He couldn't resist it. He fell to the deck on his stomach, heaving to draw breath against that great weight placed over his back, driving him into the deck. His mind whirled with anger and bloodlust, but that red haze dulled as the lack of air affected his ability to think. He started feeling faint, wheezing for breath.

"Anger is only a weapon for your opponent, Tarrin," Camara Tal said bluntly. "You lost your temper, and you paid for it. You can't afford to do that. Not once, not twice, not ever. No matter how good you are, if you don't think, you won't live. You're beaten. If I were an enemy, you would be dead."

Tarrin's mind boiled at that one statement, achieving a level of rage that caused all rational thought to evaporate like smoke. The animal within reached without, coming into communion with the Weave, grabbing the strands and yanking them towards himself to fill himself with their power. Tarrin's eyes turned from that glowing green to a blazing incandescent white as an avalanche of power flooded into him, infused him, brought under control by the raging beast and focused to a single point. With a primal scream, Tarrin's paws exploded into Magelight, and he rose from the deck like a revenant, like an elemental force which no man, no power, could hinder. Muscles ripped and one of his legs broke from the strain of rising against the magical spell, but in his enraged state he felt no pain, would not stop no matter what tried to prevent him from regaining his feet. He attacked the spell placing the weight on him at its source, striking like a viper against the energy that fed the spell, gave it its power. He severed that link immediately, breaking the spell, then turned on the stunned Amazon with blazing paws upraised, then levelled them at her like an archer raising his bow to a foe. At the last second, she seemed to understand that she was literally looking Death in the face, and she dove to the side.

A bolt of pure magical energy, so bright that it hurt to look at it, erupted from his paws, that same primal weave he had used before, one of the few ways in which the Cat knew how to use magic. It roared down the deck, missing the Amazon by fingers as she dove aside, then hit the sterncastle and caused he wooden wall to explode violently, sending flaming shrapnel back across the stern section of the deck. The bolt blew out the stern of the ship, splitting the water as it streamed across the surface for nearly a longspan, then hitting the water and causing it to explode. That detonation sent a shockwave of hot air back at the ship, making it rock, and sending a spray of water hundreds of spans into the air.

Seeing his antagonist still alive, the Cat within changed tactics. Energy hazed around him, an aura of Magelight, as he collected the power to weave together another spell, sucking it from the Weave faster than it could flow into him, causing the Weave around him to shudder and vibrate in a eerie harmony that only a Sorcerer could hear. He wove together that spell, consisting primarily of Divine energies, with token flows of the other Spheres to give the weave the power of High Sorcery, and a small ball of infathomable blackness coalesced over his left paw. Electrical energy crackled around it, against his paw and manacle, increasing in birghtness and frequency as the black ball expanded, swallowing up the light. The Cat knew that against this weave, there was no defense. Without so much as a thought, he released it, hurling it at her in a broad sidearmed toss. It hurtled towards her, and her almond eyes widened in shock and fear as it sought to utterly destroy her.

Then it simply stopped. Both Tarrin and Camara Tal stared at the magical orb in stunned shock, and then Sarraya appeared directly in front of it, her tiny hands held out as if to push it away. She somehow brought it to a halt, then pushed up with both arms, and the ball sailed into the sky, barely avoiding the ropes of the rigging. An image of something similar touched the Cat within him, an image of Triana turning his spell into the sky, taking control of its direction. Sarraya had done the same thing. Her tiny hands pointed at him, and he felt the Weave simply disappear, draining away from him as if it had never been. The power within had nowhere to go, so it generated a backlash that put him on his knees, a backlash that generated a physical blast of wind that radiated from him and struck everyone and everything around him, knocking people back and making the masts and rigging sway in the sudden wind. The Magelight winked out from around him, the incadescent white light faded from his eyes as he felt the Weave abandon him.

Even that was not enough. His rage was focused on Camara Tal, and he would not stop until she was dead. The Faerie had opposed him, so she was now also his enemy. His leg still broken, he pulled himself to his feet, leaning grotesquely against his broken leg, eyes still blazing with the greenish aura that made them so striking. Someone grabbed him by the wrist, and he pulled on his arm, dragging that someone towards him. Paw grabbing the figure by the neck, he lifted it up, then slammed it against the deck with impressive force, claws on his other paw rearing back to kill the interloper. But a flash of silver hair and a brown-skinned face struck his mind harder than a giant's fist, and eyes bluer than the sky locked onto his calmly.

It was Allia!

The sight of her was all it took. If there was one person in the entire world that Tarrin could not harm, could not injure, no matter what his mental state, it was his Selani sister. Her visage soothed his fury, the security he felt when he looked at her defused his explosion, allowing him to regain control of himself. Tarrin wilted visibly as his rage drained away, drained out of him by the blue of her beautiful eyes, eyes that bored into his and did not waver. He let go of her neck and knelt beside her, confused and scattered, unable to link together two coherent thoughts. That was somewhat normal after coming out of a rage, and he knew in the back of his mind that he only had to wait out the disorientation. He had very little memory of what he did while in that state, lost in the swirling fury that had dominated his mind. With the loss of his rage, the pain of a leg that had healed wrong struck him, pain of muscles only partially mended hit him like a thousand sticks all over his body.

He looked up just enough to see Sarraya. The tiny Faerie looked at him with concern, compassion, and mercy, and he could only stare at her. "Sleep," she whispered to him sweetly, touching him on the forehead gently. "Let the pain go through sleep."

It had to be magical. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a weariness that flowed into him, through him, settled into his bones, dulled his pain, calmed the chaos of his mind. Eyes rolling back into his head, Tarrin sagged to the deck, lost in a dreamless oblivion of sleep.

There was a moment of stunned, awed, horrified silence. Everyone who had witnessed the entire episode stared at the inert Were-cat, worry showing on their faces that he would wake up and continue his rampage. The Amazon half-sat, half-lay nearby, watching the Were-cat carefully, wiping a line of blood from her chin, as the Faerie landed just in front of the Were-cat's head, putting her hands on his forehead and cheek.

The moment was ended by the Selani. She rose quickly from where she lay on the deck, blood smearing her back and flowing down the backs of her legs. The deck was split where the Were-cat had rammed her into it, but she showed no signs that she even realized she was wounded. Hot eyes locked on the Amazon, and only one word was uttered, a word that made it clear how she felt.

"Fool!"

The word echoed through the silence, issuing through the ship, ringing in the ears of nearly everyone who was looking on. The Selania balled a four-fingered hand up into a fist and shook it at the Amazon, who still looked a little dazed from the assault.