The world slowed to a crawl. Every nerve and fiber of my body lit with fire and lightning, it was agony and exaltation.  The bandit's weapons slowly swam through unseen sap, Ob'haad's moved to intercept one and dodge another, but he too crawled through the air. I moved, and as I did my muscles seared, the heat generated by moving as fast as the limits of my body would allow. I realized it wasn't the world that slowed, everything that I was had sped up, Mind and body. My limbs cut through heavy air, the heat becoming more and more unbearable as I moved, one of my mid limbs hooked claws rended a bandits exposed belly under raised arms. The burning worsened.

     I snatched the curved blade from the hands of the bandit to my left. I was boiling in my shell. I used one arcing swing to bring it around to cut through his throat and the bandit next to him. The ones in front of Ob'haad were halfway through their swing, sparks grew and blossomed slowly from the clashing of an axe head across his sabre. A little more. I threw the blade and watched it sail through the air and through the Ob'haad's other attacker. I was dying! I let go of that heightened awareness, collapsing onto the cobblestones. The sound of my chitin clacking against the street almost sounded in unison to the bodies that lay around me now. I could feel the heat rising from my body, the blood nearly drying in it's veins. I was used up.

     I stayed conscious only long enough to see Ob'haad sever his attackers arm and follow deftly by parting his windpipe. He turned towards me, eyes wide.

     And everything went black.