The sky above the southern reaches was not blue; it was a churning ceiling of bruised violet smoke and sulfurous steam.
Mounted upon Cinder’s broad, spiked neck-crest, Lyra and Gideon banked through the rising thermal drafts four leagues south of the smoking ruins of the Obsidian Enclave. Behind them, the northern dreadnoughts and the four Sun Wyrms had vanished into the safety of the northern coastal fog, escorting Alpha Conlan and the freed thralls back to the Silver Citadel.
Ahead lay the desolate expanse of the Boiling Shelf.
Here, the continental ledge did not plunge into lightless deeps; it swelled upward in a jagged spine of submarine volcanic craters that broke the gray swells in steaming black ridges. The ocean around them churned white, frothing with volcanic gas that smelled of scorched brimstone and boiled iron.
At the center of the shelf lay the Fourth Pillar: the Cinder Maw.
It was an enormous, circular caldera half a league wide, rising twenty paces above the sea like a crown of jagged basalt teeth. Inside the rim of the caldera, the ocean did not enter. It was held back by a colossal, shimmering barrier of inverted abyssal ice—a translucent dome of pale, nightshade-colored frost that hissed violently wherever the spray of the surrounding boiling sea struck its perimeter.
Beneath that dome of unmelting ice lay the mouth of the continental magma vent.
The ancient fire of the southern shelf was being systematically smothered. Through the thick, semi-translucent frost, Lyra could see the natural orange glow of the subterranean magma chamber below, choked and blackened by thousands of thick, pulsating siphon-spikes of abyssal core-glass that had been driven directly into the molten rock.
"They aren't just siphoning the heat," Gideon growled, his deep bass vibrating through the leather saddle-brace behind her.
His massive arms were locked securely around her ribs, holding her steady against the buffeting winds, his amber-gold eyes narrowed as he studied the rim of the caldera.
"They're using the continental fire to distill abyssal venom," Gideon continued. "Look at the condensation along the inside of that ice-dome."
Lyra leaned forward, her hazel-grey eye tracking the flow of the currents while her violet eye pierced the magical distortion.
He was right.
The heat rising from the smothered magma vent wasn't escaping. It was being captured by the ice barrier, turning the steam into an oily, iridescent black condensate that ran down the interior walls of the caldera in hundreds of dark rivulets, draining into a massive cistern carved from the jawbones of an ancient sea-serpent.
Guarding the rim of the basalt teeth were three hundred elite Abyssal Myrmidons.
Unlike the common spearmen of the first trench, these warriors were colossal—eight feet tall, their bodies armored in heavy, living coral-plate that wept black poison, their four webbed arms wielding massive, serrated cleavers forged from abyssal core-iron.
And standing atop the sea-serpent cistern at the center of the caldera was the architect of the siphon.
A creature of pure, ancient malice: the High Archon of the Drowned, Malakor the Deep-Born.
He was ten feet tall, clad in ceremonial plate forged from the blackened scales of a dead leviathan. Where his lower limbs should have been was a writhing mass of six thick, muscular tentacles barbed with pale bone hooks that anchored him to the rock. In his four primary arms, he held a massive, double-bladed poleaxe that crackled with volatile, freezing lightning.
"They know we're here," Lyra said.
"Cinder isn't exactly subtle, little bird," Gideon rumbled against her temple, his lips peeling back over sharp fangs in a savage grin. "He smells like five hundred tons of burning charcoal."
At the mention of his scent, Cinder let out an earth-shattering roar that parted the violet smoke above the caldera, banking his sixty-foot obsidian wings in a steep, aggressive dive straight toward the ice-dome.
High Archon Malakor looked up, his solid black-glass eyes reflecting the descending dragon.
His lipless mouth tore open, venting an ultrasonic war-shriek that shattered the basalt rocks along the rim.
"BRING DOWN THE WORM!" Malakor’s telepathic command echoed directly inside the skulls of the Myrmidons. "FREEZE THE FIRE IN HIS CHEST!"
The three hundred Myrmidons raised their core-iron cleavers in unison.
From the tip of each blade, lances of freezing, black lightning shot into the sky, weaving together into a dense, crackling web of negative energy aimed directly at Cinder’s belly.
"Lyra!" Gideon shouted.
"I have the sky!" Lyra cried out.
She didn't raise a shield. She stood upright in the stirrups of the saddle, the wind whipping her dark hair wild around her face, her star-iron circlet igniting into an incandescent halo of celestial starlight.
She extended her right hand toward the rising web of lightning.
True Loom, unknot the storm, her will commanded.
Her sovereign power struck the net of black lightning not as a shield, but as an unraveling needle. She seized the resonant threads of the lightning, twisting the polarity of the magic with a savage jerk of her wrist.
The freezing lightning inverted.
The black bolts turned to brilliant, blinding white starlight mid-air, reversing their trajectory and crashing back down upon the caldera rim like a meteor shower.
The Myrmidon lines dissolved into screaming chaos. Fifty coral-armored warriors were incinerated where they stood, their living plate shattering into dust as the reflected celestial fire tore through their formations.
Before the remaining warriors could reform their ranks, Cinder hit the caldera rim.
