James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

She came down step by step, slowly coming into the light. She was wearing the same white tunic and canvas breeches, which were a bit frayed and torn, but they were clean, just like her. Her eyes were glowing from within with that greenish aura, two slits of pure evil in the shadows, which were a clear indication of her fury. "It's been a very long time, Tarrin," she said in a deceptively mild voice.

"Not long enough," Tarrin growled, his ears laying back and his own eyes igniting from within.

"I hope you enjoyed your time here," she said, her claws coming out, "because you're out of it!"

And with that, she dove off the steps and slammed shoulder first into the startled Tarrin's chest, driving them both back down the stairs.

Both of them were Were-cat, and they both had the same abilities. Tarrin and Jesmind both knew exactly where they were in relation to the ground, and the stairs, so while they tumbled down they both fought to put the other under when they hit the bottom. Tarrin lost that fight, coming down right on the back of his head, but he almost instinctively kicked up and out as hard as he could. With his back on the floor, it gave him a brace, and Jesmind was hurled up and over his head. He rolled to his feet as she tucked in midair, tumbling end over end several times before lightly landing on her feet some distance away. Tarrin had time to rip the rope holding the robe closed and yank it off before she got set again, shedding the constricting garment and not giving her anything to grab onto except his hair. He flung that robe in her face as she lunged at him, covering her head and upper torso, then he ducked down and let her sail past him. Her tail hooked his ankle as she passed, and it almost yanked his leg out from under him. He managed to keep his feet, but it instantly stopped her forward momentum, putting her in claw's reach of him. Even without seeing, she raked her wicked claws right across his chest, digging extremely deep furrows into him, furrows that went all the way to the bone. Had she hit him lower, he realized instantaneously, she'd have disemboweled him.

The pain was serious, but not more than he could withstand. He grabbed hold of her wrist before it could get out of reach, then reared back and slammed the sole of his foot into her cloak-clad head, yanking on her arm in the same instant to increase the force of it. She grunted in pain, and that turned to a yowl when Tarrin kept his foot up and pushed against her head as his grip on her arm pulled her into it, trying to break her neck. Her tail lashed around and up, right between the legs, sending a white-hot flash of excrutiating pain through him. He instantly let go of her, stumbling backwards against a chair as she stumbled back a few paces herself, tearing the robe from her face. Tarrin saw her eyes go completely wild, and she shrieked at him incoherently as she rushed forward. She'd lost control of herself, entering the rage that Tarrin had felt on the edges of his own consciousness many times, a rage that had suddenly boiled up in him in response to her own. Tarrin lost himself to the rage, and met the beast in her face to face.

Beast to beast.

Dar knew he should go for help, but for a moment, he was so horrified by what he saw that he couldn't move. Tarrin and that woman were, quite simply, ripping each other to pieces. There was a look of the most terrifying mindless fury on both of them, and they dealt each other the most grievous wounds with absolutely no regard for their own lives. He'd never seen such a display of sheer animalistic mindlessness in his entire life. They were on the floor, clawing, gouging, and even biting each other in an elemental display of abject fury, rolling to and fro and smashing chairs. The floor was quickly smeared and spattered with blood and bits of flesh and torn clothing, and huge patches of bare muscle and bone began to show on each of them. What was even worse, Dar could see that those hideous wounds were slowly closing themselves. They were both regenerating their wounds, and Dar almost got sick when he realized that the winner would be the one that could withstand more raw punishment than the other, which could keep up the healing even as the other sought to rip the flesh from the bones. It was a war of attrition, and Dar shuddered to think of the pain that either of them were feeling.

They rolled over the edge of the pool and fell in, and Dar's paralysis vanished as they did. Blinking, he rushed up the stairs, hoping beyond hope that Tarrin was still alive when he returned.

Tarrin managed to regain some part of himself at the shocking touch of the water. He kicked Jesmind away, put his feet under him, and kicked off the bottom, sending him out of the water like a sling bullet from a sling, catapulting him back up to the pool's edge. He was torn and beaten, and many of his muscles had been severed. His right arm hung limply at his side, the muscles used to move it ripped apart by Jesmind's claws. The pain was there, but it was a dull thing, something that festered at the back of his mind rather than dominating his every thought. She wasn't half as hurt as he was. She was much deadlier in a mindless rage than he, falling back on instincts that had kept her alive for five hundred years. He could not match her sheer brutality or mindless resistance to pain

Jesmind climbed out of the pool slowly. Her tail was missing more than half its length, which floated in the pool, and most of her left calf had been raked away by Tarrin's feet. She'd lost every bit of clothing, shredded in their brief savagery, but the look of mindless rage was still stamped onto her face. He knew that if he lost control again, she would kill him. She was more suited to it than he. He focused his rage, focused it into what he'd learned, what he knew. He'd met her on her own battlefield, and he had paid the price. Now he had to make her fight on his. She lunged at him, but he spun away, sliding just out of reach of her claws, bending like a blade of grass in the wind. He then then elbowed her in the back with his good arm, a move that was part of ji'shen , then kneed her in the side, which was a move in the Ways. They fell apart for a second, as Jesmind gasped for breath, then she turned around and rushed him again, straight ahead, uncaring about any defense he may erect.

It was almost too easy. Tarrin turned partially aside, as if to flee, then he pivoted and brought his right leg up, folded it around his knee as his back came to her, and kicked absolutely straight up, performing a standing split. The ball of his foot struck Jesmind right under the chin, the claws of his feet punching three holes in the base of her jaw. Her head snapped back audibly, and the raw force of the blow knocked her into the air. She made no attempt to right herself and land on her feet, coming down right on the base of her neck instead. She crumpled in on herself like a rag doll, and when she settled to the floor, she did not move.

Tarrin wilted, almost falling down, as the blinding pain of too many wounds to count suddenly screamed at him all at once. He'd survived by the skin of his teeth, and he looked it. The skin of his teeth was about all he had left. He limped over to her and rolled her over with a foot. She was unconscious, bleeding from her many wounds, wounds that were closing even as he watched. He mused at that; he thought that, since they were both magical creatures, that they would deal real damage to one another. It was a good thing they did not, for he'd have been dead in the first few seconds had that been true. Her face, wet from the pool, was untouched, aside from the three puncture wounds under her jaw, and the blood had been washed from it by their bath. Just looking at her reminded him how beautiful she was, and he knew that he just couldn't kill her. Not now, not ever. Regardless of how she felt about him, he didn't hate her. And he wouldn't kill her.