Lord Kaelen’s filed teeth flashed in a condescending sneer as Malakor closed the distance. The two obsidian-clad honor guards stepped forward, raising their curved scythe-swords in a crossed guard between their lord and the advancing warlord.
"Stand down, dog of the mud," Kaelen scoffed, his slit-pupiled eyes tracking Malakor with lazy contempt. "The blood of Val-Kharis does not cross steel with savages who dress in pelts."
Malakor didn't slow his stride.
He didn't draw a breath to answer.
In a single, violent motion of terrifying economy, Malakor’s left arm whipped forward. His armored gauntlet caught the crossed obsidian blades mid-air. The brittle, volcanic glass shrieked against the tempered shadow-iron of his vambrace, fracturing into a cloud of sharp black dust.
Before the guards could comprehend the shattered steel, Malakor drove his right fist forward. His iron-plated knuckle punched straight through the chest-plate of the left guard, caving the dragon-bone armor inward with a concussive crunch of ribs and heart-muscle. Without pausing, he caught the second guard by the throat, hoisting the armored warrior off the marble floor and hurling him twenty paces across the hall, slamming him into a granite pillar with bone-splintering finality.
The guard crumpled into an unmoving heap.
Kaelen’s sneer vanished, his yellow eyes widening in genuine shock. He reached for the hilt of his rapier, but the weapon never cleared its sheath.
Malakor’s great sword was already there.
The heavy, dark-steel tip rested flat against the hollow of Kaelen’s throat, depressing the skin until a bead of black, sulfur-tainted blood welled beneath the edge. The blade burned with black shadow-flame that hissed violently against the dragon-bone plates of the emissary’s gorget, filling the air with the stench of charred scale and ozone.
"I asked you a question, lizard," Malakor growled, towering over the aristocrat, his amber eyes completely dilated, a mask of unvarnished butcher's focus. "Does your emperor teach you how to breathe without a windpipe?"
Kaelen froze, the arrogant swagger evaporating into the suffocating reality of a man staring into the mouth of a starving wolf.
"Malakor," Aurelia’s voice cut through the silence from the dais.
It was not a plea; it was a sovereign's cool, measured command.
Malakor didn't lower his sword, but the twitching muscle in his jaw relaxed by a fraction of a millimeter. He cast a sideways glance toward the throne, his eyes burning with dark, reluctant obedience.
Aurelia rose, stepping down the white steps until she stood three paces from the pinned emissary. Her silver hair caught the flickering torchlight, and the Six Shards beneath her collar flared with a slow, blinding pulse of silver-violet fire that made Kaelen’s eyes water.
"Your emperor spent eight hundred years hiding behind fog while my people died in the snow," Aurelia said, her voice quiet, lethal, and absolute. "He did not bleed when the drakes burned our crops. He did not freeze when the Five Shards were carved from the ice. He sent you across the reef to ask for my crown as if it were a trinket to be traded for silk."
She reached out, her fingers closing around the golden scroll Kaelen held.
With a single flare of starlight from her palm, the hammered gold and red wax flash-melted, dissolving into molten droplets that hissed and spat upon the marble flagstones between Kaelen’s boots.
"Tell your master this," Aurelia whispered, stepping so close Kaelen could smell the winter mint and ozone radiating from her breath. "The Veil has a new sovereign. If he wants these shards, he can bring his twelve bone-dreadnoughts into my harbor. I will burn his fleet to ash, carve the wings from his dragons, and mount his three-headed banner on the spikes of the Bull-Horn Redoubt."
She nodded once to Malakor.
"Take his right hand, warlord. A messenger does not need a sword-hand to deliver a reply."
Kaelen shrieked, but before the scream could clear his lungs, Malakor’s combat dagger blurred from his belt.
A flash of dark steel, a sickening chop through bone and cartilage, and Kaelen’s right hand fell to the marble, still gripping the pommel of his un-drawn rapier. Malakor shoved the screaming emissary backward, sending him tumbling onto the bloody stones of the nave.
"Now crawl back to your dragon," Malakor snarled, wiping his dagger against his leather breeches with careless disdain. "Before I decide the message travels better with your tongue."