But Tarrin's magical nature was strong, and soon he felt himself strengthen, even as the voices around him sharpened to the point where he could understand the words. He took stock in himself, and found that he could move, if only just, flexing his paw around the hand that was placed within it. A hand that he hadn't felt until the pressure of it squeezing back overwhelmed the burning itch dominating his sense of touch.

"Tarrin?" his mother's voice called. "Tarrin, open your eyes. You can do it."

His eyelids were hard to open. Something was crusted over them, and they didn't want to fold properly. The best he could manage was a half-open right eye, but the left refused to cooperate. But there was nothing but grayness past his eye. With detached interest, he realized that the eye was blinded. "Tarrin, what happened? What did this to you?"

It was hard to make his voice work, and it required a supreme effort on his part. His voice came out in the barest of whispers, and his eye fluttered close even as he spoke, as if he could not support speaking and keeping his eye open at the same time. "D-Doom…walker," he managed to gasp, and it was enough to send him spiralling back into the blackness.

It was a long time before he clawed his way back to consciousness. He wasn't sure how he knew that, but if the condition of his body was any indication, it had been quite a while. The burning itch was gone, and the play of light against his eyelids bled through them and registered to his eyes. His shoulder and ear still ached a bit, but on the whole he felt much stronger than before. He was still weak, but the simple act of opening his eyes wouldn't exhaust him this time. The scents in the room were the same, but also different. His parents and Allia were still there, as was Jenna. There were two or three other humans in the room also, scents he didn't know. No, he did know one of them. The blond Sorceress, Jula, whom he had met in the baths some time ago. There was very little talking, and Tarrin was keenly aware of a hand holding his paw.

His eyes fluttering open, he squinted against the bright light in the room, then they focused on his mother's haggard face. She had dark circles under her eyes, and strangely, her braid had been cut off. She smiled warmly at him as his eyes focused on her, and she patted his cheek lovingly. "Good morning, my son," she said with a smile. "How do you feel?"

"Like an army marched over me," he replied in a weak voice. "What happened to your hair?"

She put a hand to her short locks, an annoyed look on her face. "I'll explain later," she told him. "The important thing is that you're alright."

"My brother, you must stop scaring me," Allia said in a stern voice, squeezing his other paw.

"I'm sorry, it's not like I planned that."

"Anything feel broken? Do you want Jula to heal something for you?" his mother asked.

"No, I feel alright," he said after a pause, sensing his own body. It was all there, including his severed ear, though the ear was still a bit tender. He was weak as a newborn kitten, but he could tell that his body had healed what the Sorcerers had not reattached or closed. Now all it had to do was recover its strength.

The pretty face of Jula crowded into his vision, and she put her hands on his face. He felt her touch the Weave, and then a slow, warm influx of energy flowed into him, seeking to invigorate his depleted body. Most of the energy was lost, but enough of it took hold in his muscles that he felt well enough to move. He still wasn't sure if his legs could hold his own weight, though.

"I'm getting tired of waking up with people hovering over me," he grunted, which made his mother smile.

"Better to wake in a sickbed than not to wake at all," she told him. "Now, tell me what happened."

"It called itself a Doomwalker," he began, seeking to edit the story so that the Goddess' warning was removed. It required a bit of creative rearrangement of the facts, though. "I saw it from my room while it was coming across the grounds, and I knew it was there for me. I came to the central Tower to try to find some Sorcerers, but I got lost. It caught up with me in a passageway. We had a fight, and then I-" he shuddered at the memory of the pain, and his body seemed to twinge in response. "I was knocked into the Conduit in the Heart, and after that, I don't really remember very much. Just pain."

"Well, that explains the fireworks," Jula said with a warm smile. "It seems that your little visit to the Heart made the Conduit light up like the sun. I heard that they could see it miles offshore. It also explains the burns. You came this close-" she held up her thumb and forefinger the barest of distances apart- "to being Consumed."

"Huh," Tarrin grunted. He didn't remember anything like that. Then again, the only thing he could remember about the experience was that he never wanted to go through it again. There was pain, and more pain, and different kinds of pain, and the sensation of being boiled in his own skin. There was a fleeting image of the Doomwalker in a furious column of fire, its silhouette disintegrating in a span of two heartbeats. But not much else. "Is it dead?"

"Dead? The Doomwalker? There wasn't enough left of it to put into a bottle," Jula told him. "Whatever you did to it, it was a pretty thorough job."

"Thank goodness," he sighed. "It was using magic against me, and I couldn't beat it in a fight. It almost killed me."

"Almost doesn't count, my son," Elke said gently, putting her hand on her forehead.

"What happened to your hair?"

She was quiet a moment. "That, thing, didn't come right for you. It attacked us first. It tried to kill Jenna."

Tarrin's heart froze in his chest, but she gave him a look that quickly soothed his fears. "She's alright. The Sorcerer that was tutoring her managed to beat that thing back long enough for me to plant an axe in its face. There were several people there, so it became a nasty fight. The thing was throwing bolts of lightning everywhere, and a couple of times it simply disappeared from one place and appeared in another. And it was fast. It gave us all a serious fight. It gave your father a nasty slash on the belly and killed two of the people the Tower have at the house as guards, and injured several others."

"How is father?"

"He'll be alright," she said gently. "The wound was pretty deep, and it came close to spilling his guts on the floor, but after he dropped his sword, the thing stopped coming after him. It was almost bizarre."

Tarrin remembered it saying something about an honorable battle between them. "Father wasn't armed," he realized. "It wouldn't attack someone that didn't try to fight back."

"Well, it certainly didn't think that way about Jenna," she said, her temper rising. "Jenna used her magic after the other Sorcerer was hit by some strange bolt of lightning the thing threw at him, and that sent it running with its tail between its legs. I've never seen such a display. She really gave it what-for."

"What happened?"

"She picked it up in her magic and almost beat it to pieces against the floor," she replied with a wicked chuckle. "Then she crushed it between the ceiling and a shaft of stone she pulled out of our floor, and then she set it on fire. It ran from our parlor trailing flames, and the last we saw of it, it was running to jump into the river."

Tarrin smiled weakly. "Jenna always did have a temper," he said. Little Jenna, his sweet little sister. It was strange to think of her as an avenging Sorceress, wielding her powerul magic with skill and precision. But that seemed to be exactly what she did. Tarrin was too unfamiliar with his own power to even think of trying to use it against the Doomwalker, and he much preferred to fight opponents hand to paw. But for Jenna, it was the only weapon she had. She was, after all, only a young girl. But it seemed to be a weapon she could wield with power and skill when she needed it.