The orc charged, his heavy footfalls sending splashes of stagnant water flying. The mace came crashing down, a meteor of jagged iron aimed at turning Anaske into a red paste on the swamp floor.
But Anaske didn't move. He didn't raise a shield or draw a weapon. He simply watched the descending weapon with a placid smile.
He had spent hundreds of nights in the Divine Library, his mind a repository of thousands different martial arts techniques, each one memorized, analyzed, and perfected.
This orc's attack, for all its power, was slow, clumsy, and full of a hundred different openings.
Just as the mace was about to connect, Anaske moved. It was not a grand, flashy motion. He simply raised a hand and, with a single, elegant flick of his index finger, tapped the top of the descending mace.
The orc's world stopped. The mace, which had been hurtling downwards with the force of a falling tree, halted in mid-air as if it had struck an invisible, immovable wall.
