The lashing of ninety-two warships into a single, cohesive naval wedge was completed in less than two turns of the hourglass.
Heavy cables of plaited hemp, woven with iron-reinforced hawser-wire from the captured redoubt’s stores, bound the war-galleys to the flanks of the twelve dreadnoughts. At the apex rode the Black Leviathan, its massive dragon-iron hull anchored to the sea by the immense, steady weight of its star metal plating.
Aurelia stood upon the raised foredeck of the flagship, her boots planted three inches from the carved obsidian prow.
Around her neck, the Ring of the Primordial Vessel was no longer a dormant torque of liquid star metal; it had expanded into a halo of spinning, razor-sharp glyphs of pure midnight, revolving an inch above her collarbone. The Eight Spheres pulsed in her chest with the concussive rhythm of a war-drum, sending arcs of silver, violet, and deep golden aether dancing across the steel plates of her armor.
Behind her, Malakor stood like an immovable pillar of black iron.
His thick legs were braced wide against the wet planks, his massive great sword planted point-down three inches deep into the deck between his boots, his hands resting heavily on the pommel. His broad chest pressed firmly against Aurelia’s back, his chin hovering over her right shoulder, his breath a hot, steady draft against the chill of the gathering storm.
"The fleet is lashed, Aurelia," Malakor rasped into her ear, his voice cutting through the rising howl of the wind. "Every sweep is shipped, every rudder locked amidships. We are tied to your will. If you tear the sea, we all go down together."
"We will not go down, Malakor," she whispered, her fingers curling around the hilt of her ancestral sword.
She drew the blade with a single, clear chime that resonated across the churning waters of the bay.
Channeling the full, terrifying authority of the Eighth Relic, Aurelia pointed the tip of her blade directly at the swirling core of the Void-Curtain. She did not slice; she twisted the hilt ninety degrees, as though turning an ancient key in a colossal, rusted lock.
Unravel.
A deafening, soundless shockwave detonated across the ocean.
The horizon cracked open.
The churning wall of purple-black tempest clouds did not part; it was violently sucked downward into the sea, forming an oceanic chasm five leagues wide and three hundred fathoms deep. The water did not pour in to fill the void; it banked into vertical, glassy walls of suspended brine that rose a thousand feet into the air on either side of the abyss, held back by the terrifying, gravitational grip of the Sixth and Eighth Relics.
Running down the center of the dry chasm was the Ancient Highway: a roaring, luminous current of pressurized celestial aether, glowing with the blinding silver of a fallen star, racing westward toward Val-Khor at an impossible, catastrophic velocity.
"Brace for the plunge!" Lady Vespera’s scream through the speaking-trumpet was swallowed by the sudden, deafening roar of rushing air.
The Black Leviathan, dragging its ninety-two tethered consorts behind it, tipped forward over the precipice.
The drop was an eternity of weightlessness.
The three-thousand-ton flagship plummeted down the glassy wall of the sea, its bowsprit slicing through the roaring air, before slamming into the silver aether-current with an impact that made every rib in the ship’s hull groan in agony.
The slipstream caught them.
There was no wind, no rolling of the sea, and no sound of waves against the hull. The entire armada was hurled westward along the subterranean current at the speed of a loosed arrow, the vertical walls of the ocean blurring past them in a continuous, crystalline smear of sapphire and dark foam.
On the foredeck, the gravitational recoil slammed Aurelia backward.
Her breath tore from her lungs in a sharp gasp as her vision went entirely white, the sheer kinetic pressure of holding the five-league chasm open threatening to compress her heart into diamond.
Malakor caught her before her knees could buckle.
His arms locked around her ribs like bands of forged iron, hauling her upright, turning her in his grip until she was pinned securely between his chest and the embedded great sword. His teeth were clenched so hard blood trickled from his lip, his shadow-magic pouring down their soul-tether in a violent, freezing torrent that counteracted the crushing acceleration.
"I have you!" Malakor roared against the shrieking air, his forehead slamming down against hers, his amber eyes burning with an unholy, defiant madness. "Look at me, Aurelia! Keep your eyes on my face!"
Aurelia gasped, her fingers digging through his heavy gauntlets, finding his scarred knuckles beneath the steel.
The white fog cleared from her vision, replaced by the fierce, savage reality of the butcher holding her against the end of the world. The Eight Spheres stabilized, their blinding light settling into a steady, protective envelope around the hurtling armada.
"Two days," Aurelia choked out, her breath hot and ragged against his mouth. "At this speed... we will reach the straits of Val-Khor in thirty hours."
Malakor’s lips parted in a bloody, wolfish sneer that defied the cosmos.
"Thirty hours," he growled against her lips, sealing her mouth with a bruising, desperate kiss as the sea screamed around them. "Hold the road open, little sovereign. We're going to catch those iron-rats before they even drop their anchors."