The eastern technique at Mid Sentinel was genuinely beautiful in the way that things built over generations were beautiful. No excess anywhere. Every motion the minimum necessary. The body having arrived at a specific efficiency through years of repetition that Vane recognized and respected the way he had been taught to recognize and respect things that deserved it. The Iron Current running underneath it, accumulating, the field pressure now at a level that would be producing visible disruption in a less established transmission chain. In an opponent without the compound's foundation, the midpoint disruption would be registering as friction in every form, costing attention, costing efficiency, producing the slow invisible erosion of capability that the Iron Current was designed to produce.
Vane felt it against the midpoint and felt the midpoint hold.
He ran the Quicksilver Thrust.
