Leir’s anger was palpable. It turned the air around him into waves of fever. His eyes closed and Skandra’s voice hit him like the bass of a distant drum. He tried to imagine an endless pile of sectioned wood, ready to be split. The ethereal calm it had once brought him, raising and dropping his maul until the sun vanished behind the bony trees of Ellecdral.
Skandra’s selfishness and cowardice made quick work of the meditation exercise. There would be no ignoring it this time. He couldn’t believe a man so talented could be so childish. He raised the maul in his mind, and his left hand came with it.
“Revenge is an ugly thing but it makes you wonder.”
The hand balled into a fist. There was a band of mithril there that the guards couldn’t have taken if they had tried.
“What does Skandra Tyullis get out of this miserable pile you've created?”
You’ve created. Leir stood still for a breath, completely still. The flame of the torch dimmed. Skandra jingled the keys.
Leir dropped the maul. His eyes opened and his fist came crashing down like a bolt of lightning. That’s how it looked—as if his arm had turned into a hammer of light. It was astonishing in its suddenness and yet so real, that a man’s arm had summoned the power of a thundercloud right there in the dungeon.
It was confusing and loud. He swung again. He was obliterating the lockbox that secured his cell door to the iron frame. The barrage was relentless, the pealing ring of forge work battering the stone walls in its awful rhythm. It was not mad rage like that of a trapped animal; he was methodical, strong, and cold.
The door was ruined. His foot raised and kicked. The door swung open, finally admitting defeat, cruelly twisted on its hinges and useless.
“There is something about that fucking chair,” he snarled.
And he stood in the frame with the claw shield still crushed into it’s terrible fist at his side.