"Elara!!!"
That soul-rending roar still seemed to vibrate deep within Liam's ears, weaving together with the mad shriek of the Ashen Drake's steam core beneath his feet, the muffled thunder of distant shell bursts, and the volcano's ceaseless, guttural growl into a relentless symphony of ruin. He stood braced at the wildly pitching bow of the airship, his bare torso a testament to brutal artistry—a canvas of old and new scars, dried black blood crusted alongside freshly split wounds weeping a dull, rusty crimson. His left arm, a fully mutated limb of cooled dark magma and actively shifting, rusted metal, gleamed with an unnatural sheen in the flickering light leaking from the ship's conduits. At his fingertips, a faint, dark red energy pulsed like the dying breaths of a star.
He no longer tried to feel the seven-day countdown; he made himself become it. A cold, nearly mechanical precision had shouldered aside most human feeling, driving his decisions. His senses, stretched like an overloaded soul-scroll, strained in dangerous resonance with the Ashen Drake's energy veins and the raging elemental chaos around them. Every groan of the airship's stressed keel, every ripple in space as distant Imperial cannons powered up, even the pulse of magma flowing below that resonated with the Molten Core shard in his chest—all flooded his mind as torrents of data, scouring his nerves raw.
"Hard to port! Evade that cluster of volcanic shot off the port bow!" His voice was a rasp, yet it cut through the din like a quenched steel spike.
At the great wheel, an older wolf-kin, his face marked by old claw scars and his fur streaked with grey—Thunderclaw, once his tribe's finest hunter, now the steadiest hand on the Drake—threw his weight against the massive, gear-bound helm, corded muscles trembling with strain. "Hard a-port, my King!" he roared back, his voice fighting the wind. "Lift fans are twenty percent over capacity! Starboard balloons three and five are bleeding air, stabilizers are lagging! Another sharp turn and the hull... she might not hold!"
"Starboard auxiliary vents, three and seven, intermittent max burst! NOW!" Liam offered no explanation. His gaze was locked ahead, magnetized to the incoming hail of molten rock. His command carried an absolute, prophetic certainty.
The order echoed through shouts and pipes. The Ashen Drake groaned in protest, a chorus of terrifying metal stress. The great ship heeled over violently to port, decks tilting. Unsecured debris and wounded crew slid towards the rail with cries. A wave of blistering heat roared past as the largest projectiles screamed by the starboard flank, air filling with the stench of scorched metal. Just as the ship threatened to roll, the designated starboard vents blasted furious jets of white steam and colored energy sparks, shoving the behemoth back from the brink. The vessel righted itself with a shuddering, groaning effort.
On deck, the beast-kin who had just escaped death stared at the figure on the bow. Awe warred with a strange, growing distance. Their King seemed to be dancing with the ship and the dying sky itself in a way they couldn't understand, every step on the edge of annihilation.
The bear-kin chieftain Gareth limped forward, one massive leg a mess of bandages soaked through with fresh blood. Each step made the deck tremble. He stood behind Liam like a scarred mountain, his voice a low rumble of pain and exhaustion. "My King, that chaotic energy zone to the southeast... our scouts were mauled. Sharp-Eye's last image showed more than a storm. The space there is... unstable. Strange vortices. And the Imperial fleet—the Unyielding and her sister Iron Curtain—have a cordon forming. Their broadside guns are bristling. Worse... their main batteries are syncing final targeting solutions."
Liam didn't turn. His awareness seemed to stretch out, tendrils of thought coiling around the two distant iron mountains, tasting the world-ending power gathering in their maws. "Tell Warrick," his voice was flat, cold, "abandon all repairs on non-essential portside structures. Redirect every hand, all our reserves of sinew and quick-set alloy, to the main stern thrusters and the core shield generator. I want shield strength up fifteen percent, propulsion efficiency up ten, before their next volley." He paused, his grotesque left hand clenching the cold metal rail. A faint sizzle rose where his fingers met it, leaving smoldering prints. "And the spare cores for the Rust-Resonators?"
"Only two left, my King," Gareth's reply was heavy. "We've exhausted the scales from Ragnarok. Without the catalyst... the smiths are powerless."
"Ready them," Liam's order was a blade of ice. "They will be our fangs to tear that blockade open."
Then—a new sound. A piercing, high-frequency whine, unlike any engine groan or shell scream, erupted from the starboard rear. It felt alive, penetrating, like some ancient mechanical insect beating its wings at impossible speed.
