Chaos Unleashed by Drew Karpyshyn

she wasn’t even sure who it was. The warning was lost as a glorious burst of adrenaline surged through her body.
    The Inquisitors were raising their staves to meet her charge, but their movements seemed awkward and slow, as if they were underwater. In contrast, Scythe felt herself moving with an easy, fluid grace.
    In an instant she had closed the gap between them. She brought Daemron’s Sword around in a wide, waist-high arc. The first Inquisitor managed to stumble back out of range, his retreat desperate and frantic. The other tried to parry the blow with his staff, but the Talisman sliced clean through the wood and opened a deep gash in his side. He grunted and doubled over, instinctively throwing himself down and to the side as he tried to roll clear of a second, potentially lethal blow. Before Scythe had a chance to finish him, however, his partner recovered enough to leap forward with a counterattack.
    He jabbed the butt of his staff toward Scythe’s face, but he still seemed to be moving at half speed. She calmly tilted her head to one side, allowing the staff to pass harmlessly by her head, mere inches away from her eye. At the same time, Scythe shifted her weight from one foot to the other and snapped her hand back in the opposite direction, bringing the Sword around in a backhanded slash meant to slice off her opponent’s leg at the knee. At the last instant he spun out of the way, and instead of amputating his limb the weapon merely cut a long but superficial gash in his thigh.
    He’s faster than his partner,
Scythe noted.
But not fast enough.
    The other Inquisitor was coming at her again now, his highly disciplined mind allowing him to block out the pain of the wound in his side. His staff twirled and spun in an attempt to disorient her, but instead of a constant blur of unpredictable motion Scythe saw the attack as a series of deliberate and laborious movements.
    When he finally struck at her, she slapped the staff aside with an almost casual disdain. She could have finished him had she chosen to do so, but she wasn’t worried about this one anymore: She barely even considered him a threat. Instead, her focus was on the soldiers in the darkness who were closing in on Keegan and Jerrod.
    If the Inquisitors seemed slow to her heightened perceptions, then the soldiers appeared to be almost glacial: like statues struggling to come to life. The two closest to Keegan and Jerrod shambled forward, and Jerrod stepped up to meet them, dropping into a fighting crouch.
    He’s moving more slowly than the Inquisitors,
Scythe noted.
    Clearly he was still hampered by the strange double vision of his restored eyes. But he was still fast enough to send the two armed men stumbling backward with a pair of roundhouse kicks.
    The more dangerous of the two men she was facing had launched another assault. There was a desperate fury in this pass, he was throwing everything he had at her. His staff whistled through the air in a series of quick slashes and strikes, interspersed with spinning, leaping kicks as he tried to overwhelm her. Scythe was forced to retreat for several steps, ducking, dodging, and parrying the blows as she picked up on the unconscious rhythm of her foe’s movements.
    And then she struck, a single forward stab of the blade so quick and precise that the monk never even had a chance to defend himself. The Sword plunged through his robes and into his chest, penetrating the flesh and slipping perfectly between his ribs to pierce his heart. A flick of her wrist withdrew the blade as easily as it had gone in and the Inquisitor collapsed at her feet.
    The surviving Inquisitor was still coming at her, but Scythe ignored him. Behind her, the rest of the soldiers had finally joined the fray, and she spun around and raced in the opposite direction to help her companions.
    The six mercenaries had formed a tight circle around Jerrod and Keegan, warily feinting and probing at their cornered foes as they tried to work up