Kimmie looked away from him, turning her back on him and wrapping her tail around her waist. Jesmind picked up her daughter and let her bury her little face in her mother's shoulder, weeping uncontrollably. Jesmind's face was haunted, almost frightening in its own way, and she stared back into the fire with eyes that burned as brightly as the flames did.

"Not now," Jesmind said in a growling tone at the smaller human.

"What other time is there than now?" Arren screamed at her. "Look! My city is gone! Thousands of good, decent Torrians are dead! Everything I've built and watched over and loved for the last thirty years stands burning before you! Dammit, woman, I'd say now is as good a time as any for an explanation!" he finished with a thunderous roar.

Jesmind looked away from him, unable to meet his eyes.

Arren looked about to explode. "Answer me, woman!" he raged.

She looked away from him pointedly.

"There's no need for that, Arren," Sathon said in a weary tone as he arrived on the scene with Mikos. "Jesmind won't tell you, no matter what you do."

"Why is that, Sathon? What's going on here? What happened to my city?" Arren demanded, turning to him.

It was obvious that Sathon was suffering as well. His face was gray and pallid, and his eyes looked very, very tired. "I don't know exactly what happened, but I have a pretty good idea."

"What?" Arren said in a shrill tone.

"Torrian was burned by magic," Sathon said grimly. "And I only know one person with the kind of magical talent capable of something like this."

"By Karas' hammer!" Arren gasped. " Tarrin!"

Jasana cried even harder, and Jesmind tried to comfort her. But she was beyond comforting.

The fire did not scour away the pain.

Tarrin walked in the middle of the raging inferno that had once been Torrian, walking through the hellish scene as if on a morning stroll. His feet often came down in puddles of liquid lead, or piles of glowing embers, or upon red-hot steel armor, twisted and smoldering, still encasing the blackened bones of the man who wore it. He was oblivious to his surroundings, walking only until something rose up to block his progress, then he would turn in a random direction and continue onward.

So many… so many. And he had killed them all. Soldiers, Goblinoids, and all the men, women, and children of Torrian, who had been hiding in their homes. It was the nightmare reborn, legions of new eyeless faces that would haunt his dreams for all time. Enemies and friends, guilty and innocent, all of them wiped out in a single moment. And what made it so terrible was that this time, there was no rage, no fury blanketing the awful truth. There was no excuse. He had done it consciously, had made a deliberate choice, a choice that ended the lives of thousands of people in a hellish firestorm.

It was the last thing he wanted to do… but there seemed to be no other choice. The enemy army was all over Torrian, and they outnumbered the Rangers and the Were-kin by at least ten to one. It would have been an absolute slaughter, and Suld itself would have been jeopardized. But those reasons seemed pitiful compared to the awful reality of what stood before him, the fruits of his handiwork. He didn't mourn much for the destruction of the Dals or the ki'zadun, what hurt him most was the thought that he had destroyed innocent people along with them.

Tarrin fell to his knees as absolute exhaustion overwhelmed him. The strain of creating such a powerful weave had been almost more than he could stand, and then he had wandered the burning city in a daze for hours afterward. His body simply had nothing left. He put his paws down on the blasted ground, panting from exertion, feeling the ash shift beneath his paws. He grabbed a pawful of it and trembled as he rose up, watching it sift down through his fingers. It was all that was left, all there was to serve as a memorial to the thousands that had died here. He opened his paw and watched it blow away on the fire-whipped wind. He couldn't face the rest of them. Not now, not after this. Sathon probably knew, and that meant that Fae-da'Nar would declare him Rogue. Jesmind was gone to him now, as were Triana and Kimmie and Mist and the son he never met, and all his Were-cat friends and acquantances. They would never speak to him again; they would try to kill him now. The only one he could even think to face was Jasana, and only because he had no choice but to take her with him. But he could never look at his little girl again and feel the same joy he had felt before. The day she found out what he had done here, he would lose her. And because of what he was, it would probably be Jasana that they sent after him, the only one capable of defeating her father with Sorcery. Allia would never speak to him again after she found out about this, and neither would his parents or Jenna. Keritanima would be the only one that could come close to understanding, but he wasn't sure if she could rationalize something like this.

His life was over. All the hopes and dreams that had been kindled by his reunion with Jesmind and meeting his daughter crumbled to dust inside him. There was nothing now, nothing to live for, nothing to look forward to. There was nothing but the Goddess, and the terrible mission he was committed to accompish. And that did not seem to be enough anymore.

Sinking down, putting his forehead against the tortured, ash-covered ground, Tarrin began weeping. He couldn't live with himself now. Not after losing everything that mattered to him. The exhaustion and the shock and the horror and the fear and the guilt all washed over him at once, and finally, mercifully, he spun down into the black depths of nothingness.

There was fire everywhere. The scene was one of firelit devastation, where ash blanketed the ground and blackened, charred posts and logs rose up from the mound of black ash and split rock like the fingers of some giant reaching up from where it was buried under the ruins. Fires still burned all over, slowly dying as the last of the fuel was consumed, but they were still enough to kill anything wandering the blasted landscape with the heat they generated. It looked as if nothing could survive in that hellish place.

But there was one thing. The body of a Were-cat lay sprawled in the ash by a large, blazing pyre that had once been an inn, his face and body covered with streaked black ash, clothes singed and burned. He should not have been able to survive where he was, but regardless, he was there. He was bathed in the reddish light of the burning city around him, casting his haunted face with shadow.

Those shadows vanished as spots of light began to glow over him. There were four of them, each nothing more than a mote of dancing light, but the light they generated bathed the entire area in blinding white radiance. Each carried its own unique color, its own flavor, as if each one represented something or someone different.

Can you see what we have done? one of them declared in a voice without sound, a voice filled with anguish. We have broken him! There is nothing left for him, and he cannot go on any longer!

Calmly, daughter, another answered, a deep voice of authority. What was done was what had to be done.

We had to know, a third affirmed, a voice of endless energy and vibrance. We had to know if he was capable of what may be asked of him.

But at what cost? the fourth demanded, a voice of regimented order. The cost is mine! My people, my worshippers, my own power, they are the victims of this!

It is as it needs be, my child, the voice of vibrance said sadly. It always saddens me to see any life end, but it is but the cycle coming to its rightful end, only to begin again.

But what of him? the first cried out. What of my sweet child? Must we continue to destroy him? Must we take everything that he is before you are satisfied, and leave him nothing but an empty shell?