 aware that if he did not do something right now, the dragon was going to kill him.  He opened his eyes and found that the dragon was taken aback, a look of intense concentration on its face now.  He felt it use its power, sensed it as a magical attack of raw power, but of monstrous proportions.  This dragon could give Triana lessons in Druidic magic!  Tarrin countered with a counterspell of Sorcery, that chaotic weave of Fire, Air, Water, Divine power, and token flows of the other spheres to grant his weave the power of High Sorcery.  With a primal scream, an audible declaration that he was not about to lay down and die for its benefit, Tarrin raised his free paw unleashed his weave just as the visible magic erupted from the dragon's outstretched forepaws.
	The power of the All struck the power of Sorcery, and in their meeting came a spectacular explosion of force.  A gigantic broiling ball of pure energy expanded between Druid and Sorcerer, and then it detonated like a keg of gunpowder.  The entire volcano rocked and shuddered, great blocks of stone dropped from the domed ceiling.  Tarrin quickly shielded himself from the wave of magical fire with a shield of Air, felt it eating at the integrity of its protection as he was engulfed in the magical chaos caused by the collision of two such powerful magical forces.
	After it cleared, the air between the dragon and the Were-cat was literally alive with wild magical currents, as the two of them continued to hurl magical power at one another, trying to break the stalemate.  Fist clenched so tightly around the sword that Tarrin lost feeling in his fingers, he kept drawing on the Weave through the All, feeling the exertion quickly, struggling against the stress and demands that using two orders of magic simultaneously were placing on him.  Tarrin dropped the sword and put both paws out, as if using the other paw would give him more push, teeth tightly clenched as spots danced before his eyes, so fully he committed to the assault.  He drew on the power of the Weave faster than the All could siphon it from the Weave, and he realized that it was just too inefficient and exhausting to do what was was doing.  If only he could touch the Weave directly!  But the spell the dragon placed had not lost its energy yet, and he could do nothing until it consumed its reserves and was exhausted.
	It was winning.  It was winning! Tarrin felt its power push against him, crush down on him, forcing him to commit more and more just to holding it back.  His concentration began to suffer, and he realized that that was what it was trying to do!  It could tell that he was using Druidic magic and Sorcery at the same time, so it was again trying to disrupt his concentration.  He had to break this contest, but it took everything he had to keep its power off of him.  He couldn't even move!
	A flash of memory, a fight in a domed room, with a book in its center.  How similar it was to this, he realized!  He remembered that Demon, how it confounded him with its ability to Teleport.  It--
	Why, Teleport, of course.  How else would we travel?
	In an instant, the echo of how that was done touched him.  It was a complicated spell, requiring more power than someone not da'shar could bring to bear.
	With a ragged scream, Tarrin redoubled his efforts and pushed against the dragon's power with all his might.  He felt it give ground to him, finger by finger, little by little, until he had actually started turning the tide.  But instead of presssing his advantage, Tarrin suddenly withdrew his power from the contest and turned it into the weave of Mind, Divine, Earth, Water, and Air, the flows weaving themselves together around him like a coccoon even as the dragon's power suddenly roared back at him without resistance.  Tarrin finished the spell and snapped it down around him.  He felt it reach out to his target area, felt tendrils of Air and Earth enclose an area on the other side of the spell--
	--and they exchanged.
	There was no flash, no sense of motion.  First he was looking the dragon's power in the face, and then he was standing behind the dragon, still crouched down with his paws out, as if to push the power away.  The dragon's power slammed into the rock where he'd been and destroyed it in an angry explosion of fire and flying stone.  The dragon didn't sense this sudden shift in his position, and the dust and debris of the explosion would keep its attention off of him for a few critical seconds.  The battle of power with the dragon had drained him, weakened him, and he needed time to recover, time for its choking spell to wane so he could touch the Weave without having to go through the All.  He couldn't capitalize on his advantage quite yet.  He first though to just grab the Firestaff and Teleport back into the tunnel mouth, but he remembered the poem's warning.  If he died touching it with that dragon still here, then he would accomplish nothing.  Not wanting to risk Summoning his sword and giving away his position, Tarrin turned and ran behind the dragon, towards the Firestaff, and then shapeshifted into cat form and hid under a large rock protrusion.  Panting from exertion, he tried to regather himself, tried to buy time.  He knew it was a terrible risk to be in cat form right now, for he'd given away his mobility, the only thing that would save him from the dragon's massive forepaws.  But it would see him if he stayed in his normal form, and he needed the time.
