Book 6. Chapter 5: In which Keith and company have a relaxing trip
Tenisent tilted his head to the side, avoiding the machine’s grab. Memories of a lifetime fighting against these enemies flowed through his soul, his body reacting exactly as it had in life.
No, not exactly.
In life he’d treated his body as a weapon, maintaining it like a blade. But there were limits. Always limits. He’d spent a lifetime compensating for those limits.
He knew the correct pattern to eliminate this Screamer after it had missed his head. The way to block its followup attack, and where to slam his hand to crack through the armor and remove the heart. It had been necessary to know the most secure paths to victory.
There was no need anymore. He grabbed the machine’s head, and ripped it off the shell wholesale. To mask the strength, he pulsed the occult around him, making his strength appear as if this was some spell a Deathless had used.
The soul sight revealed to him all enemies lurking around, their concepts like blazing spotlights. His shell’s scanning and optical subsystems confirmed what his inner sight showed. Audio systems picked up every footfall, even down to the grinding sounds of poorly fitted mechanical parts.
A second Screamer tried to spear him from the back, sharpened elongated hands forming as close to a blade as it could.
Pathetic. Doomed to failure.
Tenisent twisted on himself, his kick spearing straight through the screamer’s chassis, shattering the components built to draw power from the machine’s heart, it’s power cell. Secondary systems lit up within, desperately trying to reroute, but the momentary outage still forced the enemy into a small stutter. The human equivalent of having the wind knocked out of it.