e in the air was bleeding into him, energizing him in some strange way.  He felt almost optomistic, and was in a better mood than he'd been in for months.
	Sarraya flitted out of the shelter and gave him a calm look, but said nothing at first.  She pulled up a gossamer little bit of cloth over her face, coughed, then snorted loudly.  "Can't this place go one ride without choking me?"
	She seemed to be back to normal.  Maybe she'd blown off what had happened earlier.  That, or she was acting normal for his benefit, since she could probably tell that his earlier weakness had embarassed him.
	"It likes you," he said absently, looking up into the dust-hazed sky.  He could barely make out the Skybands, but he saw enough to determine which direction was northwest.  Visibility was poor, the dust acting like fog, but he could see about a half a longspan ahead.  And on this flat, rocky table, that was far enough.
	"The air feels weird," Sarraya complained.  "Like static."
	"I noticed," he replied.  "I think it's the dust."
	"I don't remember feeling this before."
	"I guess not every storm has the same effect," he told her.  "Want to ride or fly?"
	"I'm cold, so I'll fly for now.  The activity will warm me up."
	"I know the feeling.  Let's go," he agreed, then he started out at a ground-eating pace to the northwest.
	"Hey!  Wait for me!"
	He ran out of the dusty pall around midmorning, and the sun's blistering heat found him without the dusty haze to deflect its might.  The heat of the sun didn't really bother him much anymore, nor did the radiant heat of the rocks, or the air itself.  He had become truly acclimated to the savage heat of the desert, his body's Were aspects adapting him to his new environment.  He was much leaner now, lean and lithe and dangerous-looking, and his black for actually served to trap cooler air next to his skin, insulating his furred parts from the full fury of the sun and leaving him feeling much cooler than someone without fur.
	He still saw nothing, nothing but empty flatness, but the appearance of more rock spires on the horizon bolstered him.  He began to notice them at noontime, when they stopped to eat a Conjured meal of fruits and water.  The Fingers of the Goddess, they were called, reaching up from the desert floor.  There were a great many of them.  The last time he moved through one of those forests of stone, he'd seen a great deal of desert wildlife.  Maybe those rock spires harbored an evening meal.  Tarrin squatted down over the little Faerie, giving her shade from the merciless sun as he ate a curiously cold peach.
	Sarraya fanned herself with her wings, pulling on the neck of her gossamer gown repeatedly to circulate fresh air under her clothes.  She had done well in the desert heat, never complaining about it, but today she seemed to be affected by it.  "Is it just me, or is it really hot today?" she asked in a breathless voice.
	"It feels pretty hot," Tarrin agreed.  The midday sun was fully up, and that meant that it was blasting the rocky flat with its full fury.  It was the hottest part of the day.  "I've been wondering, how are you dealing with the heat?"
	"Faeries aren't as fragile as we look, Tarrin," she said primly.  "We're almost as rugged as you Were-kin."
	"And how much do you cheat?"
	Sarraya gave him a hot look.  "I don't cheat!" she flared, then she gave him a sly grin.  "Well, not much, anyway.  About noon, I'm starting to shield myself from the heat with Druidic magic, but I can take it most of the rest of the day."
	"It's strange, Sarraya, I'm totally used to it now.  I don't even sweat anymore."
	"You sweat, trust me," she said.  "It just evaporates so fast that you don't notice.  Anyway, you're a Were-cat.  Were-cats have that damned regeneration.  It adapts you to anything from this blasted wasteland to arctic tundra."
	"I already figured that out," he grunted.  "You want to ride for a while?"
	"I think I'd better," she replied.  "It's so hot, I'm even feeling it through my little magical shield.  I don't want to give myself a heat stroke by flying."
	"I wonder how far away those rock spires are.  The sun bends things, makes the distance--"
	Come to me.
	Tarrin's ears picked up, and he stood up and turned towards wherever that came from, towards the northeast.  He hadn't heard it with his ears, he'd sensed it some other way.  Almost like a whispering.  And the voice was unknown to him.
	Come to me, it repeated, that same inaudible whisper, yet it was plain to him.
	"Tarrin?  What's wrong?" Sarraya asked.
	"Someone's...calling me," he replied uncertainly.  "Can't you hear it?"
	"No, I don't hear anything but the wind," she replied.
	I know you can hear me.  It is time.  Come.