	He needed time!
	Then, to his horror, the dragon spoke.
	"Clever move," it said in flawless Sha'Kar, an impressed voice, a voice so deep that it vibrated the rock beneath his paws.  "I can smell you in here, invader.  Trying to delay the inevitable?  Or simply buying time to recover?"
	Tarrin felt the shuddering of the rock under him.  The dragon was moving, each monstrous paw coming down and shaking the island with its tremendous weight.  The sound of its voice shifted as he realized it was moving its head great distances on that long, serpentine neck.  "You're not invisible," it mused.  "I would sense your power.  You're too large to hide behind a rock.  You're da'shar, so you may be hiding in the lava.  It can't harm you any more than it can harm me.  Yes, that would make sense.  But you're also a Druid, and a very clever one at that.  I never thought you'd think of something like drawing the Weave through the All.  You are a worthy opponent.  It's a pity I must kill you."
	The shuddering grew stronger and stronger, and he realized that the dragon had turned around, and was moving in his direction.  He fought a Cat-induced impulse to flee in panic, to run and climb high, climb out of its reach.  If he moved, it would see him!  He hunkered down on his belly, still panting from the exertion as well as from more than a little terror, feeling very small, very vulnerable, and as if it was going to step on him at any moment.
	"Two orders of magic," it mused.  "I never thought I'd see that in a biped.  You must be Fae-da'Nar.  Were, from the look of you, but a type of Were-kin I've never seen before.  I know I took alot out of you.  Using both of your magical gifts at the same time?  I'm impressed you could even manage it.  A Were-kin needing time to recover will always revert to his instincts, and I'd say your first instinct was to hide.  So, are you cowering in your animal form in here, my worthy adversary?" it asked in a conversational voice.  "Trying to recover your strength and challenge me again?"
	Tarrin felt his heart seize.  It was as smart as it was powerful!
	"Say, about...here?"
	Tarrin scrambled forward just as the rock over his head was shattered into fine dust by the huge forepaw of the dragon.  The shockwave it caused sent him flying, and he shapeshifted back into his base form even as he tumbled through the air.  He barely managed to come down on his feet, and was off to the races, trying to get out of reach of that hundred-span long tail, a weapon that gave the dragon a reach that extended almost over the entire ring of rock.  He could hear it whistling, he knew that it was coming.
	He knew that it was coming.
	Tarrin scanned both sides of him, and then he saw it.  A blur of red, glowing in the light of the lava, coming from his right side.  Tarrin swerved quickly to his right and Summoned his sword to him.  He could see it now uncoiling, lashing out at him.
	Bracing himself with his feet, digging his claws into the rock beneath him, Tarrin turned his sword before him vertically and braced the tip of the blade against his other arm before him and locked his elbows, presenting a deadly cutting edge to that whipping tail.  The dragon didn't react to his sudden change of tactics quickly enough, as it tried to raise its lashing tail over the Were-cat's sword.  Tarrin was knocked to the ground with dragon blood sprayed all over him as two spans of his sword dug into the tail as it tried to go over him.  The arm bracing the top of the sword was broken from the impact, and as the dragon roared in sudden pain, Tarrin grabbed the arm and wrenched it back into place, feeling a shockwave of pain.
	He grabbed his sword from where it had fallen to the ground and sprinted away, feeling refreshed enough to try to use Sorcery again.
	"Agh, damn clever!" the dragon growled.  "Audo mosenthi gratta--"
	Tarrin almost fell down in shock.  The dragon was casting a Wizard spell!  He knew the sound of those words, he heard Kimmie mutter them all the time!
	"--montho compendus sensi ingratia!"
