The face-off between the mortal scribe and the aerial oligarch was not settled with steel. It was carried out with ink, bone, and law.
Lord Malakor sat shivering in his motorized wheelchair. His hands shook so wildly that the twin muzzles of the glass-like pistol danced across Ren Vale’s chest. His breathing mask wheezed with desperate, irregular pulses, the double bladders gasping for oxygen that the failing vessel could no longer adequately supply.
“Stand back!” Malakor screamed, his voice cracking into high-pitched hysteria. “I’ll fire! I’ll blast your peasant heart across this glass! I’ll detonate the fire-powder carronades myself!”
Ren Vale didn’t stop. He walked directly up to the brass footrest of the wheelchair, his expression carved from the same cold, unbending granite as the castle below.
With a motion so swift and casual it was almost insulting, Ren reached out with his left hand, his fingers clamping around the twin barrels of the pistol and shoving them toward the ceiling. At the same time, his right hand drove the four-inch mammoth-bone awl forward. He pressed its polished ivory tip directly against the brass percussion lock.
Subtractive Progression: Kinetic Trigger Annulment.
A faint violet spark jumped from the awl into the lock gearwork. The tiny springs, the firing pins, and the fulminate primer caps inside the pistol didn’t break. They simply lost their physical relationship with one another. The internal tension faded away. The trigger went entirely slack beneath Malakor’s trembling index finger, clicking loosely against the grip without pushback.