	There was a...rippling.  He couldn't describe the sensation.  Like ripples in the very air itself, shivering over him.  They came from the northeast, the same as the voice.  The sense of static in the air returned, more oppressive now, feeling like it was weighing down on him.
	Something deep inside him reacted to that sensation.  Before he realized what he was doing, he was walking towards the northeast, towards a cluster of rock spires that seemed to be separate from the others, sitting just before the horizon.
	"Tarrin?  Tarrin, what are you doing?" Sarraya called, flitting up from the desert floor and flying up to him.  She landed on his shoulder, then switched shoulders so the sun was blocked by his head a little better.  "What's going on?"
	"I can hear it, Sarraya," he replied.  "It's calling to me."
	"It could be a trick," she warned.  "I don't hear it."
	"I don't really hear it either.  At least not with my ears."
	"It could be a trap, Tarrin."
	"Then let's go spring it," he said calmly.  He was wildly curious about this.  It seemed to cause something within to respond to it, almost like an irresistable call, like the singing of a Siren.  He could not deny the power of the summons.
	"What did it say?"
	"Only to come," he told her.  "And it said that it's time."
	"Time for what?"
	"I guess we'll find out when we get there."
	He picked up into a trot, then that ground-eating loping run that allowed him to run all day without rest, a pace that covered a great deal of ground.  He ran in the direction that the calls had originated, his curiosity running wild.  He had no idea what he'd find when he got wherever he was going, but the irrepressible need to go there and seek out this strange voice did not fade in the slightest.  The thought of it absolutely consumed him all afternoon, even smothering over the eyeless face behind his eyes, dominating his thoughts.  The cluster of rock spires grew closer and closer as the afternoon progressed, and he seemed to sense that that was the destination.  That was from where the call had issued, that was where the answer to this mystery would be found.  He didn't ponder much on the manner of the call, only its substance, only its effect.  Sarraya rode along in relative silence, fretting and frowning just about the entire time, but she grew quiet when she realized that no amount of arguing, shouting, cajoling, wheedling, or even begging was going to turn him from his course.  Tarrin was dead-set to his path, and she could not cause him to drift from it.
	He reached the first rock spire about an hour before sunset.  The spires were clustered together loosely, a good distance between each one, and as he passed by the first, he slowed to a walking pace.  This was the place.  What had called out to him?  What was it that had incited such a powerful reaction?  The static charge that had been in the air was gone now, but there was something else.  It was a sense of...presence.  There was someone here, a someone whose very presence weighed down on the air itself.  The Weave itself seemed to oscillate, to shimmer, to vibrate in response to this presence, and the strands were actively leaning towards some focal point.
	As if the presence had the power to affect the Weave, just by its presence alone.
	Would he find Fara'Nae here?  Was this a place holy to her?  The only beings he could think of that could do such things were gods.  Was this collection of rock spires like the courtyard in the hedge maze back in the Tower?  It wasn't the Goddess.  He'd feel it if she was the one that was here.  Her sense of presence was completely different from this.
	At least that sense of presence acted as a beacon.  He could follow it right to its source.
	Sarraya began to get fidgety as Tarrin walked towards that sense of presence, slowly, calmly, more curious than worried.  "Tarrin?  I feel...."
	"I know.  I feel it too."
	"Is this what you heard?"
	"No, but this is what called me," he said.  He didn't know how he knew that, but he did.  "It's over there," he said, pointing.
	"That's not the only thing here," Sarraya said.  "I just saw a Selani."
	"Where?" he asked.
	"To your right," she replied.  "Just behind that rock spire over there."
	Tarrin turned and looked.  It was a smaller rock spire, as thick around as most large trees, and only about twenty spans high.  He couldn't see a Selani, but Selani were experts at hiding and stealth.  If Sarraya saw one, she saw one, and she was lucky to see the Selani in the first place.
	"I'll go see what else is around.  I'll be right back."
	"Be careful," he called as her wings began to buzz, and she faded from sight as she started towards the rock spire.
	Tarrin continued walking towards that sense of presence alone.  He wasn't really afraid.  There had been nothing in the call that invoked fear.  Even his feral suspicion seemed to be overwhelmed by the wild curiosity behind the strange, voiceless call.  All of him wanted to find out who this strange presence was, and why it called to him.
	For another ten minutes he moved towards that sensation, until he came around a small rock spire and got his first look at it.
