"Jasana was the one that turned Tarrin!" she announced in an dark tone that was literally dripping with cold fury.
Jula paled, her tail sticking almost straight out, Mist closed her eyes and muttered several choice curses, and Jesmind just stared at her mother, still with her foot in the act of coming down onto the floor. Jasana fell to her knees and began sobbing in very loud waves, paws over her face and her tail thrashing behind her like a dying snake.
"She what?" Jesmind asked in a low, cold tone.
"She turned Tarrin," Triana seethed. "We know she took the blood that turned him."
" Jasana!" Jesmind gasped in shock, almost falling to her knees herself. "How could you do such a thing!" she demanded, then she did stagger back and sit down hard on the couch behind her.
Eron wandered over to her mother and put his little paws on her arm. "Mama, what's going on?" he asked in an innocent manner. "Why is ev'yone mad at Jas?"
"Jasana did a very bad thing, cub," Mist said in a low tone, but it was not one of disbelief. "And now she has to be punished for it."
Tarrin could see, sense, that all the animosity in the room was going to make Jasana unintelligible. All the adults were mad at her, and the very real fear of the kind of punishment that someone like Triana could hand out would be the only thing dominating her mind. He wanted answers, and he realized that that meant taking a less dramatic approach. He put a paw in front of Triana to tell her that he would handle this, then he knelt in front of his crying daughter, now bent over with her paws over her face and weeping uncontrollably. His looming over her seemed to make her come out of it a little, and she looked up at him with her heart in her eyes, a heart that was breaking. She gave out a forlorn wail and threw herself against his chest, cowering between his arms and gripping his vest with her little claws digging into his skin.
He did not comfort her, but he didn't yell at her as Triana had done either. "Look at me," he said in a level tone, a tone that demanded obedience. She sniffled and looked up into his eyes with apprehension and a little stark terror, still gripping his vest.
"Why did you do it, Jasana?" he asked in a surprisingly calm voice.
She could only blubber for a long moment, then she sniffled loudly and bowed her head, unable to hold his penetrating gaze any longer. "B-B-Because everyone was sad," she hiccupped. "Everyone was sad, and it was all because you were a h-human," she continued. "You an' Mama were fighting, an' you were mad at each other, an' you promised me we'd be a family again. I just wanted everything to be the way it was supposed to be!" she wailed in a plaintive tone, looking up at him with anguished eyes, clutching at his vest so hard that she was rending it. "B-But you're alright now, and we can all be together again!" she said in a desperate voice. "Don't be mad at Mama, Papa! It makes her so sad when you're mad at her!"
Putting a huge paw on each of her little shoulders, he pushed her out away from him. She refused to let go of his vest, trying desperately to hold onto him, tearing the leather away in her little paws. "I am very mad at you, cub," he said in that same calm voice, a voice probably more terrifying to her for its even temper than the raging outburst that would have probably been more what she would expect. "Do you have any idea what you've done? Do you have any idea how much it hurt me that you'd do this to me?"
"B-But you're the way you're supposed to be!" she objected tearfully, as if that explained everything. "Everything's supposed to be alright now! It's supposed to all be alright!"
"It wasn't your choice to make," he said in a seething manner that made the little girl flinch from him. "You were with me all that time, girl. You knew how I felt about it! Why did you take that away from me? Why?"
Her eyes quivered, and she started crying again, holding onto his paws, trying to get them off her shoulders so she could collapse against him, but he wouldn't let go of her. It hurt him to do this to her, but it had to be done. She had to be made to understand that if she didn't stop, she was going to do something that would be absolutely unforgivable. As if what she'd done to him wasn't unforgivable in the eyes of the law of Fae-da'Nar, but these were rather special circumstances.
"Did you once think about the consequences, girl?" he asked in a level tone. "Answer me," he ordered after a moment of listening to her sob.
"Everything was supposed to be alright," she said in a miserable tone, sniffling. "You and Mama would be happy again, and we'd be a family."
"So you didn't," he surmised. "You decided you knew what was best for everyone, and you just went and did it without ever once thinking about how it was going to make anyone else feel."
