The eight-inch eight-sided iron sleeve on the butt of Bel Sar’s broken Ash Reed staff struck the exposed baked-clay and silver root of Approval Socket #3 like a quarry wedge hitting a frost-stressed boulder. Because the baked-clay insulator was already blistering at white heat from carrying the entire redirected return of the lower returning hub, the sudden impact of cold, heavy marsh iron driven by Middle Bronze breath shattered the baked-clay core into four jagged quadrants on contact. The heavy iron metal ring punched straight through the broken insulator and jammed two inches deep into the soft silver contact bus beneath it.
Inside the eight-sided granite basin, the retracted bronze pressure gate right away tried to slam shut to clear the blocked path and re-establish the return circuit. The heavy bronze jaws bit inward against the eight-inch iron sleeve of Bel’s staff butt with a screech of metal that sent a shower of violet sparks ten feet into the air.
Had Bel Sar struck the socket with the unshod wooden middle of a broken pole, the closing bronze jaws would have snapped the ash wood in half and snapped the gate shut. Because he had inverted the leftover piece and driven the eight-inch forge-welded iron butt sleeve into the gap, however, the closing bronze gate met solid eight-sided marsh iron backed by four inches of tightly packed ash heartwood inside the sleeve.