	It was a humanoid, or at least he thought it was.  It was tall, and was totally garbed in a strange black cloak, a cloak so black that it consumed any sense of dimension the figure held.  It was as if the cloak had been cut from the most impenetrable darkness, and the figure he saw was nothing but a cut out sheet of paper held up to the sun.  It stood upon one of the rock spires, one of the smaller ones, and he couldn't tell if it faced him or not.  All he could see was a black shadow between him and the sun.  The only reason he could tell it was a cloak was because the afternoon winds pulled and tugged at it, making the dimensionless form before him waver and ripple like a reflection on dark water.
	He came to a stop about a hundred spans from the spire, looking up the thirty spans to the figure.  He was closer now, and he could see that it was indeed a cloak.  It opened occasionally in the wind to reveal a formless figure beneath, a figure wearing black garments that blended in with the utter blackness of the cloak, serving to distort the figure's shape and form from his eyes.  That opening told him that the figure faced him, but he could not see through the hood to discern any features.
	He still felt no fear, but he felt a powerful sense from the figure.  The Weave was bending in towards it, and just as the Sorcerer back in that city had sensed him, so he sensed it.  This figure was a Sorcerer, and its power was unfathomable.  He had never felt anything like it before.
	"Vosh," the figure intoned, and that made his jaw drop, intoned in a rich alto voice that absolutely had to belong to a woman.  That was a Sha'Kar word!  "Vosh.  Unda ne.  Vasti dosba no."
	He was absolutely stunned.  The pronunciation was much different from what Keritanima had taught him, but it was undeniable that it was Sha'Kar that the form was speaking.  "Time-ending.  Arrived have.  I for-you-waiting have been."   At last.  You have come.  I have waited for you.
	He was completely bowled over.  She spoke Sha'Kar!  That language was dead, nobody spoke it anymore!  And she spoke it like she'd spoken it all her life!
	"Do I surprise you?" she asked in Sulasian, and her pattern of speech was odd.  It was as if she spoke every word with absolute exacting precision before moving on to the next.  "You have come.  You are ready," she told him, reverting to Sha'Kar.
	Hearing her speak Sha'Kar invoked an automatic response in him, and his gift for languages rose up, instantly correcting the improper pronunciations that Keritanima had taught him when they were learning the language.  "Wh-What do you mean?  Who are you?" he managed to stammer, in a Sha'Kar dialect almost mirroring her own.
	"Who I am does not matter," she said, reaching up for the hood of her cloak.  "That you heard my call is all that matters now.  You are ready."  She pulled back her hood, and he almost fell to his knees.
	She was a Selani!
	Selani!  Her features were undeniable!  She actually bore a curious resemblance to Allia in her cheeks and her blue, blue eyes.  Her hair was silver where Allia's was white, shimmering in the brutal desert sun, and she had a faint scar on her left cheek, a dark line on her smooth, dusky brown face.  The scar did nothing to mar her exceptional beauty, it only accented the graceful beauty of her face to his eyes.  Almost as if it were a beauty mark.  Her face was lovely, but it was her eyes that captured his attention.  A deep blue, like Allia's, but behind them was a sort of deep ocean of knowldge and wisdom that made her eyes haunting, piercing, ensnaring the eyes of others yet making them worrisome and uncomfortable to stare into their depths.  Those eyes looked into you, and they exposed all your secrets, made her know every part of you, both good and bad.  There was no hiding from those eyes.  They were not the eyes of an ordinary mortal being, and they marked her for the kind of exotic, unique entity that she was.  Piercing blue eyes stared down at him, and the expression on the face was stony, unreadable.  She was obviously mature, but her features did not betray her age.  But there was a set in the way she held herself, the way she looked at him with those powerful eyes, a sense and feeling much like Triana.  This woman was old.  At least as old as Triana, and that made him make a vital connection.
	A truth crashed down on him at that moment.  Sha'Kar is alot like Selani, he had told Keritanima as he learned it.  The words are different, but the structure of both languages is similar, Keritanima had told him.  Almost as if they had been descended from the same root language.
	This strange woman wasn't Selani.  She was Sha'Kar!
	The Selani and the Sha'Kar were related!
	A  Sha'Kar!  A living Sha'Kar!  They were supposed to be extinct, the race snuffed out in the Breaking!  He took a frightful step back from her, fearing her now, because if she was a Sha'Kar, then that meant that she was an Ancient.  It certainly explained how her very presence seemed to attract the Weave, warp it, draw it to her.  Her power was incredible!
