The playful, predatory amusement vanished from Alyssara's face, replaced by a cold, frighteningly impersonal focus. The alien sanctum, which had been static and silent, seemed to take a sharp, indrawn breath in response to her shift in mood. The very air grew thick, resistant, charged with a power that prickled against Arthur's skin.
"Playtime," her mental voice echoed, stripped bare of its earlier warmth, "is definitively finished."
She did not move. She did not need to. The environment itself became her weapon. The non-Euclidean angles of the walls seemed to sharpen, the featureless surfaces rippling as if they were muscle tissue. With a low, groaning sound that was felt more in the bones than heard, the sanctum attacked.
