No martial technique in the five realms—not even the High Court’s prized Early Jade spatial squeezing—can make every cubic inch of a six-foot stone hall equally solid at the same time.
To compress air until it hits like quarry granite needs aimed focus, and aimed focus needs the fighter to decide where the wall of pressure must be thickest.
Across the third and fourth blistering exchanges in the western lane of the Chamber of Permitted Shapes, Daro Kesh paid in blood and bruised bone to measure the exact law of how Keth Or allocated that focus.
CLANG-SCREEE!
On the third exchange, Keth Or drove the curved steel point of his seven-foot glaive in a high-pressure thrust aimed at the gap between Daro’s right shoulder and the corner of the four-foot stone screen.
When Daro shifted his guard half a beat early toward Route Two to protect the corner of the screen where Mina and Halin crouched behind Seyun, the tightly packed Early Jade air around the glaive’s point thickened almost in a heartbeat. Multiplying in thickness the micro-second Daro committed his weight to that low right-hand line.
Daro deflected the steel tip off the granite corner with his thirty-inch broken blade. Even so, the razor-sharp edge of the tightly packed air-wake sliced through the wool sleeve of his left forearm. He opened a shallow four-inch furrow across his skin that welled dark red.
