"So, what now?"

"Breakfast. I'm not ready to tackle this problem just yet, not so soon after learning Druidic magic. I'll start on it tomorrow. Hopefully this sandstorm will be past by then."

"Then Conjure us some breakfast," she told him. "Just make sure you get ripe fruit this time!"

"I liked them like that," he teased her as he began the mental preparations necessary to use Druidic magic.

The rest of the morning, and the day and afternoon and evening, for that matter, were spent in quiet meditation, as Tarrin sought to find this mysterious connection between himself and the Weave, tried to use Sorcery without touching the Weave. The problem was that he had no idea what he was looking for, what had changed. He felt no diferent than he did before this change inside. His sense of the Weave had changed, but it seemed that nothing else did. The first thing he tried to do was affect the Weave simply by willpower, but that didn't work. It was like smoke, something he could see but not touch, a hazy illusion without substance. He searched inside him for something new and different, but that too didn't work. There was nothing different within him, nothing he could sense. The attempts wore him out, physically and mentally, just as trying to touch the Weave for the first time had done to him so long ago. The seeking of the magic required intense concentration and effort, and it took its toll on him as the day progressed.

And behind it all was the eyeless face, disrupting his attempts to find this new form of magic. Every time he reached a state of contemplation, it appeared in his mind, and upset his attempts to seek it. The face did not lose its effect on him, even after so many days of enduring it. It could still cause a mindless panic and terror in him, if it struck with enough force or he was unprepared to deal with the emotions it incited inside him. He was forced to try to push it out of his mind and try to find a state of deep concentration at the same time, and that was not easy.

The end result of it was that by sunset, as the sandstorm died out, he was mentally and physically exhausted. So exhausted that he almost immediately fell into a deep, dreamless slumber after eating, a sleep so deep that even the dream could not find him. He awoke the next morning feeling a bit woozy, but a night's complete sleep had done his body very well.

The next morning had dawned clear and calm. There was still a bit of a dusty pall in the air from the sandstorm, and climbing onto the boulder showed him that the strong Ward he had made had been a very good idea. The Ward had about a span of sand built up around its border, and the sand was noticably higher between the boulders now than it had been before the storm. A span of sand wouldn't have buried them, but it would have collapsed the tent and left them exposed to the power of the scouring wind.

Sarraya flitted up and landed on his shoulder. "Dusty," she remarked, then she sneezed.

"The storm was a big one," Tarrin replied. "It's going to be dusty for a couple of days, at least." As he said that, he took the red scarf the girl gave him and settled it over his face, then donned his violet-shaded visor. The sun wasn't bright enough through the dust to be painful, but it would keep the dust out of his eyes. "You're going to have to navigate, Sarraya. I can't see the Skybands in this dust."

"Not a problem."

"What about the tent? Want to take it with us?"

"Why?" she asked. "If we need a tent, we'll just make another one. Let the Selani have it."

"I keep forgetting about that."

"That's why I'm the brains of this outfit," Sarraya teased.

"A Faerie, the brains of an outfit. I'm doomed."

"Hey!"

Navigating the boulder field was easy enough for him, he simply jumped from rock to rock, hopscotching his way through it. What made it a chore was that the boulder field was very, very large, longspans wide, and a couple of longspans of methodical jumping began to tire him.

"I wonder what happened to put this many rocks in one place," Tarrin mused to Sarraya as he jumped onto a particularly big rock, towering over the others.

"I'm not really sure," she replied. "The rocks don't look like they were in water, but something had to spill them out here."

"How can you tell they weren't in water?"

"They'd be smoothed down," she replied. "Water is even more corrosive than a sandstorm, over time. "Ever notice that the rocks you find in streams are smooth and look polished?"

"I never thought of that," he admitted. "You sound as smart as Phandebrass sometimes."

"I'm not sure if that's a complement or not," she said uncertainly.

The passage through the boulder field was more or less uneventful, at least up to a point. It changed quickly when he jumped from one rock to another, and his feet immediately sank down into the rock on which he landed. It wasn't stone!

Dislodged by a sudden, violent shift of the rock beneath him, Tarrin was spilled to the ground as the rock on which he had landed seemed to unfold itself, unbend, and he found himself looking up into the hungry gaze of a small kajat. It had huddled down, and it had looked so much like a rock with its brown scaly hide, he had literally jumped on top of it.

Snapping jaws instantly sought him out, and in desperation, before he could even feel fear, he twisted on the ground and got a foot on the lower jaw and both paws on the upper. Crushing pressure instantly struck him, and his foot was punctured by the spearpoint of a tooth, but his inhuman power proved to be the match of the monster's jaw muscles, if only just. Trembling with effort, staring into the maw of the huge lizard, Tarrin struggled against the vice-like crush of the monster's jaws. The pressure the monster put on him was astounding, threatening to shatter the bones in his arms and legs and he fought with all his strength to keep the jaws from closing on him. The things' fetid, hot breath blew over him, fueling his purpose, inciting the Cat within to lend all of its strength to keep him alive. With a growling roar of a cry, he pushed the jaws apart just a little, enough to straighten out his back and try to reach the sword on his back with his tail. But the monstrous reptile picked him up off the ground and began whipping its head from side to side, seeking to dislodge its meal enough to where it couldn't resist its jaws any longer. He hung on for dear life, both trying to keep the jaws from crushing him and keep his paws and feet where they were to keep the monster from killing him in one bite.

His paws slipped. He started falling backwards, out of its maw, but the fanged mouth snapped shut on his thigh, severing his right leg just above the knee. He tumbled to the ground as the intense pain of losing his leg ripped through him, before quickly being replaced with the angry tingling that told him that the leg was already starting to regenerate. The pain and the shock of the ambush pushed him over the edge, causing the Cat to rise up within him and cause his human consciousness to be shunted to the side. He got up onto his one remaining foot and jumped up onto a boulder, eyes consumed with the unholy greenish fire of his anger as he roared his challenge to the massive reptile.

It got a good look at him, got a sight of the rather gruesome process of regeneration when Tarrin lost a limb, as the leg literally grew out from the mangled stump bone first, fleshing out as it progressed, and then finally covering over with skin and fur grown from the stump down. Tarrin put his weight down on his new right leg, anger and fury overwhelming good sense. As the Cat always did, it sought out its most powerful, destructive option immediately, seeking to destroy the threat before it without considering the consequences of its actions.

The power of the Weave suddenly rampaging into him, through him, seeking to burn him to ash within heartbeats, the Cat used raw fury to bring the maelstrom under some sense of control, ignoring the burning from within of so much power, a burning that was very real. The kajat recoiled slightly as the fire-like numbus of Magelight suddenly exploded from the Were-cat's body, limning him in gentle bluish light that wavered and pulsated as if being carried by some invisible wind. Weaving together a chaotic mixture of Air, Fire, Water, and Divine energies, with only token flows the other Spheres woven in to grant the weave the power of High Sorcery, the Cat used that Weave it had used so many times before, a weave of such power that nothing could withstand it. The Cat rose a single paw and presented it palm-out to the beast, then thrust it towards the monster as it released the Weave.