The red volcanic fortress did not wait for formal parley.
From the high battlements of the iron citadel, six massive siege-mortars roared with deafening concussions. Plumes of black, sulfurous smoke belched from the embrasures as three-ton shells of solid cast iron arced through the twilight sky, their casings screaming with aerodynamic fury as they descended upon the mouth of Aurelia’s channeled sea-tunnel.
"Disperse by divisions!" Lady Vespera’s voice barked through the ship's brass speaking-tubes. "Flank speed on the outer galleys! Form line abreast!"
The shells struck the water with geysers of boiling foam eighty paces off the starboard bow of the Black Leviathan, the shockwave rattling the dragon-iron plating and setting the deck shuddering beneath their boots.
"Rattling their teeth to see if we flinch," Malakor growled, resting his great sword across his shoulder, his eyes pinned to the three ironclads anchored in the sheltered cove below the redoubt.
The enemy vessels were leviathans of dark, riveted iron, flat-decked and low in the water, each carrying twin rotating gun-turrets that were already grinding into position with squealing, hydraulic groans. Their funnels belched thick, black coal-smoke that drifted across the red crags like a funeral shroud.
"They're firing blind through the edge of the storm," Aurelia noted, her silver-violet eyes glowing with chilled precision.
Around her neck, the Ring of the Primordial Vessel pulsed softly, maintaining the tunnel through the howling tempest. She looked to the foredeck, where Saphira and forty Keepers of the Pale Lotus held their staves locked in their deck-sockets. "Saphira! Can your wardens hold the tunnel open without my direct tether?"
"For one turn of the glass, Empress," Saphira called back over the din of surf and artillery, her white robes whipping violently in the crosswind. "The ley-currents here are thick with iron, but our staves can ground the edges. Go!"
Aurelia released the channeled starlight, the silver beam fading from her hands as the Keepers' violet aether flared to take its place, sealing the perimeter of the safe water.
She turned to Malakor, a dangerous, breathless spark igniting in her gaze.
"How do you want to take the redoubt, warlord?"
Malakor’s scarred lips curled into that terrifying, wolfish grin that always preceded an atrocity. He stepped to the port rail, looking down at the forward boarding ram of the Black Leviathan, where four hundred elite shock-marines stood waiting in complete silence, their battle-axes and boarding pikes gleaming in the dim red moonlight.
"Their fort has thirty guns pointed at the channel," Malakor said, his voice dropping into a gravelly, lethal purr. "They expect a fleet action. They expect us to trade mortar-fire until half our galleys are kindling."
He turned back to her, stepping into her space, his heavy, gauntleted hand coming up to cup her neck, his thumb catching her jawline with rough, bruising possession.
"We don't give them a fleet action," he murmured, his amber eyes burning into hers. "You drop us on their high battlements with that void-step. You and me, and fifty of my mountain butchers. We take their magazines from the inside, turn their own mortars on their ironclads, and drown their harbor before their admiral finishes his evening stew."
Aurelia’s breath hitched, the sheer audacity of the plan sending a thrill of liquid fire through her blood.
"Fifty men against a coastal fortress?" she whispered, her lips parting, brushing against the leather of his thumb. "They'll have a garrison of a thousand."
"Then they'd better start digging graves," Malakor rasped against her mouth, stealing a quick, ferocious kiss that tasted of iron, ozone, and unyielding madness.
He broke away, bellowing over the quarterdeck rail: "First Cohort! Mountain veterans! To the Empress's circle! We're taking the high ground!"
Fifty hardened veterans of the Razorback campaign, clad in matte-black plate and armed with boarding axes and heavy crossbows, sprinted up the stairs of the command bridge without a single wasted movement, forming a tight circle around Aurelia and Malakor.
Aurelia drew her ancestral blade with a ringing, silver chime.
She closed her eyes, reaching deep into the Sixth Shard—the Sovereign Void—amplified by the stabilizing power of the Ring around her throat.
Shift.
A sphere of absolute, light-devouring darkness enveloped the fifty-two warriors upon the bridge. For a fraction of a second, the universe ceased to exist; there was only the crushing, weightless vacuum of the space between stars.
When the darkness shattered with an explosive thunderclap of displaced air, they were no longer on the wooden deck of the flagship.
They stood directly upon the wind-blasted parapet of the Iron Skull redoubt, sixty cubits above the churning red sea, behind the smoking barrels of the grand mortars.
Before the stunned artillery crews could even draw their sidearms, Malakor’s greatsword roared through the gloom, severing the foremost gun-captain at the waist in a fountain of crimson gore.
"Kill them all!" Malakor’s war cry tore across the ramparts like a butcher's song. "Take the guns!"