Kael's jaw tightened as he looked across the dirt. He had been treating the tremors as information only he could exploit, as though the thing producing them had no interest in what he did afterward. Akrab had watched him react and adjusted. He had nearly died because he assumed being underground made it less capable of following the fight.
The earlier exchanges made more sense now. When he attacked from a distance, it covered itself with its claws. When he kept moving, it went beneath the arena. Now it was working out how to catch him when he jumped. Kael would have admired the process considerably more if he had been standing beside his master, watching it happen to a training dummy.
