The ear-splitting clang of iron against gold-silver metal rang through the high vaults of the Inner Sanctum like the tolling of an underground bell. Sparks of blinding silver fire erupted where Berserker Ren’s jagged four-foot cleaver bit into the edge of the Man Who Returned’s shard-blade. The force of the downward blow was so huge that it drove the headsman’s cobbler’s boots two inches deep into the silvered glass floor. It sent spiderweb fracture lines shooting across forty arm-lengths of semi-clear dark rock. But the headsman didn’t buckle. His four-hundred-year-old shoulders absorbed the shock with unnatural, clockwork stiffness, the coarse grey fabric of his wool robe snapping in the violent moving backdraft.
‘You swing with anger, boy,’ the Man Who Returned murmured, his voice as flat and emotionless as a chisel striking granite. ‘Anger is just an un-audited debt. It creates no leverage against inevitability.’ With a flick of his scarred wrist, the headsman redirected the cleaver’s downward driving force. It slid the shard-blade along the jagged iron spine with a screech that set Ren Prime’s teeth on edge. The silver edge shaved a ribbon of curled iron from the cleaver as cleanly as a carpenter’s draw-knife peeling pine shavings, angling straight toward the Berserker’s throat.