"I just wanted-"
"It's not about what you want!" he cut her off in a sharp, angry tone. "Now you're going to learn, cub, that there are consequences to the actions you take. If you'd have left things alone, they would have worked out. I would have decided to be Were again, and I'd have come home. But because you interfered, now I'm mad at your mother, and I'm so mad at you I can't even explain it to you. I am so mad at you I went into a rage and very nearly killed my own sisters, and your grandmother had to risk her own life to stop me. Because of what you did, I almost killed several people that I love as much as I love you, and if that would have happened, I would have never been able to live with myself. Because of what you did, I came this close-"he took his paw off her shoulder and held his finger and thumb the barest of spaces apart in front of her-"to destroying almost everything in my life that matters to me. And it all happened because you interfered. I want you to think about that, Jasana. I want you to really think about that, and I want you to know how close you came to losing me forever because you couldn't wait, because you didn't like things and you decided to try to make everything the way you wanted them to be. Well, you've done that, but now nothing is like you want it to be, and it very well may never be that way again. And it's all because you interfered."
Gently, the voice of the Goddess touched him in a very private, intimate manner. To keep Jasana from overhearing it. Remember, she's only a child. You're getting close to destroying her life.
I'm about done, Mother, he thought grimly. But she was right. Jasana had the mind of a six year old child, and he was treading very close to shattering the entire foundation upon which that life was set. It was time to reassure her of a few things.
"In a while, I'll get over being mad at you," he told her as she wept with her paws over her face. "You're my daughter, and I still love you very much. But you have to be punished for what you've done, Jasana. You have to learn that every act you take has consequences, no matter how much you believe what you're doing is right. And I won't be mad at your mother forever either. As soon as I get over that, I'll come home, and if I think you've learned your lesson, we'll be a family again."
She looked up at him with those beautiful green eyes, shining with tears, and her hopeless expression brightened just a little. "W-We can be a family?"
" Only if you prove to me that you've learned your lesson," he said firmly. "I'll forgive you, but only when I'm sure that you won't pull an insane stunt like this again. Do you understand?"
"I understand," she said in a little voice.
"Now you're going to answer me, and you're going to tell the whole truth. No hedging. Do you understand?" She nodded vigorously. "Did anyone help you?"
She shook her head.
"How did you find out about the blood?"
"Jula told me the story about how she became my sister."
"Did she tell you where the blood was?"
She shook her head. "Jinna Brent told me."
Jinna Brent was the Water seat, and Tarrin couldn't put any real blame on her. Odds were, she had no idea just why Jasana was asking. Jula blew out her breath when she realized that Tarrin was hunting for any possible accomplices, and there was no doubt that he would not be as gentle or forgiving with them as he had been with his daughter. "How did you get it without anyone knowing?"
"I just went down and got it when everyone was asleep," she sniffled.
"Nobody ever goes down there, so all I had to do was get out of the house without Mama catching me. I thought someone may find out I stole it, so I tried to hide who took it by using magic that Aunt Jenna taught me. I hid it in my room after I took it. I knew nobody would find it there, because it didn't have any smell, and mother makes me clean my own room. She won't let any of the maids come in and do it."
"How did you get it into the potion?"
"I talked Kimmie into showing me where they were doing the magic a long time ago, before I even decided to do it," she said after a moment. "I put it in the day before you drank it. The old human was sleeping, and Aunt Kimmie was here taking a nap. I snuck out with Eron and left him in the kitchens, did it, then came back and we went down the baths with his boat."
Tarrin recalled that Jasana had turned up missing that day, and they they had been found in the baths. "Eron, did Jasana leave you in the kitchens?" he asked his son directly.
"I didn't see her go," he said in a casual manner. "Cook Golin was giving me sweetcakes."
"You and your stomach, cub," Mist growled at him, but in a loving way.
"And that's it? Nobody helped you?"
"N-No," she said.
"That doesn't sound very certain," Triana snorted.
"Well, nobody helped me," she said, looking at the floor. "But I didn't think of it myself."
"Who did?" he asked bluntly.
Jasana wouldn't look at him for a moment, then she finally did, and when she did, she looked ready to break out into tears again. "You did, Gramma," she blurted. "You and Mama and Aunt Kimmie and Aunt Mist. You were talking about ways to make Papa himself again, and when Mama said that someone should bleed on him accidentally on purpose, I remembered Jula's story about how she used Papa's blood. I promised you I wouldn't use my blood, and I couldn't get anyone else's without getting caught, so I used Papa's blood."
