The crystalline halberd screamed downward like a falling guillotine, aimed to split his skull clean in two.
His left shin was already wrist-deep in a jagged fissure of broken cathedral stone, the razor edges chewing into muscle and bone like living teeth.
He could not pull free in time.
So, he did not move the leg, he moved his spine.
A backward arch from the kneeling position so violent it ripped three distinct ropes of muscle along his lower back in wet, audible tears — each one a white-hot whipcrack of agony that punched the air from his lungs and flooded his mouth with the iron taste of blood.
The halberd carved four inches above his nose and exploded the broken stone where his face had been.
KKKRAKK.
His vision blackened along the edges as if stars had burst behind his eyes.
Phei's world tilted sickeningly. For one heartbeat he was certain the spine-tears had paralyzed him from the waist down.
