With a primal shout, Tarrin unleashed a blasting bolt of raw magical power, that same weave of Fire, Water, Air, Divine, and token flows of the other Spheres to grant the weave the power of High Sorcery. The incandescent bolt lashed out from his outstretched paws. The bolt was magical, but it depended on Tarrin's aim, and his fury had made his aim short. Jegojah dove aside as the bolt slammed into the ground, causing an instantaneous explosion as superhot magic struck and detonated when coming into contact with something it couldn't instantly vaporize. A vast weave of Air slammed the Doomwalker to the ground in mid-dive, and it rolled to the side just in time to avoid being burned in half by another of those powerful magical weaves.
"How dare you do that to him!" Tarrin raged in a voice so powerful it could be heard at the edges of the city. The Doomwalker sank into the earth just as the body of Faalken had arisen from it, but Tarrin wasn't about to allow it to get away that easily. Weaving together a powerful weave of Earth and Fire, with token flows of the other Spheres to give the weave the power of High Sorcery, Tarrin sent it into the ground and caused it to infuse the ground beneath him. It began to tremble and shake, and then the entirety of the arena floor erupted in a vast explosion of dust, sand, dirt, rocks, debris, sending it hurtling in every direction, raising a cloud of dust that billowed up into the sky.
The body of the Doomwalker crashed to the broken ground a moment after it had been hurtled into the air, and it remained still as small rocks and other debris rained down upon it. Tarrin had literally yanked the undead creature out of the ground.
The power inside was exhausting him, and doing it quickly. He realized that it took effort to draw that power now, where it had come to him unabated before. He had to reduce the power he was drawing in. He made the necessary adjustments, slowly lowering himself to the ground as the star surrounding him wavered and vanished, but his paws continued to be surrounded by Magelight. He stalked the prone Doomwalker like Death Herself come to claim it, and it rolled over in time to raise an arm in feeble defense as the Were-cat's paw lashed out, grabbing it by the neck and heaving it off the ground.
"How dare you do that to Faalken!" he raged, his eyes burning into the Doomwalker's face.
"Jegojah had nothing to do with that," it said weakly, holding onto his wrist with both bony hands. "Wrong, it was, but Jegojah has no choice but to obey when they say go with your friend."
Wrong? Wrong? Tarrin looked into the Doomwalker's shattered face, and remembered that the creature often exhibited signs of honor. He remembered what Dolanna and Phandebrass told him about Doomwalkers, that they were undead creatures created when the souls of slain men of great fighting prowess, like Faalken or Jegojah, were trapped in the mortal plane. They had said that those souls were of evil men, but they had to be wrong. Faalken was not an evil man, and yet they had managed to raise him as a Doomwalker. The soul that animated the body he now held was a long way away, and that was the reason why Doomwalkers could not be easily destroyed. The animating force simply abandoned the current body and sought out another, controlled by that soul from its remote location.
"Be done with it," the Doomalker said calmly. "Jegojah grows tired of this. Soon Jegojah's soul will belong to a Demon, and Jegojah will trouble you no more."
The soul. Of course! That was how to stop Jegojah once and for all! All he had to do was either destroy or wrest the soul of Jegojah from the clutches of those who used it for their own ends. He had made a brushing contact with that soul once before, the last time they fought, when he charged Jegojah's body beyond the bursting point with magical power. He remembered that there was a magical connection between the Doomwalker's animated body and its soul, a connection that he could follow back to the soul's location.
That was how it could be done. That was what he needed to do.
But what to do? Tarrin looked at the battered body of Jegojah, considering. Jegojah had killed Faalken, had attacked his family, had tried to kill him three separate times. But Jegojah was an unwilling participant. He understood that now, looking at the battered undead body. He was doing what he was told to do, because his very soul hung in the balance. The Doomwalker had never acted with any spite or malice, he realized when he looked back on the encounters they had had. Sure there had been posturing and threats, but never outright malice. The Doomwalker had always fought with a kind of honor, and Tarrin felt that the Doomwalker probably didn't like what it was being forced to do. But that was the key of it, it was being forced to do it .
He had felt tremendous hatred and rage at Jegojah, but now… it was slipping away. He realized that that hatred had been misplaced, badly misplaced. The hatred he felt for Jegojah should have been affixed to those who created him, created him and sent him out to attack him and his family. Those were the ones to blame, not this imprisoned soul. He blew out his breath. He didn't want to let go of his anger towards Jegojah, but it was too late for that. Helping Jegojah now seemed wrong, but on the other hand, he had to do something for Faalken. He couldn't leave Faalken's soul in the clutches of those inhuman monsters another moment longer. If it meant freeing Jegojah as well, then so be it. Either way, at least Jegojah would never attack him again afterward. And in the end, that was the most important thing.
Closing his eyes, he reached within himself, and found his own connection to the Weave. Then he assensed the body of the Doomwalker in his paw, still held up, and found the mystical connection that linked it with its animating force. It represented itself in his eyes as a black current running through the Weave, a dark magic that flowed from that source and into the dead body before him. He quickly and effortlessly joined with the Weave and followed that foul magic back, racing through the Weave until he found its headwater. He pushed out a projection of himself from the Weave and occupied it, and then opened his eyes. He wanted to see this place where Jegojah's soul was being held.
He was standing in a very large chamber of gray stone. There were braziers and a large chandelier holding globes of soft glowing light, magical spells of some sort, and the room was strangely bare and cold. It held little more than a large desk, a bookshelf that dominated the wall behind that desk, a large door of wood bound in brass on one wall, and a door of glass panes that led outside to a balcony on the opposite wall. The view through those panes of glass was wavery, but it was obvious that rugged mountains stood outside that doorway. Upon the desk, standing on elegant golden stands, were two strange crystal-like devices that glowed from within with a strange light.
Soultraps. Those were what held the souls of Faalken and Jegojah.
Tarrin moved the projection closer to the desk, which was bare aside from those two strange jewels and the stands that supported them. They were ugly things, no matter how pretty they appeared, for the foul stench of their purpose stained them in his magically-augmented sight. He looked at them, into them, starting to work out the powerful magic that had created them. It was very strong, and it entwined the souls it trapped in such a way that the disruption of the magic would also disrupt the soul, destroying it. Looking at them, he realized that the Soultraps could not be destroyed.
He leaned in and looked closely at the two devices, studying them with eyes that looked directly into the magic that constituted them rather than into the gems they appeared to be. Using force against those prisons was out of the question without destroying the souls inside, so instead of breaking the bars, perhaps he'd have better luck trying to open the door.