"Unknown high-speed contact! Starboard, three o'clock high!" The young panther-kin on lookout cried out, voice edged with panic.
"A new Imperial flyer?!" Gareth shifted, hefting his great axe, his single eye fierce despite the weapon's futility against such a target.
"No—wait!" Liam's hand shot up, halting him. His brow furrowed. The killing focus in his eyes—where magma and rust seemed to swirl—flickered, replaced by instinctual confusion. The energy he sensed wasn't the ordered, destructive burn of Imperial tech. It was wild, primal, yet bound by immense precision. An ancient, formidable will was riding that whine.
"All hands, hold fire! No one shoots without my word!" Liam snarled, whirling to face the sky.
Through the ash-blizzard and the hellish glow, a small, impossibly agile black shape wove a drunken, evasive zig-zag through sparse anti-air fire from Imperial skiffs, streaking unerringly toward the Drake.
As it neared, gasps rose. It was no Imperial construct. Half the size of a beast-kin, it resembled a giant, mechanized hummingbird. Its body was a dark, metallic substance with an organic, chitinous texture. Four wings vibrated into invisibility, creating the whine. Most startling was its tail—a living, flexible whip covered in fine, dark blue scales, leaving faint energy trails. Its head held no beak, but a complex sensor array like a crystal cluster, with two central "eyes" of cold, luminous blue fixed on Liam.
"A... Zephyr-drone?!" Gareth breathed, his massive face a mask of disbelief. "The old tales are true... Only the Royal Criers of the Ironclaw Court—one of the mightiest beast-kin empires—are said to wield these extinct mechano-beasts. They tear through storms, ride elemental chaos, to deliver the Court's most urgent summons. What is it doing here?"
Under their stunned gaze, the drone executed a breathtaking, right-angled turn, effortlessly avoiding the Drake's exhaust plumes. It came to a perfect hover three meters before Liam, the wind from its wings stirring his ash-flecked hair.
A smooth plate on its abdomen slid open. Without visible mechanism, an irregular palm-sized metal shard, edged with ancient beast-glyphs, was pushed out, floating gently into Liam's waiting, still-human right palm.
The touch was icy, a cold that seeped into the bone. Then—a wave of heat. A vast, brutal, primeval will, like a slumbering volcano, roared to life within the shard and surged up his arm.
No words were needed. A mental torrent, immense and undeniable, crashed into his mind, forming a clear, pressure-laden message:
Stranger King, in whose veins the Iron Monarch's blood now flows, HEAR ME.
An image, vague yet towering with authority, imposed itself on his consciousness—a bestial head crowned with twisted, sky-piercing horns of dark gold, eyes like twin, unquenchable forge-fires. Its mere presence spoke of crushing mountains and commanding legions.
I am the Voice of the Ironclaw Court, Ulthar Shatterstone.
Your deeds upon the Rust Isle—mortal flesh housing a Molten Core, a will unbent before God-Corrosion—have stirred our Court's slumbering war-ghosts.
Know this: the Rust-Curse is no foe of yours alone. Its shadow falls upon the mainland. The Empire's hunger seeks not one island, but the yoke for all non-human kind.
By the Ancient Pact written in deepest blood, the Trial of the Iron Throne is now forced open for you.
Cross the Storm's Eye. Reach the Spine of the Behemoth. Before the gaze of our forebears, prove you are worthy to wield the Sovereignty of Beasts, to unite the scattered clans beneath the Empire's heel, and stand against the coming tide.
Should your heart falter, or should you fall upon the path, the Pact is void. The Ironclaw Court will deem you and yours irrelevant dust, left to wither unseen.
Choose, stranger King. Your time: until the next rising of the Twin Moons.
The presence vanished as abruptly as it came. The shard in his hand dulled to a cold, heavy lump. The Zephyr-drone's blue eyes flashed once, emitted a short, cryptic buzz, then turned and vanished into the volcanic smog as a streak of light, gone as if it had never been.
Silence, thick and heavy, settled on the deck. All were frozen, grappling with what they'd witnessed.
Gareth found his voice first, his grip tight on his axe. "The Ironclaw Court... The empire of the northern wastes, who wage war with living Behemoths... They are real. And 'Iron Monarch's blood'..." His eyes bore into Liam's mutated arm and chest. "My King, does this mean your new power? Or your defiance?"
