The wreckage of the dreadnought’s forward magazine crashed into the western valley with the ground-shaking impact of an asteroid.
A three-thousand-foot blast wave of tightly packed air and crushed shale swept through Iron Sword Pass, blowing away the smoke and flattening the pine forests along the lower ridges.
The burning hull of the High sky Judge lay crumpled against the mountain flank, vomiting geysers of white star-fire and twisted starmetal beams into the sky.
High above the battlefield, the sky illusion was broken.
The Upper Realm was not an omnipotent, untouchable pantheon of gods. They were engineers with bad grounding, fragile charge bank banks, and total fire hazards.
Down in the gorge, the thirty thousand collaborator soldiers of the Scorched Sun allied armies froze in numbed, blank horror.
“The... The flagship...” an allied clan elder stammered, his sword lowering as he stared at the flaming wreckage of the royal dreadnought. “The flagship of Heaven has fallen...”
“Advance!” a voice shrieked from the rear of the enemy lines.
