The shadow of the High sky Judge was cold enough to frost the stones.
A mile and a half of massive stone starmetal plate hung suspended in the thin mountain air, defying every law of terrestrial mass. Its golden hull was etched with hundreds of thousands of linked holding runes that crackled with blue Saint Elmo’s fire.
Down on the stronghold, the air turned thick, sticky. The sheer gravity shifted weight of the vessel pressed against Lin Ke’s chest like a slab of cold lead.
High on the flying bridge, standing upon an open marble balcony overlooking the prow, was Envoy Chu Rong.
The judge’s silver robes snapped in the violent updraft. His golden clockwork eye-prisms gleamed with homicidal joy as he looked down upon the shattered pass and the fleeing mortal refugees.
Chu Rong raised his right arm.
At the dreadnought’s prow, the sixty-foot black glass maw of the Heaven-Cleaving Divine Lance began to rotate.
A deep, underground hum shook through the air. A sound that rang not from the sky, but from deep within the bedrock.
