A terror unlike anything he had ever experienced swept over him, drove down into the very core of his being. The Cat at first welled up, and then mysteriously shied away, retreated from the fear, leaving him alone to face it. He felt paralyazed, helpless, unable to find his magic, unable to fight off the cold hands of death as they were laid upon him. Hands pressed in on him, killing him, causing his knees to buckle as they pressed in on him, until he sank into a sea of gray death like a drowning sailor succumbs to the sea.
"NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"NO!" Tarrin gasped, jerking up, a heartbeat away from seeking the power of the Weave to fend off his phantom assailants. He could sense it again, the strands crossing the area, the power they held within them. He could smell Sarraya, smell the rock and the sand and the faint trace of dust in the air left over from the sandstorm the day before, and the return of sensations for his senses to sample reassured him more than anythng else that it had been a nightmare.
A dream! Tarrin flopped back down on the cool sand, breathing heavily to recover his composure. It had been a long time since he'd had nightmares, but at least before, he couldn't remember them. This one was lodged in his memory, every second of it, and it caused his entire body to shiver. He'd never felt so afraid in his life! But it was just a dream, just a dream. It wasn't real.
It wasn't real.
It had certainly seemed real. The pain had been real. Even now he shivered, felt as if the heat had been sucked out of him, and he struggled to put it out of his mind. But he just couldn't. The image of that girl was burned into his memory, the pretty girl with the black eye sockets, and the sense of accusation that had been behind that eyeless gaze.
So many...so many. Had he really killed so many? In his rages, sometimes it was hard to remember exactly what happened. But there had been so many. It gave him conflicting feelings. The human in him was mortified at it, the thought that he had caused such destruction, but the Cat simply did not care. It was a conflict inside, a conflict that was usually won by his feral nature. But even he hadn't appreciated the damage he had done until then, until he could see it, see the numbers of people who had died because of him.
But even as he appreciated it, the Cat within shrugged it off. They were strangers, unknowns. They did not matter.
Closing his eyes, he sought to soothe himself, but found little peace. He could tell that it would be useless to try to go back to sleep. And sitting in the cave would be a torture for him. So he stood up, stretching in the cold night air. He would run. He could try to forget if he started doing something, took his mind off of it, and it was about the only thing that he could do right now.
"Sarraya," he called. "Wake up. We're moving on."
"It's too early," she said in a muffled grunt. He couldn't see her, but he could smell her, and he could see the displacement her body made in the sand in the back corner of the cave.
"The more we move now, the less we'll have to move when it gets hot," he told her. "Just conjure a sling, and I'll carry you. You can sleep."
"I guess," she grumbled, appearing before his eyes. She sat up, then shivered a bit in the cold air, as if waking up alerted her to the temperature.
In moments, without food or water or preparation, Tarrin was on the move. Using the Skybands to tell direction, he travelled westward over sandy ground strewn with small pebbles, along and between the rock spires that peppered the region. Sarraya was already asleep, snuggled into a leather sling he wore behind his neck, under his braid to give her warmth. The activity gave him the distraction he needed to try to get away from the face of the eyeless girl, a face that haunted him no matter how hard he tried to forget.
As usually happened for him, the time began to blur. When he found himself thirsty, he slowed to a stop, and realized that the sun was about to come up. He paused long enough to take a long drink of water, to feel the cold night air against him and allow his skin to warm after hours of running, and that was when he noticed the smell.
Dropping onto all fours, Tarrin put his nose to the ground and studied the many scents he found there. Most of them were unidentifiable, but the distinct coppery smell of the Selani was plain over them all. Many Selani scents, male and female, and all of them moved in the same direction, to the north.
Selani had passed through here, and had done it since yesterday.
