duster vs rebar

Mab had just wheeled in preparation to charge again when there was a deep, ugly note in the air, almost below the range of my hearing, the kind of sound that you hear during disaster movies that have a lot of buildings collapsing, and maybe during earthquakes.
At the same time, my wizard’s senses were assaulted by a serious, heavy-duty pulse of earth magic.
There wasn’t even time to shout a warning. I called upon the Winter mantle for strength and speed and dove at Mab. The unicorn whirled to try to keep her away from me at the last second but wasn’t quite quick enough, and its movement was impeded by several abomination statues.
I was airborne when I saw the attack coming—jagged spears of metal, made from what looked like rebar scavenged from the wreckage of demolished buildings.
There wasn’t one spear.
There weren’t a dozen.
There were hundreds.
If the Winter unicorn had not reared to protect Mab, I figure I’d have died right there. Instead, the creature’s body intercepted maybe a dozen of the spears. I had leapt so that my back and the spell-armored duster that covered it would be between the spears and the Winter Queen.
I hit Mab and carried her off the back of the doomed unicorn.
Two spears hit me. One of them in the small of my back, and one of them directly in the center of my right butt cheek. The damned things were heavy enough to carry considerable force, and while my duster stopped their jagged ends from spearing right through me, it couldn’t do nearly as much for the pain of the impact, and half of my body vanished beneath a cloud of tactile white noise as the Winter mantle masked the pain.

Battle Ground Chapter 27, Page 253-254


“Excellent. Done.” Mab turned to the fallen Winter unicorn and, using the fabric torn from Butters’s cloak like potholders, began drawing rebar spears from the creature’s broken body. There was nothing tentative about her motions: They were workmanlike, and she removed the impaling steel with superhuman ease. To my shock, the creature started thrashing and screaming again after a few of the lengths of steel came out, and upon the last one being removed, it heaved its way to its feet, shaking its head and trumpeting in outrage.

Battle Ground Chapter 28, Page 260