	Everything turned insane.  The floor and the cavern walls began to undulate wildly to his eyes, the floor beneath him buckled and rolled like he was standing on the surface of a churning sea.  The scents in his nose went wild as he smelled grass, then rabbits, then humans, then wood, then honey.  The bubbling and hissing sounds in the cavern took on a surreal quality as they grew louder and softer, then started sounding like things that made no sense, like pans banging together, then a baby's crying, then the laughter of an old man, then the sound of wind blowing through tree branches and rustling leaves.  Tarrin teetered like a drunken sailor trying to cross the deck in a hurricane, staggering this way and that as the floor tried to throw him off his feet.  Only by supreme concentration and his Were agility did he keep his feet, but the assault of nonsense to his ears, eyes, and nose distracted and confused the Were-cat, nearly to the point of blind terror.  Tarrin was a being completely ruled by his senses, for they defined his reality in a way that no human could comprehend.  The Cat roared up into his mind in confusion, unable to make sense of the avalanche of bizarre things it was seeing, hearing, smelling, intefering with his rational mind at the worst possible time.  Dimly, Tarrin realized that the dragon's spell wasn't causing reality to go crazy, it was attacking his senses.
	Fighting a wave of sudden panic, Tarrin realized that the dragon was going to use this moment of incapacity to crush him.  With a speed born of pure self-preservation, Tarrin reached within, through the Cat, and the instant he felt his connection to the All, he caused it to bring forth the power of Sorcery.  He wove that same spell again, Mind, Divine, Air, Water, and Earth, and wrapped it around himself.  It exchanged space with an area on the far side of the cavern, to the far side of the ring of rock, so that the rock spire that had the Firestaff atop it was between them.
	A paw to his head, he shook it as he felt the Wizard magic attacking his mind, attacking his senses and feeding them nonsense.  What a clever spell!  Again in touch with the Weave, Tarrin killed the spell inside him by cutting its connection to the magical energy that fed it.  Mercifully, the wild undulation of the ground ceased, his ears and nose cleared, and the rolling nature of what was before his eyes solidified.
	Tarrin took that brief moment to change his strategy.  He couldn't fight the dragon with magic, because so long as it used its power to block his and forced him to draw Sorcery the way he was, it simply outpowered him.  He couldn't use any sustained spells, like summoning an Elemental or flying or walking on the walls, because the dragon could kill his spells.  That limited him to fast spells with immediate effects, things the dragon could only counter by out-thinking him, outguessing his intent.  And Tarrin respected this foe enough to grant that it probably could do just that.  That meant that he had to attack it physically, and use his magic in a manner that would allow him to get close enough to try to figure out a way to kill something whose vital organs were so far inside its body that his sword would never reach them.  He could cut it so much that it bled to death, but that would take hours, and he wouldn't last that long.
	Wait.  There was one vital organ he could reach.  Its brain.  It couldn't be too deep inside that huge head.  Either his sword or staff should be able to reach it if he could get in a position to try to stab it in the head.  Tarrin drew on his knowledge of Sapphire's anatomy as he watched the dragon's mighty head swivel around the rock spire and lock its eyes on him.  Its skull would be too thick on top or in the back.  Trying to go through the eye was out, it was too great a distance from the eye through the eye socket to the skull, and it could easily shake him off before he could get a weapon in that far.  But if he tried attacking it upward, from inside the mouth...
	That was absolutely insane.  But sometimes, crazy works.
	All he had to do was trick the dragon into trying to swallow him, and somehow avoid getting torn apart by those deadly teeth after he ended up in its mouth.  Then he could recall his staff from the elsewhere and make his move.  It had a greater reach, and since it was wood, Tarrin could charge it with his Druidic power and make it grow, becoming a living spear that would eventually get to its brain.  But he had to do it in the thin bone between its palate and its brain, bone the staff's blunt end could penetrate with a good strong thrust.  Then grow the staff out, like slowly impaling a victim on a stake, until the staff hit brain and put the dragon down.
	That may work.  It was the only thing he could think of, a desperate plan for a desperate situation.
	And desperate times called for desperate actions.
	Reaching within once more, through the Cat, Tarrin came into touch with his Druidic power, joined in communion with the All.  He showed it his image and let it read his intent, and it responded.
	The dragon began to slow down, more and more as it waddled along the rock towards him on all fours, until its tail seemed to drift behind it lazily, and every step became a slow ballet of ponderous movement.  
