Then she came at him, jaws wide in a high-pitched roar.
    She was fast, to be sure, and the Prelate didn’t have much experience against a lance. For a few seconds, it took all his focus to deflect her attacks: deep thrusts and counterrotating slashes that she delivered with a dancer’s grace and a demon’s fury. But then he feigned an opening—dropping his shield and tempting her to overreach—and when she stabbed her lance toward his midsection, the Prelate stepped aside and grabbed the weapon on its shaft, right between her hands, and then pulled her close and smashed his helmet into hers. She staggered backward, dazed, and collapsed onto her side.
	 The Prelate spun the lance around his hand, altering his grip for a downward thrust to spike the female to the floor. But as he raised the weapon, the Prelate felt the vibration of heavy footfalls from behind, and he spun to meet them instead of making the kill. The lance’s energized tip stopped in midair, vibrating and crackling against the Half-Jaw’s energy blade.
    “If you want my ship,” Rtas ‘Vadum growled, “you’ll need to be faster than that.”
    The Prelate’s wide lips tightened into a sneer. “As you wish.”
    At long last, he was facing the traitorous Sangheili who had allowed the Flood to invade High Charity—the one responsible for killing his wife and child.
    Tem’Bhetek exhaled, released the last of his mental gates, and attacked the Half-Jaw with the full measure of his fury.
    Shoving away his foe’s sword arm with the lance, the Prelate fired a point-blank burst with his rifle. But the Half-Jaw flowed with the lance and out of the line of fire, and then ducked under the Prelate’s arm and brought his blade around and down onto the Prelate’s armored neck. Tem’s shield flashed but held, and he shrugged the blade away, answering the Half-Jaw’s counterattack with a savage kick to the ribs.
    Their duel was a blur until the Prelate found a hole in the Half-Jaw’s defenses and caught him in the shoulder with his hardlight shield—a cut that burned through Rtas’s armor and into flesh. The two combatants stepped away from each other, breathing heavily. All around them, the Sangheili rangers and Jiralhanae were locked in their own deadly dance.
    “You will . . . not win this fight,” the Half-Jaw said through ragged breaths.

-Halo: Fractures, pg. 187-189 (Halo: Shadow of Intent)