The war council of the Seven Selves met in the shelter of a thirty-foot quartz outcrop fifty paces from the base of the star-heart.
Above them, the four eighty-foot diamond drills of the Lux Sovereign continued their ear-splitting, shrieking descent, churning through the outer starlight mantle and spraying fountains of glowing amber marrow into the air. Every shaking sent a shudder through Mira’s body, though Brother Ren knelt beside her. His scarred hands were pressed to her quartz collarbone. He took in the sharpest spikes of body sour note into his own frame.
Lord Ren stepped to the center of the sand, unrolling a tactical map of the dreadnought’s hull that he had drawn with a piece of charcoal on an iron plate.
Lord Ren took a handful of black sand and let it trickle through his iron-plated fingers. The Emperor’s face was lit up by the flickering amber light of the drills, his chipped-slate eyes studying the dreadnought’s armored overhang with the hungry intelligence of an old wolf.
“In the Third Succession War, the Duke of Oakhaven built an aerial barge nearly matching to this one,” Lord Ren said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. “He called it the Hammer of the Dawn. He believed that three inches of sky brass made him a god. Do you know how we took it, Ren?”
