The roar of the Vanguard’s broadsides was not the flat bark of common black powder.
It was the shriek of condensed void-gravity tearing through the atmosphere. The twelve refitted star metal dreadnoughts fired in unified echelon, their bored-out dragon-mortars launching eighty spheres of pressurized dark-matter across the flat water of the bay.
Where the void-shot struck the unyielding iron hulls of the Eclipse ironclads, there were no mere dents or splintered plates.
The projectiles imploded upon impact.
Air, armor, and hydraulic machinery were crushed into dense, fist-sized singularities before detonating outward in violent back-blasts of purple thunder. Three line-vessels of the Eclipse center were broken like dry twigs—their armored hulls snapping at the keel, their steam-boilers collapsing in deafening bursts of scalded iron and superheated steam.
"Close the line!" Lady Vespera’s voice rang through the speaking-trumpets, cold, crisp, and terrifyingly precise. "Galleys to the flanks! Net their paddle-wheels with chain-shot! Boarding teams, stand by the rams!"
The Black Leviathan led the charge, slicing through the boiling foam at twenty knots, driven by its runic paddle-wheels.
At the center of the enemy crescent, Arch-Reaver Vorenus’s flagship—the Dread Sovereign—recovered from its initial shock. The colossal, double-decked iron monster, four hundred feet of black iron and steam-valves, pivoted its massive, three-gun forward turret directly toward the charging flagship.
"Incoming heavy shells!" the lookout bellowed from the foremast.
Three five-hundred-pound armor-piercing iron bolts screamed from the Dread Sovereign's main battery, trailing plumes of black coal-smoke.
Aurelia did not step back.
She planted her boots at the tip of the bowsprit, the Eight Spheres blazing around her throat like a necklace of fallen moons. She reached out with her left hand, her fingers splayed, channeling the Third and Seventh Shards—liquid starlight and the Unyielding Bastion.
A hexagonal barrier of shimmering, silver-white aether snapped into existence thirty yards ahead of the bow.
The five-hundred-pound iron shells slammed into the barrier.
Instead of shattering the shield, the kinetic fury of the projectiles was instantly absorbed by the Ring of the Primordial Vessel, feeding into the torque around Aurelia’s neck before being expelled as a blinding wave of harmonic resonance. The shells flattened like lead slugs against an anvil and splashed harmlessly into the froth.
"My turn," Malakor growled at her side.
He vaulted onto the dragon-iron ram of the Black Leviathan, balanced precariously forty feet above the churning water as the flagship closed the remaining fifty yards at ramming speed. His two-handed great sword burned with roaring, black shadow-flame that whipped violently in the gale.
"Brace for ram!" the deck-officers roared.
The reinforced star metal prow of the Black Leviathans struck the port flank of the Dread Sovereign with a cataclysmic shriek of rending iron.
The thirty-foot dragon-ram punched through four inches of riveted belt-armor, driving deep into the enemy vessel’s forward coal-bunkers. The impact lifted the stern of the twelve-thousand-ton ironclad clean out of the water, showering both decks with shredded iron plates, sheared rivets, and screaming men.
Before the ships had even settled from the violent collision, Malakor leaped.
He cleared the twenty-foot gap between the shattered bowsprit and the Dread Sovereign's foredeck with a single, explosive bound, landing like a meteor amidst a platoon of fifty armored Eclipse guards.
His great sword came down in a brutal, sweeping cleave.
The dark steel cleaved through two spearmen and their lacquered tower-shields, the shadow-flame consuming their flesh before their severed torsos hit the iron grating.
"Vanguard! On me!" Malakor roared, his amber eyes burning with blood-drenched ecstasy as he swung his blade backhanded, taking the head of an Eclipse centurion. "Tear the guts out of this tub!"
Four hundred mountain veterans poured across the boarding ramps behind him, boarding axes swinging, their iron shields locking into a relentless wall of slaughter.
Aurelia stepped across the crumpled iron plating of the ram, her ancestral blade drawn, her silver hair whipping in the smoke.
At the far end of the command bridge, standing behind the armored glass of the pilothouse, stood Arch-Reaver Vorenus—a towering giant clad in blackened master-work plate, holding a massive pneumatic war-hammer that crackled with blue lightning.
His mechanical eye whirred, focusing on the eight glowing glyphs at Aurelia's throat.
"The witch of the western sea," Vorenus’s voice boomed through the steam-horns of the bridge. "You brought your head directly to my anvil."
Aurelia stepped onto the blood-slick deck, her lips curving into a cold, lethal smile.
"Your anvil is broken, reaver," Aurelia answered, her blade singing as she leveled it at his throat. "And your emperor is next."