The dive into the Black Chasm was not an assault of ships; it was a plunge into the throat of a frozen world.
Three leagues outside the harbor of the Silver Coast, the gray swells of the continental shelf suddenly plummeted away into an abyssal abyss where the water turned from slate into the ink-black hue of midnight obsidian. The surface here did not break in white foam; it was thick, viscous, churning with slow, oily ripples that gave off a bitter, metallic stench of sulfurous silt and crushed deep-sea kelp.
High in the slate-gray sky, Cinder circled within the sub-zero thermal drafts, his sixty-foot wings keeping a tight perimeter above the black water. The drake flew low, his belly scraping the top of the mist, his throat glowing with a low, steady ember of volcanic fire ready to burn away any aerial horrors that dared breach the surface.
Beneath the waves, the four Sun Wyrms formed a golden diamond around their riders.
Lyra and Gideon were mounted upon the massive back-crest of the elder wyrm, secured to the high saddle-brace of treated seal-leather they had forged during the southern campaign.
Beside them, mounted upon the three younger wyrms, were Talia, Commander Varis, and four elite Void-dancers of the Ember guard. Each warrior wore a pressurized diving tunic of double-layered bull-hide lined with silver wolf-pelt, their weapons bound tightly against their forearms with tarred sinew.
Around the six warriors and the four golden beasts, Lyra held the Weave-Aura.
The incandescent sphere of celestial violet starlight shimmered ten paces wide, an airtight, pressurized pocket of ancient Morvath sovereign-magic that held back the bone-crushing weight of the freezing sea. Within the perimeter of the light, the air was sweet with the scent of frozen cedar needles and mountain snow, but Lyra’s jaw was clamped tight, a fine bead of blood trickling from her left nostril as the immense tectonic pressure of the deep pressed against the boundaries of her soul.
Gideon’s massive hands were locked over hers on the guide-harness, his colossal chest pressed flat against her back.
His furnace heat—the deep, unyielding marrow of mountain iron and burning cedar—flooded across the silver-red bond between their hearts, acting as a massive counter-current that absorbed the crushing agony of the depth before it could fracture Lyra’s ribs.
"Hold the frequency, little bird," Gideon rumbled into the nape of her neck, his deep bass vibrating straight into her spine. "I’ve got your back. I’ve got your heart."
Lyra leaned back into his solid, immovable warmth, drawing his strength into her veins. "Two hundred fathoms... four hundred... six hundred."
The water outside the violet bubble grew darker, colder, and heavier.
The golden scales of the four Sun Wyrms were the only light in a lightless universe, their luminescent fins casting long, amber ribbons across the sheer, vertical rock faces of the chasm walls.
And then, eight hundred fathoms down, the acoustic hum struck them.
It was not a sound; it was a physical shockwave of ultrasonic vibration that hit the Weave-Aura like a battering ram.
THRRRRRUM.
The violet sphere rippled, flickering with violent, static-like fractures.
Outside the bubble, the water turned from black to a sickly, bioluminescent purple. Thousands of needle-thin shards of black core-glass drifted through the current like poisoned snow, clinking against the golden scales of the wyrms with sharp, metallic clicks.
The three young wyrmlings let out high, distressed whistles, their fins tucking tight against their flanks, their golden eyes wide with ancient, instinctual terror.
"They smell the Mother," Varis called out through the mental link, her silver braids whipping in the internal air-currents. "Their ancestors were hunted in these trenches before the First Age."
Ahead, at the bottom of the shelf a thousand fathoms down, the ocean floor opened into a subterranean amphitheater carved from black volcanic basalt.
Rising from the center of the amphitheater was the Keystone Spire.
It was colossal.
A jagged, triangular needle of solid abyssal core-glass, sixty paces wide at its base, rising two hundred feet toward the surface like a black tooth jutting from the earth.
Pulsing at the center of the spire was an enormous, spherical cavity carved from the petrified skull of a primordial leviathan. Inside the skull, suspended in a swirling vortex of pressurized, black mineral liquid, was a colossal, multifaceted gem the size of a war-chariot: the Heart of the Weeping Tide.
Connecting the spire to the trench walls were hundreds of thick, fibrous tendrils of bioluminescent purple kelp—fleshy, pulsating cables that siphoned the tectonic energy from the seabed and pumped it upward toward the coastal anchors.
And guarding the base of the spire were three hundred Abyssal Merrow.
They hovered in the black water in disciplined, circular echelons, their drowned-limestone bodies clad in armor of carved chitin and black pearl. In their webbed hands, they held heavy, barbed tridents forged from black core-glass that crackled with volatile, freezing lightning.
At the center of the formation, hovering twenty paces above the leviathan skull, was the creature who had stood upon the spire in the harbor: the High Priest of the Drowned.
The priest’s two solid spheres of polished black glass locked onto the descending golden wyrms.
His lipless mouth unhinged, letting out a shriek of ultrasonic rage that shattered the surrounding sea-kelp into drifting pulp.
"THE PROUD ONES DIVE TO DIE! "the priest’s voice echoed directly inside their skulls, cold as liquid nitrogen. "FEED THE QUEEN’S MARROW TO THE MOTHER! DROWN THE NORTH IN BLOOD!"
The three hundred Merrow lunged.
They moved through the water with terrifying, serpentine speed, their webbed feet kicking in synchronized bursts, their black-glass tridents leveled like an undulating forest of poisoned needles aimed straight for the Weave-Aura.
Gideon didn't wait for them to reach the bubble.
The northern warlord sheared their secondary harness straps with a flick of his blade.
"Ember guard! Secure the flanks!" Gideon roared, his voice booming within the starlit sphere like a war-drum. "Varis, take the priest! Talia, cut the kelp cables!"
He looked down at Lyra, his amber-gold eyes burning with pure, apocalyptic savagery.
"Drop the bubble, little bird," Gideon growled, his star-iron claymores humming with lethal, violet starlight. "I’m going to paint this trench red."
Lyra didn't drop the bubble entirely.
She focused the Weave-Aura down to a tight, form-fitting skin of starlight that wrapped around each warrior’s armor, leaving their limbs free to strike while holding the freezing water from their skin.
"HUNT!" Lyra screamed.
And the King and Queen of the Ash Court dropped into the black water like twin comets of starlight falling into the abyss.