The human in him wondered at this. She was strong. She could do all the things he could. So why such small things? Was she toying with him?

There was one way to find out.

Setting his feet apart, he wove on a massive scale, flows of Air mainly, forming the first stages of the air shockwave that had proved to be so devastating all the other times. Eyes blazing with white light, a vicious snarl on his face, the air before him took on a reddish hue, an irregular reddish haze as the weave began to form-

– -But a lance of Fire struck his weaving, Fire laced with weaves of Air. The Air weaves in her counterstroke interacted with the flows in his, causing them to cancel one another out. The weave collapsed in on itself violently, then the flows of Fire interacted with the remaining flows in an odd manner, reforming into a new weave that immediately manifested. It formed as a ball of intense burning flame that suddenly exploded in all directions. An inferno of hellish fire blasted towards him, and he barely had the time to erect a Ward of Fire flows, a shield against it, before it engulfed him. He covered his face and flinched away instinctively as the fire blasted over him, but his Ward protected him from the fire. The Ward itself seemed to be caught up into the fire, as latent magical flows in the fire itself attached to the Ward, consumed it, ate away at its integrity, causing it to fail. But not before the fire exhausted its magical energy and dissipated.

Even the Cat was impressed. She used his own weaves against him!

The fire winked out, and in its wake it left a rocky ground that was blackened and smoking. The dirt and sand that had collected were now pools of clear glass laying on the blackened stone.

She had struck at his weave! While he was weaving it! And she even set up her attack so it used the flows not cancelled out to reform into a new spell. She had caused him to use up his own energy to create a spell of her design!

This was a true Ancient.

But the Cat understood its mistake. The weave took too long to create. Against her, he had to use fast weaves, things easy to create and with power. If he gave her an openeing, she would destroy his attempts to weave, maybe even turn them against him once again.

Weaving Air again, this time he used something fast and quick, something that could be realeased as quickly as it was woven. It released as a scythe of pure Air, a rush of air with a cutting edge more lethal than any sword or blade, and it lashed out like a whip towards the Sha'Kar as she drifted to the ground. The Sha'Kar simply raised her hand to meet the leading edge of that weave, then deflected it with a slash of her hand, deflected it to the side. It continued on, striking a rock pillar, then slicing it in half at the base as neatly as a knife cut butter. The pillar shuddered, then slid off its sliced base and then toppled over in an explosion of dust and a ear-splitting boom.

The power rebuilt in him as quickly as it had been expended, and he felt the stress. He was starting to wear out, to tire, and the power was becoming harder and harder to control. But there was no room for weariness here. The Sha'Kar was advancing on him confidently, advancing through the dust cloud that had concealed her for a moment. He had to use something that would burn off the power inside, give him a chance to catch his breath, but not something that she could disrupt.

He could feel her counterstroke building within the Weave itself. Earth. It had something to do with Earth. Whatever she was doing wasn't High Sorcery… it was that other-magic that she used, a type of Sorcery he couldn't sense, couldn't see. He reacted too late to sense the weave as the ground beneath him began to shudder. He tried to jump aside, but a massive hand of stone rose up from the ground, and it closed over him. Crushing pressure struck him, broke his tail and one of his arms, and it squeezed a ragged cry from him as the hand tried to snap him in half. The power within shuddered as the pain made him lose control for a split second, then he quickly wove a weave of Air and Fire, then unleashed it outwards from his body. The effect was purely explosive, like gunpowder put to the torch, and it shattered the stone hand in a loud blast of dust, fire, and black smoke.

The pain had been too much. The Cat rose up within in a heartbeat, going from unwilling participant to fully in control in the blink of an eye. The Cat completely dropped all his defensive measures, opened itself up to the Weave without hindrance. It thrust out into the Weave with flows, and then snapped them back to make them form a small spiderweb of little strands to feed his power, to directly connect him to the Weave itself. The power that flooded into him went from a flood to an absolute deluge, causing the nimbus of Magelight around him to intensify, to expand visibly. The connection to the Weave intensified his sense of it, and he could feel its power pulse and flow like blood, circulating through the Weave, but it coalesced in the strands nearest the Sha'Kar, as if her very presence saturated the strands with power. In that fleeting moment he realized that all strands were not the same, that the power within one strand was not the same as all other strands, as he'd been taught. It was something that he'd seemed to comprehend already, but he hadn't realized it until he saw the effect the Sha'Kar had on the Weave, an effect caused by her very presence.

An effect caused by his presence.

With a vicious snarl, Tarrin wove together a weave of Fire and Divine, and the ghostly aura of Magelight around him shifted from white to red. He released it, and the aura around him suddenly expanded, grew, became a living thing unto itself, a massive bird made of pure fire. He imparted the magical construct with self-animating properties, as if the very element of Fire were collected and fused into a coherent magical being. He had no idea what he was doing, how he did it, but he knew what he'd just formed.

An Elemental.

A magical creature under his direct control. It would obey him, do his bidding, until he dismissed it back into the Weave or it was destroyed. He pointed at the Sha'Kar imperiously, and the Elemental understood exactly what it was created to do. With a shrill cry, the bird of Fire streaked away from him, towards the Sha'Kar, talons extended and ready to attack.

The Sha'Kar was smiling. That only enraged the Cat even more, sent it spiralling into the abyss of utter rage. She made a slashing motion with her hand, and he felt the eddies and currents within the strands shift, alter. They suddenly became motive, as if she were controlling them, and they suddenly extended outside the Weave and formed into flows. Flows of Water and Air. They lashed out from the Weave itself, struck the Fire Elemental as if they were arrows, and the flows coalesced within the Elemental to counter the weaving he had done to create it. The bird gave a startled cry, a cry of pain, as the Sha'Kar's weaving unravelled the very magic that made it what it was. The fiery bird spread its wings and began to thrash, and then the fire that made up its form simply broke up and evaporated like smoke.

The Sha'Kar didn't have time to gloat. Another weave of Fire, Water, and Air formed in Tarrin's paws, and he unleashed it on the woman in the form of intense, powerful lightning. She raised her hand, and he could sense the shift of the Weave as it seemed to respond to her. Flows of Earth came free of the Weave and rose up from the ground. The lightning hit that flow of Earth, and the energy of the lightning was absorbed harmlessly into it, deflecting the physical effect of the weave harmlessly.

The power rebuilt within him instantly. It began to haze the air around him as it heated him, heated it, the buildup of power so great that it started to distort the aura of Magelight around him. The Cat sensed this, felt the fiery pain of being so filled with the Weave's power, but it was too angry to care. It only saw the Sha'Kar, and it would not stop until it got her, no matter what the cost. The Cat could shrug off the pain that would have left Tarrin squirming on the ground in agony, as pure, total fury, the need to kill, overrode all sense of self. Tarrin wove again, weaves of pure Earth, sending them into the ground. The weave was on a titanic scale, a weave so vast, so convoluted that the Sha'Kar actually seemed impressed, uncertain as to how to go about stopping it before it was released.