	He'd used this spell before.  He knew what kind of a toll it was going to take on him, and he knew he could only hold it for a few moments at the very most.  He raced towards the dragon with a speed that, to it, would be absolutely unbelievable, a blur of black on the dark stone that moved like living lightning.  That would be its perception.  To Tarrin, it moved with an almost ridiculous slowness.  Bubbles of lava popped languidly, throwing blobs of lava through the air that were almost pretty as they drifted along in the air, slowly changing their shape, and all sound had taken on a deep, basslike quality, a rumbling slowness that his ears had trouble comprehending.
	Tarrin blazed right by the dragon, evading a smashing forepaw with such ridiculous ease that he could have gone down on all fours and crawled out of its path.  He raced behind it and picked up his sword, then turned and darted right back at it, as he saw its comprehending expression slowly bloom on its face.  It was a Druid, so it probably understood the nature of the spell, and it also probably knew that all it had to do was stall him until the demands of the spell forced him to release it.  It tried to back away from him, but now Tarrin had the advantage, slashing at its ankle on its back right leg as it put its weight down on it, trying to sever tendons.  The sword caused an eruption of blood that boiled lazily out from between scarlet scales, not spraying out fast enough to touch him as he whizzed by.  He turned and bore down on the other back leg, in the air and moving back towards the inner lava pool.  The dragon was going to try to get into the pool, where Tarrin's sudden speed and agility would do him no good.
	But then the foot changed direction and came down towards him, and he had to swerve to avoid getting trampled.  It outguessed him!  He did manage to stab his blade into the top of its huge foot after he jumped out of the way, feeling his heart pound harder and harder in his chest and his ribs ache from the incredible strain the spell was putting on his body.  He glanced up and saw the wings unfurl, realizing it was going to kick up another storm of ash and dust to blind him, further reducing his current advantage.  Tarrin took the sword in both paws and released the spell of acceleration, and before the strain of it could hit him, he called forth Sorcery once more and again wove the spell of Teleportation.
	Much to the dragon's eternal shock and dismay, Tarrin suddenly appeared about ten spans in the air over its head.  He landed on its snout, a snout wide enough for him to stand upon easily, and then drove the sword in his paws down into the scales beneath his feet, plunging more than half his blade down into the dragon's nose.  The sword caught in bone or cartilage or something hard in there and became wedged.  The dragon roared in sudden pain and whipped its head from side to side as it turned in place, swinging them over the inner lava pool, but Tarrin refused to let go, getting snapped back and forth as his body began to feel the effects of the speeding spell, as his muscles burned and throbbed and his heart raced like a rabbit in his chest, but he gritted his teeth and kept his grip, despite the wild, punishing ride.  Those two huge eyes looked down at him in sudden baleful hatred, chilling his blood, and he sensed the oncoming paw well before it reached him.  It would be the dragon's automatic reflex to something stinging it on the snout.  Swat it.
	Tarrin let go as the dragon ducked its head to get it within reach of its forepaws, and couldn't help but feel a grim satisfaction when the dragon slapped at its own snout, driving the sword even deeper into its own nose.  He plummeted nearly eighty spans from the dragon's snout to the pool of lava beneath and had the breath knocked out of him as he splashed into it.  This lava was much hotter than the lava on the outside, and was much more fluid, lacking the rubbery consistency of the cooler lava.  It was thicker than water, but he found that he could almost swim in it.  He was about twenty spans from the nearest rock, but that would be too far in any case.  The weariness of the spell he had used left him weak and disoriented, but he couldn't stay in one place too long.  He reached within, through the Cat, and it became very hard to him now.  He was getting tired, losing his edge, but he couldnot stop.  He barely managed to gain communion with the All, and he again called forth the power of the Weave from within it.  Weaving the spell of Teleportation once more, he moved himself to the far side of the rock spire once more, as far as he could get from the dragon and still be on the ring of rock.
	He left his sword behind on purpose.  He wanted the dragon to think that now, he was unarmed.  And he doubted he'd have the strength to Summon it out of the dragon's snout in any case.  He was breathing so heavily that his breath rattled in his throat.  His heart hammered in his chest, and his muscles all felt like they were made of water.  All he could do was bend over and pant like a winded runner, feeling the blood rush though his veins, feel and see it pound behind his eyes, feel the pulse in his neck and wrists, even in his legs.  He hadn't exerted himself like this since he was in the Desert of Swirling Sands!
	"Oh, you are a clever one!" the dragon called, sounding amused.  "I never dreamed a biped would give me this much trouble.  But I can hear your heart, Were-kin.  You don't have much left, do you?"
