And in her left hand, this strange woman was holding his staff.
"Does it make sense to you now, Tarrin?" she asked in a mocking tone. "I didn't appreciate you killing one of my cambisi. I had to carry that fool around inside me for nine months. I spent alot of money training him. Well, I can't very well have you running around with this," she said, motioning with his staff, "seeing as how inconvenient it made things, so I came over here to take it from you."
It took his mind a moment to adjust, to comprehend what was going on, and for that moment he was slack-jawed and dazed. But then he realized what had happened. It had been a lie! A game, a mental trick she used on him to make him believe he was back home! It was all so twistedly sickening! She had used his most treasured memories, his deepest emotions, against him in the most despicable manner! She had created a sense of trust in him, walked beside him, had pretended to be someone who cared about him, and it was all just so she could steal his staff!
Outrage erupted in him, and it sent him flying immediately into one of the deepest rages he had ever felt. He had never felt so violated in his life! The witch had used his own memories against him, she had looked inside him and played with his dreams for her own ends! Outrage fueled an immediate, undeniable need to rip the woman into pieces. Very small, bloody pieces. His eyes exploded with that unholy greenish radiance that marked his anger, and he lashed out at her with a speed that would have amazed a human looking on.
But the woman seemed to be one step ahead. With a single thrust of her wings, she vaulted herself into the air, holding his staff in her hands. "Temper, temper!" she called down to him mockingly as he rushed through the empty space she had just been occupying an instant before. He turned and looked up at her, rage blinding him of everything but the need to make that bitch suffer for what she did to him. He would make her pay! Reaching out, Tarrin grabbed the Weave in a stranglehold, demanded all the power it could give to him and more. It nearly ripped as Tarrin sucked the power out of the Weave faster than it could give it to him, causing his rage to share the feeling of intense pain that came with holding so much power. But there was very little cause to fear the pain in his mental state. He welcomed it, felt it inside him. The air around him began to shimmer from the heat of his building power, even as his body literally exploded into Magelight.
"You want temper?" he heard himself shouting nearly incoherently at the woman. "I'll give you temper!"
The air in front of him began to pulsate with a reddish aura, a misty cloud of glowing air that was the beginnings of a very simple weave, a weave that his enraged mind could easily create. It began to coalesce, to brighten, as Tarrin wove the flows of pure Air, with only token flows from the other spheres to grant his spell the power of High Sorcery. The woman was still in the air, nearly hovering, staring down at him with a suddenly serious face. He saw her reach out and point at him, and a blasting cone of fire erupted from her palm, lashing down at him with tremendous speed.
With a flick of his tail, Tarrin's enraged mind divided its attention. One part of him continued with his weaving, and the other attacked the magical conduit running from the winged woman's magical attack to the outside, a place beyond his comprehension, a place that granted her the magical energy to create her spell. She was connected to her spell by the Weave, and she was connected to the source of her power throught Weave. And there was no magic that flowed through the Weave that he could not affect with his own power. His power cut that connection like a scythe, and the fire simply winked out of existence well before it reached him. A barrier of his will formed around her, pulling the Weave away from her and isolating her, robbing her of her connection to her magical source by slicing them away from her. He had effectively cut her off from her formidable magical powers.
"Impossible!" she gasped, staring at him in absolute shock.
That instant of hesitation proved to be deadly. With a building scream, rising to a tremendous crescendo that was magically amplified by his own weaving, the reddish aura before him suddenly became coherent, a wall of angry red light that faced in the woman's direction. It was ready. With absolutely no regard for the damage he was about to deal out to the local geography, Tarrin's enraged mind released the weave.
The reddish wall of energy shuddered, then it exploded outward, away from him, as a shockwave of pure Air, a blast of air that raced away from him at supersonic speed. The buildings in front of him simply disappeared as the shockwave slammed into them, killing instantly those unfortunate souls that were inside. The shockwave did not slow down in the slightest as it shattered everything before it, expanding in an arc before him and above him, striking the winged woman not a heartbeat after she called out her surprise that he could cut her off from her magical powers. She was slammed by that shockwave, the wall of air, and was carried along with it as it raced away from him, destroying everything in its path. Building after building was shattered by his magical attack, creating a wall of flying debris that built up in front of the shockwave's front, sending dust and smaller bits of building tumbling in its wake. The radical speed of the weave caused it to expand to the terminus of its power in a single heartbeat, dissipating nearly as quickly as it was released. In the wake of its end, an ear-splitting BOOM shook the ground, caused Tarrin's eardrums to rupture, cracked the walls of the buildings that had been safely behind him, a monstrous sound that rolled out just behind a deadly cloud of debris and dust that rained down on the buildings that had been outside his weave's area of effect, destroying many of them as cow-sized chunks of shattered masonry slammed into them.
Panting, Tarrin hunched over. He stood at the narrow end of a cone of absolute destruction that extended before him, and went on for nearly ten blocks before the scoured earth gave way to a huge field of shattered wreckage. Buildings to each side of the magical weave were still standing, though they were covered in dust, and many of them had been cracked by the sound of the weave as it roared over them. The echos of that explosive sound still rang through the city. Still absolutely furious, he looked up into the dust-choked sky. She was gone. If she truly was a Demon, then his weave could not kill her. But she was gone now, hidden by the dust, and she had his staff. The object of his fury denied him, Tarrin stood up and threw his arms into the sky, screaming out his rage, his humiliation, his sense of being violated by the winged woman, who had taken his most fond memories and dreams and twisted them so she could gain his trust, and get his staff.
The Weave was flooding him with power once again, but he had used almost everything he had to create his retaliatory weave. He was drained, exhausted, and even his enraged mind seemed to comprehend that it had to do something before that power scoured his flesh from his bones, and left him nothing but a pile of smoldering ash. With barely a thought, it cut him off from the Weave, generating a backlash that literally ripped his shirt with its power, sending a powerful gust of wind away from him, disturbing the dust that had come to cover the entire area. He was furious, in total rage, and that lent him the strength to turn away. There would be no finding her tonight. The shockwave threw her up, not out. She would not be in the debris field. She was probably tossed a few longspans before she regained control of her flight.
His rage lessened, allowed his conscious mind to rejoin with the Cat, and it wasn't much better. Tarrin was indignant, he was humiliated, he was just so angry over what she had done to him. Losing his staff was just a drop of water in the well compared to his feeling of being utterly violated by the Demoness, violated all the way to his soul.