There was no wind-up, no dramatic flourish of steel. There was only the terrifying economy of a master at work.
One moment Leonidas was ten yards away, his stance coiled like a spring; the next, he had simply erased the distance. He appeared where Rex had stood, his blade carving through the air in a perfect, hissing horizontal arc.
SHHH TICK.
The blade passed through the space where Rex's torso had been. Behind the villain, a massive marble pillar, one of the few relics that had survived the initial destruction, slid apart at the waist as if cut by a hot wire.
The two halves groaned before toppling to the ground with a thunderous CRASH that sent chunks of masonry flying across the lawn.
Rex was gone.
Foresight that sixth sense honed by centuries of slaughter had granted him a tenth of a second of warning. He had spent that precious heartbeat springing backward, his boots skidding across the dirt as he narrowly avoided being bisected.
