An incandescent bolt of pure magical power, carrying the heat of a thousand bonfires, unleashed from Tarrin's upraised palm, ripping through the air as it travelled from Tarrin's palm to the terminus of its power in the blink of an eye. Its path carried it directly through the kajat's head, vaporizing everything it struck from just above that bloody maw to the top of its head in a perfect circle about a span across, then continuing on for nearly four longspans before the power of the weave reached its limit and dissipated. A cracking sound, something like thunder, proceeded the blast of magical fury, the sound of the air being instantly displaced and superheated by the power of the weave.

The kajat stood numbly for a long moment, then toppled to the side, partially on a large rock. Tarrin found himself struggling against the unmitigated power of the Weave, as it almost instantly replaced all the energy he had expended creating the killing weave, feeling like a man drowning in a sea of fire. But then the power flowing into him began to slow, and he sensed Sarraya using her Druidic magic to restrict that flow, to get it to where Tarrin could resist or control what was coming into him. But she was a basket trying to hold an avalanche. He could feel her struggling with her Druidic magic with everything she had, reaching the limits of her power, and it had very little effect on his connection to the Weave.

In that instant, as the Cat fled him, he understood the incredible danger he was in. If Sarraya could not reduce what was coming into him, he could not cut himself off without having the backlash kill him. If she couldn't, he would be burned alive from within, destroyed by the power of the Weave, he would be Consumed.

It was just too much power. He could feel that Sarraya was at the limit of her ability, and the power did not slow down enough to allow him to cut himself off without killing himself. He threw himself into controlling that power, to push against what was coming into him, even going so far as to seeking to use the power within directly against the power outside, seeking to have them strike one another and cancel each other out, just as a misweaved spell fizzled if flows of the same Sphere touched.

Fizzle! Of course!

In a terror-induced moment of brilliant clarity, Tarrin recalled one of the most basic rules of Sorcery; a Sorcerer cannot weave spells on himself. An attempt to weave on one's self caused the weaving flows to contact the power within, and it made it drain back into the Weave through the flows. Every time he had touched the Weave with his power, he had been drawing in, rather than trying to drain off. If he attempted to weave on himself without High Sorcery, the flows would strike him, come into contact with the power inside, and then the power within would suddenly drain out of him. The power of the Weave always follows the path of least resistance, Dolanna had told him so long ago. It was why a Sorcerer couldn't use magic on himself.

Reaching out, Tarrin accessed every strand near enough to him, and called all six Spheres from them. Flows of all six sphere reached out like tentacles, reached out to him, and then he pulled them inside of him, having them make contact with the power at the core of his being.

The effect was not what he hoped. The power drawn within was that of all seven Spheres, where he was only attempting to drain off six. The power within was held in a combined state because all seven Spheres were present, the sphere of Confluence holding the other six together. He realized that when in contact with High Sorcery, trying to induce a fizzle to leech off power would not work.

Unless… he fizzled a weave of High Sorcery.

In the instantaneous spans of consideration, he realized that that was a paradox. High Sorcery could not fizzle, because its very nature would not permit it. A misweaved spell of High Sorcery could not fizzle, so logic dictated that it would always explode in a wildstrike if it went wrong. An attempt to fizzle the spell in the weaving also wouldn't work, because a fizzled weave wouldn't drain off the power inside. The spell would have to form and affect him, but that wouldn't do any good either.

Or would it?

Feeling his blood boil inside, feeling his organs expanding dangerously from the incredible heat, feeling the fur burn off his arms and legs and his skin begin to char, smelling his hair burning away, feeling internal tissues begin to sear from the power, Tarrin started again, weaving together a weave almost completely made up of Divine flows, with only token flows of the other Spheres to grant the weave the power of High Sorcery, to grant the weave the power to affect him. Even as he weaved it, he fully understood that if this did not work, he would die, suffering the untold agony of being burned alive from the inside out, to die in a funeral pyre of his own creation, to be Consumed by the very power that had saved his life so many times before. There would be no time to try something else, to try again.

It was all or nothing. Everything that he had done, everything that he was, everything that depended on him, it all focused down into that instant in time, when Tarrin used his last desperate ploy in order to cheat death one more time, risking everything on a simple rule of High Sorcery, a rule he had never really bothered to study, never really seemed important, until that moment.

A Sorcerer using High Sorcery could weave spells that affected himself.

Tarrin released it, and then he felt it pierce into him, pierce the core of him where his magic was building, was burning him, threatened to destroy him. It infused into him, and then it started doing what it was intended to do, what it was woven to do.

Drain off magical power.

Where his attempt to fizzle failed, this did not. The power within suddenly found an outlet through which to flow, siphoned away by the power of his own weave. The sudden bottomless nature of his being seemed to strike back at the Weave, at his connection to it, making it shudder and recoil from him. His powerful connection to the Weave faltered as the totality of the power within drained out, and in that unstable instant, Sarraya struck. She attacked his connection to the Weave with every fiber of her Druidic power, and where she failed before, she succeeded now.

Tarrin could feel his connection to the Weave break, and it did not cause a backlash. The weave he wove on himself, no longer having anything to sustain it, unravelled harmlessly.

Tarrin collapsed onto the rock, sucking in air like a man just pulled from the sea, feeling the intense burning ache from inside like an agony, like he'd been spitted on a red-hot steel spear. Close, it was too close! The Weave had done damage to his body inside, and he'd come a mouse's tail from being Consumed. All because of a single moment of irrational anger. His body was utterly, completely drained of everything he had, and it was an effort simply to breathe.

"Tarrin! Tarrin, are you alright?" Sarraya asked in a fearful voice, landing beside his head and putting her tiny hand on his forehead gently. Her touch suddenly became warm, gentle, and he could feel her using her Druidic magic on him. The burning and painful injury done to him by High Sorcery began to ease, covered over by a feeling of blissful warm softness, as she used her power to accelerate his own healing and numb the pain. "Tarrin!" she called in a frightened voice. "Answer me!"

He was totally exhausted. It was an effort to think, to move, to form coherent will in order to speak. "Too close," he said in a weak voice. "Sarraya."

"I'm here, I'm here," she said assuringly. "Does it still hurt?"

"I'm tired," he said in a listless voice. "So tired."

"Then go to sleep, Tarrin," she said in a cooing voice. "I'll be here to watch over you. I won't let anyone hurt you."