	"You see truth," she said in a calm voice.  "You know me now.  You fear it."
	"Y-Y-You're--You're a Sha'Kar!" he managed to get out.
	"If giving me such title pleases you," she told him mysteriously.
	"What do you want from me?"
	"You have heard my call," she said again.  "It is time."
	"Time?  Time for what?"
	"Time," she replied, pulling a slender arm from beneath her cloak and simply pointing a delicate finger at him.
	And with that word and gesture, the ground in front of him just simply exploded.  The impact of it blasted the breath from his lungs, picked him up, carried him along with the shockwave of the explosion as bits of rock and debris drove into him.  He felt himself flying through the air, and then was tumbling on the ground with a dozen shouts of pain emanating from various parts of his body.  He rolled to a stop, his body a bit dazed, but his mind whirling like a hurricane.  There had been no touching the Weave, no sense of Sorcery from her!  It was as if she'd woven the spell outside his senses!
	She attacked him!  She was a Sha'Kar, an Ancient, and she had attacked him!  How was he going to fight an Ancient?  How was he supposed to stand against that kind of incredible power?
	He rose up to his feet, crouching down over them, tail slashing back and forth as an instinctual need to face this challenger battled with the human realization that this was no being to fight.  Panting from the pain of the shrapnel, pain that eased as his body mended itself, he looked up and saw her descending from the top of the spire slower than would be natural, as if the air was holding onto her and lowering her gently to the ground.
	His mind raced through innumerable possibilities, but it kept returning to two simple conclusions.  One, that there was no escape from someone like this.  Her magic could easily keep him from escaping.  And since he could not flee, he had to fight.  Sarraya wasn't here, so that made his most poweful weapon unavailable to him, but that didn't mean that he was just going to lie down and die for her benefit.  He was a Were-cat.  He knew how to fight without Sorcery.
	That one thought nearly scared him into losing his composure.  Fight an Ancient?  It was madness!  Something very close to abject terror closed on him as the woman's feet hit the ground, as she lowered those eyes on him.  She outmatched him in every sense of the word...but then again, he'd been outmatched before, and he had found ways to win.  It was live or die, so he'd better get his mind going and find a way to either defeat her or escape from her.
	With deliberate slowness, he drew his sword, letting her hear the sound, trying to do anything to rattle her steely composure.  He was much taller than her, and he was a physically intimidating person.  It had worked on many others before her.  Perhaps it would work on her as well.
	She simply stood there, staring at him.
	He couldn't show fear.  Gritting his teeth, feeling like he was about to run into the mouth of some giant predator, Tarrin exploded forward out of nowhere, moving with all the speed and power his body could give to him.  Sword held point towards her, he covered the distance between them faster than a thoroughbred could sprint, his fear and adrenaline granting him incredible speed.  She simply watched him coming, and made no move to avoid him or defend herself.  He knew that that was a very important observation, but if she wasn't going to move, he was going to take his shot at her.  He charged right at her, on top of her in the blink of an eye, and he thrust the black-bladed sword directly at her chest.
	And she made no move to evade, until the very last second, when she pulled her cloak around her.
	The blade met nothing.  It simply kept going, and going, even as Tarrin's feet slid to a stop just before her.  It sank into the impenetrable blackness of her cloak, swallowed up by it, and it met nothing to slow it down.  He thrust through her so hard that his paw also dipped into that inky blackness, and when it did he felt an agonizing, biting cold slash through his paw and arm, like the touch of a Wraith.  Crying out, he recoiled from that icy cold, letting go of the sword in his haste to free himself from that painful touch.  He pulled his paw back, seeing that the fur had frost on it, and his fingers were numb and nerveless.
	The sword was simply gone.
	It had went inside the cloak!  The cloak wasn't natural, it was some kind of magical artifact!
	She gave him the slightest of knowing smiles as he staggered back away from her.  She reached within her cloak, and with deliberate slowness, drew out his sword, holding it by the middle of the blade.  It was nearly as tall as she was, but she held it with a surety and confidence that told him that she was much stronger than she appeared.  She glanced at the blade casually, then tossed it aside like it was so much dross.