There were no tracks, no traces of their passage. For so many to move and leave no trace, it was quite a testament to the Selani's stealth. If they were that close, then their scouts, Selani with vision like Allia's, had to have seen him by now. Allia told him how Selani moved, and that involved the employment of scouts both in front of and behind the group, to seek out dangers ahead and stalkers behind. Those rear scouts had probably seen him, since he'd made no attempts to hide his passage through the desert. They had to know he was here, but so far he hadn't seen any of them. Then again, he hadn't been looking. He stood up and scanned the terrain with his eyes, allowing his night-sighted eyes to show him what even the Selani could not see at night.
There. On that rock spire about two longspans north. Three Selani, standing on its top. They were too distant for him to make out anything, even which direction they faced, but he could clearly see their shapes, and the fact that they moved told him that they were not rock formations.
There was a slight shiver in the ground under his feet. It was faint, scarce, barely noticable, but his sensitive pads detected the disturbance. Again. There it was again. And again! They were rhythmic, predictable, occuring every second or two. But it wasn't natural, and that raised all sorts of warning flags inside him.
Raising up, he tested the cold air thoroughly with his nose, screening, sifting, classifying the scents carried in the night air. The never stopped moving in the desert, but it was calm enough so that dust wasn't kicked up into the wind. He turned into the wind and analyzed all the scents drifting in. Though he couldn't identify most of them, he could discern animal from mineral, reptile from mammal, bird from insect. All of them had basic elements to their scents that identified their kingdom.
The shuddering stopped, and then it started happening very quickly. As if something were running!
Instinct taking over, he immediately understood what was happening. He coiled his legs and jumped straight up, impossibly high, twenty spans into the air--
--just as a massive reptillian creature charged under him, jaws snapping together in empty space where he had been standing instants before.
It had come at him from downwind! It was a massive, monstrous, unbelievably huge lizard, a lizard that walked on two legs! He landed squarely on its back, a back covered in tan scales, a color that would allow it to blend into the desert. A back fifteen spans off the ground! It rose up, and he appreciated that it had a large head, and when it turned to look at him with those black, soulless eyes, he saw the teeth in its mouth. Teeth as long as a child's forearm!
What a monster! It was a kajat, he realized, one of the cabin-sized two-legged predators of the desert. An elongated body with a tail longer than its body, a massive tail like Binter's, used for stability. It's frame was horizontal, and though its forelegs weren't long enough to let it walk on all fours, they were long enough to allow it to reach the ground when it leaned down. The feet of those forelegs resembled hands more than feet or paws, and he could see them flailing, trying to reach behind itself and dislodge its potential meal.
Allia had described them to him, but the reality was a thousand times more intimidating than the description!
It began to writhe, and he heard Sarraya scream as he jumped away from it, getting clear so he could face it in a manner of his own choosing rather than getting knocked off. Tarrin looked at the massive beast, the size of a Giant, and he felt both respect and fear for this monstrous lizard. This was no animal to be taken lightly! It had attacked him from downwind, a sure sign of cunning. He wouldn't let the fact that it was an animal blind him to the fact that this was an experienced hunter. As a fellow predat
or, he could appreciate its tactics, and he was amazed that something so big could move with such speed and stealth!
"Tarrin, it's a kajat!" Sarraya screamed in fear, getting loose of the sling and flying away from him. "Run!"
He took a moment to appreciate his opponent. It was just huge! He'd never seen a living thing that large before! It was twenty spans tall when it stood relatively upright, but it had to be seventy spans long, nose to tail, covered in tan scales that would allow it to blend in with the sand and rock. The tail made up more than half of its length, but it didn't make it any less intimidating. It was bipedal, with forelegs--arms--slightly longer than normal for a bipedal body, but not long enough to allow it to walk on all fours and keep its spine level. It was built horizontally, not vertically, horizontally built around its powerful back legs, the long, thick tail there to provide balance for the body when moving. He still couldn't get over how big it was! It could swallow him whole! That oversized mouth was filled with row after row of spearpoint-sized, gleaming white teeth, and he certainly didn't want to find out how sharp they were.
