 at one another using power and might the physical world was never meant to contain.
	They would ensure that the world would not suffer with what was about to come to pass.

	Never in her entire life has Jesmind been so terrified.
	She cowered on the floor, clutching her desperately crying child as all reality seemed to go wild around them.
	The immense chamber seemed to waver and distort as two indescribably powerful figures seemed to duel with one another in the air over the platform. One of them was the god Val, but the other, somehow, was Tarrin.  Jesmind didn't understand what had happened, but somehow, Tarrin could somehow fight against Val.  And the change in him!   Was how he looked now some kind of great magic?  Triana had told her long ago that she sensed something special about her mate, something unusual, as if there was a potential within him that transcended the bounds of normal magic.  Could this be the final realization of that hidden potential?  A power so great that it gave him the power to fight a god?
	Whatever it was, they were tearing the world apart!  They struggled against one another, Tarrin's brilliant blade crashing into some kind of rod of utter darkness in Val's shadowy hands, and every collision between those two weapons sent out a shockwave of power that was shaking the very earth itself.  She could feel the power exchanged between those blows, and she could also somehow sense that what she could see was only a fraction of the true struggle going on between them.  The shaking of the earth was only a part of what was happening, though.  Images and shapes floated transparently in the air around them, like some delusions of reality, and magical streamers of light and energy cascaded down from the air to hit the ground.  When they struck, sometimes they exploded, sometimes they just disappeared, but sometimes they did bizarre things.  One streamer hit a stone in the floor and changed it into a puddle of water, another hit and transformed a small piece of rock fallen from the ceiling into a sparrow, which then frantically rose into the air and flew towards the large passage that led outside.  Jesmind rolled wildly aside each time one of those dangerous motes of light drifted towards her, then managed to regain her feet as the shaking of the earth subsided by a small amount, enough for her to stand.
	Clutching Jasana to her, she was momentarily stunned and confused by what was going on.  She woodenly saw that six-armed Demoness come down the platform with the naked human female secured firmly in the grasp of her six arms, keeping her prize, and the human woman actually clutched to the Demoness like a child, willing to accept even her aid if it got her to safety.  The other Demons were right behind her.  They were fleeing from the battle, and the looks of terror on their faces were sincere and obvious.  One of the pig-headed ones squealed in sudden fright and tried to dive aside, but it was too late to avoid a massive blast of fire that billowed forth from the combatants high above that crashed into it.  She clearly saw the silhouette of its body evaporate, outlined by the furious fire, wavering away to nothing and leaving not even ash behind when the fire splashed into the floor and winked out of existence quickly.  Jesmind looked up to see Tarrin raking Val with a column of fire that emanated from his outstretched paw, his braid and tail and those wings all covered in angry red fire stretched out behind him, as if bracing him for the attack.  Val had blocked the fire with his black rod, and the remnants of the fiery attack were raining down on those below.
	Tarrin had told her to run.  Now she understood how good an idea that was!  They were going to get killed if they stayed in there!
	Gathering up Jasana, Jesmind turned and raced towards that archway, her terror and desperate concern to get her daughter out alive consuming her, giving her great strength and speed.  She sprinted past the six-armed Demoness, and the creature made no move to attack her or hinder her.  In this, they were all united by their powerful instinct of self-preservation, and there were no enemies anymore.  She flinched away and nearly fell down when a shadow of absolute blackness raced over her head, leaving her chilled to the bone in its wake.  That wave of utter blackness struck the wall over the archway, and instantly covered every part of the stone that it touched in a thick layer of crystal clear ice.  Tarrin and the god Val were completely consumed in their battle with each other, and the power that was flying around them was indiscriminate and deadly.  They had to get away!
	Almost flying through the archway, Jesmind entered the long tunnel that would lead them back outside.  The columns lining the wide gallery were shuddering and swaying alarmingly, and stones and dust were dropping down out of the ceiling like rain, concealing the passage and reducing her vision.  But she ran on wildly, recklessly, consumed with the need to get her daughter out alive.  She jumped over a boulder-sized stone that had fallen out of the ceiling, and raced underneath one of those huge pillars as it broke free of its anchors and toppled out into the gallery, racing under it literally as it fell, and the deafening sound of its impact behind them shivering her fur, a palpable force against her skin.
