The Vanguard’s Pride struck the Scion of Cinders like an iron ram splitting a mountain of bone.
The reinforced dwarven-steel prow sheared through the outer netting of the dreadnought’s starboard flank with a deafening shriek of sundering timber and shattering dragon-iron. Twenty heavy naval ballistas loosed their iron-forged grappling hooks at once, thick hemp cables screeching as they bit deep into the petrified leviathan-ribs, binding the two vessels together in a violent, rolling embrace.
"Boarders away!" Lady Vespera’s command was swallowed by the thunderous roar of battle.
Before the boarding planks could even drop, two figures cleared the distance in a single, impossible leap.
Aurelia landed upon the main deck of the dreadnought like a falling star.
Her ancestral blade cleaved through the bronze barrel of an incoming swivel-gun before the crew could touch the fuse, sending the top half of the weapon spinning into the sea. Channels of silver-violet fire cascaded from the Six Shards beneath her breastplate, sweeping fifty paces across the deck and flash-freezing the dragon-iron gun-ports into brittle, useless slag.
Beside her, Malakor hit the deck with the weight of an executioner's hammer.
His massive great sword was a blur of black shadow-fire and butchery. Two Val-Kharis deck-officers clad in crimson dragon-scale plate lunged with serrated halberds; Malakor didn't even bother to parry. He ducked beneath the thrust, drove his shoulder into the foremost officer's chest with enough force to shatter his breastplate and stop his heart, and brought his two-handed blade down in a brutal, sweeping cleave that severed the second man at the collarbone.
"Clear the foredeck!" Malakor roared, blood spraying across his cheek, his amber eyes burning with unholy joy. "Forward, dogs! Take their guns!"
Behind them, two hundred northern shock-marines swarmed across the grappling lines, their heavy boarding pikes and battle-axes turning the upper deck of the Scion of Cinders into a slaughterhouse.
The defenders of the First Era were fierce, their reptilian blood making them unnaturally swift and resilient, but they had spent eight centuries fighting skirmishes in the mists. They had never faced the brutal, unyielding discipline of the Vanguard—men and women who had marched through the Ashen Wastes, broken the drakes of Ouros, and dragged the world back from the edge of the void.
From the quarterdeck of the dreadnought, a figure descended the bone-carved staircase with unhurried, terrifying power.
It was Admiral Valerius, the Vanguard Commander of the Eternal Fleet.
He was nearly seven feet tall, his armor crafted from the blackened skull of a horned sea-serpent, his hands gripping a colossal, dual-bladed battle-axe that burned with the sickly green fire of raw abyssal magma. His slit-pupiled yellow eyes locked onto Aurelia, devoid of fear, hungry for the power resting inside her chest.
"The little thief who broke the seal," Valerius's voice boomed over the clash of steel, vibrating through the very planks beneath their boots. "Your magic ends on the water, girl. The blood of Val-Kharis ruled the deep before your ancestors learned to scrape iron from the dirt."
Valerius lunged, his massive axe descending in a vertical arc that sheared the sea-spray in two, whistling with enough force to split the deck to the keel.
Aurelia didn't retreat.
She raised her ancestral blade with both hands, channeling the Fifth Shard—the crushing, immovable gravity of the continental bedrock.
The collision of starlight and abyssal magma was deafening.
A shockwave of green and silver light exploded from the impact point, shattering the planks beneath their boots and blowing twenty feet of deck-railing into the frothing sea. Aurelia’s arms shuddered, the kinetic recoil vibrating through her teeth, but her boots remained rooted to the timber, unyielding and absolute.
"You speak too much for a dead man," Aurelia whispered, her silver-violet eyes flaring into blinding brilliance.
Before Valerius could wrench his weapon free for a second blow, Malakor surged into his blind spot like a striking viper.
The warlord didn't aim for the armor; he drove his heavy combat dagger straight through the gap beneath the admiral's armpit, piercing the unarmored scales and sinking the dark steel to the hilt.
Valerius roared in agony, his yellow eyes bulging as black, boiling blood sprayed from the wound, his grip on the battle-axe loosening.
Aurelia used the opening instantly.
With a fluid, lethal twist of her hips, her ancestral blade whipped around the admiral's guard, punching straight through the center of his throat. She channeled the Sixth Shard directly into the steel.
The Sovereign Void devoured him from within.
Valerius did not fall as a corpse; his armor and flesh imploded into a harmless cloud of black, smoking ash that was caught and swept away by the freezing ocean wind.
The deck of the dreadnought fell dead silent.
The remaining Val-Kharis crew threw down their weapons, falling to their knees upon the blood-slicked planks as Lady Vespera’s marines secured the helm.
Malakor stepped up beside Aurelia, his breath coming in ragged, steaming plumes, his face spattered with black blood. He sheathed his dagger with a sharp click, his heavy, gloved hand reaching out to wrap around her waist, pulling her firmly against his armored side.
"One dreadnought down, empress," he murmured against her ear, his lips parting in a wicked, breathless smirk that set her pulse racing despite the cold.
Aurelia looked past the shattered bowsprit, out toward the open sea where the fog was beginning to part.
There, anchored in a crescent around the deep-water channel, lay the remaining eleven dreadnoughts of the Eternal Fleet, their lanterns burning like angry red stars in the dark.
And at their center rose theBlack Leviathan—a floating continent of dragon-iron, carrying Emperor Typhon himself.
"Signal the fleet, Vespera," Aurelia commanded, her voice ringing across the blood-stained deck with cold, imperial finality. "We take the flagship next."