One by one around the chalked diagram of the lower shrine, the five senior fighters stated their bounds without waiting for a marshal’s assignment. Hall Mistress Soran tapped the tip of her hand-wrapped plain iron spear against the northern ridge line on the stone. Her Experienced Jade redirection would take the high northern ledge directly above the shrine roof. That turned aside the main upper blade routes long enough to prevent an unimpeded upright strike from reaching the populated river valleys below.
She didn’t promise to hold the sky forever. She promised four to six exchanges of upper redirection before her stance would have to yield down the slope.
Next, Chief Examiner Vaska Ren knelt by the diagram and chalked his assignment beside the three square marks representing the leftover inner wall sockets. Aided by Retrieval Commander Keth Or Vaska would enter the lower shrine structure itself. He stood behind him with his braced right wrist and three-fingered left hand.
Vaska had bolted those test sockets into the dark rock twenty winters ago. Because of that, he and Keth would identify the exact physical guide-rod seams and expose their timing rhythms so the sockets could be wedged and broken from within.
