Honor and Blood

Keritanima felt the strain of leading the Circle fade from her as Ahiriya took the lead, but she was still completely exhausted, and every time Ahiriya's demands for power reached her, she found it harder and harder to answer them. Her legs began to tremble, and she nearly fell as Ahiriya moved the Circle near the shattered edge of the destroyed wall, then began to attack the battling enemies below with magic, who had tried to circle around behind Je

"Kerri? Kerri, are you alright?" he asked in sudden concern, putting an arm around her shoulder.

Ahiriya began to weave again, and it put a demand on Keritanima that was just too much. She felt something inside her give, and then a sudden eruption of power snapped out of the Weave and assaulted her. In sudden panic, Keritanima let go of Azakar, falling to the floor of the wall, as she realized that the power of the Weave was flooding into her unchecked. She was too weary, too exhausted, to struggle against it, and Ahiriya's demands on her had overwhelmed her attempts to stop it from happening. The sudden inundation of power into the Circle caused all of them in it to shudder and recoil. Ahiriya gave out a strangled cry and tried to break the Circle, but the power flooding into the Circle resisted any attempt to break it. In desperation, she turned that power against itself, using it to try to forcibly sever the ties binding the Sorcerers together.

The attempt worked, at least in a way. The Circle broke violently, causing a huge backlash, and the other three Sorcerers joined to it were thrown from their feet by the power of its disruption, causing a blast of wind to issue forth from the middle of them and a shockwave of pain to lash through them. All the power that had been flowing into the Circle fed back into Keritanima, filling her beyond her capacity, dropping her into a sea of fire that burned at her insides. She let out a ragged scream and rose up on her knees, hands over her face and muzzle as Azakar and Szath scrambled to her. "Get out of here!" Ahiriya barked in fear, staring at Keritanima.

"What's going on?" Dar demanded.

"She hid how tired she was from me!" Ahiriya snapped angrily. "The damn fool! She's lost control! She's going to be Consumed!" She looked at Dar with steady eyes. "Now if you value your life, then run!"

But Dar did not run, as the others in their group did so. He joined Azakar and Szath as they tried to do something, anything, to make Keritanima stop shrieking in agony. He put his hand on his friend's shoulder and touched the Weave, trying to think of some way to stop what every teacher he'd ever had told him could not be stopped once it began.

"Back away from her," came a voice. They all looked over to see Je

"Go on," came Tarrin's voice. Dar whipped his head around and saw Tarrin standing right behind them, when he hadn't been there only a second ago! "Go. We'll take care of her now. She'll be just fine."

Dar nodded mindlessly, and then he found himself being pulled along by Azakar as the Mahuut pulled him away, trusting in Tarrin and Je

Keritanima had just done the impossible! She had avoided being Consumed!

Tarrin and Je

To: Title EoF

Chapter 36

The battle continued to rage, but for the moment it raged around the congegration of Sorcerers on the wall.

Tarrin had sent the three Sorcerers in Keritanima's Circle back with her, getting Dar off the battlefield and quelching Ahiriya's objections by threatening to do something very unpleasant to her if she disobeyed him. Szath and Azakar formed the core of the guard escorting Keritanima off the field, and when they were safely on their way, Tarrin and Je

Paws wide, the concave star of the Goddess formed around his projection, even as it formed around his body inside the Tower, floating within the Conduit inside the heart of the Tower, inside the very room in which Jegojah tried to kill him so long ago. Tarrin opened himself to the Weave, allowed it to fill him to his capacity, so much that his teeth actually began to throb, that his eyesight shivered with every beat of his heart. He reached his pi