	Maybe he didn't, but he only had to have enough left for one more spell.  If only he could get into a position to use it.
	Rising up, not showing his weariness, Tarrin first started walking, then jogging, then he was running around the ring, his ears back, his eyes glowing green, and showing this titanic adversary that he would not go down without a fight.

	Far away from the great battle that was taking place in Sha'Kari, far from the small island, far from everything, there was a tiny village settled in the mountains of Nyr, along the Spine of Gold.  It was a very rural place, where the common Nyrians cultivated their golden fields, taking advantage of the rain that the mountains above them wrung from the sky as the wind blew the clouds over them.  Nestled on a small plateau along the windward side of the low mountains, it was a place of peace and happiness called Shora Myrr, which meant Child's Gold in the Nyrian language.
	It was a place where nothing exciting ever happened.  The four hundred villagers scattered across the plateau spent their days working in the fields, and then they would come home and enjoy the rewards of their labor.  It was a dull place, if not a happy one, but most of the villagers much preferred dull over exciting.  There were no raiders that far out, no Goblinoids in the mountains, only an occasional rock lion or bear intruding on the humans' chosen range.  A place of peace and security, a good place to raise children.
	But today was a day of excitement for Parl and Kiki Shon, a young couple only a year on their new holding, a small farm on the very edges of the community.  They were newlyweds, only a year together, and today Parl paced nervously along the wide porch on the side of his cottage, a place that remained dry during the daily rains that were common during the summer.  The rain came down this day, as it did every afternoon around that time, pattering the wooden slats of the roof and dripping to the grassy lawn, where ducks and geese waddled up from a small artificial pond dug for them in the barnyard.
	His wife was pregnant, and right now she was in labor, trying to give birth.
	He had been waiting for hours and hours, as he heard his wife groan and shout within with the village matrons.  She had been in labor too long!  He was growing worried that there were complications.  Childbirth was never an easy thing, and sometimes it could be threatening to the life of the mother.  His excitement and happiness at the impending birth had become dark worry and despair, for he feared that something was terribly wrong, and he would lose both his wife and his new baby.  It had been too long!
	And then someone touched him on the shoulder.  He whirled around in surprise, and found himself staring at the strangest woman he had ever seen in his life.  She had white skin.  He had never seen that before!  The merchants that visited said that the people on Arathorn and Draconia had pale skin, like parchment, but he never believed them.  But here she was!  She was tall and statuesque, this woman, much taller than a Nyrian.  Her hair was wild, a clash of seven different colors that were arrayed in stripes on her head, and her eyes actually glowed with an amber radiance that hid the pupils and irises.  She was beautiful, this woman, something out of a man's wildest fantasy, a kind of beauty that any race, any culture, any society would appreciate.  She wore a shimmering gown that sparkled as she moved, clung to her curves in a very appealing manner.  And she was smiling at him, a most wondrously gentle and reassuring smile that it caused him to immediately relax, despite the fact that never before in his life had he met someone quite like her.
	"Easy, my friend," she said in perfect Nyrian.  "All goes well with your wife and daughter."
	"D-Daughter?" he stammered.  "How do you know?  Who are you?"
	"See?  Here she comes now," she said distantly, raising her head to the sky and closing her eyes.  "She's about to open her eyes," she said in a dreamy tone. "That's the moment, you know.  When they take their first look at the world and discover their place in it.  That is...the moment."
	"Parl!  She's come through!" Matron Vila called from inside the cottage.  "It's a girl!" she said with a relieved laugh.
	From inside the hut, there came a slight smack, and the sound of a baby crying.
	"Open your eyes, my darling," the woman said in a strange voice, a voice that almost seemed to be more than one coming from a single mouth.  "Open your eyes.  Take your place, my daughter.  Complete me!"
	Within the hut, the wet, birth-stained infant, dark of skin but with red hair, the most unusual thing that the mother and matrons had ever seen, slowly opened her eyes.  They were blue, and within them was a comprehension, an awareness of things that seemed absolutely unnatural.  They focused on the first thing they saw, their sweaty, crying mother who looked up at her in absolute joy, and then they simply understood.
	Parl stared at the woman, and then to his absolute shock, she simply vanished into thin air.
