Midnight descended upon the harbor of Val-Khor not with the sound of bells, but with the muffled creak of tarred hemp and the silent dipping of muffled oars.
Twenty war-galleys of the Imperial Vanguard slipped past the shattered remnants of the Syndicate’s blockade, moving like black specters across the glassy, ink-dark water. At the head of the formation sailed the Vanguard’s Pride, Lady Vespera’s flagship, its towering hull reinforced with plates of captured ironwood and black dwarven steel.
Aurelia stood upon the foredeck, her boots planted firmly against the wet timber.
She wore her dark leather harness over an arming doublet of boiled sea-serpent hide, its surface repelling the freezing spray that whipped off the bow. The Crown of Thorns was absent from her brow, replaced by an iron combat circlet that held her long silver hair away from her face.
Beneath her breastplate, the Six Shards were fully awake, radiating an icy, silver-blue luminescence that she held tightly within the perimeter of her flesh.
Reaching out with her right hand, she dragged her fingers through the freezing sea mist drifting over the gunwale.
Channeling the First and Fourth Shards—astral winter and the tidal gravity of the Astral Tear—she commanded the elements to submit. The coastal fog did not merely thicken; it coalesced into a colossal, swirling bank of impenetrable white frost that swallowed the twenty galleys whole. From thirty yards away, not even the lantern-light from the flagship's mainmast could pierce the freezing shroud.
"The sea obeys its empress," a low, rough voice murmured behind her.
Malakor stepped onto the raised foredeck, moving with that effortless, predatory grace that made him look as natural on a rolling deck as he was on a bloody redoubt. He wore his heavy shadow-plate, stripped of any polished buckles that might catch the moonlight, his two-handed great sword wrapped in oiled wool across his back to prevent the steel from whistling in the gale.
He stepped close, his massive frame sheltering her from the bitter northerly wind.
His gloved hand came down on her shoulder, his fingers sliding up to the bare skin of her neck, his thumb resting gently against the pulse hammering at the base of her throat. The heat radiating through his touch was an unyielding furnace, cutting through the bone-chilling draft of the open ocean.
"They won't see us until our bowsprits are through their gun-ports," Malakor murmured, his breath hot against her ear, sending a delicious shiver tracing down her spine. "The lookout in the crow's nest just signaled. Two leagues ahead, beyond the Dragon's Teeth reef. The lead dreadnought is anchored in the channel."
"The Scion of Cinders," Aurelia said softly, leaning back against his chest for a brief, steadying heartbeat. "Theron’s scrolls said it carries the Emperor’s Vanguard Admiral. It is the shield that guards Typhon’s flagship."
"Then we will break the shield," Malakor growled, his lips grazing the curve of her jaw, his teeth lightly catching her earlobe before releasing her with reluctant slowness. "And leave the pieces for the sharks."
A sudden, rhythmic thrumming sound cut through the roar of the surf.
It was not the sound of drums. It was a deep, guttural vibration that echoed through the water itself—the sound of immense, subterranean bellows forcing air through chambers of superheated fire.
Through the swirling wall of Aurelia’s frost-fog, a colossal shadow loomed.
The Scion of Cinders was monstrous. Carved from the petrified ribcage of an ancient abyssal leviathan, its black dragon-iron hull rose four stories above the waves, bristling with triple tiers of bronze dragon-mortars. The bow was sculpted in the likeness of a roaring, three-headed serpent, whose open maws glowed with the sickening, sulfurous orange of captive abyssal magma.
"Grapples ready!" Lady Vespera’s whisper hissed across the deck, carried by the marine runners. "Ballistas at the elevation! On the Empress's mark!"
Aurelia unsheathed her ancestral blade with a sound like ringing ice, the starlight along the edge slicing through the dense mist.
Beside her, Malakor drew his great sword with a dark, terrifying grin that split his scarred face, the shadow-flame on his steel hissing in anticipation.
"Close the distance!" Aurelia commanded, the silver-violet fire in her eyes detonating into blinding brilliance. "Board them!"