Corvin moved with the particular quality of someone for whom technique had long since ceased to be a conscious process and had become simply what his body did when it was pointed at a problem. There was no hesitation in it, no observable decision-making between intention and action, and the result was a speed that was not actually superhuman but functioned like it because the gap where normal people processed their next move simply did not exist in his body's chain of events.
He came in fast. Nero blocked the first strike and took the second on the forearm — blunt, solid, the kind of impact that would leave a bruise — and he moved back and tried to use the spear's reach and found that Corvin had already accounted for the reach, was already inside it, and the third strike caught him across the thigh with enough force that his leg reported an opinion about continuing this exchange.
He kept moving.
