The pain in Len Vey’s chest was not physical heat. It was systemic, spirit pressure.
The qualitative progress band of the country registry didn’t give decimal numbers or percentage bars. It projected itself directly into his mind as a thick, level band of cold, violet light, pulsing with the heavy, unbending rhythm of a sky-high pocket watch. With every spreading of the violet glow, the pressure deepened behind his chest bone, streaming outward along his collarbones and collar like an iron clamp slowly tightening against his ribs.
Across the dark surface of his mind, the office registry held its austere, legalistic accounting:
“Sit down, Len,” Ivara Quill commanded, kicking a heavy iron three-legged stool toward him with the heel of her boot.
The iron feet of the stool scraped across the damp flat stone slabs with a harsh screech. Len sank onto the seat, his knees trembling wildly the moment his weight left his boots. The crushing fatigue that always accompanied a coming soon milestone threshold fell across his spine like a wet wool blanket.
His living body was Level Five. Surefoot, Long Breath, Road Sense, and two baseline stamina improvements earned on the outside roads beyond the border. For eighteen nonstop hours, he had pushed that Level Five baseline to its total clockwork limit: hauling heavy timbers over railway ties, wading eighteen inches of freezing gutter slurry, sprinting across broken dark rock stone floors, and absorbing the dynamic recoil of a three-ton train on a five-percent grade.
