Ursiel vs Marble

From the other side of the amphitheater, there was a roar of collapsing stone, and I looked up in time to see a couple of sets of Corinthian columns falling, to the accompaniment of Ursiel’s furious roars.
“So,” Michael said, “to be clear, Grey is on our side?”
“Yeah. I hired him before this started.”
“But he killed Miss Valmont!”
“No, he didn’t,” I said. “He lied to Nicodemus. She must be outside the vault somewhere, waiting for us.”
Michael looked nonplussed. “Oh. Still. I don’t care for the man.”
“Hey, we’re alive right now.”
“True,” he said. He drew a deep breath. “And if he’s kept faith with you, we should help him.”
Just then, Ursiel went up on its hind legs. Grey was still in that same monstrous form, and still hanging on. The Genoskwa’s physical eyes were a bloody ruin, but Ursiel’s glowing green orbs were furious and bright. The giant bear-thing roared, a sound guaranteed to haunt my nightmares, should I live long enough to have any, and toppled over backward, into another Corinthian column, attempting to smash Grey upon it. They went down with another huge crash and a spray of glittering gems. The sound of the impact was . . . just freaking huge. The kind of noise you associate with the demolition of buildings, not with a brawl.

Skin Game Chapter 45, Page 382-383


The great bear whirled back to me and lunged into instant, savage motion, and again I skittered out of the way a couple inches ahead of being ground into paste. I darted a few more yards to one side, putting one of the displays between us. It didn’t bother to go around—it just crashed straight through, spraying gold and jewels everywhere, and I damned near got my head redecorated with a falling marble column. I slipped, recovered my footing, and kept moving, forcing the huge bear to keep turning laterally if it wanted to pursue me.
It went like that for a subjective century and a half, and maybe thirty objective seconds. Several suits of armor were crushed and scattered when a flashing, enormous paw shattered the marble column holding up the roof of their display area. Half a dozen pieces of art that might have been Fabergé eggs in delicate golden cages were smashed flat when a sledgehammer blow missed me by an inch. At one point, I picked up a cut diamond the size of my fist, screamed, “Get rocked!” and flung it at Ursiel’s nose before darting behind another exhibit, this one of rare sacred texts, featuring half a dozen Gutenberg Bibles as the centerpiece.

Skin Game Chapter 47, Page 393-394