The other ships finally reacted. The remaining three began to turn, to flee from this monster who could destroy entire ships with single spells, but they would not get far. Still holding the air Weave, Tarrin sent it against the next nearest ship. He slashed both arms down in a smashing motion, and the flat surface of the weave slammed into the top of the next nearest ship. It didn't strike at supersonic speed, but it struck with enough force to shatter the masts and crush the ship underneath it. An ear-splitting series of explosions of ripping wood heralded the death of the vessel, smashed into fragments that were slammed into the ocean with enough force to send up a splash hundreds of spans into the air.
The toll of his actions slowly began to catch up to him. Even in his rage, he began to feel the bone-weariness that working with such power was causing, an exhaustion that would kill him if he didn't stop. But he would not stop. Not until they all paid for what they did to Miranda. But even in they purity of his rage, he understood that he had to do it fast. Already, he could feel the burns, the injuries he had done to himself. He understood that he was walking a razor's edge between being Consumed and dying from burning up all his own energies. But there was no fear in it. He would welcome either, so long as they came after he destroyed the Zakkites.
There could be time for one more weave. The remaining two ships were fleeing from the galleon, close to each other. Tarrin reached out in his rage and drew in the power to weave, saturating himself with the power, the majesty, the might of High Sorcery. His fur was all completely burned away, and his skin was smoldering as the power burned him alive from the inside out, but he did not stop. Weaving together a weave composed primarily of Water, he raised both hands and released it. Two massive walls of water rose up from the sea on both sides of the Zakkite vessels, who immediately tried to climb out from that valley of death. The walls of water shimmered and pulsated, undulating like the surface of water blown by the wind in a pond, then their surfaces snapped taut, as if some giant had pulled the corners of a sheet laid over them.
When they did that, Tarrin slapped his hands together, which made the two mountains of water smash into one another with a thunderous noise, grinding the last two ships into small shards of waste. The debris showered the sea all around them as the two mounds of water turned into a singular column of power that sprayed out as if a god had thrown a small island into the sea, spraying water, wood, and the mangled bits of the dead all over the water's surface for longspans in every direction.
The last windrows of the sound faded away, and Tarrin sagged to his knees on the deck. Charred paws came to rest on Miranda, where he had laid her so gently, and in that touch he could sense everything about her. His awareness heightened by his touch on High Sorcery, still saturated with its power, he could assense her in a way that he had never been able to do before. Her body was dead, but the soul within had not yet been released, as it awaited Dakkii, the goddess of Death, to come to claim her. With a clarity that seemed unnatural, he understood the significance of that simple fact. Sorcery could not resurrect the dead, but Miranda was not truly dead. Not yet. But Dakkii was coming-in his state of expanded awareness, he could feel her approach, knew that there wasn't much time.
Reaching out one more time, understanding that to draw on the Weave again would be fatal, he drew in the power for one last spell. There was no regret in the action. The rage had subsided, leaving behind an emotionless sense of awareness that judged an action only by its rightness, and what he was going to do could not be any more right. He leaned over and put one paw on Miranda, and the other on Sisska, then closed his eyes. The black metal amulet around his neck flared into sudden incandescence as he wove together Water, Air, Earth, Divine energy, and token flows of the other spheres so that his weaving carried the power of High Sorcery, and then released them into the two females. His touch became a searing flash of light, and both females suddenly bowed their backs and snapped their jaws tightly shut. The weave of healing literally attacked the ghastly wounds which had killed both of them, reknitting flesh, smoothing away burned bone, reconstructing entire sections of body, and then infusing them both with the pure energy of the Weave. That spark of power incited their hearts to beat, their diaphragms to flex, reawakened the souls that had been preparing to depart this world and move onto the next. The power of his touch was more potent than any spell of destruction or battle, as if the Weave itself responded to him with a complete surrender that was missing when he used it in anger or to destroy, magnified by the utter saturation of energy that the new strands allowed him to bring to bear.
As one, both Miranda and Sisska drew in a ragged breath, on their own. They would make it.
He had no more. Still connected to the Weave, he no longer had the power to sever himself from it, or to let go of it. But it did not rush into him as he thought it would have. He was utterly defenseless to the Weave, yet it did not seek to fill him with its power. Instead, it simply drained away, evaporated, letting go of him with a gentleness that made him blearily wonder what had happened. But no matter how gently it happened, it still generated a backlash within him, one that his body simply could not tolerate. Eyes rolling back into his head, he collapsed forward, and knew no more.
"By all that's holy!" Dar said in utter awe, crawling out from his hiding place. Keritanima stood not five paces from Tarrin, Miranda, and Sisska, hands held out. He could feel her, feel the tremendous effort it had taken her to cut Tarrin off from the Weave. Dar wasn't an expert on Sorcery, but he was positive that she just saved his life. He was being Consumed, had drawn too much power to handle, and had she not stopped that, it would have killed him. His body was burned, blackened, as if he'd walked through a fire, but Dar knew that those were only the injuries that they could see. The same thing had been done to him inside, almost like he'd been cooked in an oven. She stood there for a long moment, a look of terror and hope in her eyes. It would have to have been Keritanima to do that. Not even Dolanna had the raw power necessary to try to overwhelm Tarrin, even when he was in such a weakened state. Keritanima was a powerful Sorceress, and would be among the very strongest, if Tarrin's power did not eclipse her. Only she had both the power and the ability to even hope to cut Tarrin off from the Weave.
He had never- never- thought that he would ever see anything like that. He had felt it in his soul, a power so immense that anyone who could touch the Weave could not help but feel. Tarrin had created new strands, built them out of flows pulled from existing strands, and for no reason other than the fact that he wanted to draw more power, faster. Dar stood there and stared in mute shock as Keritanima rushed over the the inert trio, stared dumbly as Miranda took in a shuddering breath, and then sat bolt upright so quickly that it nearly scared him into wetting himself.
"A Weavespinner," Dolanna said in reverence, coming up beside him, and seeming to know what he was thinking. "That, my young pupil, is what being a Weavespinner truly means." She touched the shaeram around her neck delicately, then grabbed hold of it in a strong grip. "Come, Dar, Tarrin is badly injured, and there are many in need of our aid. I will need the power of a circle to help mend them."
Crying.
Someone was crying. Someone was dead.
Miranda!
"Miranda!" Tarrin gasped, eyes fluttering open as consciousness flooded into him with a speed that left him disoriented. He felt as if he'd been baked in an oven, and his entire body itched. And it ached with a weariness that seemed to have infected him like a disease, leaving him feeling feeble. The recent past was lost in a haze of weariness and a memory of rage. He had lost control of himself again, he remembered that, but as was normal for him, his actions during that period of frenzy were murky and indistinct. Time would sort them out. As if he really wanted to know what he had done this time. He was too tired to brood about it, but he distinctly remembered what triggered it. Seeing Sisska and Miranda laying dead on the deck.