The silver-nipped quill was shaking with the violent, shuddering fury of a captured hornet.
Violet spark arcs lashed outward from the pool barrel, dancing across Scribe Ren’s knuckles and blistering the manicured skin of his fingers. The master forger’s eyes bulged behind his wire-rimmed bifocals, his teeth grinding together in agony as the four-century-old driving force of the Dynastic Promise pushed back against the nib.
“I can’t... Hold the ligature!” Scribe Ren choked out, his voice strangled by moving shock. “The dragon-hide... It remembers the Emperor’s hand! It refuses the stroke! The ink is freezing in the tiny blood vessel chamber!”
Beneath the shaking nib, the dark violet ink of Ren Prime’s blood had begun to smoke. That turned grey and crystal-clear before it could soak into the porous connective tissue fibers of the scroll. If the stroke failed mid-word, the constitutional paradox would snap, exploding the entire black glass sanctum in a total back-blast of tightly packed legal power.
Ren Prime didn’t hesitate.
Ignoring the blinding, nauseating pain in his sliced forearm, Ren stepped forward and clamped his right hand directly over Scribe Ren’s clenched fingers.
KZZZZZZZZT!
The spark arc surged through Ren Prime’s palm like a torrent of molten copper.