There would be no running from this beast, he could see that already. It was big, but it could move very fast, maybe as fast as him. He wasn't about to try to run away and be forced to deal with it when it was behind him, when it had an advantage. He couldn't give up anything to this beast and expect to live through his mistake. Run, no. Climb, yes. There was a rock spire about a hundred spans behind him, a good thick one that the monster couldn't knock down. He had to convince it that there were easier meals to be had, and use that momentary trepidation to get to that rock spire and climb to safety. That, he could do without hurting it too much. And if it was persistent, well, he'd never tried kajat before. It could be tasty.
It gave out a tremendous bellowing roar, and he could feel the wind of its breath on his face as it roared at him. The breath was disgustingly foul, making his nose curl. But before it could make a move, Tarrin suddenly exploded into action, going on instinct, not really feeling fear as the Cat rose up and joined with his conscious mind. He streaked towards the massive beast, who seemed quite surprised that such a small thing would charge it. He drew his sword as he rushed it, face expressionless, lost in the moment, feeling no fear, no danger. He knew what he had to do, and he would go about it with the same gravity that some people felt when they peeled apples.
It lowered its head to snap up the crazy prey, but jaws again snapped on empty air. With all the speed of his breed, Tarrin sidestepped those jaws, slid up under the huge monster, then rose up the sword and stabbed it squarely in the tail.
The bellow that rose up this time was one of pain, and the great beast sidestepped frantically as it tried to whirl around to face this cagey foe. Tarrin moved with it, nearly getting trampled by its massive feet, jumped over it tail as its slashed aside, then reared back and used his sword to slice off the last half-span of the scaly tan tail.
It bellowed again, trying to turn to face this foe, but Tarrin again dashed under it, using its own body as a shield from its sight, staying under and away from those jaws. He again nearly got stomped by a thunderous slam of a foot into the ground, as it realized that its quarry was underneath it. It stomped again, and again, and yet again, but Tarrin danced around the moving tree-trunk sized legs, using his speed to keep those huge feet from crushing him. He turned after it stomped and whipped the sword around as he spun away, the very tip finding the beast's foot and slicing scale and skin. It was a scratch, a superficial cut, but the beast howled again at this unknown sensation of pain and flinched its foot away.
That was it. He managed to get the beast turned so its back was to the rock spire. It was confused, couldn't find him, and he used that momentary distraction to suddenly bolt out from under the monster, jumping again to avoid its whipping tail, and then sprinted all-out towards the rock spire. He felt under his feet that it had stopped stomping, and the sudden furious bellow told him that it had turned enough to see him running away. The stomping started again as he felt it in the ground, that it was rushing after him, but he could already see that it was too late. He was more than halfway to the spire. He sheathed his weapon on the run, slowing down only slightly to prepare for the critical first jump that would get him out of the beast's reach quickly.
With a bounding leap, Tarrin vaulted twenty spans up the rock on the initial jump, and claws immediately found purchase in the sandstone of the spire. He climbed quickly and easily, moving up the spire nearly as fast as a human man could run, literally climbing the spire by leaps and bounds. In mere seconds he was more than halfway up the sixty-span high rock spire, and by the time the kajat reached the spire, he was on the top, down on all fours on the flat, narrow table-like top of the spire, looking down at the huge lizard with very little concern.
"Tarrin, are you insane?" Sarraya literally shrieked at him as she reached him at the top of the spire, screaming at the top of her lungs, sounding like a possessed fife. "What in the Abyss did you think you were doing!?"
"Buying enough time to get up here without getting my head bitten off," he replied calmly. "I'm alright, Sarraya. It's too slow to get me."
"I should slap you!" she said vociferously. "You scared me half to death!"
