Leaf Team moved first, and even Snow Team who were not weak, not inexperienced, and not easily impressed anymore felt the difference immediately.
Dimitri entered the front line of the dead with the same cold economy he brought to everything else. The albino snow leopard did not pounce or roar or waste force on dominance displays. He passed through resistance the way a blade passed through cloth, each strike placed with complete finality, there was no visible urgency in him because there was no possibility of confusion in his frame of reference. The dead in front of him simply ceased to matter one by one.
Thane dropped from the air with a violence that still obeyed precision. His talons raked, lifted, twisted, released, and his wings corrected each fall without breaking flow. If his earlier flight had looked unsettled, this did not. In combat he became horribly specific, a thing built to enter the right point at the right angle and leave nothing but proof behind.
