The air in the Underlayer was no longer oxygen; it was a thick, suffocating soup of copper-scented mist and the scorched aroma of incinerated flesh. Rex was no longer merely fighting; he had entered a state of transcendental carnage. The "performance management" was gone.
The restraint was dead. He was a god of the slaughter, and the rhythm of his destruction had become a frantic, beautiful madness.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
The laugh erupted from Rex's throat, not a joyful sound but a jagged, manic peal of pure, unadulterated ecstasy that sliced through the screams of the dying. It was the laugh of a man who had looked into the abyss and found it hilarious.
A massive, armored troll, its skin like weathered granite, stumbled toward him, its eyes wide with a terror it couldn't comprehend. The beast fell to its knees, its massive hands trembling as it reached out toward the blood-drenched sovereign.
