Within three heartbeats of Hall Mistress Soran’s opening thrust, the sixty-foot circular floor of the Chamber of Permitted Shapes transformed into a four-part tactical machine where every square foot of slate and bronze carried a distinct hazard.
In the center-right sector beside the bronze lectern, Soran pressed Assistant Examiner Reth Mal with relentless, short-interval iron thrusts. Because she was deaf to the hum of the channel cable and the shouts of the guards, Reth couldn’t use verbal feints or sound blast waves to throw off her timing. Her dark eyes stayed locked on the line of his collarbones and the brass valve under his thumb. That forced him to spend every ounce of his channel-fed Jade pressure simply keeping her seventeen-copper iron point out of his throat.
From the top of the northern guard post stairs across the vault, the four armored Court axe-spear-guards roared in alarm and charged down the steps toward the central stone base.
“Two left, two right!” Daro Kesh barked, drawing his shortened, square-tipped Bronze sword as he sprinted alongside Mina toward the heavy stone dressing-screen six paces to the left of the stone base.
The first two Court guards—seasoned Iron-realm wardens in overlapping bronze scale—veered left around the revolving blade ring, leveling their long axe-spears to skewer the sixteen-year-old healer before she could open her medicine satchel near the captive. Mina didn’t flinch or slow her stride. Trusting Daro’s back fully, she ducked behind the four-foot-high stone dressing-screen, dropped her oilskin satchel onto the flat…