	Insane.  This was insane!  What had happened?  How had Tarrin managed to face off against Val?  He was fighting a god, and he seemed to be holding his own?  Why was he doing it?  Why?  All he had to do was get away!  If he had that much power, he could just run away, and take the Firestaff with him!  He didn't have to fight!  He couldn't win!  Val was a god!
	Jesmind screamed when a huge fissure opened up in the stone beneath her feet, making her leap aside to avoid falling into it.  Hot light poured up from the base of that longspan-deep chasm in the earth, and Jesmind realized that the power those two were giving off was tearing the very earth apart as they battled!  More fissures crisscrossed the floor, and the land began to shift crazily as some blocks of stone-capped earth rose up and others fell, an insane obstacle course of shifting sections of floor that ground and crushed against one another.  Those fissures went up under the columns and snaked up the walls, and she saw with some serious terror that some were being shattered by the forces being exerted against them, and others were beginning to tear free as the ground dropped out from beneath them, tear free where they would begin to fall.  The walls were crumbling, as massive stones began toppling out from them to strike the pillars, and larger and larger stones began to rain down from the ceiling.
	Sprinting forward because she had no other choice, Jesmind relied on her inhuman agility to navigate the wildly shifting floor, loping from platform to platform as fast as she could possibly go.  She glanced back when she heard a deafening tearing sound, an awful tearing of rock, and she glanced back just in time to see that six-armed Demoness get crushed under thousands of tons of rock as the walls and ceiling collapsed on top of her.  She and that human she was carrying were certainly dead, and the Demons behind her, if they weren't dead, were trapped.  But she felt little satisfaction in seeing that hated bitch die.  At that moment, their own survival was in serious doubt.
	Moving with renewed terror-induced motivation at seeing the walls collapse behind her, Jesmind surged forward, taking greater and greater risks, keeping her eyes peeled for any large stones that appeared out of the dust ahead and above them, dust so thick that she could barely see more than ten spans ahead of her.  She clutched Jasana to her with one arm, the little girl clinging frantically to her mother as the Were-cat danced along uneven patches of rubble-strewn ground, evaded flying rocks that rained down from the ceiling, and jumped high to clear the massive pillars that had already fallen to the floor ahead of them.  The noise was deafening, tearing and exploding rock all around her, and the dust coated her nose and throat and made breathing more and more difficult.  But to her eternal relief, the strange light that lit the gallery had not failed, lighting their way and providing Jesmind with just enough light with which to avoid the lethal stones that rained from above and see enough of the floor and debris on it to set her feet without having them slide out from under her.
	A thunderous detonation shook the entire world, it seemed to her, shaking everything so badly that Jesmind and Jasana were spilled to the ground.  She barely heard the snapping of stone and saw the shadow appear out of the dust, and wildly rolled to the side as one of the huge pillars toppled down on top of her.  She rolled up against a huge stone that had already fallen to the floor, and the massive black shadow of the falling pillar suddenly consumed all the light.  She flinched, covering Jasana with her own body as the pillar crashed to the ground, and then she screamed in agony when something crushed her left leg.  She looked back to see that the stone by them had stopped the pillar's fall and kept it from killing them, but the pillar had broken, and the very edge of its end had landed on her left foot.  She realized she could cut off the foot with the Cat's Claws, but they would leave a permanent injury, and she would have no chance of getting Jasana out alive with only one foot.  And she would only slow Jasana down as she tried to get out alive herself.  Grimly, she realized that there was only one choice to make.
	"Mama!" Jasana said in wild terror, struggling under her.  "Mama, are you hurt?"
	"Cub!" she said in a gasping voice.  "I'm pinned!  You have to keep going!  Go!"	
	"No!" Jasana shrieked, wriggling out from under her.  "I won't leave you, Mama!"
	"You stupid cub!" Jesmind shouted at her.  "You have to get out of here!"
	"I won't leave you!" she screamed, grabbing Jesmind by the arm and pulling with all the might her little body could muster.
	Jesmind yanked her paw free, fixing Jasana with a penetrating stare, summoning up all her motherly authority.  "I told you to go!" she said in a voice that would brook no disobedience.  "You're all that matters, cub!  You have to get out!"
