Appraise had never been a combat ability, and Nox had stopped pretending otherwise a year earlier.
It reads what a thing is and where the thing came from, which is a clerk's function. Every fighter he had beaten with it had been beaten by a document rather than a strike.
He put it on Marek Sol at full attention with his left side open and bleeding.
It cost him about two seconds of standing still in a room with a champion in it. Two seconds is a considerable price when a man can cross eleven meters in one.
What came back was not one champion, and it had never been one champion at any point. Seven cities stood inside that man as seven separately authenticated contribution layers.
Verrin's layer read as a firebreak brace and had been reaffirmed nine hours earlier.
Ironvale's read as convoy shielding, filed under its council seal in the spring. Torrel Bend's read as fault suppression and carried the northern operator's seat signature.
