Tarrin shivered, imaging spending his entire life as a mobile metal statue. "I'll make a special point of it," he said as images of that metal body rusting away came rushing up at him. "That explains why using Sorcery feels so much different in my cat form," he added.
"That's what happened!" Jenna gasped suddenly. "When we crossed over, the Goddess Transmuted us!"
"Very good, young one," Spyder said with an appreciative nod. "But the Goddess didn't do it. You did. The Goddess shows you how to do it, and you do it as she shows you. A part of surviving the crossing over is Transmuting your body so it is invulnerable to heat. It is that change that renders you powerless until you regain your touch on the Weave. As I said, it is why you should never Transmute yourself. The effects are very unpredictable, and the chance you lose your powers is very great."
"I'll make sure that doesn't happen," Jenna said fervently.
"Do Da'shar gain the immunity to heat?" Tarrin asked curiously.
"Yes, but it doesn't aid them as much as it aids us," Spyder replied. "Since Da'shar can't access High Sorcery, it doesn't benefit them the same way it benefits us. It does increase their powers, however, just as it did for us," she added. "It increases the amount of magical power they can contain, allowing them to exceed the body's old limit and achieve the limits of their own powers, and it also vastly increases the contribution they can make to a circle."
"I didn't realize there was a distinction in limits," Jenna said.
"There is. There is the limit the body can tolerate, and there is also the limit your power will allow. All Sorcerers have a magical limit higher than the tolerance of their body. That is why there is a danger of being Consumed. Crossing over eliminates the body's limit and allows the da'shar to achieve the limit dictated by his or her magical powers."
That explained a great deal. If the body couldn't handle what the Sorcerer's power was capable of drawing, it fully explained why Sorcery could be dangerous to the user. And it explained why da'shar crossed over, to eliminate that physical limitation and allow them to achieve their maximum power. It also eliminated the danger of being Consumed, since the body could handle any amount of power that the Sorcerer was capable of drawing. "If they can't access High Sorcery, how do they face crossing over?" he asked curiously.
"There is more than one way to lose control of your powers, Were-cat," Spyder told him. " Da'shar cross over when they lose control of a spell, or draw in more power than their bodies can tolerate, usually at the prodding of the Goddess. When it is time, the Goddess ensures that it will happen."
"There'd be no avoiding, it," Jenna chuckled. "She'd know the instant the candidate touched the Weave."
Spyder nodded, then her expression became quite business-like. "Alright then, enough chattering. We're wasting time. So, on to the lessons. Let us begin with a weave Tarrin is so fond of using. The Sunbolt."
"I never realized it had a name," Tarrin chuckled, realizing that that was the name of the chaotic weave he was so fond of using to rearrange the local geography.
"It does. Some call it the Goddess' Wrath. It is a very powerful, very destructive weave. That may be why you're so fond of using it," she smiled at him.
"It works," he shrugged.
And so it began. Spyder showed them weave after weave, showing them and then forcing them to duplicate her weave. Then she would explain how to manipulate the flows to gain different effects from the weave, make them practice, and then move on to the next spell. They were there for hours and hours, as evening passed to night, and night to midnight, and midnight to morning, endlessly weaving spells for Spyder as she taught them. Tarrin didn't notice the time fly by, even as the sun began to rise the next morning, for he was utterly engrossed in what the Urzani was teaching them. Jenna too showed no signs of even being drowsy as the sun rose the next day. They had learned a veritable onslaught of attacking weaves, from weaves to stun a single man to weaves to lay waste to entire city blocks. They had learned just as many defensive weaves, spells that stopped weapons, nullified sound, protected one from harm, caused enemies to not be able to see them so long as they were hostile (Spyder called that one the Selective Invisibility weave, easy to weave and not too demanding to sustain, much preferable to a real spell of invisibility), and many, many more. She didn't dwell long on Wards, only explaining that they could be created in nearly as many forms as one could make up, and they could range from making the target victim itch and sneeze to killing them instantly if they crossed it. Then she taught them utility weaves, things from as simple as mending shirts to powerful spells of Healing. After that, she went on to Illusions, showing them how to make Illusions so large they were almost unbelievable, and then she taught them the new realm of Phantasms, spells of Illusion that could affect the physical world. The main one she taught them was a Phantasm that could actually kill onlookers, if they believed the Phantasm was real. "The mind can kill itself and the body along with it if it truly believes that it has been struck a mortal wound," she explained, calling the spell a Phantasmal Killer. "That is why the power of the mind is one of the greatest powers in the world." Tarrin didn't doubt it after that, and what was lucky for him, there was no race restriction as there was with Mind Weaves where Phantasms were concerned. The weaver of the spell merely formed the parameters, and the mind of the victim filled in the blanks with images from its own deepest fears and caused the victim to see what it feared most. That was the way the Phantasmal Killer worked, and Tarrin could tell that it would be devestatingly effective. Few had the moral fiber or raw willpower to face his greatest fear.
After that, Tarrin Conjured a good meal for them as Spyder trained Jenna in Mind weaves, from simple ones to make people forget what they just saw, all the way up to the most powerful, which could utterly control a subject. There were Mind weaves for experiencing the sensory input of a subject, literally seeing through his or her eyes, and weaves for sensing the mental energy left behind in an object, just enough of it to make out the appearance of the object's owner, or know where the item had been or how it had been used. Spyder called that Psychometry, and she said it was an exceptionally useful weave. It was also a weave that Tarrin could perform, for it didn't rely on affecting a living mind, only merely read the impressions left behind by that mind. There were even Mind weaves for affecting emotion, digging out submerged memories, editing a victim's memory on a large scale, and making people see and hear things that weren't really there. Spyder explained that it was commonly how people with little aptitude for Illusion made up for that lack of ability. Mental images worked much like Illusions did. Some of the Mind weaves, Tarrin could use against any person, or against objects; in reality, he could use all of it, and did indeed memorize those weaves, but some part of him considered it to be unfair to wield such an advantage over the other Were-cats. Certain Mind weaves, he had to admit, would come in very handy, like the ability to see through the eyes of another.
After that lesson, Spyder moved on to advanced Elemental magic, and that included spells to control the weather. She showed them how they would look but did not release them, unravelling them so they wouldn't take effect. "Listen to me closely, pupils," she said in a stern voice. "Absolutely, under no circumstances, do you ever attempt to affect weather on a scale more than a few square longspans. The power of weather is one of the most powerful forces on the planet, and when you begin to tamper with the weather on a large scale, you are meddling with forces you cannot begin to understand. But it will never get that far. If you try, the Goddess of the weather and the air, T'Kya, will strike at you for interfering with her work. And believe me, if you manage to survive that retaliation, you will know to never try such a thing again. Do I make myself clear on this?"