The Grand Hall of Val-Khor was filled with the scents of fresh cedar shavings, pungent whale-oil lamps, and the dry, medicinal tang of dried lotus leaves.
Around the massive oval table of polished black bog-oak sat the leaders of the three realms that now comprised Aurelia’s domain.
To the west sat Dennis and the battle-scarred marshals of the human resistance, their weathered hands resting on maps of the western coastline. To the east sat Saphira and six senior Keepers of the Pale Lotus, their shimmering robes of spun-jade silk catching the lantern-light in quiet, ethereal majesty. At the head of the table sat Theron, surrounded by stacks of grease-stained engineering rolls captured from the Dread Sovereign's chart-room.
Aurelia presided from the high seat, clad in dark velvet with the Eight Spheres glowing softly at her throat, her ancestral blade laid across the table before her.
Beside her, leaning back in his heavy iron-banded chair with his boots propped unceremoniously on the edge of the oak table, sat Malakor.
He was skinning an apple with a broad combat dagger, utterly indifferent to the pristine parchment maps near his heels, his dark amber eyes lazily scanning the faces in the room with lethal, predatory vigilance.
"The technical rubbings are complete, Your Grace," Theron wheezed, his milky eyes blinking behind thick crystal lenses as he unfurled a three-foot diagram of an armored airship. "The Eclipse engineers call them Sky-Leviathes. They do not fly by aether or wind; they rely on lifting-cells filled with 'phlogiston-gas'—a volatile, refined vapor drawn from the sulfuric vents of the Obsidian Caldera."
"If it's gas in a bag, it burns," Dennis grunted, his thumb tracing the diagram’s hull-lines. "A few well-placed fire-arrows from our ballistas, and the whole contraption drops like a stone."
"It does not drop easily, Lord Warden," Saphira spoke, her voice cool and silver. She pointed a slender, jade-ringed finger at the outer envelope on the blueprint. "The gas cells are sheathed in triple layers of vulcanized spider-silk, encased within an outer hull of corrugated star metal plate. Normal flame will not penetrate the outer skin before their gondola-cannons pulverize the battery crews below."
"Then we don't shoot them with fire-arrows," Malakor rumbled, slicing a wedge of apple and popping it into his mouth off the flat of his dagger.
He chewed slowly, his heavy gaze shifting to Saphira.
"You told us your weavers in Shen-Zhul have ballistas that shoot condensed cold-aether. The kind that turns hot brine to glass in two seconds."
Saphira blinked, her silver eyes widening slightly. "The Frost-Lances of the First Dynasty?"
"The same," Malakor said, pointing the tip of his dagger at the airship's gas envelope. "Gas expands in heat, doesn't it, Theron? What happens when you drop fifty gallons of sub-zero starlight into a pressurized gas-bladder forty leagues up in the air?"
Theron’s jaw dropped, his withered hands trembling as he stared at the warlord. "The... the gas would instantly liquefy. The volume would collapse by nine hundred percent in the space of a single heartbeat."
"And then the iron bag drops like a five-hundred-ton hammer," Malakor grinned, a dark, terrifying smirk spreading across his scarred face. "Right onto the deck of whatever ironclad is floating beneath it."
A low, appreciative murmur passed between Dennis and the western commanders.
"It is brutal," Saphira admitted, bowing her head toward Malakor with newfound respect. "And entirely feasible. The First Forge has eighty Frost-Lances in the high vaults. We can mount two on the foredeck of each captured ironclad."
"Do it," Aurelia commanded, her voice cutting through the room with quiet, imperial finality.
She stood up, her hand resting on the pommel of her sword. The entire council rose with her as one, bowing their heads in unison.
"Dennis," Aurelia said, looking at her veteran marshal. "You will retain eight captured ironclads and four thousand levies to fortify the harbor of Val-Khor. If any stragglers from Vorenus’s fleet appear, drive them onto the rocks."
"It will be done, Your Grace," Dennis saluted with his good arm.
"Saphira, return to Shen-Zhul via the slipstream," Aurelia continued. "Bring the Frost-Lances and two hundred of your best aether-artificers to the fleet within four days."
"The Keepers answer the Empress’s call," Saphira bowed low.
"And the rest of us," Aurelia said, her silver-violet gaze turning to Malakor, whose eyes were already burning with that familiar, wild hunger, "sail for the Obsidian Caldera. We take the war to the Emperor's doorstep."
Malakor drove his dagger an inch deep into the oak table, rising from his chair with a slow, monstrous grace that made the guards at the door hold their breath.
"To the caldera," Malakor growled, stepping up beside her, his heavy hand catching hers on the table, their fingers interlacing over the cold steel of her blade. "Let's go burn a sky."