On the center stone of the snow bridge, Arel Fen tried a compromise that his Inviolable Point was never structured to survive. Refusing to pull his rear right boot out of its deep ice groove—because his training told him that leaving the keystone entirely meant surrendering his anchor—he lunged his lead left foot eighteen inches sideways toward the broken northern lip.
At the same time, he dropped the silver-tasseled tip of his spear out of its tight twelve-inch sphere and swept it downward in a long slanted cut aimed not at Ilyra’s unarmored chest, but at the hemp lashing ropes of Maren and Tov’s litter sliding below her knee. The split commitment destroyed his shape instantly.
By trying to stay in his old point with his rear foot while reaching out to stop the new crossing with his front foot, Arel stretched his equilateral base into a narrow, overextended line across the slick limestone. Worse, because his intention was divided between holding the center stone and severing the litter ropes four feet away, the iron-heavy Bronze thickness at his spear tip thinned to less than half its consolidated weight.
Ilyra stood unarmed above her braced spearhead. She felt Arel’s intention fracture before the steel even crossed her knee line. In that instant, she didn’t have to think about separate defensive branches or wonder how to protect her wounded right shoulder.
