Guttural words and cracking noises in a mockery of language, intermingling vulgarly with sibilant hisses and slurs spewed forth from his gullet. Time seemed to slow to a standstill. The very motes of dust in the air, disturbed and borne aloft by the sudden intrusion upon their sacred slumber by numerous clumsily trotting hooves, froze in the air as if frightened stiff by a terror without name.