Tarrin levelled a very frosty stare at his bond-mother. Triana coughed delicately and gave him a helpless look. "Well, we were desperate," she said defensively. "And it was just talk. We didn't actually do it, cub."
"No, but this little eavesdropper here was alot braver than the lot of you," he replied in an icy tone.
"I wouldn't have imagined that she'd actually try it," she answered.
Tarrin realized that he'd gotten all his answers. Everything Jasana said fit in with what he already knew, and it also fit in with the way things happened as he undestood them. Despite his anger with her, he was privately very proud of her, proud that she could take an idea mentioned in passing and develop it into a marvelously well thought-out plan. If the simple fact that they used things that she had no experience in to track her down, she very well may have gotten away with it. Jasana had decided on her objective, decided on what she needed, organized things to acquire them, then executed her plan, and she did it all without anyone suspecting that she was up to no good. She was only two years old-around six or seven in human years-but already displayed remarkable intelligence and cleverness. Were it not for the fact that he was the victim of her scheme, he would have been tremendously impressed by it. He really was impressed by her, but he couldn't let her know that.
He was satisfied that that was everything he needed to know. He was confident that she had acted alone, and in his own mind, that was the end of it. The fury he'd felt before was actually starting to cool, as he heard her and understood things. He was very angry with her, but his love for his daughter had already started to nullify the blind rage he'd been experiencing, and it pulled at him a little bit to know that she would suffer through her punishment. He didn't want to see her suffer, but in this case it was an absolute necessity. If they didn't choke off this habit of hers of altering the entire world to suit herself, she was eventually going to do something for which there would neither be forgiveness nor leniency. Her turning him was a crime punishable by death, and she had to be made to understand that. It was something that just was not done, and the laws of Fae-da'Nar were explicit about it.
Taking his paw off her shoulder, he looked down at her with stern, almost cold eyes. She gazed up at him with teary eyes, her desperate fear evident on her face, as was just a glimmer of hope. "I'm not the one who's going to punish you, cub, though I'm sure you would have preferred it if I did," he told her. "Your grandmother is already chomping at the bit for it, and I'm not going to gainsay her. Besides, I think I've already punished you enough," he added thoughtfully.
Jasana threw a wild look at her furious grandmother, and it dawned on her that she wasn't going to get out this quite as easily as she was starting to think she was.
"I'm sure your mother's going to have a few things to say to you as well," he said soberly.
"Oh, you'd better believe that!" Jesmind said hotly, stalking up on them from where she'd stumbled into her seat.
"Stand in line, cub," Triana told her grimly. "I get her first."
Jasana blanched, almost unconsciously trying to sidle up to her father for protection, but he stopped her with a paw, then stood up before her. She barely came up to the middle of his thigh, and she seemed so small and defenseless. Then he reminded himself how much chaos that defenseless little child had caused.
"I'm going to leave this in your paws, mother," he told her calmly. "I'd better find Jenna and get my scolding overwith. I know she's going to let me have it over all the damage I caused. She'll probably make me fix it."
"I think she'll be happy enough you're alright," she said in a absent manner, her hot eyes fixed on Jasana.
He looked down at his child one more time, a serious, grim look, seeing her tears and fighting against them moving him to take pity on her. There could be no pity this time, or else he may lose her to her own cleverness in the future. "I'm going," he announced.
"I'm coming with you," Jula announced, moving towards him. "I, really don't want to be here for this."
"Alright," he nodded, turning his back on his sobbing child deliberately. He traded knowing looks with Triana, then padded away from her. He absently picked up the door on his way out and repaired it with a quick weave of Earth and Fire, then closed it behind him. Jasana's howls of pain started almost immediately after that, as Triana probbly put the girl over her knee, raised her tail out of the way, and proceeded to flay the skin off her backside. Tarrin considered it a necessary act. He had laid in the mental punishment, making her see just how much damage she had caused, and now her mother and grandmother were going to make her sorry she ever thought of doing it in the first place. Hopefully the combination of the terror of being punished so again and the very real threat Tarrin made to not forgive her if she ever did anything like that again would be enough for her to start thinking about the consequences of her actions before she did them.
