"It will not be pleasant," she said.
"I know."
She turned to face him properly and she opened the Warlord at the specific low register that was not the Killing Intent but was the Authority's foundational pressure, the base layer of it, the thing that existed underneath the specific technique she was about to run. The air in the outer ring changed quality. Not dramatically. The specific heaviness of it arriving in the ambient field the way it arrived whenever the Warlord was genuinely present rather than contained.
She ran the Iron Current.
He felt it immediately. Not as a physical force. As a quality in the transmission chain's midpoint, a pressure arriving at exactly the juncture where the form moved from the hip into the shoulders, the specific location where the Silver Fang's efficiency lived. It did not disrupt the chain. It sat against it.
He took three steps toward her and ran the Quicksilver Thrust at half output.
