Dawn broke over Anchorhead not in gold, but in a curtain of churning slate-grey mist. Sixty war-galleys swept out of the harbor basins on the crest of an outgoing tide, their bronze rams slicing the swells in unison. At the head of the fleet rode The Dread Sovereign, its great black sails catching the stiff southern gale as four hundred oars plunged into the wine-dark water.
Aurelia stood upon the raised foredeck, one hand braced on the carved timber dragon that formed the prow. The salt spray whipped her cheeks, but the cold could not pierce her; the unified core within her chest hummed with steady, quiet warmth, attuning her senses to the immense pressure of the deep sea beneath the keel.
Beside her, Malakor was a mountain of blackened iron and wolf-pelt. His heavy great sword remained sheathed across his back, its abyssal runes smoldering through the mist, while his crimson-flecked eyes scanned the dark horizon where the waters turned from emerald shallows to the bottomless indigo of the Leviathan Straits.
"We have entered the Siren’s Ribs," Captain Dennis shouted over the howling wind, gesturing toward jagged, tooth-like pinnacles of black coral that breached the foaming surf like the bones of a shattered fleet.
Before the helmsman could alter course, the wind abruptly died.
An unnatural, suffocating stillness fell over the straits. The waves flattened into oily, glassy troughs, and out of the sea-mist drifted a sound—a faint, seductive melody that vibrated not in the ears, but directly inside the center of the skull. It was a weeping chorus of impossible beauty, promising forgotten crowns, lost lovers, and painless slumber in the deeps.
Along the rowing benches, oarsmen hesitated. A young soldier dropped his spear, his glazed eyes turning toward the dark water as he began climbing over the gunwale.
"None step overboard!" Dennis roared, his voice trembling under the insidious mental pull.
"Aurelia," Malakor growled, his voice a low, warning rumble. His jaw was clenched, his hand white-knuckled against the hilt of his blade as his abyssal ether fought the psychic venom invading his thoughts.
"I have them," Aurelia whispered.
She stepped to the very edge of the prow and closed her eyes. Drawing upon the starlight humming in her veins, she channeled her frost outward—not as an attack, but as an absolute crystalline barrier.
"Silence," she commanded.
A shockwave of sub-zero ether pulsed from her palms, racing across the surface of the sea around the sixty galleys. The salt spray in the air flash-froze into billions of microscopic ice needles, falling into the water like a sheet of ringing glass. The psychic sound waves shattered against the frozen air, the seductive song abruptly replaced by a chorus of shrieking, gargling wails.
Three monstrous shapes broke the surface thirty paces ahead.
They were the Abyssal Sirens—not maidens, but horrors of the deep. Their upper torsos were bloated, grey-skinned carapaces crowned with spiny crests and needle-sharp fangs, while their lower halves coiled into long, eel-like tails that churned the sea into foam. Their webbed claws reached toward the flagship, their throats swelling to unleash a psychic scream powerful enough to burst the brains of the crew.
Before their throats could clear, Malakor moved.
He drew his great sword with an earth-shattering screech of iron. The blade flared into an inferno of black and crimson abyssal fire that hissed violently against the damp air. With a single, explosive leap powered by dark ether, Malakor cleared the twenty paces between the ship’s prow and the sea, descending upon the central siren like a falling thunderbolt.
His descending strike cleaved the beast cleanly through the skull, splitting its armored carapace in two. The superheated abyssal fire detonated within the monster’s flesh, vaporizing its blood and turning the creature into an explosion of boiling steam and black ash.
As Malakor landed upon a jagged coral reef, the two remaining sirens lunged at him from the surf, their venomous fangs dripping with caustic bile.
"Down!" Aurelia called out from the foredeck.
She raised both hands. Two lances of compressed star-frost lanced from her fingertips, piercing the ocean swells and impaling the two horrors through their chests. The celestial cold detonated upon impact, freezing their blood and turning the two beasts into solid, cerulean statues of ice before their claws could touch Malakor’s armor.
With a feral grin, Malakor swung his great sword in a wide, horizontal arc.
The flaming edge shattered both frozen sirens into thousands of harmless, glittering shards that plunged into the dark water.
Silence returned to the straits, broken only by the resumed roar of the wind.
Malakor vaulted back onto the foredeck with a heavy, metallic crash, sheathing his smoking blade. His face was spattered with salt spray, his chest heaving, his dark eyes ablaze with that wild, predatory heat that always surfaced when he conquered death.
He stepped straight to Aurelia, his gauntleted hand wrapping firmly around the back of her neck, pulling her toward him until her forehead touched his breastplate. He leaned down, pressing his lips to hers in a hard, possessive kiss that tasted of salt, iron, and savage triumph.
"You took their song," Malakor murmured against her mouth, his breath hot against her chilled lips, his arm anchoring her firmly against his chest.
Aurelia smiled against his lips, her hands resting over the hot iron of his plate. "And you took their heads."
She looked past his broad shoulder.
Beyond the shattered coral of the Siren’s Ribs, the mist was parting under the returned southern gale. Rising out of the churning ocean three leagues away loomed the Isle of Serpents—a jagged fortress of volcanic glass dominated by a colossal, spiraling tower that pierced the storm clouds like a poisoned dagger: the Sunken Spire.
Malakor turned, his arm remaining locked around her waist as he raised his hand to the fleet.
"The straits are ours!" his deep voice roared across the sixty galleys. "Set full sail for the Isle of Serpents! The Fourth Shard is waiting!"