	"I will not leave you!" she declared adamantly.  "Tell me how to get you out!"
	She saw that this was argument she was not going to win.  She couldn't force Jasana to go, so she realized that the only thing she could do was let her daughter help her in any way she could.  "If only we had something to cut my leg off that wouldn't leave a true wound!" she said.  She could tear her leg off with raw power, or use her claws to rend the flesh to the point where she could snap her leg off, but both would take time, and time was the one thing that they did not have.
	Jasana took on a look of dreadful concentration, and to Jesmind's surprise, the woodcutting axe that they had used in Aldreth appeared in her little paws.  "Will this work?"
	"How did you do that?" Jesmind asked, forgetting the terrible danger they were in.
	"It's Conjuring, Mama," she told her.  "I realized I could do Conjuring a few days ago.   I was going to use it to get away from the evil man."
	Jesmind gave her daughter a fiercely proud look.  A Druid!  Her little Jasana was a Druid!  Just like her father!  She took the axe from her daughter, twisted around, and did the deed with one swift blow.  She severed her own leg just below the knee, feeling that wild sting of pain, then the angry burning that heralded the rapid growth of a new foot.
	As soon as that foot was fleshed out, she scooped up Jasana and raced into the dust once again.  The whole pyramid was coming down around their ears, and they absolutely had to get clear as quickly as possible.
	She had no idea how long she ran along that passage, wildly dodging falling stones collapsing pillars, and holes that suddenly appeared in the floor.  It all blurred together in Jesmind's frenzied mind, a mind consumed by the absolute need to get her daughter out of the pyramid and to safety.  But time caught up to her when she saw light ahead of her, piercing the dust-induced gloom of the treacherous passageway, and it caused her to redouble her efforts.  Now that she could see the exit--the way out!!!--her utter desperation to reach it caused her to speed up, to move like an arrow shot from a bow, to get her daughter out of the deadly tunnel and get nothing but empty air over them.  Her eyes fixed to that light, growing stronger and stronger with each racing step, narrowly avoiding a house-sized block of stone that dropped from the ceiling to crash into the floor behind them, shaking the ground with the might of its impact.  Her only sight, her only goal, the very focus of her entire life was that light, and it was with almost religious joy that she suddenly burst from the darkness, burst from the dust, leaping out of the collapsing tunnel just ahead of a shower of stones from the archway that marked its entrance, leaping free of the pyramid and setting foot on lush grass.
	She didn't look back.  She raced forward with all the speed she could muster, rushing towards a column of smoke where huge winged figures circled over something.  They were dragons, and she realized quite unahppily that the dragon that was supposed to be there to pick them up was not there.  What had happened?  Was it late?  Had it already come and not found them?  The area around her was empty, all the Goblinoids moving forward to engage the armies that the gods had brought here to deal with them.  With Tarrin fighting Val, why weren't the gods doing something about the army?  Couldn't they just destroy it?  She raced on as the ground shook and rumbled beneath her feet, and she realized to her horror that the fissures that had collapsed the tunnel were also snaking out into the earth itself around them, tearing the very earth apart.  Far to her left, a geyser of molten rock erupted from the ground in a deadly spray, flying hundreds of spans into the air to spatter back to the ground, killing anything that it landed upon and setting fire to the lush green grass.  She angled away from that horrid display almost unconsciously, and was forced to leap over a ten span wide gash in the earth that stood in her way, a gash that had a terrifying reddish light and powerful heat rising up from it as she sailed over it, so hot it singed the fur on her feet and lower legs.
	Gods above!  If someone didn't come to get them soon, they may not live to reach safety!
	Ahead and to the right, to her terror, she saw a chunk of land that had be be a half a longspan in area suddenly sink down into the earth itself.  A gout of fire and magma flew into the air a few seconds later, and an ominous black column of smoke rose over the pit.
	Goddess!  The land was sinking into the liquid fire that was beneath it!