	What a strange and exciting day!

	She was the seventh sui'kun, and her birth restored the last of the seven major Conduits, restored the final missing section of the Weave.  The Weave was again complete, and the Goddess burst forth from the Heart as her power was completely restored.
	To again be free.

	Within the domed volcanic chamber, Tarrin felt the Weave around him suddenly began to writhe, as if someone has set fire to a cobweb.  It was a Weavequake!  The violence of the Weavequake struck him as hard as the dragon's blow ever could have, causing him to crash to the ground as his insides squirmed and wriggled like the weave, sending a shockwave of debilitating pain through him.  The Weave had reached out and touched him in its throes, and Tarrin had been to weak and exhausted to prevent it!  So intimately connected to the Weave, its turmoil was his turmoil, and the strain of the strands translated into a pain that shot through him unprotested.  His claws scrabbling on the stone, all he could do was lay there and gasp for breath and find some way to marvel at the sheer power of it, the unmitigated violence of what was happening within the Weave.  Was it another Breaking?  Had Spyder or one of the other sui'kun somehow been killed?
	He could feel the enormity of it.  Whatever it was, it was happening everywhere.  Not just within their isolated section.
	The pain, it was incredible!  Tarrin rose up on his knees and put his paws to his head as Magelight exploded from him, screaming out as it felt like his insides were being turned inside out, and pain blasted behind his eyes with every beat of his heart.
	The dragon too could sense the magnitude of the event.  It looked around in confusion and fear, and then it suddenly gave out a great cry, dancing aside as a massive boulder dislodged from the ceiling and nearly struck it on the back.  But its eyes were locked on Tarrin, and after it evaded that rain of rock, it advanced on the incapacitated Were-cat with designs to finish the battle.
	Tarrin struggled to find rational thought, and when he did, he sought to cut himself off from the Weave.  It was because he was connected to it, that was what was causing the pain!  He had to get away from it!  Hissing with intense concentration, fighting through the massive onslaught that threatened to drown him into unconsciousness, Tarrin turned the power within him against itself, sought to use it to sever his ties that was making him share the Weave's turmoil, which caused the incredible pain.  But it was too much.  He was too tired, too weary, in too much pain to bring enough will to bear to fight against the avalanche.  Defeated, Tarrin slumped to the ground, slave to the racking pains the Weave tore through him.  He could feel the shuddering of the rock beneath him, knew that the dragon was within striking distance, but he could do nothing.
	The Weave itself had betrayed him at the wost possible moment, and now he was going to die.
	And then there was...peace.  The pain eased.  The throbbing behind his eyes stopped, even as he knew that it still continued in the Weave.  An old power, long forgotten, washed over him, isolated him, protected him, a gentle power that had laid submerged in the depths of his soul, a power that cradled him as a child in its mother's arms.  A power placed inside him by the gentle lips of a Goddess, a long time ago.  It rose up and defended him from the power of the Weave, protecting him in his most dire hour of need.
	He became aware at the last possible instant.  His writhing stopped and he scrambled forward even as the dragon's forepaw shattered the rock where he had been laying, leaving a rubble-filled crater in its wake.  Panting from the aftereffects of the pain and his own weariness, he managed to get to his feet and ran right under the dragon, between its hind legs.

	The Weavequake reached even to the Sha'Kar.  They screamed in fright as the da'shar among them distanced themselves from the Weave as quickly as they could.  They had never sensed its like before, not even during the breaking.
	It reached through all of Sha'Kari.  The spells causing the wind were torn asunder by the Weavequake, their ancient weavings undone.  The void in the Weave that separated that within from that without suddenly bloomed with new strands, as the Weave mended the lingering areas of damage that still existed since the day of the Breaking.  The strands grew out from the newest Conduit, which thrust itself directly into the heart of the void, main strands and feeder strands stretching out from that core of power like cracks creeping through a piece of broken glass.
	When the new strands reached the massive construction of the black dome of the Ward, they plunged into it to rejoin the strands on the other side.  The weaving of the Ward reacted violently to the intrusion, and the Ward's delicate weaving was pierced in too many places at once for its monumentally complicated patterns to hold themselves.
	The black dome that was the Ward shimmered, the sheer featureless black boiling like great clouds within, and then, in a surprisingly f