The descent into the belly of the fortress was a trail of blood and shattered iron.
The garrison had attempted to barricade the lower spiral staircases with heavy oak chests and stone ballast, but against the combined might of Aurelia’s gravity pulses and Malakor’s furious two-handed cleaves, the timber splintered like kindling. The fifty mountain veterans swept through the torch-lit corridors with ruthless efficiency, clearing barracks and armories with short-swords and boarding axes until the surviving defenders fled down into the subterranean magazine.
At the lowest level of the redoubt, carved directly into the basalt roots of the volcanic cliff, stood the doors of the High Command Vault.
The portal was a massive slab of cast pig-iron, eight inches thick, reinforced with five horizontal deadbolts of hardened dwarven steel. From behind the iron came no sound of weeping or shouting—only the rhythmic, pressurized hiss of a heavy boiler valve and the low, terrified chanting of men preparing to ignite their own powder stores.
"They're going to blow the magazine," Malakor growled, resting the flat of his bloody great sword against his shoulder. His nostrils flared, scenting the acrid stench of spilled alchemical oil seeping through the door-seams. "Cowardly bastards want to take the cliff down on top of us."
"They won't get the chance," Aurelia said, stepping to the center of the threshold.
She laid both palms flat against the cold pig-iron.
Around her neck, the Ring of the Primordial Vessel flared with deep, liquid midnight. She drew upon the Third and Sixth Shards—molten starlight and the Sovereign Void.
Instead of battering the iron with brute force, she channeled a pulse of absolute vacuum along the lock-mechanisms inside the door. The air within the keyways and bolt-housings imploded with a series of muffled, metallic snaps as the internal pins collapsed into their casings. With a final, crushing application of localized gravity, the massive eight-inch slab tore inward off its bronze hinges, crashing onto the stone floor of the vault with a deafening boom.
Aurelia stepped through the smoke, her ancestral blade drawn, flanked by Malakor.
The vault was a circular cavern forty paces wide, illuminated by green glass glow-lanterns.
In the center of the room, standing beside an open iron chest overflowing with thick, leather-bound sea-ledgers and wax-sealed cylinders, was Governor Marcus—a tall, withered man clad in the black-and-gold mantle of the Eclipse Senate. In his trembling right hand, he held a burning phosphorus match, hovering six inches above an open keg of alchemical blasting powder.
Surrounding him were twelve personal guards clad in ornate lacquered breastplates, their weapons drawn, their faces pale as salt beneath their iron skull-visors.
"One step closer, barbarians," Marcus wheezed, his yellow, drug-addled eyes darting frantically between Aurelia and the towering shadow of Malakor. "One step, and I drop this match! There are sixty kegs of refined fire-salt beneath this floor! We will all burn in the emperor's name!"
Malakor didn't even pause his stride.
He took two heavy, deliberate steps into the room, his boots crunching over the shattered door-hinges, his amber eyes pinned to the governor’s throat with unvarnished, predatory contempt.
"You won't drop it," Malakor rasped, his voice dropping into that terrifying, gravelly purr that made strong men wet their breeches.
"I will!" Marcus shrieked, his hand shaking so violently sparks showered from the match. "I swear by the Black Sun—"
"You're a bureaucrat in a silk coat," Malakor cut in, closing the distance to five paces without breaking eye contact. "You like soft beds, warm wine, and taxing fishermen. Men who drop matches on powder kegs don't give speeches first. They just do it. You're waiting for me to negotiate so you can beg for a ransom."
Marcus’s jaw dropped, the match trembling in the air.
Before the governor could recover his resolve, Aurelia flicked her left fingers.
A localized current of astral frost swept through the air between them, flash-freezing the match into brittle, extinguished ash before it could touch the powder.
In the same breath, Malakor blurred forward.
His heavy gauntlet closed around Marcus’s throat with enough force to lift the governor completely off his feet, slamming the back of the old man’s skull against the basalt wall. The twelve bodyguards flinched, their swords twitching, but before a single blade could lunge, the fifty Vanguard crossbows outside the doorway leveled as one, their iron sights locked onto the guards' visors.
"Drop the steel," Malakor whispered, his face an inch from the choking governor’s nose, his thumb pressing into the man’s windpipe with agonizing precision. "Or my marines turn your guards into pincushions, and I feed your fingers to the gulls one by one."
The twelve bodyguards looked at their gasping governor, looked at the fifty loaded repeating crossbows, and threw their weapons to the stone with a clatter of surrender.
Malakor dropped Marcus onto the floor like a sack of damp grain, turning his bloody boot to kick the open keg of powder away from the table.
Aurelia walked up to the iron chest, her gloved fingers picking up the central cylinder of black vellum, bound with the imperial seal of the Eclipse Emperor himself. She broke the wax with a twist of her dagger, unrolling the crisp parchment in the green lantern-light.
Her silver-violet eyes scanned the dense, runic cipher.
"What is it, Aurelia?" Malakor asked, stepping up behind her, wiping his dagger against his breeches as he leaned over her shoulder.
"The operational orders for the Grand Fleet," Aurelia whispered, her blood running cold with sudden, lethal clarity. "The three ironclads in the bay were only an advance picket. The main battle fleet—forty-eight capital ironclads, commanded by Arch-Reaver Vorenus—cleared the Obsidian Caldera three days ago. They aren't sailing to the Glass Shoals."
She looked up at Malakor, the Eight Spheres around her throat pulsing with alarming speed.
"They're sailing directly toward the straits of Val-Khor. They know the Veil has fallen. They intend to burn our capital to ash while our armada is stranded in the east."