Tarrin, the Cat, only glared at it more furiously and redoubled its resolve to destroy it.

"Which will be next, Were-cat?" it taunted. "The Amazon, yes? Maybe the Sorceress? Perhaps the Selani wench."

With a vicious shriek, Tarrin exploded against the Doomwalker's strength, driving its arms back. Stark hatred burned inside him, burned against anyone who would threaten his sister. Hatred that fueled him, drove him, demanded that he destroy the Doomwalker, and do it utterly. But it held fast against him, hands crushing his wrists, causing pain that Tarrin could no longer feel. But no matter how much he pushed, the superior strength of the Doomwalker, fueled by its magical connection to the earth, could not be overmatched.

The Cat could not overpower it. But the Cat could overwhelm it. Overwhelm it and destroy it. It knew what to do. The human wizard had explained it to Tarrin, and it was something that the Cat remembered.

Eyes burning a bright green in fury, that green suddenly blazed into an incandescent white, a light of painful intensity that illuminated the Doomwalker's faced, bathed it in the light of doom. It seemed to sense that it had crossed a line that it should not have crossed, that it had sent Tarrin from the the fury of a rage into the dark pit of total maniacal bloodlust. A scream issued forth from the Were-cat, a sound of pure, unmitigated hatred, a sound that did not even remotely contain rational thought.

Tarrin's body exploded into a brilliant, incandescent aura of Magelight, fingers feathering from him as he reached out with coiled tendrils of the seven spheres. They sought out strands, and when they touched them, he snapped them, causing them to form into new strands. A concentrated web of magical power formed around him, with the Were-cat at its nucleus. Still being held by the Doomwalker, the Were-cat opened himself completely and utterly to the power of the Weave, letting it fill him, suffuse him, sweep him up in its ecstatic depths and drown him in the rapture of its power. He drained the Weave of its energy all around him, bringing it into him, into a body that was never meant to contain such incredible power. But that power was held for only a brief moment, long enough to form it into a titanic weave consisting mostly of Mind and Divine energy, with only token flows of other spheres to charge the weave with the power of High Sorcery.

Tarrin released that weave against the Doomwalker's body, filling it with every iota of the power he had gathered within him, utterly draining him of everything he had. It entered the dead shell and infused it, charged it with a magical force it could not possibly hope to contain. Jegojah's body suddenly began to glow, and cracks formed in its gray, pallid skin, beneath which pulsed a blazing incadescence that seared the eyes. The Doomwalker fought against his magic with its own, but it was like a mosquito challenging an eagle. It tried to pull away, but Tarrin grabbed it by it hands and held onto it, held it in a crushing grip that doomed it. Those cracks widened, split, crisscrossing the entire body, until that material form achieved the maximum potential of energy it could hold. And even still Tarrin poured magical power into it, breaking that ultimate threshold.

The body held by the Were-cat shuddered only once, and then it detonated in a blinding flash of fire and light, generating an ear-splitting BOOM that echoed from the city walls. It knocked everyone but Tarrin off their feet for hundreds of spans in every direction, who was shielded from the explosive force by the power of his own Sorcery, the ghostly aura of wispy light that shimmered around him. Tents uprooted and blew away by the power of the explosion, buildings shuddered and glass windows shattered, and a cloud of smoke and dust was sent high, high into the air.

When the smoke cleared from around him, Tarrin stood blankly, standing before a smoking crater in the hard packed street.

The Were-cat sagged to the ground, still connected to the Weave. Release. It had to release the Weave, or he would be destroyed. Gritting his teeth, he severed himself from the Weave, taking advantage of the fact that the spell he had woven had completely drained him to the point where the power couldn't resist being stopped.

The backlash blew at his clothes, pushing them away from him, sent a shockwave away from him as he cut himself off from the Weave, ripped an avalanche of pain through him that shocked him back to his senses. Sagging to his paws and knees, Tarrin sucked in air as fast as he could draw it into his lungs, feeling the searing pain ripple through him, feeling like he'd been boiled in his own pelt. Memory of it all was scattered in his mind, with only nightmarish images of the Doomwalker, Sarraya being struck by the shield, of seeing Allia and Camara Tal laying motionless on the ground. Of Faalken-

Faalken!

Tarrin pulled his head up, looking towards the Knight. Dolanna and Dar had the burly Knight on his back on the ground. Camara Tal was standing over him, her halter burned in half and leaving her bare from the waist up, but she had no blackened wound in her chest. She had healed herself. She had her amulet in hand, but her head was bowed. Both her hands were bloody. He saw with cold horror the huge pool of blood that was around the Knight, covering his sheared armor, soaking into the dirt and into the robes that Dolanna and Dar were wearing.

"Fa-Faalken," Tarrin wheezed, trying to get back his breath. "N-No, Faalken."

Dolanna looked up at him, looked into his eyes, and what he saw in them caused a cold hand to wrap around his soul.

Faalken was dead.

It struck him like the hammer of a giant. The enormity of it drove daggers into his mind, burned his soul with the purity of its significance. A friend had died, a friend had died protecting him. A friend had died because of him, a friend was dead, and it was his fault.

It was his fault.

Images of his mother, staring at him with terror in her eyes as he held her against a wall, preparing to rip off her head, swirled in his mind. Images of the many people he had killed, images of Faalken, the cherubic, optomistic Knight who always had a smile and a comical word, one of the few people who could make Tarrin laugh. A cheery soul, a warm friend, his light forever extinguished.

And it was his fault.

Faalken was dead because of him! The words of the Doomwalker returned to him, the taunting, offering him the choice between saving his friend or destroying the Doomwalker. In his rage, he followed the only path that made sense to the animal within, the destruction of an enemy. He had let Faalken die just to satisfy his own lust to kill. Jegojah may have struck the blow, but it was Tarrin who had let Faalken die!

Faalken was dead. Faalken was dead, and Tarrin had killed him.

He shook his head dumbly, denying the stark truth, the horrible realization that he was now the monster that he had always feared he would be. He had caused the death of his own friend. But there was no denying a truth so powerful, so simple, so logical. Tarrin had had a choice, and he had chosen to let Faalken die. He was guilty, he was the one. It was all his fault.

Paws to the sides of his head, Tarrin reared back and wailed to the sky, a heart-rending moan of utter despair, of abject sorrow.

Faalken was dead. And he was the monster that killed him.

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