What had just happened? How did it happen? How could the potion change him back? That was impossible!

And Goddess, what had he done to the Weave? She thought it was going to rip itself apart! He must have regained his ability to use it in the middle of his transformation, and it was that raw, elemental creature, half human, half cat, and totally consumed by the pain, that had managed to make the connection. She had never sensed anything like that before, and it was a shivering display of the tremendous power her brother possessed, a power far greater than her own, despite the fact that they were both sui'kun.

She knelt by Tarrin, put her hands on him, feeling the hardness under his skin, knowing that the change was complete and thorough. He was a Were-cat once more.

"By the holy circles of Denthar!" Phandebrass finally managed to exclaim.

"Phandebrass!" Sapphire said in a suddenly furious tone, snapping her head around and up to glare dangerously at the Wizard. "What in the blazes did you do!?!"

"B-By my honor, Sapphire, it should never have done that!" he said in flabbergasted confusion. "It couldn't have! The power to change humans Were is a function of magic, and it's not Wizard magic. It's Druidic by nature, and you know we can't duplicate that!"

"Perhaps there was some part of it left in him," Sapphire said, but Jenna reached down and picked up the cup. Phandebrass was right. There was no way the potion should have done that. Only a Were-cat could change him back into a Were-cat. She sent searching flows down into the cup, searching the traces of liquid still clinging to its interior as a light film, knowing what she would find, but dreading the enormity of the consequences if she did.

It was there. Goddess, it was the worst thing that could have been. She shook her head and groaned audibly.

"What is it?" Sapphire demanded of her.

"The potion didn't do it," she said in a trembling voice. "There's Were-cat blood in the cup."

She held the cup in trembling hands, her gaze down on her brother. "Someone put Were-cat blood in the cup," she said, tears actually coming into his eyes. "Someone-" She couldn't finish, breaking down into wracking sobs. Phandebrass knelt beside her and comforted her, and she cried into his robe unashamedly.

"Someone changed him against his will," Sapphire said in a voice of doom. "And the list of suspects is a very short one." She hissed, and lightning crackled around her body, a display of her growing fury. "I will find out who did this and make them wish they were never born!" she vowed in a voice that cracked like a whip.

Someone had changed him against his will, and Jenna knew that more than blood was going to be spilled over it. Someone was going to pay, and from the fury in Sapphire's voice, they were going to pay dearly.

Goddess help her, whoever she is, Jenna thought, knowing that it had to be one of the females. Jesmind, Kimmie, Jula, Triana, or Mist. One of them had to do it. Nobody else could. The only question was which one.

Which one would die because of their impatience.

To: Title EoF

Chapter 7

He knew before he even woke up.

It had been so long… so long. The presence of the Cat within him was all he needed to tell him what had happened. It could not be there any other way, even if the potion did restore his memory. Without the magic, the mind of the Cat could not exist. He could feel that too, the subtle magical power of Were infused into him once more, linked into the All by delicate threads. As he rose up from the blackness, he knew. He knew what had happened, because he knew that he was once again not alone within his own mind.

He had been turned once again.

The memory of it was blurred. It had happened when he drank the potion, that much he could remember clearly. He could remember it so clearly because he had understood what was going on, and had sensed the truth of it. The potion hadn't turned him, something in the potion had done it. Someone had put something in the potion, blood or spit, and it had turned him. He remembered the absolute outrage he'd felt when he realized that, when he realized that someone had stolen from him the one thing he had left to him with his amnesia, the only thing that had given him any sense of control over his own life. The right to choose his own path.

Someone had chosen it for him, and even now he was absolutely furious about it. It was not the rage of the Cat, however, it was the cold, ruthless kind of anger that came from the human in him. The human Tarrin had coveted that right, the right to be whatever he chose to be, and it was taken away from him. There weren't enough words in existence to describe how that made him feel. Shock, outrage, indignation, they were paltry attempts to gauge the depths of his emotion over what had been done to him. That towering resentment had been the first thing to awaken in his mind as he climbed from the black void, and it was joined by his icy anger, his absolute hatred of whoever had done it to him.

But such a thing had trouble competing against the sense of reawakening he began to feel. Senses long throttled by human inadequacy were again restored to him, and he could smell absolutely everything in the room. The ears that were now on top of his head could hear the silence in the room, but could also hear the breathing of the two humans who were standing outside his door, with the occasional clink or shifting of metal armor. Knights. He could feel every finger of the soft linen sheets against his skin, as well as the soft leather of the trousers that were still on him. The room had lingering traces of his own scent, but the scent was different to him, seemed unusual. It was the scent of him as a human.

Opening his eyes slowly, seeing the intensity of the colors, the brightness of the glowglobe hanging in the center of the room, he knew that he was alone. A body that felt light, agile, powerful, responded to his commands as he rose up from the pillow, swung his feet over the edge of the bed, and set them down where not that morning the human Tarrin would have needed a stepstool to set his feet on something solid while sitting in the bed. He focused on his arm and paw, mystified over seeing the black fur once again, turning his paw over and looking at the dark pads. He clenched his fist, feeling every muscle and tendon shift as his body obeyed his commands, feeling once more the power in that act.

There was more than that. The Weave was much more present to his eyes now than it had been before. The strands were more than ghostly, almost solid to his eyes, but he found that he could sort of ignore them and make them disappear from his sight when he needed to see behind them. The sense of the Weave was much stronger as well, and he could feel it out there, almost aching to have him wield it, its power gathering around him in preparation for any task he set it to do. He was used to that effect from before, but it was much stronger now than it had been, as the strands not only pulled towards him, but saturated with the floating energy of the Weave that wasn't tied to the currents of the strands. He attracted both the Weave and the extra power within it, and he could feel the flows almost pulling free of the strands of their own volition, as if he were some kind of powerful magnet drawing iron filings across a table.

It was the strangest feeling. The human Tarrin had been afraid of losing his identity with the return of the memories, but it had turned out to be a false fear. That part of him was still there, merged once more with the collective whole of human, Cat, memories, fears, and mental impulses that formed the core of his personality. He had not become another person, he had merely been restored to the person he had once been. All the memories of his time as a human were there, neatly arranged with the older memories that had been denied to him. The newness of things was gone now, though, and in a way he regretted that. The human Tarrin had been trusting, almost naive, and had had a youthful innocence about the world that made everything seem interesting and good. But that was gone now, educated by the dark experiences of memory, and he knew things would never seem so fresh or new to him again.