– -even Tarrin was not prepared for what happened next. Magical power flooded into him like a tidal wave, and before he even understood what was happening, It lashed out at Koran Dar with that raw magical power, almost of its own volition. Tarrin fell backwards with his chair as he recoiled from the bright light and ear-splitting crack as the energy manifested in the real world. The ceiling and the floor traded places a couple of times as he rolled to a stop on his back, his legs still tangled in the chair, feeling like someone had just sucked all the energy out of his body.

"Sizzling lizards!" he heard Phandebrass exclaim. "Koran Dar, I say, are you alright?"

"Sizzling is a good word," the Amazon man said in an unsteady voice. Tarrin managed to sit up and saw Koran Dar lying on the floor a good ten spans from where he'd been when he started, the front of his robes smoking and blackened. "If I hadn't deflected most of that, it would have burned a hole through me," he admitted.

Tarrin was too disoriented yet to feel guilty at having hurt Koran Dar. His head was spinning in a very uncomfortable manner, and even sitting up was making him so dizzy that he couldn't tell which was was up. He laid back down on the floor staring at the ceiling as it rotated in a wobbling manner around the glowglobe, and he wondered how he was staying on the floor when gravity kept changing directions on him. He was certain that his legs trapped in the chair was the only thing holding him down on the floor.

There was more. There was something else in his mind with him, something alien… yet there was a familiarity to it that he could not dismiss. It was like another being, but it was also a part of him. It had been that other thing that had lashed out at Koran Dar, for it had objected to his presence in their shared mind so strenuously that it had attacked the Sorcerer to chase him away. It was a non-thinking entity, primal, nothing but a bundle of feelings and emotions and impulses and instincts. Something primitive, but its power was more than Tarrin could deny. It may be simple and instinct-driven, but it was very, very strong. He felt it retreat back down into that chasm inside his mind unwillingly, as if it were fighting against the force holding it down there, but was not strong enough to counter its power. And as it retreated, Tarrin felt his disorientation and dizziness ease, but it did little for his dazed condition. The reaction and abrupt appearance of that other entity was too much for his mind to easily accept, and he wasn't sure how long he lay there on the floor before he became aware of Koran Dar and Phandebrass kneeling over him.

"What, what happened?" he asked in a bleary tone.

"I found what I was looking for," Koran Dar told him in a rueful tone. "I just didn't expect it to attack me."

"A-Attack you?" Tarrin asked in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"The part of you that made you a Were-cat, at least mentally, is still inside you, Tarrin," Koran Dar explained. "You always called it the Cat, so that's how I'll refer to it. It's still in your mind, or at least an echo of it is. I guess it couldn't be completely separated from you. It's part of what you lost, trapped with the memories that were taken from you. That's the key there, young one. The memories you lost are intertwined with the Cat. That's going to make recovering your memories without bringing that back into the forefront of your mind very, very difficult."

"But we can do it?" Phandebrass asked.

Koran Dar nodded. "I managed to discover how the memory was pulled out of him, Phandebrass. It was an attempt to erase it, but it only managed to erase the part of it that was locked in his human mind. When whatever happened to him stripped his Were nature out of him, it couldn't purge it entirely. The Cat had become a part of his mind, and not even tearing out his Were nature was enough to destroy it in him. It made the Cat retreat into the very core of his mind, and it took those memories, or at least copies of them, with it. Everything he knew since losing his memory is still in his mind. They're just locked up in the lost part of his Were nature."

"I say, restoring his Were nature would most likely restore his memories as well," Phandebrass mused.

"I'd say most likely, but we were told to find a way to give him back his memory as a human, Phandebrass," Koran Dar reminded him.

"I say, I think I can do that too," he said brightly. "Now that I know how his mind was affected, I think I can research a suitable cure, I can. I'll need to borrow the resources of your library, good Koran Dar. Would you mind terribly?"

"I think I can say with certain authority that you have the run of the library, good Wizard," Koran Dar said with a slow smile.

Tarrin looked at them in uncertainty and a bit of anxiety. The lost part of his Were-cat nature had possession of all his lost memories? It was still inside his mind, even though he was human again? He guessed it was possible; Triana had admitted that what had happened to him was something she considered absolutely impossible. She said that any attempt to cure Lycanthropy would kill the Were-creature in the attempt, for the nature and magic of being Were utterly infused the one turned. Whatever had separated that out of him could not do it with absolute certainty. It had left the tiniest of pieces of it inside him, and that fragment was holding onto all his lost memories.

"You mean if they made me a Were-cat again, I'd get back my memories?"

"I'd say yes," Koran Dar said with a solid nod. "The Cat is holding onto those memories, and I'll bet that it's trapped in the deepest part of your mind because what made you a Were-cat was stripped from you. If you were a Were-cat again, it would return to its rightful place in your mind, and I'd bet that it would restore your memory in the process. But I'm not saying that's the only way, Tarrin. Give Phandebrass some time, and I think he'll find an alternate solution to the problem."

"I say, I should have an answer by tomorrow evening," he said confidently.

"Why did I attack you with magic when you touched that-whatever it was?"

"I say, because the Cat in you rejects mental communion with unlike minds," Phandebrass told him calmly. "It was a phenomenon you'd displayed before. You can't Circle with any other Sorcerer, because your Were mind wouldn't accept the mental connection necessary to form the link, it wouldn't. I say, I think when Koran Dar touched the remains of the Cat in you, it reacted just as it did the other times others have tried to touch your mind. The Cat doesn't seem to like humans very much," Phandebrass said with a grin.

"You didn't attack me, Tarrin. The Cat attacked me," Koran Dar said calmly. "You are the same being, but sometimes you and the Cat can do things independently of one another. Like two sides of a coin. Both are different, and they can mean different things, but they're still the same coin."

"I don't understand."

"I don't want to scare you, but I'll be blunt," Koran Dar said evenly. "The Cat is a part of you, but as you just saw, it's capable of acting of its own volition when its instincts are suitably provoked. The Cat saw me as an intruder, an invader, and it took steps to protect itself from me. That's why it attacked me. You had nothing to do with that magical spell. The Cat did that all on its own."

That did scare him, and he had to admit it to himself. Triana and Jesmind had said that the Cat would make them do things, but he'd never experienced it quite like that before. He barely had any memory of it, and it frightened him that he was capable of reacting so violently and having no real idea why. He could kill someone and have no inkling as to why he'd just done it, or what it meant.

"Don't worry about it, Tarrin," Koran Dar smiled. "The Cat won't manfiest like that again. It simply can't, because you're not a Were-cat anymore. The only reason it could was because I was so deep inside your mind that I could touch it."