave he had created, a weave that he now saw had done nothing more than tear a gash in the flesh of the earth, a gash that now bled profusely. But his Cat half, his fury, would not permit failure now. He had nothing left to Weave, but he would not stop. The need to destroy overshadowed self-preservation. Besides, now he was vulnerable, exposed. He would not allow her to pick him apart in his weakness. Better to die fighting.