In that first week you were still numb; you were tired, you were hungry, and you sat down at the countertop to eat your tepid supper, and had gotten through maybe five spoonfuls before the sword emerged from the middle of your chest.

      The aim for your pulmonic valve was unerring, but he had put himself at the mercy of your third and fourth ribs. This was a mistake your assailant would never make again. Always your bosom friends, they unfurled for you then like the springtime. Thick ropes of costal cartilage burst from your breast to fix your assailant’s sword in place: your ribs became jaws, your sternum the neck of a spring. Your blood sprayed into your indifferent soup, and the rapier stuck fast. You wrestled yourself backward; your phalanx bones burst through your fingertips like knives, and, too frightened for anything sophisticated, you raked blindly into the meat of the fatless and muscular thighs behind you.

      Your claws turfed up the meat of his hips and pelvis, but you would come to learn that Ortus the First did not respond to pain. He moved—you were dragged with him, off your stool, away from your blood-spattered soup—and you let his rapier go, dilating the bone so that he stumbled backward and you went forward, rolling over the countertop, spilling your bowl, dislodging pots and pans, and causing a hell of a noise.

Harrow the Ninth - Act Two, Chapter Nineteen