You cannot hide a four hundred foot warship when the sea itself smells like raw sulfur and hot iron.I crouched behind a pile of wet pine crates on the salt-stained timber piers of the eastern docks, watching the black hull of the foreign flagship loom over the water like an iron mountain. Cold rain washed off my face, but my hand was dry and firm around the leather wrapping of my seamless black blade."How much time do we have before the harbor guards rotate their watch," I whispered, keeping my eyes on the high brass searchlights sweeping across the bay."Five minutes," Valeri

  The air tasted like hot metal and salt, burning the back of my throat with every quick breath I took.Bright red alarm lights flashed against the wet iron walls, casting bloody shadows across the dead executioner lying on the floor grating. Above us, the heavy four inch blast doors had sealed every exit, cutting off the draft and trapping the rising cloud of silver mercury vapor inside the closed holding vault."Soren, do not draw deep air," Valerie called out, her voice muffled as she pulled a thick glass flask filled with a foaming, pale blue liquid from her leath

 Water was already up to my neck, freezing cold and thick with black oil, but the heat rising from the floor beneath our feet was enough to boil the harbor sea.The whole ship gave another terrible, gut wrenching groan as the main hull plates parted down the keel. Fire sputtered in the dark overhead, bright orange sparks dropping into the icy water with sharp, angry hiss noises. The metal ribs around us were bending like thin wire under the weight of the sea."Soren, we have ten seconds before the secondary powder hold goes off," Valerie gasped, her hands clinging tight to my shoulder while her other arm kept th

A silver chain around your wrists feels just as heavy as an iron one when you are suspended three hundred feet above a dark ocean.The iron floor of the grand hall was polished so bright I could see my own reflection in the seamless gray stone. Above us, sixty tall stone pillars stretched up toward an open glass dome, where the crimson sky of Occidens cast a bloody light over the long, curved marble bench at the front of the room."State your names and your business in neutral waters," a tall man sitting in the center of the bench commanded, his voice echoing off the high stone pillars like a heavy brass drum.He wore a long, silver threaded robe with a broad obsidian collar, and his hands rested flat on a thick book bound in brass plates. Seven lower ranking magi sat on either side of him, dressed in plain blue robes, their faces pale and unreadable under thei

 Falling through three hundred feet of burning clouds will quickly teach you the true value of a steering lever.The floating fortress was tearing itself apart in mid-air, raining heavy iron girders and hot marble blocks down into the dark ocean below. The air was thick with gray smoke and screaming wind as Valerie and I sprinted along the tilting metal catwalk of the citadel’s private lower hangar bay."Soren, over there!" Valerie yelled, pointing her brass wrench toward a narrow, sleek vessel resting on a low launching rail near the bay doors. "That is an Occidens sky skiff! It uses twin compressed ether th