The sixty-foot volcanic drake didn't land; he plowed into the basalt teeth like an avalanche of living obsidian. His massive talons crushed three Myrmidons into paste, his spiked tail swept an entire squad off the cliff into the boiling sea below, and his jaws parted to unleash a continuous, roaring river of cobalt-blue dragon fire straight across the ice-dome.
The ice shrieked.
The unmelting abyssal frost, tempered by centuries of lightless pressure, met the primordial volcanic heat of an elder drake. Clouds of blinding, superheated steam erupted into the caldera, obscuring the battlefield in a thick, white fog.
Gideon and Lyra leaped from the saddle before Cinder’s claws had even settled into the stone.
They hit the slick basalt floor of the caldera in unison, rolling smoothly to their feet as Gideon drew both of his five-foot star-iron claymores with twin roars of singing steel.
Through the blinding steam, four massive coral cleavers whistled toward Gideon’s neck.
Gideon didn't give ground.
He stepped forward into the strike, his right claymore parrying two of the heavy cleavers with a deafening ring of sparks, while his left blade cleaved straight through the center of the attacking Myrmidon's chest, bisecting the eight-foot brute from collar to hip.
Behind him, Lyra moved like a shadow of starlight.
Her obsidian daggers were blurred arcs of black glass and violet flame. A Myrmidon lunged with a barbed harpoon; Lyra slid beneath the thrust, driving her right dagger into the creature's knee-joint, then spun to drive her mother’s star-iron blade straight through the side of its neck.
The creature collapsed, black ichor hissing against the hot stone.
Ahead, at the center of the caldera, the steam parted to reveal High Archon Malakor.
His bone-barbed tentacles were coiled tight, his four arms raising the massive poleaxe high above his head as his black-glass eyes locked onto Lyra.
"The Ash Queen dies first!" Malakor roared, his tentacles propelling him across the basalt floor with terrifying, serpentine speed.
Gideon stepped directly into his path.
"You'll have to go through the wolf first, squid," Gideon growled, his voice dropping into that dark, apocalyptic register that promised only slaughter.
Malakor swung the heavy poleaxe in a devastating, horizontal arc designed to sever Gideon at the waist.
Gideon dropped his left blade, caught the haft of the poleaxe barehanded, his muscles screaming under the impact, and drove his right claymore straight into Malakor’s center shoulder.
The star-iron bit deep into the leviathan plate, releasing a fountain of black, freezing fluid that hissed against Gideon’s chest.
Malakor shrieked, his tentacles lashing out to wrap around Gideon’s thighs, their bone hooks tearing through the heavy leather of his breeches to bite into his flesh.
Gideon didn't flinch.
He locked his bare hand tighter around the poleaxe haft, his amber eyes burning with unbridled, feral savagery as he pulled the Archon closer until their faces were inches apart.
"Lyra!" Gideon roared through gritted teeth. "THE VENT!"
Lyra didn't hesitate.
She vaulted off the carcass of a fallen Myrmidon, bypassing the struggling warlords, and landed directly atop the central siphon-cluster at the mouth of the magma vent.
The cluster was held by twelve massive pins of abyssal core-glass driven into the continental bedrock.
Lyra dropped to one knee, driving both of her star-iron daggers straight into the bedrock between the pins.
She didn't use starlight. She opened her veins, letting a drop of her true-mate blood—infused with the ancient Drake fire of Gideon's lineage—fall onto the cold stone.
"Awaken," Lyra whispered to the earth.
The continental vent answered.
A deafening, tectonic roar ripped through the caldera. The seabed beneath the ice-dome cracked wide open, and an ocean of molten, orange magma surged upward with uncontainable volcanic fury.
The ice-dome shattered into ten million flying shards of boiling vapor.
The siphon-pins melted like tallow in an open flame.
The natural heat of the southern continent flooded back into the shelf, consuming the abyssal venom in the cistern and vaporizing the remaining Myrmidons in a rolling wave of clean, volcanic fire.
Gideon twisted his claymore in Malakor’s shoulder, tearing the blade free with a savage heave, then brought the heavy pommel down onto the Archon’s skull with bone-crushing force.
Malakor collapsed onto the disintegrating basalt, his tentacles thrashing weakly as the rising magma began to lap at his armor.
"The... the Deep Court..." Malakor choked, black fluid pouring from his broken mouth. "The Empress... waits... in the Sunken Court..."
Gideon stepped over the dying Archon, his boots smoking against the hot stone, and severed the creature's head with a single, clean stroke of his blade.
The Fourth Anchor was broken.
Across the Boiling Shelf, the volcanic vents roared to life in an unbroken chain of natural fire, driving the freezing dark of the abyss back into the deep trenches where it belonged.
Cinder touched down beside them, his obsidian wings shielding them from the falling ash, his throat rumbling with deep, contented satisfaction.
Gideon turned, extending his bloody, soot-blackened hand to Lyra as she rose from the steaming vent.
She took it, leaning against his massive chest as the smoke began to clear, her dual-colored gaze looking south toward the vast, uncharted waters that lay beyond the continental shelf.
"Four down," Gideon rumbled, his arm locking around her waist, his lips brushing the crown of her head.
"Three remain," Lyra whispered.
"And the Empress is waiting."