[[9] on Finish with Courage]

For a second, there is only the thunder of SP fire and a cloud of smoke and grit so thick it could choke a horse. It clings to everything, shoves itself down throats, and muffles the world in an all-consuming emptiness of sound. The world and skirmishers hold their breath.

And then the growling starts. It's the worst kind, the kind of growling that reaches down the spine and plucks directly at that bit of hindbrain that remembers when you used to be a kind of fluffy animal, clutching at nuts in the undergrowth. It's the spring-laden bassen growl that speaks of something with a chest large enough to swallow you whole, and which probably will do so if you don't find a hole to crawl into.

Then the two furnace-red eyes appear, casting light into the grit like dual lighthouses, too far into the air to possibly be real, and moving too fast to believe.

Then the titan emerges from the smoke far more quickly than is fair for anything that size to move. Alexa is a hecatonchire of pain, lashing fingers and slamming spearbutts against temples, growling all the while like Charybdis at her hungriest. And behind that, a wall of thrusting, stabbing spears.

All it takes is one skirmisher turning. Then the spears are through the gap, the titan is in the midst of the formation, and men are scattering like rats chased by flame.

Gah! Every time! Damn SP weapons! They get everywhere, and she can't even wipe her eyes!

Well. That will have announced her. Time to get while the going's good.