Liam slowly closed his fingers around the shard. Its chill was a stark counterpoint to the Molten Core's heat and the Rust-Curse's insidious cold within him, a strange anchor. He looked at his monstrous left hand, felt the sigil on his chest, heard the ghost of the countdown in his soul.
Iron Monarch's blood? Was it the Molten Core shard? The corrupting Rust-Curse itself, seen by ancients as a mark of potential? Or simply his raw, desperate will to survive and break things, fitting their savage criteria?
"The Trial of the Iron Throne... The Storm's Eye... The Spine of the Behemoth..." He muttered the ominous names, his mind racing, weighing the insane risk against the faint, desperate hope it offered. An invitation to a wider, deadlier stage. A possible source of power or knowledge he desperately needed. Yet the voice of Ulthar had been one of cold assessment, blatant use, and utter indifference to failure.
"My King, we can't trust them!" A young wolf-kin, Hark, shouted, his face young but eyes hard. "Mainland Courts always see fringe-clan kin like us as impure, as cannon fodder! It's a trap! To steal your power or make you a pawn!"
"He's right!" a grizzled engineer added, clutching a bandaged arm. "We're hanging by a thread! The fleet's on us, the volcano's eating the island, your... condition, and Lady Elara... We need a safe port, not a suicide mission to some mythic deathtrap!"
"But..." The old fox-kin shaman near Gareth spoke, his voice soft but carrying a strange light. "The Ironclaw Court... legends say they hold ancient beast-spirit lore, ways to commune with ancestors, awaken earth-deep powers. If it's true... might they have means to... curb the Curse? Or rekindle Lady Elara's spirit?" He voiced the fragile, unbearable hope.
Gareth took a heavy breath. "It's a chance, my King. But the risk is beyond anything we face. We know only fragments. 'Storm's Eye,' 'Spine of the Behemoth'—I've never seen them on any map. They could be forbidden places, or not of this world at all. And the Twin Moons..." He looked grimly at the shrouded sky. "By our oldest star-readings, their next convergence is in nineteen days. The time... is cruelly short."
Liam's gaze swept over them—the fear, the doubt, the buried spark of hope at being acknowledged by such power. His thoughts arrowed down through the decks to the medical bay, to the silver-haired figure clinging to life by the thinnest thread.
Saving Elara needed a miracle beyond reason. Fighting the Rust-Curse needed greater power or forgotten wisdom. Escaping this inferno needed a key.
This sudden, perilous trial... its path seemed to whisper alongside those desperate needs.
The scales of his fate teetered—
BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!
The world exploded. The Ashen Drake was hammered sideways as if by a god's fist, heeling over at a sickening angle. Chaos—screams, the rending of metal, bodies and cargo tumbling.
"REPORT! Imperial fleet! The Unyielding and Iron Curtain... MAIN BATTERIES... FULL BROADSIDE!" The lookout's scream was pure terror. "Barrage covers us—we can't evade!"
Liam whipped around. On the horizon, the two leviathans blossomed with fire along their entire flanks. Dozens of massive shells, capable of erasing towns, tore into the sky, weaving a net of absolute destruction that descended upon the Drake and the sea around it.
The Empire's final sentence had been passed. And in his hand, the cold shard of the Court weighed like the world itself.
To grasp at this deadly, elusive chance? Or throw everything into a final, hopeless fight here and now?
The light in Liam's eyes—magma and rust—contracted, then exploded into supernova fury. His left arm hummed with angry power. There was no time for debate. Not even for thought.
"GARETH!!"
"Here, my King!" The bear-kin roared, battle-lust and fatalism in his eye.
"Tell Warrick! Initiate the Boiling Blood final protocol! Burn every spare bolt, bleed every non-critical conduit! I want this ship past her limits in twenty seconds! Jettison everything that isn't nailed down!"
"All hands, brace for impact! Target unchanged—the chaotic zone southeast, FULL BURN!"
"And this Courtly invitation..." Liam's fist clenched the metal shard so tight its edges bit into his flesh. A smile, cold, mad, and utterly resolute, cut across his face. It was a challenge to the entire malignant sky.
"First, let's smash our way out of this Imperial coffin. THEN we'll decide if this," he raised the clenched fist, "is a key to a throne... or just a rock to bash their heads in with!"
The order was the last drumbeat. The Ashen Drake, this final ark of defiance, gathered its broken self, poured every last gasp of steam and spark of energy into its wounded heart, and screamed its defiance into the teeth of the annihilating fire descending from the sky. It charged, a dying beast, into the storm and the unknown.