'...they are rushing,' Marius thinks, suddenly reaching for Amara, casting off from the massive beast's leg with a hauling shove that propels him into where she stands, taking her down into the black water with him-- the two of them are prone, suddenly and violently, there's a whistle of long shapes in the air soaring through their space, the shrieking wail of the beast like the hunting-horn bellow of a dying mastodon filling the air.<br/><br/>Slowed time, the prolonged clarity of adrenaline and fear fragmenting its continuity, making this moment a balletic pose among the oil-slick water and sky-strangling trees.  Shortspears glide by like diving birds, globes of water-droplets morphing, flattening and spinning in the air, arcing up from the hole they plow through the water's skin.<br/><br/>The ember-haired girl is behind him, he can feel her looming there, feel her killing it expertly, feel her making it pay, making it suffer, with malice-less rage.  It which should not be won't be for long, but he can't let himself kill it properly, must disregard its maddening size and kill something else, something smaller and more deadly, more immediate.<br/><br/>Even through the chitinous scales of armor between them, Amara can feel the frame of Marius' body, his muscle and skeleton broad and hard as stone, can feel the force of him hauling her up, pivoting her to one side as his boots shovel into the murk and propel them both up and forward from where they landed prone.  They are lunging forth, Marius shouldering Amara to cover behind him--  the raiders are bearing down like closing jackals, and Marius' blade is eager to meet them.<br/><br/>He does not know how he knows, but the ember-haired girl is killing the beast-- he could have guessed it from his knowledge of battle, from knowing enough in having met her that, what she speaks for her future will be her fate in any case, hell or high water.<br/><br/>He does not mind their appearance; they are all one to him, cells of the same organism.  Every moment these men live is an opportunity for Amara to be... strange, he couldn't put a word to it, if he had to-- anything that could happen to Amara is a nameless, faceless horror... and all of this decompresses from some deep crevice in his mind in the time of one footstep.  Knowledge that was there, coiled in some crag, pooled in some unseen seam in the terrain of his psyche like an oil reservoir, and now it was spilling out in a slow trickle of black in his mind-- lost, suddenly, as he sees their blades bearing down, producing themselves from scaled scabbards, back-sheathes, fencer's loops at their hips, he becomes only an extension of his blade, which can feel its path through the space the enemy occupies like a ribbon threaded through space.  One two three four five, paring bodies, snipping away limbs, surgical and beautiful.<br/><br/>He follows it.  The beast shuddering behind them, Marius knows that he will survive man first, then the beast-- but only if enough damage was already done.  The blade has remained in his hand the whole time-- he could complete hundreds of tasks this way, a sword in hand, using his fist like a primitive paw while his free-hand managed complex tasks, but there is only one thing a blade like this can do.<br/><br/>And it does it-- and, time returns, and he parts from Amara and lets the blade do its tender work.