But it wasn't there anymore. Tarrin heard it behind him as he landed, so he rolled forward and came up facing it. Its breastplate was caved in at the abdomen from the force of Tarrin's blow. It pointed its sword at him, and before Tarrin even knew what was going on, he was on his back, pain blasting along his chest and arms. He could feel the shirt against his chest burn from the impact with whatever magic the creature had thrown at him. The smell of ozone was strong in the air, and the passage echoed loudly with a thunderclap. Magic! The Goddess warned him that it was a powerful creature, and it was only logical that that meant that it also had some magical capability. It was on him instantly, and the only thing that saved him from having his head split in half was a raised foot. He caught its wrist on the pad of his foot, bending his back impossibly tight and bracing his body with his arms as his leg absorbed the force of the attack, stopping the edge of the blade mere fingers away from Tarrin's forehead. Tarrin's leg was much stonger that its arm, and his body uncoiled like a spring, hurling the creature away from him as his leg and body pushed against it. But it didn't fall down, and Tarrin's backwards roll didn't get him far enough away. He ducked under another blow meant to chop his head in half, but he didn't get down far enough.
Tarrin screamed in pain as his right ear fell to the floor beside him, and that pain triggered the Cat in a way that he could not suppress. The animal in him took over, and his eyes blazed from within with a greenish aura that consumed them. Jegojah actually backed up as Tarrin exploded from his crouch and threw his staff aside, assaulting the undead creature with a blind, mindless fury that took the creature by surprise. He was quickly bleeding from several shallow cuts and slashes in his arms and upper body, but he completely ignored the pain as the Cat in him sought nothing less than ripping off the creature's head. The creature contained Tarrin's mindless fury, understanding that he had lost control, and it made him pay for it every time Tarrin's claws sought out its face by cutting another bleeding line in his hide. Grabbing the edge of the creature's shield, Tarrin ripped it off of its arm, but it cost him a deep stab to his left shoulder in reply. And just as the pain had triggered his loss of control, that deep injury, to the bone, somehow shocked him back into rational thought. He grabbed the sword with his other paw, ignoring the blade's edges digging into his fingers, then pulled it out of his shoulder, then twisted it to the side. He spun away from that motion and planted his clawed paw right in the creature's face as it tried to recover its position, staggering it back and giving Tarrin a chance to see what he had done to it while he was in his rage.
At least he had given back as good as he got. The creature had several very deep rends in its armor from his claws, and its face bore no less than four quartets of deep slashes that dug into the bone. And now that it didn't have a shield, Tarrin felt that it evened things a bit. His left arm was still movable, but it caused a shockwave of pain in him every time his shoulder shifted. His head was pounding, and he could feel blood pour into his ear canal like water, dulling his hearing on the right side.
It cackled again, giving him what Tarrin felt was a leery grin. "Oh, clever, clever Were-cat," it rasped. "Ye be better than Jegojah expected. Professional trained, ye be, by a master who knows his fighting."
"Let's get on with it," Tarrin snarled.
The creature moved as if to advance, but then it called out a single unintelligible word, then slammed its booted foot into the floor. It created a seismic shockwave that sizzled up the hallway like a tidal wave, and when it hit Tarrin, it picked him up and hurled him twenty spans down the passage. His back slammed into the ornate gates to the inner chamber, and the shockwave drove them open and spilled him onto the floor beyond.
Dazed, Tarrin lay on the floor, knowing that the creature was coming but unable to figure out how to make his body move. Each bootstep seemed to be an eternity apart, and time seemed to slow to a crawl. His eyes came into focus just in time to see it swinging its sword in a broad overhanded chop, meaning to put him down for good. He managed to find out how to move his arms, and a blast of pain heralded his success as his paws arced up and over his body, then slapped together on either side of the broadsword's blade. The blade cut into the pads on his palms, but the pressure he exerted on the sides halted its forward motion just above his chest. Shock registered on the undead creature's face as Tarrin's foot smashed into its knee, buckling it and making the creature roll to the side as its supporting leg crumpled under its weight. Tarrin pushed the sword along with it as he rolled in the other direction, coming to his feet as the creature also regained its footing. Its left leg was bent at an unnatural angle at the knee, but it didn't seem to be in any pain or discomfort.
With a grim look on its face, the thing advanced and engaged, but it limped on its damaged leg. That gave Tarrin an advantage, and the Were-cat suddenly became like smoke, always just within the reach of the creature's sword, but never quite where the sword was trying to go. Tarrin evaded and dodged the still-fast sword, moving like a reed in the wind, folding and slipping around the blade as it sought his blood. He was trying to work the creature into a position where he could give it a finishing blow, but the cagey undead creature seemed to sense each of his attempts to work it into a bad position. They traded futile blows for a long moment, until the creature managed to slash Tarrin across the thigh with its sword when he again slipped on a small pool of his own blood. Sucking his breath in from the pain, Tarrin staggered back with a paw over his leg. Something suddenly seemed to seize his tail in a hellish sensation of fire, but something that seemed to burn and freeze at the same time. His tail flinched away from that feeling, and he didn't dare look back to see what it was. The undead creature was coming at him in a rush that startled the Were-cat, too fast for its damaged leg, until he realized, too late, that it had lunged with every intention of falling onto the Were-cat after it its sword spitted him, using him to break its momentum. Tarrin managed to slither around the point of the sword, but the creature slammed into his side, right against his injured shoulder, and Tarrin screamed and was staggered back from that painful force.
Then all the world became pain.
Jegojah stumbled forward after ramming its shoulder into the wounded shoulder of its opponent, forcing it back. The Were-cat seemed to cross some sort of invisible boundary, and then its entire body was surrounded with some kind of blazing white light! It was almost like smoke, surrounding the Were-cat, floating up and away from him in wisps and tendrils as if caught in some kind of wind or current. Jegojah recognized it as Magelight, and he had only seen it once before.
When his living body was killed on the battlefield, destroyed in the fires of High Sorcery, what the current Sorcerers called Ritual Sorcery.
Jegojah staggered back, in awe, and it was then it realized that it was too late to run.
Never had Tarrin experienced such pain. It infused his very being, blazing into every tiny part of his body, seeking to fill him until he exploded. The transformation into a Were-cat, long buried in his mind, was a candle held up to the bonfire compared to what sought to erode his very sanity now. Only dimly did he understand that it was the power filling him, seeking to charge him to the bursting point, flooding into him in such a rush that he could not hold it all.
Tarrin had stepped into the massive Conduit that ran up the center of the Tower, and the tremendous magical energy within it had touched him.
His mind floating in a tidal wave of agony, Tarrin desperately realized that if he didn't do something with the energy filling him, it would destroy him. His eyes focused through the wispy white light surrounding him at the awestruck Doomwalker, and he let out a primal scream of pain and rage, focusing it on his opponent. His frenzied mind attempted to embrace the power, channeling the power, trying to harness it, to control it ever-so-slightly before it could incinterate him from within. Raw power blazed from his incandescent body, striking the Doomwalker in the chest, and then filling it with the same energy that was filling him. But the Doomwalker was not a Sorcerer, could not even begin to hold the power that Tarrin was forcing into it.