The capture of the Scion of Cinders sent shockwaves across the black swell of the Outer Reefs.
Aboard the captured dreadnought, Lady Vespera’s prize crew worked with ruthless, practiced efficiency. The corpses of the Val-Kharis officers were heaved over the blood-slicked gunwales to the churning sharks below, while thirty shock-marines forced the surviving dragon-cultists at pike-point to man the subterranean magma bellows.
The three-headed dragon bowsprit, still dripping with green abyssal fire, swung around forty degrees, locking its glowing maws upon the crescent of the remaining eleven enemy vessels.
Aurelia stood upon the raised quarterdeck, the salt-wind whipping the silver strands of her hair against her cheeks.
Beside her, Malakor had already stripped off his dented left vambrace, using a strip of clean linen soaked in strong spirits to wipe away a shallow, sizzling gouge where Valerius’s molten axe had grazed his forearm. He barely winced as the alcohol bit into the burned flesh, his amber eyes pinned to the horizon where the Black Leviathan loomed like a fortress carved from obsidian midnight.
"They aren't deploying their skirmish galleys," Malakor noted, wrapping the linen tightly around his arm with his teeth and his free hand, tying off the knot with casual brutality. "Typhon isn't treating this like an ambush. He's letting us form up. Arrogant bastard wants to watch us break against his center."
"He believes his flagship is unsinkable," Aurelia replied, her hand resting on the pommel of her ancestral blade.
Beneath her breastplate, the Six Shards pulsed with a strange, double-cadence. The Five Shards of the original astral crown thrummed with a steady, defensive rhythm, but the Sixth—the Sovereign Void ripped from the Primordial Crown—was practically snarling. It recognized the ancient, stolen aether pulsing within the Black Leviathan's hull.
"It's not just a ship, Malakor," Aurelia murmured, her voice carrying a chill that cut through the ocean spray. "It's built over the petrified spine of the First Dragon's brood-mother. The core of that vessel carries an unrefined shard of the deep mantle. If it detonates in the channel, it will trigger an underwater eruption that will drown Val-Khor in a boiling tidal wave."
Malakor paused his pacing, his broad frame turning toward her, his shadow-fire flaring beneath the collar of his cuirass.
He crossed the deck in three heavy strides, stopping directly in front of her. His large, calloused hand came up to cup her jaw, tilting her face up toward his. The fierce, unvarnished hunger in his gaze was intoxicating—a dark fire that challenged the impending cataclysm with pure, insolent defiance.
"Then we don't detonate the core, empress," he growled low in his throat, his thumb stroking over her bottom lip, pressing until she felt the hard ridge of his knuckle against her teeth. "We carve it out of the hull with our bare hands. We take Typhon’s head, throw his body to the sea-worms, and steer his floating mountain back into the harbor as your personal pleasure barge."
A breathless, wicked laugh escaped Aurelia’s lips. She leaned into his touch, her hands sliding up the cold plates of his chest harness to rest over the violent, steady beat of his heart.
"A pleasure barge, warlord?" she whispered, her eyes flashing with dangerous amuse. "You think of strange things on the eve of a massacre."
"I think of having you in the high cabin of a dragon-ship with no councils, no weeping barons, and no scholars knocking at the door," he rasped, leaning down until his lips brushed against hers, stealing a deep, possessive kiss that tasted of salt, alcohol, and the dark promise of total ruin.
When he pulled away, his eyes were burning with that familiar, predatory light that signaled the butcher was fully awake.
"Vespera!" Malakor roared over the quarterdeck rail, his voice cutting through the groaning of the rigging. "Signal the fleet! Three columns! We use the Scion as the battering ram and drive straight into the Leviathan's flank!"
From the deck of the Vanguard's Pride, running parallel to the dreadnought, a series of green lanterns flared in rapid sequence, acknowledging the order.
Across the water, the Black Leviathan finally stirred.
A sound like a thousand bronze trumpets screaming from the bottom of an iron well echoed across the reef. The water around the flagship began to boil, churning into froth as four colossal, dragon-iron paddle-wheels began to turn along its flanks. Above its main deck, three massive, multi-tiered towers of black adamantine ignited with blinding, sulfurous green lightning, charging the colossal mortars aimed squarely at the advancing Vanguard.
"Here it comes," Aurelia whispered, drawing her blade with a clear, silver chime that resonated with the cosmos.
Beside her, Malakor raised his two-handed great sword, the black flame along the steel erupting into a towering column of shadows.
"Let the sea burn," Malakor snarled. "We have an emperor to butcher."