Everything about Altharion literally changed.
He came onto me… strong. The casual man who had been spinning his axes and giving speeches was gone, and the thing that replaced him crossed the snow like the distance had personally offended it. The first axe came down at my collarbone in an arc that would have split me to the hip.
I wasn't there.
Feather Step. One pace, no more, a single stuttering shift of the world that put me half a body-length to his left before the axe finished falling. It bit into the snow where I'd been standing and threw up a spray of white.
'Still works. Good.'
That was the thing I'd figured out, lying in the snow getting my organs rearranged. Whatever he did to my hits, whatever ate them before they landed, it only touched what I sent at him. It didn't touch what I did to myself. The Step was mine. He couldn't refuse a thing I was only doing to my own body.
So I could move.
Moving just wasn't going to be enough.
