---
Others both knees. One man hit the floor with both palms and nearly cracked a tooth from how hard he bit down on his own cry. Another clutched his throat as if he could physically tear the burning out through flesh.
Raka stayed standing for three breaths longer than most.
Then even he folded half forward with a low, ugly sound dragged out of him against his will.
Bat Bat drifted a little behind Sekhmet and whispered, with real awe for once, "Oh. This one is bigger."
Mira could not take her eyes off them.
The transformation stayed close to the body, under skin, in bone, in blood, in the places where their old mortality was being refined into something more predatory and less forgiving.
Light traced their veins from within.
