The female Were-cat suddenly seemed to get nervous, become afraid, when Tarrin hunched down and opened his arms, claws out, and roared at her in mindless fury. She was trapped inside the building, and he stood between her and the door, but she showed no signs of trying to flee. She rose up on her feet and squared off against him.
They sprang at the same time, going from staring at one another to engaged in the blink of an eye, and their initial exchange was nothing short of brutality personified. Neither even tried to defend against the other. They tore and ripped at one another with their claws, even biting with their fanged teeth, rolling across the littered floor as each sought to tear the other apart. But their claw wounds began to heal even as they were inflicted. Not that either of them felt the wounds they were receiving. Tarrin was completely overwhelmed by his rage, and Jula's insane anger had risen her to a similar state, a state that made them both unfeeling, invulnerable to pain or fear, completely dominated by the need to kill. Tarrin and Jula were both inhumanly strong, but he was larger than her, and he was stronger than her, and that let him eventually get her on her back beneath him, begin to start trying to protect herself as he pinned her down with his knees and tried to hit her in the neck.
With a foot to his belly, Jula kicked him off of her, separating them for a moment. Both were covered with blood, both of their blood, and most of Tarrin's clothing had been shredded by Jula's rending claws during their initial contact. He landed on his feet and immediately reversed his momentum, rushing right back at her. She managed to twist out of his charging attempt to grapple her, and she turned and ran for the door. But Tarrin turned even as he went by and grabbed her by her long, filthy hair, snapping her head back forcefully and pulling her off her feet. He turned on her as she landed on her back, trying to put a paw through her head, but both her feet rose up and kicked him dead in the face before he could reach her, kicked him with so much force that he was lifted off his feet, sailed over his own head, and landed hard on his stomach a couple of paces away.
Regaining his feet, the enraged Were-cat shook his head a few times to clear the ringing in his ears. He hadn't been hit that hard in a long time. The impact of it had shaken a bit of his rage loose, allowing a portion of his conscious mind to return to him. And that logical part analyzed things. It realized that if they just flailed at one another, either of them could win. It would come down to whose regenerative power would fail first. But she fought like a wild animal, where he had been trained by some of the finest fighters in the entire world. He wasn't using what he had been taught, he was simply lowering himself to her level and playing by her rules. His rage wasn't going to win this battle. He would need his reasoning mind to be completely assured of victory.
Tarrin rose up from his hunched posture, and retracted his claws. That made the female give him a curious look, unsure of what he was doing, until he closed his fists and shifted into the Ungardt defense position. She hissed at him and rushed, then tried to bull into him to continue raking at him wildly. But he backed up, keeping a cushion of distance between them as his paws and wrists deflected her seeking claws. He tried to get her to hit his manacles, where the steel would protect him from having to heal the wounds she inflicted, save his strength for more serious injuries. Jula seemed unmoved by his shift in tactics, simply trying to bull him down and rip him apart, but she couldn't get close enough to him to do it. He backed up in a complete circle to keep the cushion between them, and the entire time he studied her movements. She was wild, untrained, and that meant the her movements were instinctive in nature. Her speed made this dangerous, but he was just as fast as she was. She depended completely on her speed and her regenerative defense, because she had no formal training. She only attacked. She made no attempt to defend herself.
He'd seen enough. She drove a paw in to try to gouge out his eyes, but he caught her by the wrist, turned to press her up against his back, then whipped her over his shoulder in an arm-throw takedown. She slammed into the floor hard, her breath blasting out of her lungs. He dropped to a knee and tried to punch his fist right through her face, but she rolled aside even as he struck. His fist drove into the soft stone of the floor of the ruined house, shattering the stone it hit and sinking half his fist into the basement beneath. He rose back up to his feet as she rolled to her own, and confusion was evident on her face. She had never seen that coming. But that moment of confusion evaporated in her insane fury, and she charged him again.
She staggered back woozily when his fist slammed into her cheek, using his longer reach to hit her before she could reach him. Her knees wobbled for a second before they solidified, and she wiped blood off her lip that had come out of her nose. The raw power of the punch had affected her, just as it had done Triana. Regeneration couldn't quickly counter the stunning effects of a powerful physical blow. Even that wasn't enough to dissuade her. She roared at him furiously and lunged at him with her claws on one paw leading, but Tarrin simply twisted to one side and leaned back, and let her paw fly harmlessly past his head. He grabbed that paw's wrist after it went by even as he continued spinning to one side, jerking her out of her jump path and swiging her around, then letting her go. She sailed out of control, slamming into one of the walls of the house squarely on her back. She rebounded off the wall and landed on her side on the floor.
Shaking her head, she got back to her feet, but now the mindless fury on her face was replaced by trepidation. He still stood between her and the door, and he knew it. Now the animal within was telling her to flee, and he knew that too. But she wasn't going to get away. He may have enough of his rational mind to fight her, but the desire to kill her was still making his mind swirl in a maelstrom of anger and rage.
She made a show of readying to pounce at him, but at the last instant she turned and tried to rush around him, trying for the door. He turned in the other direction, putting his back to her for an instant, and then his manacled fist came flying around him as it whipped around his body, using the momentum of his spin to accumulate awesome speed and power. The manacle struck her just under the left arm, in the ribs, and it blasted her off her feet as her body simply folded around the irresistable force of the blow. She tumbled to the floor, spitting up a mouthful of blood, but she again got out of the way when he went for her prone form. She got back to her feet and ripped her claws right over his face, nearly taking out his eye, but he grabbed that paw as it went past, then slammed his fist into her face. Still holding onto her, he punched her again, and again, and once again, making her knees wobble, then yanked her to the side and spun her back to him, then wrapped her up in the Ungardt sleeper. Arm over her neck, he squeezed with all his might, enough to take the head right off of a human, cutting off the blood to her brain and her windpipe. She struggled, gasping for breath, then pain shot through his groin when her tail lashed up and struck him between the legs like a whip. The intense pain made him loosen his grip on her, and he struggled to recover from it, struggled not to lose himself to the rage again. She bit the arm that had been around her neck savagely, and the pain was like a wake-up call as her long fangs penetrated deeply into his forearm. It conjured an irrational image of Jesmind, her fangs sank into that very same arm, and it was like the entire nightmare had begun again. He jerked that arm back with her teeth still stuck in it, snapping her head back. She grabbed his arm with both her paws and got her teeth out of his arm, but her arched back shuddered when his fist hit her right in the kidneys. Her head slid under his arm and she fell to the floor, gasping for breath and groaning, as he staggered back and allowed his regeneration to wash out the pain her tail caused him.