He saw the monk's movements before he loosed the arrow. The tiny flinch of his hand as it pulled back a fraction, the tensing of the arm and the twitch of the tendons in his hand as his fingers released themselves from the arrow's feathers. All this happened in a fraction of a second, nearly the height of his enhanced reflexes and vision.
Then the arrow left the bow, travelling across the hallway in a blaze of speed. Its motion slowed in his eyes, he had all the reaction time he needed to lean slightly to the right, letting the arrow sail right past him, embedding itself deep in the stone wall behind him. With a small smile, he resumed his stance, rolled his shoulders and stretched the kinks out of his neck.
"Well then now that's just rude. You wanna play this way, fine then. I'll play rough."
With a flick of his free hand the water in the hallway began turning into ice, swiftly and steadily. He braced his right foot, bent slightly to gather his strength, and then pushed off from his right. This action made him hop into the air slightly as the leap forward closed the distance between him and the monk, even as the water beneath him froze solid, trapping his feet and ankles in a solid, icy grip.
A second passed. Two.
Daniel landed on both his feet and, using the ice as a rudimentary slip-n-slide, let his right foot skid forward. His body twisted left and he leaned to the left, lowering his left hand to the ice to clamp down on it, slowing his progress forward enough to turn his forward momentum into a sideways spin on his left foot. Maintaining the crouch he swept his right leg right around counter-clockwise, aimed right for the monk's left shin.
Continuing the spin, he came round again, still pivoting on his left foot, and threw up his free hand as a feint, palm up in a quick flicking motion that did nothing, while beneath him his sword arm came up swiftly in a straight, quick diagonal jab from Xing Yi's low left, aiming to hit his solar plexus with the hilt of his sword. He would be in a kneel now, his right knee on the ice with his left foot bracing.
All this, from dodge to leap to kick to feint to jab, took merely seconds, what would seem like a short moment to the monk.
False god he may be, but speed was his game.
SkyeOfStars