	Not seconds later, a hideously sharp shudder in the ground under her feet told her that the same thing was happening right under her!  She saw the earth start to rise before her some twenty spans ahead, felt the lightness in her stomach as she started to fall down under the earth with the land on which she was running, and she leaned forward and sprinted with all her might as the land got higher and higher, leaping hugely when she got close to that rising land.  She soared over that edge with plenty of room to spare, and the instant her feet touched solid ground, she fled away from the growing pit behind her blind panic, knowing that a plume of flying lava was going to erupt out of that pit as soon as the earth fell into the lake of liquid fire that was consuming it.  If any of it splashed on her, it would mean her instant death!
	"Mama!" Jasana screamed in terror, burying her face in her mother's chest.
	"I know, cub, I know!" she said in a strangled tone.  "Where are you, you damned dragon?" she huffed in a terrified voice.  "Goddess, if you're out there, I need your help!" she pleaded as she ran.  "If someone doesn't come and get us, we're not going to make it!"
	As if in answer to her prayer, a shadow appeared over them and then vanished.  She looked up to see a dragon circling over them, one with deep blue scales, but was an order of magnitude smaller than Sapphire.  This one couldn't be more than fifty spans long from nose to tail, a truly tiny dragon compared to the immense matriarch who was Tarrin's friend.  Jesmind's relief at seeing that scaly beast defied rational explanation.  It was as if it were a personal gift from Tarrin's Goddess, a magnificent chariot to whisk them away to safety.
	"I'm here!" it called in a breathless voice.  "Sorry, a couple of Demons slowed me down!"
	It landed quickly and heavily fifty spans before them, hunkering down as they rushed towards it so they could climb on as soon as they reached it.  "Quickly, the earth is shifting under me!" the dragon called in concern.  "We don't have much time!"
	"What's going on?" she demanded as she reached it, jumped up onto its back and in front of its wings, settling between two spines at the base of its neck.  She stuck Jasana in front of her, putting her arms around her daughter protectively as the dragon turned quickly on the ground and unfurled its wings.
	"The army's pulling out as quickly as it attacked, and the Goblinoids are running right behind them!" the dragon said.  "The entire tundra is shaking, and fissures are opening up everywhere!  This war is over, biped!  Nobody's going to fight on a battlefield like this!"
	"What's making it happen?" Jesmind asked as the dragon's wings flared, and they vaulted into the sky.
	"That is!" he said, nudging nose towards the collapsing pyramid.  "Can't you feel it, biped?  Whoever's in that thing is tearing the world apart with magic!"
	Jesmind looked down as the dragon turned its tail to the pyramid and beat its wings frantically.  Huge masses of Goblinoids were doing just what the dragon said, running for their lives, but many of them were dying as the land tore itself apart, sending them plunging into those pools of molten rock and to certain and painful death.  She looked ahead to see the army the gods had brought doing the exact same thing, fleeing wildly, trying to outdistance the fissures that were opening in the earth and causing massive chunks of it to sink into a fiery demise.  Whatever combat had taken place before this happened was completely forgotten, as human and Goblinoid fled side by side in common interest, as every living thing on the tundra below desperately tried to get away from the hellish chaos that had gripped the land.
	Jesmind looked behind them, to the pyramid.  Tarrin was in there, and he was fighting with Val.  Their battle was so intense, so powerful, that it was tearing the earth apart.  She could only look back in desperate fear and worry for her mate, trying to understand what was happening, why he was continuing to fight even though there was no chance he could win.  Goddess, what was happening in there?

	It was a battle between two evenly matched foes.
	Tarrin sensed that early on as they continued to trade unimaginable assaults on one another, grappling in the air over the platform, but those physical actions were nothing but a metaphor to symbolize the titanic battle that was being waged between the two of them.  Val was confined to his icon, but it in no way restricted his ability to battle Tarrin on every conceivable and inconceivable level of existence, fantasy, imagination, and even anti-existence.  The two gods hurled such power between them that the mortals surrounding them would go mad trying to understand it, scrabbling into every possible realm for any foothold or advantage that would turn the tide of the battle in his favor.  Though Tarrin was new to this kind of battle his divine status gave him all the understanding and awareness he needed, and that caused him to be able to fight Val on even terms.
