Bruno barely had time to process the fact that there was something green and power-tinged crackling toward him from Alastair's hand before every input, every stream of data from within or from without his own body was completely overwhelmed by a sudden surge of incomprehensible energy.

Outside, Bruno halted mid-reach with a sickening twitch as his eyes flashed instantly to red and snapped wide in terrified confusion, then he seemed to briefly lose any sort of body coordination and almost fell to one knee before barely recovering his balance with a strangled cry.

A fraction of a second later and he was swinging a superhumanly fast backhanded strike towards the last known three-dimensional location of the nearest part of Alastair's body.