	Feeling was returning to his paw.  He flexed it a few times as he took a few more steps back from her, trying to figure out what to do next.  But she only gave him a slight look, a shift in the set of her eyes, and that was all he needed to react to whatever was about to happen.  He spun aside and sprinted away from her, diving over a large rock, then turning and rushing towards the nearest rock spire.  This was insanity!  What was he supposed to do against something like that?  She couldn't be injured by weapons, and he'd destroy himself with Sorcery long before he got anywhere near her!
	He reached the spire, hiding behind it for cover, trying to recover his breath and his racing mind, as his heart pounded in his chest.  Think, he had to think!  He couldn't use Sorcery, and he couldn't fight her hand to paw.  That didn't leave him many options.  He could use some Druidic magic, but he'd never tried to use it in a fight before, at least not consciously.  And Sarraya had never taught him any Druidic spells that would be useful in a fight.
	"You shame us," the woman called out.  "Must I force it of you?"
	And with that, the rock spire against which he was leaning began to shudder and vibrate.  For a fleeting moment, he could feel the magic from her, feel it through the weave, a rippling and pulsating energy that vibrated through it like the plucking of a lute's string.  The sound of cracking rock reached him, and he looked up in time to see several large chunks of the spire beginning to fall down to the desert floor.  He scampered aside as a big one hit very close to him.  He raced away from the spire as it shuddered and groaned, then ear-splitting sound of ripping stone raked over his ears.  He turned back in time to see the entire rock spire shudder, then begin to topple to one side.  It struck the desert floor in a massive cloud of dust, with so much energy that the rock and ground beneath his feet heaved violently from the blow, nearly knocking him down in its convulsions.  The sound of the impact nearly deafened him, sent a huge cloud of dust roaring over him.
	Merciful Goddess! he thought frantically.  What power!  And without High Sorcery!
	She was just too powerful!  There was no way to fight her, no way to hide from her, no way to run from her!
	He had no choice.  He couldn't fight someone like this.  He needed High Sorcery.
	Paws limning over in Magelight, Tarrin reached out to the Weave, felt it connect to him, and then try to drown him in a tidal wave of its power.  More than ever before, he felt a modicum of control over the power, as if his abilities had reached a point where he could control High Sorcery to a limited degree.  He found that he could push against that power, resist it at least enough to be able to use the power within before it built up past the point where he could contain it.  It flooded into him, joined with him, and that power caused him to become more attuned and connected to the Weave.  He could feel her magic now, feel it flow and eddy within the strands.  With a primal scream, he harnessed that power within him, used it against the Weave, caused the strands to expel flows of the Spheres.  Those flows coalesced around his paws as he wove them into a spell, and then he released its power.  The weave manifested as a powerful blast of wind, shattering the dust cloud and then sending it back the other way.  The force of the wind was enough to pick up small stones, sending a cloud of debris flying back at the Sha'Kar with enough force to injure, maybe even kill if they hit right.
	But the cloud parted, then passed by on both sides of the Sha'Kar woman harmlessly.  She gave him a penetrating look, a look that unnerved him despite the distance between them, and then she gave him a chilling smile.  "Now," she said, and then she raised delicate hands limned over with the ghostly radiance of Magelight.
	She could use High Sorcery too!
	She was a Weavespinner!
	The sight of that caused his human mind to retreat, to literally drag the Cat out into the forefront.  He needed all his power, he needed the rage of fury to give him the power to control his own magic.  He needed everything he could possibly find, because he was facing an opponent who had the power to beat him at his own game.
	With a building roar, Tarrin's body exploded completely into Magelight as he relaxed the constraints he had placed on himself, and it responded by trying to burn him to ashes.  Rational thought was scoured away, leaving behind only the instinctive impulses of the Cat, a mind that did not need to think in order to function.  Power that would kill a linked Circle roared into him, through him, saturated his being with its power.  It sent a shockwave of pain through him, pain that his Cat nature could block, ignore, shrug off, as the animal within ignored the dangers to the body in order to protect itself from an enemy.
	So fast that most Sorcerers would not be able to follow it, with a speed borne of familiarity, Tarrin wove together that chaotic weave of Fire, Air, Water, and Divine flows, with only token flows of the other Spheres to grant his weave the power of High Sorcery, and then unleashed it on the dark figure.  A blinding, incandescent bolt of pure magical power, a bar of light containing heat beyond anything natural, ripped through the air as it hurtled directly at the Sha'Kar's body.  But the Sha'Kar slapped the bolt aside with a hand casually, and it deflected in its path and struck the ground a few hundred spans behind her.  That touch caused the rock to vaporize, and then to explode, sending a shockwave of flying debris, dust, and loud noise roaring across the small forest of rocky pillars.