	And they were even.  Their power, though separated by five thousand years, was equal.  Totally equal.  They were both creations of the Firestaff, both borne of its energies, and it had not changed its method of bestowing its gifts after five thousand years.  They were mirror images of one another, with only time and experience separating them.  But while Val had the advantage of experience, Tarrin had the advantage of sheer determination, possessing an absolute determination to win at any cost, no matter what.  Val did not have that same maniacal zeal.  He was fighting to save his own life, nothing more, and that fear of death caused him to be much more cautious.  As it had served him so many times in the past, so it served him again.  Tarrin's wild nature and dangerous, reckless method of fighting allowed him to throw absolutely everything at the dark god, unafraid of consequence or even continued survival, seeking to overwhelm his adversary with with sheer determination and his utter need to win at any cost.
	And he could throw absolutely everything at Val.  He could sense the presence of all the other gods, something that certainly seemed to distract Val, and knew that they were containing the pair of them, allowing them to fight and minimizing the damage they did to the universe.  That was a good thing.  Had it not been contained, muted, the raw power unleashed by them would have devastated everything within a hundred leagues, and as the battle raged on, the area of destruction would have grown wider and wider.
	Knowing that their battle would not destroy the world only urged Tarrin on even more fervently, allowing him to commit himself utterly and completely to the fight, unleashing such furious assault on Val that he had been forced to literally consolidate his power and defend against his infuriated opponent.  The pyramid shook and crumbled around them, shaken to its core by the power of the struggle taking place within it.
	The battle taking place in the mortal realm was only a small part of what was going on, but it was a metaphor for the battle raging between the two gods.  Every movement and act was merely a representation of the shifting of vast amounts of power along infinite realms of possibility, and every attack or defense was a representation of countless thrusts and assaults, parries and ripostes, taking place in those realms of possibility in a simultaneous action.  It was a battle on every possible level, but a battle waged by two gods whose minds were still grounded in mortal concepts.  That was why Tarrin had managed to unsettle Val with anger.  Despite being a god and having such a vast mind, able to concentrate on thousands of individual things at once, he still possessed emotion, and that emotion could blind a thousand facets of the same mind as easily as they blinded just one.  Emotion was the key to this battle, one facet of Tarrin's vastly expanded mind realized as he deflected an attack from Val from those countless aspects, but in the mortal realm was symbolized by a blast of utter darkness that erupted from the rod in Val's shadowy hand.  Tarrin's sword slashed the darkness in half, sending it to either side of him, a mere representation of the true defensive counter that the former Were-cat had employed.  The deflected attack's power was largely lost in the ether of existence, but a fragment of it, the fragments grounded in the physical world, slammed into the side of the pyramid and nearly collapsed its entire south side, but through some miracle the wall managed to hold, a testament to the skill of the lost race of people who had built it.  It caused the entire pyramid to shake violently, but somehow the grand old building managed to stay up.
	Emotion was the key, and also the weakness.  No matter that they were gods, it was emotion that ruled their actions now.  Val fought desperately out of hatred, anger and fear.  His hatred for Tarrin was a tangible thing, a cancer within him, and it was facing his most hated foe that brought out his anger.  And there was fear as well, fear of losing, fear of destruction, even fear of what would happen when he beat Tarrin and had to face all the gods surrounding them, worried that he would be too weak to repel an attack from them all.
	Tarrin's emotions were no less powerful, but were much differently focused.  His hatred for Val was intense, but it did not consume him.  His greatest emotion was fear, but it was fear for others, not for himself.  He had used the Firestaff to become a god to save his mate and daughter, and also to once and for all put an end to Val and the danger he represented to his family and friends.  That fear for the safety of others had instilled within him a powerful determination to win, to destroy Val no matter what it took, and no matter what the cost.  He fought wildly, recklessly, unafraid of loss so long as his defeat so weakened his opponent that the gods beyond could strike him down, just as Val feared, before he could mount a defense against them.  For Tarrin, Val's defeat was much more important to him than his own victory, and his opponent had a very hard time protecting himself from someone that was quite willing to lose so long as he softened up his foe enough for the next assailant to win.
