Keter blobsweat

Needless to say, Keter was the first to close the distance, crossing the intervening space as though it wasn’t even there. It wasn’t teleportation or anything like that, either—he simply transformed himself into light and moved, abruptly closing in to attack. A hair-thin line of searing white light extended from his finger straight through the center of Malkuth’s chest, right through where we’d last seen the portal that sustained him.

A moment later, he flickered once, the action on barely visible to my eyes. Spears of white light surrounded Malkuth in a massive sphere, hundreds upon hundreds of them created in an instant and bursting upon him just as quickly, hardly seeming to even start moving before connecting fully. Keter flashed once and was elsewhere by the time I registered it, a column of light extending from his hand to connect with Malkuth’s hide—and then there were two more, each born from a slightly different position at Keter’s side. By the time I noticed that his hand had moved, dropping to his side just below where the three beams of light had come from, he was closing in, hands reshaping into vicious claws as he grasped and tore at Malkuth’s flesh, ripping away small chunks.

Even for me, watching him was like watching a faulty or poorly cut video and seeing it stutter and skip moments or scenes. He was somewhere, but then he was somewhere else by the time I noticed it, one action already completed even as he moved onto the next. He was just testing the waters, not wasting energy on any massive displays of power just yet, because he knew what Malkuth was capable of—and, of course, because he knew what I had in mind.