The Questing Game

"That's my boy," Camara Tal smiled. "I'll go find the bug. You two keep an eye on that. And find some way to clean her up. She stinks," she said, wrinkling her nose.

"No argument from me," Dola

"Tarrin, you didn't, did you?" Sarraya demanded even as she flitted into the tent. She had her hands on her hips and glared at him, not a span from his nose.

"I didn't bite her," he assured her. "I found her like this. Believe me, I really want to know what happened to her."

"So this is Jula," Sarraya mused. "She doesn't look all that dangerous."

"Wait til she wakes up," Tarrin grunted. "She's totally mad. Dola

"That's a good idea," Sarraya agreed. "It should. It's the instincts that cause the madness. Take those away, and the insanity should fade."

"Alright, Dola

The weave was unbelievably complicated. It was no wonder it had taken Dola

"Alright," Tarrin nodded to her. "Let's do this."

It was a marvelously simple combination. Sarraya used her Druidic power to keep his Sorcery in check, and he reached through her restrictive shield on him and touched the Weave. The result was that the Weave didn't try to flood him as it usually did. The power flowed into him slowly, allowing him to completely control it as he had been able to do before High Sorcery had overwhelmed his ability to weave spells. That awesome power was isolated from him, kept on the other side of Sarraya's Druidic barrier. It was kept a little too well. "Loosen it a little, Sarraya. It'll take me hours to weave the spell at this rate."

"Just tell me when to stop," she replied, and he felt the Weave's energy flowing into him faster. It continued to increase, until he reached a level where he felt he was comfortable. It was fast enough to grant him the power he needed to weave the spell, but not so much that he couldn't resist its flowing into him when he was done.

"Right there. Alright, Dola

Leaning back on his heels, Tarrin blew out his breath when the weave was finished. He cut it off, letting it evaporate, but it left behind a magical effect inside Jula's mind much like a Ward, a magical effect that would separate and supress her Were instincts. It wouldn't last forever, however. Just as Dola

Putting a paw on her forehead, Tarrin wove together a healing weave and released it into her, which made her body shudder slightly at the icy cold sensation. He'd given her a concussion when he was hitting her in the face, that was why she was still unconscious. His own regenerative powers were rather slow when it came to healing damage to the brain. Probably because of the complexities involved in it. Jula tried to roll on her side, but a paw on her shoulder held her down. She groaned incoherently, reaching up and grabbing his wrist in a weak grip, her tail wrapping around his ankle reflexively when it made contact with him. Then her restless movements eased, and she relaxed back to the floor of the tent.

Her eyes opened, slowly. She blinked a few times against the light, and he could see from her eyes that she was coherent. The burning quality that had been inside them, induced by her madness, was gone. She looked up at him in dumbfounded shock for a long moment, then she shuddered when his paw shifted against her.

"So this is it," she said calmly, submitting to his hold on her. "Did you wake me up just so I could be ready for it?"

"I see you remember," he said, a bit coldly.

"I remember everything," she said, shuddering and closing her eyes sharply. "Everything. Sometimes memory is a curse. Why am I not insane now?"

"Tarrin supressed your instincts," Dola

"Did you want me to be rational for this? I'm impressed, Tarrin. Your brutality goes quite beyond anything I could ever manage."

"You'll believe that in a few rides," he said stiffly, taking his hand off her shoulder.

She stared at him. "You're not going to kill me, are you?" She rose up on her paw, looking up at the four of them in surprise. "You want what I know, don't you? You resisted the urge to kill me, just so you could make me talk? You even cured my madness, just to get at my knowledge. Goodness, you're nothing like what Kravon believes of you, Tarrin."

"That's part of the reason," Tarrin told her gruffly. "This is the other." He reached down and grabbed the end of her tail, and pulled it away from his ankle.

"Surprised to see me like this?" she asked with a slight little smile. "You don't give a girl many options, Tarrin. After you so effortlessly ripped out my spine, I had a choice of either dying, or drinking some of your blood that they stored for study. I always plan for eventualities. I could see that facing your wrath was a definite possibility. I was proved right in that."

"It backfired on you, did it not, Jula?" Dola

She sighed, and a little shudder ran through her. "I should have let myself die," she said with utter sincerity. "Just do me one favor, Tarrin. When I'm done talking, when whatever you did to me wears off, kill me. I'd rather be dead than be like that again."