	Besides, he knew that his victory would be his own defeat.  By taking up the Firestaff and becoming a god, he was now just as much a threat and danger to the gods as Val.  If he struck Val down, they would attack him just as quickly as they would have attacked Val.  He knew the instant he held the Firestaff to the sky that it was a one way trip, and that his deification would be brief.  He had become a god for the sole reason to destroy Val.  Once Val was destroyed, there would be no more need for him, and he would not endanger the world by trying to live on.
	If only to protect those he so greatly loved that he was willing to resort to this kind of desperate gamble.
	Tarrin shifted his awareness more into the physical world, studying the shifting, shadowy form of his opponent, allowing his expanded mind to consider as he prepared to repel an attack his opponent was about to initiate.  Val's physical form suddenly rushed forward with the black rod leading, and Tarrin responded sufficiently, which caused his physical form to bring up his sword and parry the blow wide.  The key was the physical world and emotion, he understood that now.  By continuing to brawl across the entire spectrum of existence, he was doing nothing but wandering away from the key of it.  Val was imprisoned within his icon.  Destroy that icon, and he would destroy Val.  That was why Val was attacking in such a vast and broad manner, to distract Tarrin from the simple truth of that one observation.  Val's weakness, his greatest weakness, was his imprisonment.  And emotion was the path that would lead him to the promised land.
	Shifting himself almost entirely into the physical world, Tarrin freed his physical form of its mere status as a metaphor of battle and attacked Val's physical form in earnest.  This shocked and surprised his foe, who  was forced to return to the physical realm himself, hastily raising up his black rod of utter darkness to desperately parry the assault.  Tarrin attacked again, and again, and again with his blazing sword, causing his adversary to back up quickly, moving to protect his vulnerable icon from attack.
	What's the matter, Val? he taunted, speaking directly into his foe's mind.  Do I frighten you now?  I know how to defeat you.  You couldn't beat me when I was a mere mortal, and you know you have no chance against me now.  So why don't you just give up?  I'll make it swift and clean.
	I am invinicible! Val shrieked feverishly in Tarrin's expanded mind, his hatred and anger boiling out of his words like froth from the mouth of a mad dog.  I am a god!  I am eternal!  You are nothing, Were-cat, do you hear?  Nothing!  You take from me my rightful place and my destiny, and now you have the nerve to consider yourself my better?  I will show you how wrong you are!
	It's almost unfair, Tarrin continued to taunt.  After all, you're bound into your icon, limited in your power.  I have no such restriction.  I could withdraw my icon to somewhere safe and deal with you from a position of security, but I won't do that.  I'll give you the chance to kill me, fair and square, hand to hand.  Just you and me, though it will hardly be a fair fight.  You are but a mere godling, Val.  In a way, I pity you for your disability.
	That got him.  The term godling seemed to send Val into a fever pitch, and he abandoned dragging Tarrin into fighting across the entire spectrum of existence and resorted to good old fashioned brute force in the physical world.  He advanced with his glowing eyes blazing with indignation and fury, as if Tarrin's insults had been more than he could stand, wailing at Tarrin's winged form with his rod of utter darkness.  This was a form of combat much more suited to the martially trained Were-cat, and he smoothly and gladly fell into a defensive position, concentrating all his power in the physical world yet watchful for a sudden attack in the realms beyond that of mortal comprehension.  Motes of charged magical chaos drifted away from the impact of Val's rod and Tarrin's sword, physical embodiments of raw magic, whose effects on reality were wild and upredictable when they struck solid matter, as the two gods battled across the dusty air over the high dais below, a dais littered with massive boulder-sized building stones that had fallen from the roof above.  Val proved he knew how to fight in a physical sense, but his technique was forced, and his edge was taken away by his rage.  His movements were jerky and predictable, and he was so taken with his anger that he didn't realize that the god who opposed him was simply letting him attack to get a feel for his opponent, coming to an understanding of his preferences and his strengths and weaknesses when fighting with a weapon.
	Tarrin continued to defend, searching Val's technique and the magic that made up his physical form for a chink in his armor, a weakness he could exploit to his full advantage.  His chosen form was one that was not completely solid, shifting in its nature and actually rather cleverly adaptable, which also made it deceptive and hard to pin down.  But the shadows and darkness only concealed what was really in there, and that was his icon.  It was a physical object, not an amalgamation of shadows and