"Sorry, but I wasn't in a position to explain it," he told her, looking down at the beast. It was looking up at him with utter hatred in its eyes, burning with fury that it couldn't reach him. It put its forelegs on the spire, pushed at it, even looked to try to climb up to him, but Tarrin wasn't that concerned. He reached down and picked up a flat rock on the top, a rock the wind had yet to dislodge, then stood up and threw it at the monster. Tarrin's inhuman strength gave the rock enough power to kill a human, and that deadly missle struck the kajat squarely between and just over the eyes. It wasn't enough to kill a creature with such a thick skull, but it did make it shut up, take a step back while shaking its head. It didn't kill, but it certainly felt it. The monster looked up at him again and bellowed, but that bellow turned into a hiss of pain when another, even larger rock hit it right on the snout, nearly hitting it in a tooth.
When Tarrin ripped out a rock large enough that no human could hold over his head, large enough to put a crack in its skull, then held it up in both paws and threatened to unleash it on the reptillian beast, the kajat wisely turned and stalked off. It was indeed intelligent. It understood that Tarrin could kill it if it pressed him, and realized that he was in no mood to be its dinner.
"That's right," Tarrin called to it as it stalked away from him. "Go find something else to eat."
"Ooooh!" Sarraya growled in her throat. "You didn't have to give me a heart attack, Tarrin!"
"Explain that to him," Tarrin said to her, pointing at the retreating reptile. "He started it."
"Did you have to attack it? Did you really feel that giving poor little Sarraya a heart attack was a good way for her to start her day?" she demanded hotly.
"I couldn't just run away from it, Sarraya," he defended himself. "It's big, but it's fast. I didn't know if it could catch me, and I didn't want to find out the hard way. I had to confuse it first. Besides, I wasn't really in any danger. Hmm, that piece of tail I chopped off is still down there, and I'm hungry. I wonder what it tastes like."
"I hate carnivores!" she screamed in exasperation, then she flew away.
The experience did three things for him. Firstly, it taught him that the dangers of the Selani desert were many, and that some were unexpected. Secondly, the exercise helped him put the eyeless gaze of the dead girl out of his mind, allowed him to concentrate on other things for a while.
Thirdly, he found out that kajat isn't that bad at all.
Running with the heat of the rising sun on his back, Tarrin continued towards the west, towards his goal after the short scrap with the kajat. Sarraya had flown off in a tiff, leaving him alone with his thoughts. He wasn't that worried about her. She was a grown Faerie, and few of the desert's denizens could so much as reach her, let alone threaten her. When
she was over it, she would come back. Until then, he was left alone with his thoughts, and they mostly centered over the nightmare he'd had. He still couldn't shake that face. It seemed to be right behind his eyes, and whenever he stopped paying attention to what he was seeing, it appeared before him again. It reminded him of the Cat, how it felt when he had first been turned, how it always seemed to be there whenever his mind wasn't focused on something else. As before, he realized that the way to keep the face from him was to keep his mind occupied on other things.
But that wasn't easy in a vast desert, where he only had himself for conversation at the moment. So he spent the time running digging up absolutely everything that Allia had told him about the desert in their time together. Some of it was useful at the moment, but most of it wasn't. Most of it was just stories, stories of their clan's holdings, stories of the life of the Selani.
They were semi-nomadic people with some permanent settlements where the water would support it. They mainly herded animals for a living, subsisting off large, flightless desert birds and animals that sounded to him like goats. They grew plants where it was possible. Wandering tribes of a clan often stopped in at these permanent settlements to restock supplies, get more water, trade information, and renew kinships. The denizens of these permanent settlements often didn't stay there more than five years, as they joined a wandering tribe and someone from the tribe took their place. The Selani didn't like living in one place like that, so it was seen more as a chore than a privilege. Clans were rivals, so it was rare that a tribe of one clan paid a visit to a tribe of another. Clan chiefs did communicate with one another, and once every five years all the clan chiefs and many clan members met at some place called Cloud Spire for what Allia called kiswisa, or the Gathering. From what he remembered, there was a Gathering to take place this year. Last year she said it would be next year, so that made it this year. She never said exactly when this Gathering took place, however. He hoped it wasn't now. If it was, then large numbers of Selani would be on the move all at the same time, and it would make crossing the desert more dangerous for him.
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