The first of the five separate actions that opened the lower returning hub began at the fractured eastern corner of the collapsed recess. There, Daro Kesh limped two paces out from behind the granite stone support prop and planted his braced right leg directly against the newly snapped dark rock wall. Dust and hot white frost were still boiling out of the crater where Heaven’s Measure had buried its three main pale blades four feet deep into the empty cave floor. Above the crater, the yard-wide bronze drum of the lower returning hub was tilted forward on its southern lip, its rear eastern returning plane screaming as it tried to whip back across the open slope and seal the exposed under-seam before anyone could cross the rim.
Daro didn’t try to meet that whipping rear plane in open ground where his torn right thigh muscle would have buckled under the sideways twisting force. Instead, he used the jagged upright face of the shattered recess wall as an external splint. Wedging the outside of his bound right knee and hip into a rough granite notch at the corner of the crater, he locked his intact left boot six inches lower on a dry dark rock step and raised his heavy, chipped short sword in a two-handed guard.