"I really didn't want to see that," Jula said with a shudder. "I feel sorry for the cub. She only did what everyone else wanted to do, but was too afraid to try."
"I know, but if she were older, Triana would have killed her. You know the law."
"I know," she sighed. "What happened down there? The whole Tower shook."
"I was in a rage. Triana stopped me, and she did it faster than I thought she could have. I think she has experience in dealing with raging Were-cats."
"With Jesmind as her daughter, I wouldn't be surprised," Jula said with a slight smile as they reached the stairs, Jasana's howls still ringing in their ears.
"I remember every moment of it," he grunted. That was very unusual for a rage. Usually he had no memory of it initially, but the memory slowly bled into him afterwards. He remembered every minute of this one, from Allia besting him in the storeroom to laying waste to the lower levels of the Tower to the very, very short confrontation between him and Triana. "I've never been handled like that before," he admitted. "Triana must have practiced for the day she'd have to subdue me. It took her all of about half a moment." He put a paw to his head. "I was too enraged," he told her in a distant tone as they descended down the staircase. "I was so mad, so completely enra
ged that I couldn't even remember things I usually remember when I'm in a rage. I couldn't even use Sorcery."
"That's a good thing, father," she said with a shudder.
"I'd have to agree with you," he nodded. "I don't think that would have happened anyway, Jula. Mother was watching, and she wouldn't have allowed me to use Sorcery against her Tower. Remember, what she gives to us freely she can withhold when it's needful." He was silent a moment. "I do remember trying for Sorcery there at the end, and I think I could have used it if Triana hadn't been on me. I was shocked, daughter. I'm still shocked. Triana's a lot more powerful than I thought."
"I thought you said you couldn't remember how to use Sorcery."
"Triana had me in some kind of locking move," he told her, "and she was overwhelming me with Druidic magic. I think that shocked me out of the depths of that rage, enough for the Cat to regain access to some parts of our mind. I reached for Sorcery because Triana had taken everything else away. And she was waiting for me to try that," he admitted with a grim chuckle. "I didn't think a Druid could cut me off, but I know now I was wrong about that."
He thought back over that episode, and realized once again how much of a liability the rage could be. He'd been so furious that he didn't even try to defend himself from Allia, didn't understand the danger she posed. He just attacked her wildly, and in that wild, undisciplined flailing, Allia picked him apart and stuck her sword in his neck. He had been so enraged that he couldn't even remember how to use his magical abilities. The only reason he had Druidic magic was because the All connected with him, not the usual system where he reached into the All. And even when he had the power, he could do nothing with it than crude, elemental bashing, flailing about with the magic like it was an extra arm, using nothing but raw, unrefined eruptions of naked power. He had had no control, no finesse, none of the usual exacting precision with which he usually wielded his Druidic magic and his Sorcery both, and his fury severly limited the possible ways he could have used the All. In this case, that was a good thing, since he was too angry to get creative in his destruction, but in any other case it would be a very, very bad thing to have happen. Then with Triana, he was so enraged that he couldn't use his full power, couldn't even use the power he had at hand in a rational manner, and she beat him because of it. Tarrin was glad they'd beaten him, but that competitive part of him still objected to being bested, no matter what the contest. Besides, they were very important lessons for him, lessons in how not to act when facing a powerful foe. He'd learned long ago that rage was an asset to his opponent, not to himself, because it reduced his capacity to think rationally, and now more than ever using his magic required a great deal of rational control. Jegojah had taught him that lesson in the most bitter fashion, when his rage had caused Faalken's death. In a way, it was good to be reminded of that fact. If he was in a rage, all he could do was use heavy-handed, crude magic, relying on power. Now he knew so many spells, so many spells that could protect him or help him win a fight, but he couldn't use any of them if he was so enraged that all he wanted to do was blow things up. It was even more critical with Druidic magic, for in a fury he may try to sink a mountain into the sea or something else like that, and it would end up getting him killed. It was good that he had lost his temper inside, where the confined space also limited the available options for destruction. Since all he had around to destroy were crates and walls and ceilings and floors, he didn't try something that he wasn't capable of accomplishing, like exploding one of the buildings on the Tower grounds or something like that. The restrained nature of the underground passages were actually an asset to him that time, and their simplisitic monotony protected him from himself.
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