He came to a stop about a hundred spans from the spire, looking up the thirty spans to the figure. He was closer now, and he could see that it was indeed a cloak. It opened occasionally in the wind to reveal a formless figure beneath, a figure wearing black garments that blended in with the utter blackness of the cloak, serving to distort the figure's shape and form from his eyes. That opening told him that the figure faced him, but he could not see through the hood to discern any features.

He still felt no fear, but he felt a powerful sense from the figure. The Weave was bending in towards it, and just as the Sorcerer back in that city had sensed him, so he sensed it. This figure was a Sorcerer, and its power was unfathomable. He had never felt anything like it before.

" Vosh, " the figure intoned, and that made his jaw drop, intoned in a rich alto voice that absolutely had to belong to a woman. That was a Sha'Kar word! " Vosh. Unda ne. Vasti dosba no. "

He was absolutely stunned. The pronunciation was much different from what Keritanima had taught him, but it was undeniable that it was Sha'Kar that the form was speaking. " Time-ending. Arrived have. I for-you-waiting have been. " At last. You have come. I have waited for you.

He was completely bowled over. She spoke Sha'Kar! That language was dead, nobody spoke it anymore! And she spoke it like she'd spoken it all her life!

"Do I surprise you?" she asked in Sulasian, and her pattern of speech was odd. It was as if she spoke every word with absolute exacting precision before moving on to the next. "You have come. You are ready," she told him, reverting to Sha'Kar.

Hearing her speak Sha'Kar invoked an automatic response in him, and his gift for languages rose up, instantly correcting the improper pronunciations that Keritanima had taught him when they were learning the language. "Wh-What do you mean? Who are you?" he managed to stammer, in a Sha'Kar dialect almost mirroring her own.

"Who I am does not matter," she said, reaching up for the hood of her cloak. "That you heard my call is all that matters now. You are ready." She pulled back her hood, and he almost fell to his knees.

She was a Selani!

Selani! Her features were undeniable! She actually bore a curious resemblance to Allia in her cheeks and her blue, blue eyes. Her hair was silver where Allia's was white, shimmering in the brutal desert sun, and she had a faint scar on her left cheek, a dark line on her smooth, dusky brown face. The scar did nothing to mar her exceptional beauty, it only accented the graceful beauty of her face to his eyes. Almost as if it were a beauty mark. Her face was lovely, but it was her eyes that captured his attention. A deep blue, like Allia's, but behind them was a sort of deep ocean of knowldge and wisdom that made her eyes haunting, piercing, ensnaring the eyes of others yet making them worrisome and uncomfortable to stare into their depths. Those eyes looked into you, and they exposed all your secrets, made her know every part of you, both good and bad. There was no hiding from those eyes. They were not the eyes of an ordinary mortal being, and they marked her for the kind of exotic, unique entity that she was. Piercing blue eyes stared down at him, and the expression on the face was stony, unreadable. She was obviously mature, but her features did not betray her age. But there was a set in the way she held herself, the way she looked at him with those powerful eyes, a sense and feeling much like Triana. This woman was old. At least as old as Triana, and that made him make a vital connection.

A truth crashed down on him at that moment. Sha'Kar is alot like Selani, he had told Keritanima as he learned it. The words are different, but the structure of both languages is similar, Keritanima had told him. Almost as if they had been descended from the same root language.

This strange woman wasn't Selani. She was Sha'Kar!

The Selani and the Sha'Kar were related!

A Sha'Kar! A living Sha'Kar! They were supposed to be extinct, the race snuffed out in the Breaking! He took a frightful step back from her, fearing her now, because if she was a Sha'Kar, then that meant that she was an Ancient. It certainly explained how her very presence seemed to attract the Weave, warp it, draw it to her. Her power was incredible!

"You see truth," she said in a calm voice. "You know me now. You fear it."

"Y-Y-You're-You're a Sha'Kar!" he managed to get out.

"If giving me such title pleases you," she told him mysteriously.

"What do you want from me?"

"You have heard my call," she said again. "It is time."

"Time? Time for what?"

"Time," she replied, pulling a slender arm from beneath her cloak and simply pointing a delicate finger at him.

And with that word and gesture, the ground in front of him just simply exploded. The impact of it blasted the breath from his lungs, picked him up, carried him along with the shockwave of the explosion as bits of rock and debris drove into him. He felt himself flying through the air, and then was tumbling on the ground with a dozen shouts of pain emanating from various parts of his body. He rolled to a stop, his body a bit dazed, but his mind whirling like a hurricane. There had been no touching the Weave, no sense of Sorcery from her! It was as if she'd woven the spell outside his senses!

She attacked him! She was a Sha'Kar, an Ancient, and she had attacked him! How was he going to fight an Ancient? How was he supposed to stand against that kind of incredible power?

He rose up to his feet, crouching down over them, tail slashing back and forth as an instinctual need to face this challenger battled with the human realization that this was no being to fight. Panting from the pain of the shrapnel, pain that eased as his body mended itself, he looked up and saw her descending from the top of the spire slower than would be natural, as if the air was holding onto her and lowering her gently to the ground.

His mind raced through innumerable possibilities, but it kept returning to two simple conclusions. One, that there was no escape from someone like this. Her magic could easily keep him from escaping. And since he could not flee, he had to fight. Sarraya wasn't here, so that made his most poweful weapon unavailable to him, but that didn't mean that he was just going to lie down and die for her benefit. He was a Were-cat. He knew how to fight without Sorcery.

That one thought nearly scared him into losing his composure. Fight an Ancient? It was madness! Something very close to abject terror closed on him as the woman's feet hit the ground, as she lowered those eyes on him. She outmatched him in every sense of the word… but then again, he'd been outmatched before, and he had found ways to win. It was live or die, so he'd better get his mind going and find a way to either defeat her or escape from her.

With deliberate slowness, he drew his sword, letting her hear the sound, trying to do anything to rattle her steely composure. He was much taller than her, and he was a physically intimidating person. It had worked on many others before her. Perhaps it would work on her as well.

She simply stood there, staring at him.

He couldn't show fear. Gritting his teeth, feeling like he was about to run into the mouth of some giant predator, Tarrin exploded forward out of nowhere, moving with all the speed and power his body could give to him. Sword held point towards her, he covered the distance between them faster than a thoroughbred could sprint, his fear and adrenaline granting him incredible speed. She simply watched him coming, and made no move to avoid him or defend herself. He knew that that was a very important observation, but if she wasn't going to move, he was going to take his shot at her. He charged right at her, on top of her in the blink of an eye, and he thrust the black-bladed sword directly at her chest.