Gloria lifted her right hand.
She did not gather a grand spell, nor did she draw a sword.
She only closed her fingers into a fist. The air around her knuckles tightened, then went still, as if even the hall understood that mana was not what mattered here.
The old man's eyes shrank.
"Gloria! Stop this madness! I am your..."
She stepped in and punched.
It was one hit.
The sound was dull and heavy, like a drum being struck too hard.
THUDD!
Her fist landed on the old man's chest, right over the place where a Monarch's power should have sat like an iron wall.
BAAM!
That wall broke.
The old man flew off the dais.
His broom left his hand. The monarch-level weapon clattered across the marble and skidded to a stop near a fallen chair.
The old man's body smashed through the first row of banquet tables, then the second, then hit a pillar hard enough to leave a crack from floor to mid-height.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
"Blurrrghhh!!!"
