Diving through the boiling corona of the central red giant was like falling through a sea of liquid fire.
Seraphina and Kaelen cut through the solar flares inside a tight, pressurized sphere of combined dawn and shadow.
The heat exceeded fifty thousand degrees, but Seraphina’s Sunblood drank in the stellar radiation like mother’s milk, while Kaelen’s void-fields bent the thermal shockwaves around their trajectory, converting the heat into dense gravitational momentum.
They breached the atmosphere of the central siphon, touching down upon the immense observation gantry of the War-Maker’s Anvil.
The platform was a continent-sized slab of scorched black soul-iron, suspended directly above a swirling vortex of liquid star-plasma.
At the center of the gantry rose the Prime Crucible, where rivers of white-hot stellar metal were poured into titanic molds to cast the spinal cannons of dreadnoughts.
Flanking the crucible were four colossal Magnetic Containment Pylons, each pulsing with azure lightning as they channeled the siphon's flow.
Guarding the pylons were two hundred Molten Berserkers—eight-foot-tall automations forged from brass and volcanic stone, their chest plates burning with mini-reactors, wielding two-handed great axes dripping with liquid magma.
"The pylons' cooling vents cycle every twelve seconds," Seraphina said, dropping into a low combat crouch, her sunstone bow manifesting in her hands.
Her amber eyes tracked the azure discharge with clinical triage precision.
"When the vents vent plasma, their magnetic shielding drops for three seconds. If we hit all four synchronization nodes simultaneously, the siphon collapses!"
"Then let us clear the floor first," Kaelen Vance rumbled darkly at her side.
His eighty-foot shadow-wings snapped open with a thunderous crack of displaced air.
Gloom-Weaver flared in his grip, its broad black blade crackling with cold violet lightning.
His molten silver eyes flashed with sovereign bloodlust as the Molten Berserkers charged, their magma axes whistling through the superheated air.
Kaelen moved like an apex shadow.
He didn't just meet their charge; he warped the space between them.
Activating the Obsidian Ring of the Void-Consort, he generated a five-hundred-pace pulse of localized gravity compression.
The front rank of forty berserkers hit an invisible wall of a thousand atmospheres, their brass armor collapsing inward with deafening metallic groans before their magma cores detonated harmlessly beneath the pressure.
Kaelen vaulted off the smoking slag, his broadsword slicing through three berserkers in a clean, horizontal sweep, his dark-matter wings whipping out to decapitate another four with razor-sharp feathers.
"Seraphina! The vents are opening!" Kaelen’s battle-roar cut through the clang of steel.
Seraphina was already in the air.
Her twenty-foot wings of starlight carried her sixty feet above the boiling crucible.
She nocked four arrows of compressed thermonuclear dawn to her sunstone recurve bow, channeling the combined fury of the Solar Dynamo of Ra and the celestial lightning of the Heart of Susanoo.
Her golden crescent mark burned at her throat with blinding white-gold brilliance.
The four pylons hissed, venting massive plumes of superheated blue steam as their magnetic shielding dropped.
TWANG-TWANG-TWANG-TWANG.
Four arrows screamed through the vapor, striking the four synchronization nodes with pinpoint, surgical perfection.
The result was an instantaneous, catastrophic chain reaction.
The azure containment lightning shattered into sparks.
Deprived of magnetic guidance, millions of tons of superheated red-giant plasma reversed direction, rushing backward up the siphon and erupting into the Prime Crucible in a blinding, apocalyptic fountain of molten fire.
The continent-sized gantry shook violently, buckling under the sudden thermal overload as the foundry collapsed into ruin.
Across the boiling mist, the sixty Night-Reaver stealth cruisers completed their run, their anti-matter torpedoes detonating the left and right siphons in synchronized, brilliant fireballs that tore the outer ring of the forge apart.
Kaelen vaulted through the falling slag, landing heavily beside Seraphina at the edge of the collapsing platform.
He caught her by the waist, pulling her flush against his broad chest, his breath hot and ragged against her lips.
"A masterstroke, my Queen," he purred huskily, his eyes dark with intoxicating pride.
"The forge is broken."
Before Seraphina could answer, a deafening, thunderous impact shattered the center of the platform.
From the burning ruins of the Prime Crucible rose a colossal figure, ten paces tall, clad in armor of smoking, blackened titan-steel that burned with internal volcanic fire.
In his right hand, he held a gargantuan war-hammer the size of a siege engine, crackling with red stellar lightning:
Vorgon, the War-Maker.
The second Harbinger raised his war-hammer, his burning orange eyes locking onto Kaelen and Seraphina with apocalyptic fury.
"You broke my anvil..." Vorgon’s voice boomed like the collision of two planets, shaking the red nebula to its core.
"Now I will forge your bones into my throne!"