	The Sha'Kar responded with a whip-like tongue of fire that emanated from her hand, and then she lashed it at him over the distance between them.  It moved with a speed that defied rational thought, but to Tarrin's heightened senses, it moved with a ponderous slowness that he could easily track.  He wove together a weave of Fire and released it, forming it around his paw, and he caught that tendril of fire as it tried to strike him.  He felt the nature of the weave, then charged it with a huge surge of Air.  The Fire mixed with the Air, and he sent it back towards the Sha'Kar like throwing a burning pot of pitch.  The tendril detonated along its length in rapid succession, but it winked out as the Sha'Kar countered with flows of Water into the tendril to counter the explosive mix of flows.
	He didn't hesitate.  His Cat mind was already working on the next gambit, weaving together a weave of High Sorcery that was primarily composed of Earth.  It was the magical effect he'd seen Jegojah use before, and he released it by stomping on the ground.  It created a seismic shockwave that raced in the Sha'Kar's direction at shocking speed, causing a line of dust and flying shards of rock to follow in its wake as it shattered the rock through which it travelled.  But the Sha'Kar rose up into the air, allowing the shockwave to travel under her harmlessly.  He felt her weaving spells now, using High Sorcery, a weave of Water, Air, and Divine mainly, and then she released it.  A pale beam of cold blue erupted from her hand.  He didn't have the time or the presence to study the weave and create a counter for it, so he simply dove aside as it hit the ground where he'd been standing.  He looked back, and saw that the ground had been covered by a thick layer of ice.
	The human in him wondered at this.  She was strong.  She could do all the things he could.  So why such small things?  Was she toying with him?
	There was one way to find out.
	Setting his feet apart, he wove on a massive scale, flows of Air mainly, forming the first stages of the air shockwave that had proved to be so devastating all the other times.  Eyes blazing with white light, a vicious snarl on his face, the air before him took on a reddish hue, an irregular reddish haze as the weave began to form--	
	--But a lance of Fire struck his weaving, Fire laced with weaves of Air.  The Air weaves in her counterstroke interacted with the flows in his, causing them to cancel one another out.  The weave collapsed in on itself violently, then the flows of Fire interacted with the remaining flows in an odd manner, reforming into a new weave that immediately manifested.  It formed as a ball of intense burning flame that suddenly exploded in all directions.  An inferno of hellish fire blasted towards him, and he barely had the time to erect a Ward of Fire flows, a shield against it, before it engulfed him.  He covered his face and flinched away instinctively as the fire blasted over him, but his Ward protected him from the fire.  The Ward itself seemed to be caught up into the fire, as latent magical flows in the fire itself attached to the Ward, consumed it, ate away at its integrity, causing it to fail.  But not before the fire exhausted its magical energy and dissipated.
	Even the Cat was impressed.  She used his own weaves against him!
	The fire winked out, and in its wake it left a rocky ground that was blackened and smoking.  The dirt and sand that had collected were now pools of clear glass laying on the blackened stone.
	She had struck at his weave!  While he was weaving it!  And she even set up her attack so it used the flows not cancelled out to reform into a new spell.  She had caused him to use up his own energy to create a spell of her design!
	This was a true Ancient.
	But the Cat understood its mistake.  The weave took too long to create.  Against her, he had to use fast weaves, things easy to create and with power.  If he gave her an openeing, she would destroy his attempts to weave, maybe even turn them against him once again.
	Weaving Air again, this time he used something fast and quick, something that could be realeased as quickly as it was woven.  It released as a scythe of pure Air, a rush of air with a cutting edge more lethal than any sword or blade, and it lashed out like a whip towards the Sha'Kar as she drifted to the ground.  The Sha'Kar simply raised her hand to meet the leading edge of that weave, then deflected it with a slash of her hand, deflected it to the side.  It continued on, striking a rock pillar, then slicing it in half at the base as neatly as a knife cut butter.  The pillar shuddered, then slid off its sliced base and then toppled over in an explosion of dust and a ear-splitting boom.
	The power rebuilt in him as quickly as it had been expended, and he felt the stress.  He was starting to wear out, to tire, and the power was becoming harder and harder to control.  But there was no room for weariness here.  The Sha'Ka