There was only one thing that touched his mind in that eternal moment, as the vestiges of the potion actually did manage to perform its task.
That he had experienced this once before.
Sliding off the bench, scrabbling at the clean, neatly arrayed white walkway stones, Tarrin tried to writhe, tried to think, tried to stop what was happening, but he knew that it could not be stopped. He cried out once more, but it was not a cry of pain, it was a cry of outrage, of indignation, of fury, before the pain of it descended his cry into a mindless shriek of absolute mindless agony.
His right of choice had been denied to him.
Lost in the completeness of the internal fire, the pain of the changes did not touch him. Lost in the unending scream torn from him, he could not stop what was happening. The bones in his back split, grew in number and grew smaller, and every bone within him shifted, grew longer, became more dense. The bones in his hands split, cracked, thickened and then reset, enlarging his hands. The comfortable boots on his feet stretched grotesquely, then were split asunder as the same process took hold in his feet, lengthening and enlarging them as the balls of his feet widened unnaturally. Skin split and then resealed as the bones continued to expand, longer and longer and longer, blasting shockwaves of pain through him as the flesh was torn and the organs violently displaced.
But the changes to body were not the only ones. The Cat was released from its prison within as the first sweeping wave of the change took hold, as the body began to become accommodating to the mind. With it came the memories, two years of memories, a lifetime of memories. The bad and the good, the horror and the joy, the pain and the pleasure, it swept over his pain-maddened mind like pouring salt into an open wound, assaulting him from within as the pain shattered his body. The memory was there, all of it, every bit of it trying to sweep the others and the pain aside and take hold inside him all at once, augmented by the memory-kindling potion that was still in him, whose magic had not lost its potency despite the betraying extra addition to it.
Memory and change suddenly competed with lost power as the lost connection to the core of his power was restored. Tarrin's hands, still in the process of transforming back into paws, suddenly erupted with Magelight as the pain-maddened soul, caught between human and Were, found within memory and body forgotten capabilities, fought against the inevitable with all the righteous indignation it could muster. The shriek of pain became a powerful cry of fury, as rage overcame the agony, rage at this most shocking, most horrific of betrayals. The power surrounded him, infused him even as the magic of the Were-cat and the magic of the potion stormed through him. The power picked him up from the ground as his hands became paws, his feet set into their permanent hybrid form, and his body continued to grow taller and taller. The back of his pants split as his spine extended out from its place, separated from his pelvis and tore through his skin, snaking out like a sailor lowering a rope flailing in a gale as the spine formed a tail, and that tail quickly fleshed out and began to grow black fur.
The Magelight around his body coalesced, then shimmered into the brilliance of the four-pointed star around him as the totality of the Weave sought to flow into him, through him, become part of him, make him a part of it. The Conduit that flowed through the Tower behind him suddenly erupted into blazing brilliance, shimmered with an audible ringing sound, responding to his pain, and the entire Weave around Suld shuddered and writhed as every major strand, every feeder strand, every wisp of every flow suddenly glowed with bright white light and sang out in the choral shimmering from the Conduit and through them, showing the mundane citizens of Suld for that one brief moment what had always surrounded them, the power the katzh-dashi utilized, revealing what had once been hidden before becoming hidden once more. The Weave was caught up in the throes of his pain, reacting to him in a way that it would not for any other, shuddering and shifting as the pain roared through him. His mind, with the memory-restoring potion taking hold inside him, was reaching up into the Weave, trying to find solace, find refuge there to protect itself from the eternal firestorm of the pain caused by the transformation. That pain was easing as the greatest of the physical alterations were complete, as the human ears vanished and cat's ears poked up through his hair, as fur quickly grew in on his arms and legs, along his tail, on his new ears, and his teeth shifted in their shape, shifted by the power of the magic that changed him, his incisors growing out into impressive fangs. He finally opened his eyes, but instead of the Were-cat's vertically slitted green, they were a blazing, incadescent white as the power of the Weave surrounded him.
The change was done, and it could not be undone. The pain eased, but the chaos within his mind did not stop. The magical potion that was still coursing through his body sought to restore memory, but found that memory already restored. The magic of the potion was touched by the power of the Weave, altered, and it reached into the Weave, through him, seeking to restore memory. As was its function.
Tarrin sucked his breath in when something inconceivable happened. The echoes of the Weave, the fluttering remnants of lost information, of memory, reacted to the powerful mingled magic within him. It called out to the echoes, and the echoes responded, flooding into him with a speed that nearly drove him mad. A nightmarish jumble of images, sounds, impressions, things and places and feelings and memories flowed into his mind. The magic of the potion, still powerful, augmented by the power of the Weave, drew in all the memory of the Weave and showed it to him in one great moment of utter lucidity. In the blink of an eye, the entirety of the memory of the Weave was laid out before him, like some vast, unfathomably huge tapestry that was both too massive to understand yet arrayed in a manner that made it make sense. In that fleeting moment, with the entirety of the Weave's stored memory open to him, he knew that he had touched the mind of the Goddess. He had seen what no mortal was ever meant to see, the answers to everything, the totality of existence, and it was more than his mortal mind could comprehend.
This is not for you, my kitten, her voice seemed to flutter to him from some great distance. This will only drive you mad. Forget what must be forgotten, and find peace once more.
Her power reached back through the Weave, touched him, and undid the magic of the potion. Her hand passed through his mind, sweeping away that which would drive him mad, but not touching many of the other things his mind had learned during that moment of utter communion with her. What Jenna had learned from Spyder, now Tarrin had learned from the Goddess.
The touch of the Goddess disrupted the power of the Weave flowing into him, through him. The four-pointed star which formed the heart of the symbol of the Goddess wavered around him, then winked out. The power holding him off the ground was disrupted, and he fell back to the earth.
The Tarrin that touched the ground, fell limply and blissfully unconscious to the soft, welcoming earth, was once again a Were-cat.
Jenna and Phandebrass could only stare in shock. Sapphire landed by his limp form, nudging him worriedly with her snout.
She couldn't believe it. The potion hadn't restored his memory, it had changed him back into a Were-cat! He looked exactly as he did the last time she'd seen him! He was just as tall, as tall as Triana, and he had the fetlocks and the drawn sense about his face that made him look more mature. His face was calmly reposed, a welcome sight given that but a moment ago, the mindless agony of the change had contorted his handsome features.