The Doomwalker raised the tip of its sword towards him, and Tarrin instantaneously reacted to that display. Drawing out the flows as quickly as the energy flowed through the Weave to the Doomwalker, Tarrin wove together a spell of Air, Earth, and Divine flows, forming an reflective barrier to the magical assault he knew was coming. Jegojah pushed its sword forth, and a sizzling bolt of lightning blasted into the air between them, charging at him at a speed that was almost impossible to follow.

At least for a human. Tarrin reared a paw back and swiped it across his body in a backhanded motion, and when the leading edge of that bolt of lightning struck the blurring paw, it was deflected away from Tarrin's body. The bolt blasted to the side of him, striking and rebounding off the wall of the arena, then struck the sand of the arena floor to melt the sand and form a puddle of bubbling glass.

If Tarrin thought that Jegojah was surprised before, the look on its face now-or what was left that he could see, with that visor down-was one of utter disbelief.

"Ye can do magic!" it gasped. "But if ye could destroy Jegojah, already it would have been done, yes," it reasoned immediately thereafter. "Ye full power, it is not yet back, no."

Tarrin said nothing. He wove together a short, simple weave of Fire and then unleashed it at the Doomwalker. If it wanted to play magic, Tarrin would be more than willing to oblige. A huge gout of flame erupted from the Were-cat's paw, lashing out in the Doomwalker's direction, forcing it to dive to the ground to avoid getting cooked. Its form then sank into the ground, disappearing from sight. Tarrin had never seen it do that before, and the newness of it caused him to delay a heartbeat too long. The blade of its sword suddenly plunged out from the ground, right up between Tarrin's legs, and only fast reflexes saved him from getting that blade up the inside of his left calf. It still managed to cut a shallow line through his fur, a line that spewed blood immediately. Tarrin wove the counterspell again to stem the bleeding, then realized that it couldn't fight the Doomwalker when it was hiding under the ground. Weaving together a platorm of Air some ten spans off the ground, Tarrin jumped up onto that invisible landing, standing seemingly on midair, crouching down and watching the ground below him intently.

It didn't emerge for several moments. It seemed to realize that Tarrin was no longer on the ground, and it refused to come out where it would get attacked immediately upon resurfacing. And with it inside the ground, Tarrin's sense of it from the Weave was muffled. He couldn't tell exactly where it was, only that it was somewhere underneath him.

Tarrin considered it. It obviously wouldn't come up where Tarrin could get at it, so its logical next move would be to come up somwhere else, like within the walls of the arena, then come out of them in that manner. If it could pass through solid rock, anyway. If not, its best bet was to surface on the far side of the jagged mound of building stones that pierced the arena wall, where Tarrin couldn't see it. Either way, looking down wasn't the place he should be looking. He started scanning the entire arena floor and even the stands, watching for the Doomwalker from any possible approach.

It emerged again not a distance away, but directly underneath him. That surprised Tarrin considerably, but no less so than when the Doomwalker raised its sword to blast him with lightning again. Instead of jumping or defending, Tarrin instead rose up and blasted the entire area with a huge gust of wind, thanks to a quick weave of Air, which served to kick up the dust of the arena and immediately hide him from the Doomwalker's sight in a cloudy fog of dust and sand.

Two could play the hiding game.

Tarrin expanded his platform to allow him to move from his aerial position in utter silence, without having to get on the ground, then lightly set his feet on the top of the mound of rubble on the west side of the arena's floor. He stopped maintaining the Air platform, but instead wove an Illusion of himself, exact down the most minute detail, and projected it down onto the arena floor below. The Illusion made quite a show of moving slowly and quietly, each foot painstakingly coming down so there would be no noise. Tarrin was even thoughtful enough to add footprints behind the Illusion's progress, depressions in the disturbed sand that anyone could easily track.

The Doomwalker took the bait. It rushed out of the haze with very little sound, sword leading. Tarrin made a point of having the Illusion quickly raise up and into a defensive stance, seeking to parry the point of that deadly sword. Jegojah's sword slid under the upraised staff, and effortly plunged into the midsection of its oppenent. It felt no resistance, and continued to feel no resistance as its body stumbled right through the disrupting Illusion.

It cursed and raised its shield as a weave of focused Air, a scything blade of pure Air, lashed down from the top of the mound of rubble at terrific speed, released with a slashing motion of Tarrin's arm. The Doomwalker managed to get its shield up in time, and to Tarrin's surprise, the shield resisted the power of the blow. The ground on either side of the Doomwalker shuddered, and a dark line appeared across the sand for a moment before the shifting sand and dust settled into the incision left in the neatly sliced ground. The Doomwalker staggered back from the impact of the Weave on its unusual shield, now showing a deep, clean, neat slice across its featureless face. It screamed another curse at him and raised its sword, unleashing another blast of lightning in the direction from which Tarrin's weave originated, but its aim was off. It couldn't see Tarrin very well in the dusty haze, and its magical attack flew harmlessly over Tarrin's head.

One thing became apparent. In a battle of magic, even without High Sorcery, Tarrin would win. Jegojah was not a magic-user in the pure sense of the word. He had only limited abilities, and Tarrin had seen most of them. He could not improvise, make up new spells, use magic in a creative manner as Tarrin could. He could only apply those things that he could do to the situation, and make the best of them. But the thought of picking Jegojah apart from afar with magic offended his sense of vengeance. He wanted to be in the Doomwalker's face, wanted to look it in the eyes. Revenge was not something exacted from a distance. Tarrin could easily raise an Elemental to do battle with the Doomwalker, or split the earth and cast him down into the crevice, or pick it up with Air and send it flying to the moons, but he didn't want to do those things. He wanted to beat Jegojah down like a dog with his own two paws. He had been very content to fight without magic until the Doomwalker resorted to it first.

But the Doomwalker had other ideas. The lightning not finding the mark, Jegojah resorted to its most powerful attack. Tarrin felt it in the ground even as it unleashed it, that sesmic shockwave that shook the earth. The ground trembled and rumbled as the rubble pile began to vibrate like the string of a lute, then blocks and masonry went flying as the shockwave struck the pile. Tarrin was quickly inundated in flying rocks, and the shifting stones beneath his feet parted and caused him to sink down into the debris as if it were quicksand. Rocks jabbed and pounded at him, their shifting pinched and cut into him, and it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience as he found himself getting buried beneath the rubble he had thought would be his advantage. The pile continued to shift, and he clearly felt his tail snap under the strain of being pinched between two large rocks. The pain made him suck in air sharply and start thrashing against the shifting rubble.

Now things were not good. Tarrin wriggled out of the rubble as he heard the Doomwalker cackling evilly. He had not forgotten about that power, but he had never expected it to be that strong. It hadn't shown that kind of strength before. He'd been saving that up, obviously.